“What… is this…?”

It was well past the hour of Xu, and the streets of Silver Bridge Ward were still bustling. Shop after shop breathed out waves of heat, while pedestrians carrying little lanterns laughed and chatted as they crossed the bluestone-paved road. In the shadows, a little wastewater trickled along. Hardly anyone noticed the two figures who had just begun to face off against each other.

The stout auntie who had put in a few good words on someone’s behalf had already ducked out of sight. Up on the second floor of the Xiang Family Eatery, Yu Hezhang and Meng Biao — both of whom had once tasted a beating from that “Sun Wukong” — were seasoned men of the martial world. They could roughly gauge just how formidable their opponent was, having heard countless tales of the dangers of duels among the greenwood’s finest. A moment earlier, the young man walking along the roadside had seemed to suddenly notice something, then crossed the crowded street to confront another figure in front of a general goods stall.

From their vantage point above, they could see clearly that in that instant, young Sun’s movements looked no different from ordinary walking, yet his speed was unfathomably fast. Neither of them so much as blinked, and still they couldn’t fathom how he had generated such force.

Facing him, the man who had risen to his feet was powerfully built. Though they couldn’t immediately place his identity, they could guess he was no easy greenwood hero to deal with.

The two of them had only just crossed paths with Long and Sun the day before, and had always found it puzzling that the pair had come to Fuzhou to set up a stall and sell goods without stirring up any trouble. Now, at this moment, with an enemy clearly coming to their door, the two men felt a sense of “just as I suspected,” and everything suddenly made sense.

How could demons like these possibly be law-abiding, decent folk…

Below, a conversation rang out between the two stalls.

“Just as I thought… Young master here felt something was off about you the last time I came through…”

“Big talk,” the young man across from him said, hands on his hips. “Why would I mess with you? You’ll never guess.”

“When a villain does evil, it’s naturally because his skin’s been itching for a beating.”

“See? Told you, you’d never guess.”

“…”

Yue Yun’s fists were already clenched, and he ground his teeth.

After a moment, he finally spoke: “Talk. Where’s this monkey from, that he dares run wild in Fuzhou?”

“Messing with you counts as running wild? Is Fuzhou your family’s backyard?”

“A sharp tongue earns a beating too.” Yue Yun pointed a finger. “This Yue doesn’t strike the nameless. Give your name now, and I’ll go easy on you.”

“Tch, you’re mad. So if I just don’t give my name, there’s no fight to be had… heh heh. You know what? I argued with the stout auntie because I wanted you to pay her less, so I messed with you, and you actually fell for it, hahaha…”

“…”

The crowd wove back and forth along the street, lanterns and torches casting a scattered play of light and shadow. Amid that light and shadow, the two men’s inner energy stirred; with every seemingly casual motion, every lift of a hand, every step, faint sounds seemed to rise from within their very bones.

The pedestrians on the road hadn’t yet noticed any of this. Not far off, the stout auntie couldn’t help but leap forward. “You little brat, I knew you were up to no good! Young Master Yue, young lordling, hit him!…”

“La la la, that’ll show you…” Ning Ji stuck out his tongue.

Yue Yun was likewise so furious his head spun, the veins at his temples bulging.

But he had come here this time to search for clues about Zuo Xingzhou and Zhan Yunhai, and clinging to his last shred of reason, he turned his gaze aside.

“Ma’am, tell me — what are these two brats’ names…”

The stout auntie popped out from behind her stall…

“…Long? Ao? Tian—”

It was a late-May night, nearing the hour of Hai, when a terrifying, low roar suddenly erupted over the skies of Silver Bridge Ward.

On the second floor of the Xiang Family Eatery, Yu Hezhang and Meng Biao could actually feel the sound waves ripple across their bodies. As greenwood men whose job it was to recruit skilled fighters, they were especially sensitive to certain signs. They couldn’t make out exactly what the two men confronting each other not far away had said, but it was clear the negotiation had broken down. The roar from the strongly-built young man betrayed a deep mastery of the most orthodox esoteric inner cultivation — more terrifying, even, than some of the so-called “grandmasters” and “elders” of Fujian.

Qu Longjun, who had been telling stories and chatting in front of a stall along with a group of young women, turned to look toward the rice-cake stall, at the stubble-faced young man whose hair stood on end with fury. At the same moment, Ning Ji nearby spread his arms wide, and from his mouth came a roar of his own — “Hooowl—” — bursting forth in surging waves that shot up into the night sky.

Last year in Jiangning city, Lin Zongwu had answered the raised black banner with a single furious roar, the inner power of the greenwood’s foremost man astonishing the world. Ning Ji had admired it in his heart, yet he also knew he himself fell far, far short. But at this moment, facing Yue Yun, who had suddenly gone berserk before him, he did not yield an inch.

Both men’s inner power surged. Yue Yun waved a hand: “Everybody clear out—”

The cry of “Clear out, clear out…” shook the long street, and then more roars piled atop one another.

“I’ve long heard of Grandmaster Zhou’s Fanzi Fist and Five-Step Thirteen Spear. Others may fear you, but I’ve wanted to test myself against you for a while now!”

“I’ll — test — your whole — family—”

A thunderous boom.

The two figures collided head-on!

In that instant, the crossing blur of fists erupted too fast for the eye to follow. The bluestone bricks underfoot shook and rumbled like grinding millstones, while above, shadows of fists whistled through the air.

Yue Yun possessed prodigious natural strength, and whenever sparring with anyone, he would instinctively hold back at first. Yet now, facing this young man a head shorter than himself, in his blazing fury he unleashed seventy percent of his power. But amid the fearsome gale of his fists, his opponent crouched low, arms curved into a circle above his torso, legs driving sideways like a wild ox plowing the earth, and in the blink of an eye lunged straight for Yue Yun’s waist, wrapping him in an embrace.

Yue Yun’s first punch swung through empty air; his second dropped lower along its path, but his opponent’s stance was lower still. The other’s elbow swept up in a block like an exploding vortex, combining both power and finesse to deflect Yue Yun’s fist upward, and then both hands were already seizing the fabric at the small of Yue Yun’s back.

From just that one charge, one block, and one grapple, Yue Yun understood the young man before him was extremely experienced in real combat. Being a head shorter, with a gap in both age and strength, the youth had gone straight for a body clinch through the middle, relying on his one advantage — a lower center of gravity — to contest the midsection and lower stance. But Yue Yun’s strength was immense and his waist and stance rock-solid; when had he ever feared such small cleverness? His footwork sank low, his knee drove up in a strike, and both hands reached to seize the youth’s back.

But in the very next instant of that collision, the youth shifted from a hold to a shove, his body pulling back for a split second, and then one arm shot straight up from within their embrace, aiming for Yue Yun’s chin and face. Yue Yun’s head barely managed to jerk aside, and the blade of that palm shifted mid-air, hard and soft twisting together, before it came crashing down with a whistling roar.

The Great Stele-Smashing Hand — the Heaven-Overturning Seal!

With a boom, a nearby table burst outward from the inside, and a swath of cloth on Yue Yun’s shoulder likewise shredded and fluttered away like butterflies.

The two shifted slightly out of alignment — Yue Yun’s knee strike landed on empty air, but he did manage to seize the cloth on the youth’s back, meaning to hoist him bodily off the ground. Yet in that same instant the Stele-Smashing Hand shattered the wooden table, the youth’s center of gravity had dropped to its lowest point; his hands clamped around Yue Yun’s waist once more, and using the force of Yue Yun’s own pull to spring up, he tried to drag the man crashing down to the ground.

Neither gained the upper hand in this exchange — Yue Yun lifted the youth’s body for a moment, but the youth’s waist and stance moved as one, and he used that borrowed force to plant his feet back down; still, he failed to pull Yue Yun to the ground either. In the next instant, Yue Yun dropped his elbow in a smashing blow, the youth lunged forward in a bow stance, and after a few bouts of grappling and tearing, both figures went rolling forward onto the ground.

In an ordinary duel among martial artists, there would rarely be so much fighting on the ground; but on the battlefield, ground-rolling saber and ground-rolling fist techniques were among a veteran soldier’s most vital means of survival. The moment the two figures made contact, they rolled to the ground amid thunderous crashes, yet the grappling and lunging never let up. In the blink of an eye, tables and chairs went flying and bluestone slabs shattered in front of the rice-cake stall, the two of them rolling, rising, lunging, and trading blows. Soon their clothes were torn to shreds, and bloodstains began to appear on their bodies.

The pedestrians on the road all began to flee and scatter. Some recognized Yue Yun and ran off shouting a jumble of things. Meanwhile, Qu Longjun watched it all coldly, and with an unruffled expression she shielded the young women around her, saying, “A small matter has come up. Please, everyone, go on ahead.”

But few actually left.

One woman said, “That man clearly looks like a villain.”

Another, who recognized him, said, “That’s the younger brother from the Yue siblings of the Beiwei Army. He’s always been one to stir up trouble — look at him, he looks just like a monster.”

Someone said, “Who would’ve guessed Young Master Long really is a man of the martial world?”

Another said, “So young Sun is quite formidable too…”

Someone added, “…I really don’t like that kind of man… I mean the one who looks like a monster!”

The brawl across the way was swift and savage — those in the know watched with hearts pounding, but to the uninitiated, the way the two kept rolling around on the ground looked rather unseemly. At one point the two briefly pulled apart. Yue Yun, in a Fanzi Fist stance, steadied his breathing as he watched the youth crouched low across from him, his fist-guard coiled and cold, and the fire of rage burned in his chest.

His strength was tremendous, and with the advantage of a thick hide and tough flesh, he hadn’t suffered any serious injury in the fight so far. But the young man before him was far more nimble; though his cultivation still fell short of Yue Yun’s, he had used all manner of strange, tricky moves to drag Yue Yun to the ground, and combined with his low center of gravity, had managed to keep Yue Yun from gaining any real advantage. The fight had been anything but glorious, and — rare for him — he felt somewhat humiliated by it.

In the army camps, ground-rolling fist was practiced, sure enough, but it was rare to see someone drag their opponent to the ground for the entire fight and cling to them like sticky candy, refusing to let them rise at all — the humiliation of it outweighed any real harm.

But what angered him most, of course, was the handsome young man standing a little further off, the one called “Long Aotian.”

Last year in Jiangning, on a mission with his sister, they had rescued a young woman named Yan Yunzhi, and he had once harbored feelings for her.

Unfortunately, that Long Aotian had sullied the young woman’s reputation, and afterward she had even seemed to develop feelings for him — his sister had once discussed the matter with him. Being a straightforward, blunt man by nature, he found it absurd and infuriating, but in the end there was nothing he could do about it.

Back in Jiangning, he had once been curious what the man actually looked like. Now, seeing him with his own eyes, certain things suddenly seemed to make sense — but at the same time, it only made him angrier.

So it’s true — women really do go for pretty-boy faces like that?

Yan Yunzhi, whom he had once admired for seeming so strong and independent — in the end, she had just fallen for this face?

He raised a hand and pointed, hesitated a moment, then forced out his most righteous, high-minded voice: “You… all of you, stay away from him! Those two are no good!”

Nearby, Ning Ji was talking to the stout auntie: “Let’s make him pay for it. His family’s rich.”

The stout auntie: “Pah, pah, pah—” She ignored him.

Behind them, a woman had already started shouting, “Who do you think you are!”

“You’re the one slandering people! You’re the one who’s no good!”

“Look at yourself — you look just like a monster!”

“That’s right, that’s right, that’s right…”

“Young Master Long is definitely a good man…”

Amid the chattering noise, Yue Yun ground his teeth and let out a cold laugh. “Long Aotian, Sun Wukong — you two lechers, do you think no one knows what you’ve been up to out there?”

“L-lechers?”

A group of women wore complicated expressions, their eyes all going wide and sparkling.

Yue Yun had finally caught the crowd’s attention. He swept out a hand, sneered again, and, projecting with his inner power, declared: “Long Aotian, do you still remember Yan Yunzhi of Yan Family Fort—” His voice rang out righteous and stern, rolling out over the long street.

Hearing that name, Ning Ji’s expression tensed, and his face instantly fell flat.

Not far behind, Qu Longjun’s brow furrowed slightly. Before she could say anything, the group of women reacted first.

“Y-Yan Yunzhi?”

“Yan Family Fort…”

“Could it be… the Female Knight, Yan Jiuniang?”

People exchanged glances. Someone raised the book in their hand, making a connection: “Young Hero Long… Female Knight Yan… could there really be a Female Knight Yan…”

“…”

Yue Yun was stunned by this reaction, his expression freezing, unable for a moment to grasp what was happening.

At that very moment, Qu Longjun glanced at Ning Ji, then said coolly, “And what business is it of yours, whatever there is between Miss Yan and me?”

The moment those words left her mouth, wave after wave of excited screams rose up from the crowd.

One woman lowered her voice, beaming with excitement: “Ahhhh… there really is a Female Knight Yan—”

Some women even joined hands and jumped up and down: “Her name’s Yan Yunzhi…”

“So the two of them really…”

Someone began shouting furiously at Yue Yun:

“Yeah, yeah, what are you to the Female Knight Yan, anyway—”

“Ahhhhh— that’s right, what business is it of yours, you monster—”

“I ship them together…”

“No, I don’t, I don’t approve…”

The atmosphere grew so heated, so bizarre, that Yue Yun could only stare at the scene before him, utterly unable to comprehend what kind of world he’d landed in.

…

“But those two — they’re lechers—”

A moment later, a roar of stifled fury and frustration tore through the night sky!