Shouts and cries of pain rose up on every side; inside the restaurant, the noise had erupted in an instant, as chaotic as a pot suddenly boiling over. Caught in the middle of it, though, hardly anyone could grasp the full shape of what was actually happening.
As Song Qian pulled Qin Siyuan out through the main door, the tall, powerfully built man behind them had already forced his way through the crowd and was closing in fast, and at the intersection ahead, several dozen men came surging forward to block the way as well—for a moment, it felt as though they’d walked straight into a prearranged ambush.
Though the imperial relatives held little real power these days, a man who’d earned a post as a guard in the princely household was certainly no pushover, and Song Qian, seeing danger closing in from both front and back, gritted his teeth and drew the long blade at his side. All around, the commotion was total chaos—it wasn’t just the two of them rushing out the door, but several other guests who’d already been near the entrance as well. Seeing several dozen men bearing down on them from across the street, they too froze for a moment in shock. But the man leading the group opposite seemed equally taken aback, and abruptly threw up a hand, halting his men and bringing the two sides into a standoff.
There was scarcely any time to think, and no one could quite make out who the actual enemy was. Inside the hall, the gunshot’s echo still rang out, deafening; the powerfully built man had already fought his way through the crowd, charging straight at Qin Siyuan, while Song Qian, blade drawn, was torn between the two threats, unable to decide which to face first. Amid the din, a voice rang out, calm and steady despite the chaos: “It’s them! Take them down!” Though the voice was quickly swallowed up in the general uproar, it still carried clearly enough to be heard—it belonged to none other than Qin Siyuan himself, walking just behind Song Qian.
Looking back on it afterward, despite the suddenness of the whole affair and having been dragged out the door before he even understood what was happening, this man in his sixties had shown not the slightest trace of panic, reacting first and fastest of anyone. His words carried clearly enough for others to hear as well. Behind them, the powerfully built man let out a furious roar and hurled a potted plant through the air. Song Qian swung his blade to deflect it, the impact still forceful enough to send him staggering sideways a few steps, shards of broken pottery and clumps of soil scattering through the air—but the pot’s trajectory had shifted slightly, sending it flying instead toward the several dozen men blocking the street ahead. The leader of that group, who had just raised his hand to halt his men, suddenly found the object hurtling toward him; caught off guard, he threw up both arms to shield himself, and though he escaped unharmed, he was left covered head to toe in flying dirt.
“Damn it, they came prepared too…” The leader wiped the wet mud from his face, then abruptly drew a cudgel from his side. “Brothers, smash them to pieces!” Several dozen men surged forward with a roar!
The chaos at the entrance instantly swelled into a raging torrent, the two sides crashing together. Inside the hall, Yuan Jin’er crouched behind a counter, peering out, utterly unable to understand why everything inside had suddenly descended into chaos as well—all she could hear was shouting, gunfire, smoke billowing and blood spraying. The gunpowder used in fire-lances in this era produced enormous clouds of smoke and a deafening report; the sudden blast was genuinely terrifying, and on the far side of the smoke, flesh and blood had erupted outward, spreading across the floor and spattering the faces and bodies of those standing behind.
Up on the landing at the top of the second-floor corridor, several people had rushed out to look at the scene as well—Zhou Pei, Zhang Rui, and Li Tong, who had come with Ning Yi. They’d seen Ning Yi head out carrying the fire-lance, hesitated for a moment, then followed after him. Before they’d even fully cleared the corridor, they saw someone leap down from the landing, and chaos erupted below in an instant. Zhou Pei jumped in fright and crouched by the railing to look down, and before she could make sense of anything, a deafening boom sounded, smoke rising up on one side of her view, mixed in with a shocking amount of blood.
It was then that Zhou Pei and the two tutors caught sight of the same scholar they’d been sitting down debating with earlier—but all trace of his earlier refined, cultured air was gone. Amid the chaos in the hall, with pandemonium breaking out at the entrance as well, that single shot had been executed with brutal precision, without the slightest hesitation. As the barrel came down, the scholar drew the woman in white beside him close and began retreating into the crowd.
The three of them up on the landing simply couldn’t process the sudden violence and death unfolding before them. Whether it was Zhou Pei, who’d seen rather more of the world than most girls her age, or Zhang Rui and Li Tong, both well versed in matters of military strategy, none of them could find any familiar framework to make sense of a body suddenly collapsing in a spray of blood—their minds went utterly blank. A moment later, they saw the scarred man below come to a stop, then charge straight at the scholar in the long robe.
“Ahh—! Ahh—!”
“Kill the old Qin dog first!”
“The fire-lance! Don’t let him light it again—”
The shouts came from several different mouths at once, but Zhou Pei, standing dazed above amid the chaos, couldn’t even tell who had said what. All she could see was the scarred man charging toward Ning Yi with a furious cry. This northern brute stood a full head or more taller than Ning Yi, powerfully built besides, and in the blink of an eye, the two of them collided amid the still-drifting smoke.
The girl’s heart leapt into her throat. In her mind, her tutor Ning Yi had always been a mild-mannered, bookish scholar; even his occasional boasts about being some kind of bloody-handed butcher had always struck her as nothing more than a taste for lowbrow tales of the martial world. But there was no joking matter here—the two men’s builds weren’t remotely comparable, and she fully expected her tutor to be sent flying, coughing blood, at the barest touch. Yet in the next instant, amid the smoke, the two men had already locked together in combat.
The clash was direct and brutal from the very first instant—nothing about it resembled the elegance of formal martial arts. Tables and chairs around them were sent flying in the collision. The barrel of Ning Yi’s fire-lance was made of bamboo, with only a small amount of metal at the tail end; he swung it at the scarred man’s head, but when the man blocked the blow, the entire bamboo tube shattered, the elastic force of the splintering bamboo nearly whipping the weapon into a lash, the metal tail grazing past the back of the man’s head before Ning Yi himself was sent flying backward from the impact.
He’d been practicing that internal-strength technique for a while now, and his physical condition far exceeded that of an ordinary man; the bursts of force he could occasionally unleash were genuinely startling—without that, the fire-lance could never have shattered into a whip-like mess with a single swing. But that kind of power was only useful in that single instant of release; his body, ultimately, still couldn’t match the scarred brute’s. In the blink of an eye, he’d already taken a punch, and returned one of his own; he swung a stool at the man, only to have it smashed apart in turn. These brief exchanges had already made clear the imbalance of raw strength between them. The next instant, the scarred man swung back with a heavy steel whip, smashing a table to splinters with the blow.
The steel whip was solid black through and through, its momentum crushing—a single solid hit would surely shatter bone and pulp flesh. Having barely dodged the first swing, the whip came sweeping back without pause. Ning Yi leaped backward; his outer robe tore with a ripping sound, and a burning pain flared in his stomach—whether from a real wound or sheer nerves, he couldn’t say. He didn’t dare wait for the third swing to come; instead, planting both feet, he lunged forward with everything he had, throwing himself bodily to lock his arms around the man’s neck and right ribs.
When Ning Yi’s internal energy erupted in a sudden burst, the force was tremendous—Lu Hongti had once warned him that this kind of explosive release was harmful to the body, since he hadn’t trained from childhood and couldn’t fully adapt to the technique, but in a critical moment, it was undeniably ferocious. The man seemed not to have expected a mere scholar to possess this kind of nerve and strength; for a moment, his neck and right arm felt as though clamped in iron rings, and no matter how hard he gritted his teeth, he couldn’t break free, the steel whip in his right hand rendered useless. The two of them crashed to the ground together, rolling.
The whole exchange had unfolded in the span of a few heartbeats—the scarred man charging in, the brutal clash, and then the sudden collapse to the ground, all while the drifting smoke around them was churned into further chaos by the struggle. The moment the scarred man hit the ground, he rolled and lunged with his left hand to grab at Ning Yi, but Ning Yi had already released his hold, and as his body rolled, he desperately clamped both arms around the man’s right arm—the one holding the steel whip—while wrapping his legs around the man’s shoulder.
Since coming to this world, Ning Yi had taken an interest in martial arts, and once he’d developed internal energy, he’d learned a few sets of forms as well—Lu Hongti had, after all, taught him the practical applications of these techniques. But over the past six months or so, he’d had no real experience in actual combat, and without that, none of the forms had ever become instinctive—and without instinct, the techniques themselves were essentially useless. Facing an enemy now, his mind had gone nearly blank; the moment they clashed, he knew immediately he couldn’t out-fight this man on skill alone, so he’d thrown caution to the wind and fallen back on the same crude methods he’d always relied on.
When the opponent held a weapon, running was essentially pointless—the only option was to close the distance and meet him head-on.
This man’s raw power was ferocious—on a real battlefield, he might well have made a capable commander—but he was, in the end, nothing like a true martial master such as Lu Hongti. In front of Lu Hongti, Ning Yi would never even have gotten close enough to land a hold; even if he had somehow managed to grab her, she could have broken free with some effortless technique. But this man relied purely on brute strength and ferocity; though experienced in brawling, in his usual fights, his sheer power alone had always been enough to throw or knock down his opponents with ease. This was the first time he’d ever faced someone—a mere scholar, no less—who simply clung to his body and kept going for joint locks meant to kill, and as the two of them rolled across the floor again and again, he found himself utterly unprepared for it.
In modern combat systems, the development of joint-locking techniques, aided by scientific understanding, had reached an almost complete mastery of vulnerable points—Gracie jiu-jitsu could kill at close range with the slightest misstep, aikido and karate both had extensive counter-joint techniques, and traditional Chinese seizing arts and various styles of self-defense sanda were likewise built around exploiting weaknesses. Ning Yi was certainly no master of such grappling arts, but with his life on the line, his mind stayed clear—he knew that letting go now meant certain death. Combining this awareness with the bursts of force from his internal energy, he shifted position again and again, alternately locking the man’s head and neck or his limbs, twisting through joint-lock after joint-lock, rolling right, then abruptly left, trying with everything he had to snap the man’s arm or leg.
Perhaps only someone who had truly trained in these joint-locking techniques could fully appreciate just how fragile the human body really was, but this brute’s own instinct for survival in mortal combat was razor-sharp as well. For a moment he found himself thoroughly outmaneuvered, but his powerful counterattacks still managed, again and again, to force Ning Yi back at the last possible instant—only for Ning Yi to close the distance and clamp onto him again a heartbeat later. The two of them rolled across the floor for no more than ten-odd seconds, but every single instant felt like a matter of life and death. The surrounding tables and chairs bore the brunt of it, smashed to splinters by the scarred man’s wild, flailing blows; Ning Yi took a solid punch to the leg from the man’s left fist, but with every passing moment, he too was fighting with everything he had to snap the man’s limbs. Just as he managed to clamp down on the man’s right arm again, straining to break it, the man’s left hand lashed out at Ning Yi with sudden force—and in that instant, a flash of white surged forward.
It was Yun Zhu, who had been pushed aside by Ning Yi at the very start of the fight and had been watching from nearby. Gritting her teeth, she pulled the hairpin from her hair and lunged forward, driving the pin straight into the man’s lower abdomen.
The brute let out a furious roar and kicked Yun Zhu away—the blow landed somewhat off-target, catching her on the shoulder instead, but though it wasn’t delivered at full force, it still sent her tumbling across the floor. Ning Yi had no idea where she’d been hit, but gritting his teeth, he summoned one last burst of strength and, with a sharp crack, snapped the man’s forearm in two, the steel whip clattering to the floor.
The agony of the broken arm and the stab wound to his abdomen sent the man’s eyes bulging wide, his body rolling over once more—but this time, the scholar didn’t follow him down. Ning Yi rose to his feet, and just as the man was lifting his head, Ning Yi had already snatched up the several-dozen-pound steel whip and charged straight at him, catching sight of the man’s hands raised in a final defensive posture as they swung out.
“Die—”
With a resounding crack, the studded head of the steel whip smashed down onto the scarred man’s left temple, and in an instant, half the brute’s skull seemed to burst open. He’d been standing near the wall of the hall at that moment; the full force of Ning Yi’s blow sent his body flying nearly off its feet, smashing straight through the front-facing window overlooking the river, his upper body dangling out for a moment before falling back inside.
Up on the landing, Zhou Pei watched Ning Yi’s blow land, watched the man’s head burst open, her lips trembling, unable to say a word, her mind completely blank.
Ning Yi turned back to check on Yun Zhu, and saw her sitting up while clutching her shoulder, managing a faint smile in his direction despite the pain. On the other side of the hall, Jin’er let out a cry and came running toward them.
Over by the entrance, dozens of men were still locked in a chaotic brawl, and the most powerfully built of the five men was among them, steadily closing in on Song Qian and the protected Qin Siyuan. He was clearly the most formidable of the five, and though the several dozen men who’d come charging in from the street were armed, they could barely slow him down for long—especially since Song Qian had also been drawn into the fighting. Though skilled enough in his own right, being forced to protect Qin Siyuan while blocked by the crowd meant he couldn’t force his way clear.
The relatively tall, gaunt man had by now also plunged into the melee, wielding a pair of blades—the several dozen men blocking the way were little more than street thugs, and in moments he’d already cut several of them down. He glanced back this way and saw his companion’s head smashed open, and for a moment seemed ready to turn and charge back toward Ning Yi. Their eyes met, and the ferocity in his gaze was in no way inferior. He swung the steel whip once more, bringing it down a second time on the scarred man’s already-ruined skull—the wall beside them, though wooden, had been sturdy enough to withstand the first impact, but under this second blow, it split apart entirely, the scarred man’s head now beaten into something utterly unrecognizable.
“Come on, then!”
Ning Yi flung the steel whip aside and shouted across the hall. He drew the remaining fire-lance from his back with one hand, and with the other, pulled out his fire-striker—just as a gust of blade-wind came slicing toward him. The wealthy young master, who had been bringing up the rear, had turned and was charging straight at him.
“Kill the old Qin dog—”