Chapter 27: Chapter 27
Once the unwelcome visitors were confirmed gone.
Madam Zheng crept out trembling, her face etched with despair and panic:
“Dalang… we can’t afford to cross vicious thugs like that. What — what are we going to do?!”
“Don’t panic, Ma.”
Shen Xiuhan turned around, his expression already calm. He stepped closer and spoke gently:
“First thing tomorrow, I’ll go to the hall with a generous gift and ask my senior brothers to put in a word with the Golden Dragon Gang on our behalf. They won’t dare refuse an inner-court senior brother’s face.”
Madam Zheng, though still sick with worry, had no other recourse. She could only pray that the martial hall’s name would truly keep these devils at bay.
…
Deep in the night, all was still.
A crescent moon hung in the sky.
Shen Xiuhan lay flat on his wooden bed, eyes closed, breathing long and even, as though lost in deep sleep.
Just past midnight.
In his sea of consciousness, a streak of golden light slashed through the darkness.
【Today’s Intelligence has refreshed!】
【Intelligence 1: Ma Xianyang, third inner-court disciple of Tongbei Martial Hall, has been stuck at the Peak of Blood Tempering for a long time and desperately needs a treasure fish to break through. He is well-versed in treasure fish behavior. Silver-backed fish typically inhabit the deep waters of Yunshui Lake and very rarely drift into the shallows.】
【Yet you have no boat and no nets, and still managed to catch one. Ma Xianyang has concluded from this that you may possess some kind of secret method for locating treasure fish in shallow waters. If you refuse to hand over this method, he will kill your entire family to eliminate all loose ends!】
【Current location: Inner city, Ma residence.】
【Intelligence 2: Yu Zhe, Golden Dragon Gang member. No qi-blood. Formerly an outer-court disciple of Tongbei Martial Hall. Assigned by Ma Xianyang to conduct surveillance.】
【Current location: Inner-city Huaishu Street gambling den. Currently drinking and throwing dice. Expected to return drunk to his mistress’s home in Dongxi Ward during the small hours.】
【Intelligence 3: Tian Erhu, Golden Dragon Gang member. No qi-blood. Also formerly of Tongbei Martial Hall’s outer court. Dispatched alongside Yu Zhe by Ma Xianyang.】
【Current location: Lodging in the outer city, Yeci Ward, No. 5 on Erfu Street counting east to west.】
SWISH!
In the darkness, Shen Xiuhan’s eyes snapped open.
Ma Xianyang’s wild speculation had gotten the process completely wrong — yet by sheer fluke, he’d stumbled onto the truth of Shen Xiuhan’s hidden card!
What he was after wasn’t the fish at all.
It was a nonexistent “treasure-finding secret” that he believed Shen Xiuhan possessed!
But…
‘I can’t afford to provoke Ma Xianyang yet…’
‘But two vermin who haven’t even knocked on Blood’s door dare to bark and snap at my heels?!’
‘They must be tired of living!’
Shen Xiuhan held his breath and listened to the sounds inside the hut.
At the other end of the bed, Madam Zheng’s soft snoring rose faintly. Shen Momo lay curled in her mother’s arms, breathing soft and even.
Confirming that both were fast asleep, Shen Xiuhan silently peeled back the covers.
He pulled on an unremarkable gray roughspun robe and cinched the cuffs and trouser hems tight.
“Creak…”
The wooden door let out the faintest groan, then was eased shut again.
Shen Xiuhan made a stop at the kitchen first, then slipped soundlessly over the wicker fence and melted into the night, racing toward Huaishu Street.
Dark moon, high wind — a perfect night for killing!
…
Huaishu Street.
“Master Yu, your luck’s running hot tonight! Leaving already? Why not roll a few more rounds and clean the whole table out!”
“Piss off! This master has real work to do tomorrow. I’ll be back another day!”
Yu Zhe shoved through the windbreak curtain and stepped out of the gambling den. The night wind hit him, but instead of feeling cold, his whole body was flushed with heat.
He bounced the coin pouch in his hand, unable to suppress a grin.
Tonight, he’d been blessed by the gods themselves. In barely four hours, he’d won close to two taels of silver!
Add in the three taels that Senior Brother Ma had tossed him earlier tonight, after they’d returned from that mud-legged brat’s hovel…
“Fuck, finally scraped enough together.”
Yu Zhe muttered a string of curses under his breath.
This money would finally be enough for him to buy another Blood Origin Pill!
His natural talent was abysmal. He’d scraped and borrowed to scrape together tuition, then ground through half a year in Tongbei Martial Hall’s outer court — and never came close to sensing his qi-blood.
When his time was up and he couldn’t afford to renew, he was swept out the door.
Luckily, he had a quick mind. He’d latched onto Ma Xianyang and done plenty of dirty work for him, earning a few crude combat techniques in return.
With those rough-hewn moves, Yu Zhe had clawed his way up in the Golden Dragon Gang.
But he knew the truth. In Changyun County, the Golden Dragon Gang didn’t amount to a damn thing.
The Golden Dragon Gang was nothing more than a dog running errands for the Bai family — holding down the fish exchange and wharf turf at West Market, handing over fifty percent of the monthly take like clockwork.
As long as the money arrived on time, the Bai family couldn’t care less whether it was the Golden Dragon Gang or the Black Dragon Gang.
Take the past few days, for instance. With Tongbei Martial Hall and the Bai family at each other’s throats, the Golden Dragon Gang’s income from the fish market had been targeted by the Raging Waves — that gang of discharged military hard cases.
Their leader, Zheng Dadao, was no one to trifle with.
A master of both fist and blade, and dripping with killing intent.
After several clashes, the Golden Dragon Gang had already lost three or four good fighters!
And their master, the Bai family?
Sitting up high, turning a blind eye!
Because they’d never considered the Golden Dragon Gang as their own people.
In this world, only those who had knocked on Blood’s door — true “martial artists” — counted as human beings!
If you weren’t a martial artist, even if you commanded a hundred thugs, you were still just livestock to be discarded on a whim!
‘But with talent like mine, breaking through to Blood Tempering — how could that be easy? The only way is to brute-force it with pills!’
Yu Zhe clenched his fists.
A Blood Origin Pill from Tongbei Martial Hall cost a full five taels of silver apiece!
Over the past two years, he’d gritted his teeth and bought three, swallowed them all — and aside from gaining a bit of brute strength, his qi-blood remained as still as a dead pond.
He’d nearly given up all hope.
But then, as if the heavens themselves had dropped a windfall in his lap…
An outer-city mud-legged brat who somehow knew how to catch treasure fish.
Ma Xianyang’s words surfaced in Yu Zhe’s mind:
‘Silver-backed fish always lurk deep in Yunshui Lake — they’re nearly impossible to track under normal circumstances. I got word from his childhood friend: he has no boat and no nets. He must have caught it from the shallows, and that’s nearly unheard of! So I suspect… he may have gotten his hands on some kind of secret recipe for finding treasure fish!’
“Heh heh…”
“A mud-legged brat is a mud-legged brat. He doesn’t even understand that possessing a treasure invites calamity. Senior Brother Ma has him pinned down dead to rights!”
Yu Zhe walked through the alley, a greedy grin splitting his face.
That little performance earlier tonight had been a “cast a stone to test the waters” ploy deliberately set up by Ma Xianyang!
First, they’d pressure him with a fake demand — make him hand over another treasure fish to “settle the debt.”
If Shen Xiuhan really did buckle under the pressure and caught another treasure fish to offer up…
Then the existence of the secret would be confirmed beyond all doubt!
When that happened… he and Tian Erhu would grab the whole family.
Chop off a couple of his widowed mother’s fingers. See if the brat still dared keep the secret locked in his belly.
Once the secret was in hand, Yu Zhe could haul in treasure fish for himself, endlessly…
Blood Tempering?
It was only a matter of time!
“Ha ha ha!”
Drunk on his fantasy, Yu Zhe couldn’t help but laugh aloud.
He licked his cracked lips, a filthy gleam flickering in his eyes:
“And that little sister of his… tsk, still just a bud, but fresh as morning dew…”
“Whooo…”
A gust of night wind blew in through his collar, and Yu Zhe shivered. The lust that had been burning in him went cold by half.
He hunched his neck instinctively and looked around. Nothing but pitch blackness in every direction, so dark he couldn’t see his own hand.
Somewhere in the distance, a dog barked twice, then fell silent.
A nameless unease prickled at Yu Zhe’s scalp. But he shook his head and laughed at himself:
“Too many dirty deeds — now I’m jumping at shadows on a night walk. Getting worse by the day!”
He let out a breath, striding toward his mistress’s home, humming a tuneless ditty:
“The lad’s surnamed Qi, the lass is too, even the dowry maid was surnamed Qi — Qi girl married off to Qi’s home, and come midnight they roll over, Qi flush against Qi…”
Still humming?
Your time’s up!
A blast of cutting wind came from behind without the slightest warning!
Yu Zhe’s body went rigid, every hair on end.
“No—!”