Chapter 29: Chapter 29
“Heh…”
The black figure seemed to have anticipated it. A slight shift of his body and the blade slid past.
At the same time, his wide sleeve whipped forward in a violent sweep.
SWISH!
A cloud of quicklime erupted in Tian Erhu’s face, billowing apart in the night wind!
“AAGH! My eyes!”
Caught completely off guard by this underhanded trick, Tian Erhu took the full blast to his head and face.
Searing pain burned through his eyes. He screamed, instinctively ducking and flailing his arms to shield himself.
Shen Xiuhan’s right hand shot in like a viper, threading past Tian Erhu’s wildly swinging arms. Five fingers curled into iron hooks and locked around his throat bone with unerring precision.
Qi-blood erupted. He squeezed with savage force!
CRACK-CRACK-CRACK-CRACK…
A string of bone-splitting sounds that made the teeth ache.
The next moment, Tian Erhu’s iron-tower frame toppled forward and hit the ground rigid as a plank, as if he had simply fallen asleep.
The exchange had been loud — unnervingly so in the dead of night.
Shen Xiuhan, wary of complications, immediately crouched to search the body.
But after patting the man down head to toe, Tian Erhu had nothing on him.
Shen Xiuhan frowned and darted inside the house.
The room was dim. By the faint light filtering through the window, he tore through everything in sight.
A short while later, Shen Xiuhan’s shirt held several new items…
Four taels of loose silver.
And a battered, hand-copied martial manual titled “Iron Bone Art.”
Shen Xiuhan didn’t stop to read. He shoved everything into his shirt.
Back in the yard, his gaze swept over the five bloody, bone-deep finger holes in the top of Tian Erhu’s skull. He frowned.
Wounds this gruesome and distinctive would be far too recognizable. If he dumped this one at the Golden Dragon Gang’s doorstep as well, it would only make the cover-up more conspicuous.
“Forget it. Spring’s almost here. The wolves, leopards, and jackals in the Dali Mountains that starved all winter should be crawling out of their dens to hunt by now.”
Shen Xiuhan gave a cold snort.
Qi-blood surged through his body. With a single heave of one arm, he hoisted the corpse — easily over two hundred jin — onto his shoulder.
Burning qi-blood at this rate couldn’t be sustained for long, but it was more than enough to carry him through the night to the foot of the Dali Mountains.
After hurling the body deep into a hidden thicket of thorns, he immediately turned tail and vanished back into the darkness.
…
By moonlight, Shen Xiuhan made his way home along a secluded path.
On the road, he pulled out the Iron Bone Art manual and began flipping through it.
“No wonder Tian Erhu hadn’t awakened his qi-blood yet could take a direct hit from me. He’d been cultivating this hardening art.”
He turned the pages one by one, his surprise growing as he read, silently weighing the possibilities.
‘If I can wait a while longer, save up another round of Intelligence points, and Deduce this Iron Bone Art to Full Mastery — or even Perfection…’
‘Then I’d have the Heavenly Dark Eagle Force for offense and the Iron Bone Art for defense. Another life-saving card in my hand!’
“Not bad. A survival art like this was practically made for me!”
He tucked the old manual safely against his body.
Shen Xiuhan’s thoughts stirred, and the remaining Intelligence entries from today’s system refresh surfaced in his mind.
【Intelligence 3: Two li to the north, in a den deep within the outer reaches of the Dali Mountains, a heaven-and-earth nurtured “Treasure Beast: Azure Spike Fowl” is hidden, along with three unhatched “Treasure Beast Spirit Eggs” inside its nest!】
The Dali Mountains!
A treasure beast!
Shen Xiuhan’s gaze sharpened. He turned his head instinctively and glanced northward.
The whole reason he’d dumped Tian Erhu’s body at the foot of the Dali Mountains was because he’d heard the mountains teemed with wild beasts and were treacherously dangerous.
Hunters from the outer city didn’t dare venture deep without traveling in groups.
And while the Azure Spike Fowl mentioned in the Intelligence was in the outer reaches, he still couldn’t afford to be careless!
‘I’ve heard old Uncle Chen used to hunt in the mountains back in the day and knows the terrain well. I should find time to ask him for advice before making any plans.’
‘Treasure or not, you have to be alive to claim it.’
Shen Xiuhan was a cautious man. He felt no impulse to rush into the mountains after treasure right away.
He set the matter aside for now.
He continued reading through the remaining entries. The rest were the same as before.
The original copy of the Tongbei Stance;
And the inheritance relics of a Diaohailou true disciple, deep in Yunshui Lake…
Shen Xiuhan shook his head, withdrew his gaze, and quickened his pace toward home.
He pushed open the wooden door of the thatched hut. Inside, all was quiet — Madam Zheng and Shen Momo were still fast asleep.
Shen Xiuhan slipped off his outer robe, lay down on the bed, and stared up at the dark ceiling beams. He let out a long, slow breath.
Then he closed his eyes.
…
The day after the killings of Yu Zhe and Tian Erhu.
The sky was barely gray when Shen Xiuhan walked through the gates of Mei Martial Hall as usual.
The moment he entered the front courtyard, he spotted several early-arriving outer-court disciples clustered by the weapon racks, whispering heatedly before the morning session, faces flushed with excitement.
“Have you heard? The Golden Dragon Gang went berserk this morning!”
“What happened?”
“Apparently, one of their members was killed last night — brutal death, body dumped right at their own doorstep!”
“Whoa, that’s definitely the Raging Waves!”
“The Raging Waves? The turf of ‘Zheng Dadao the Fist-Blade Master’?”
“The very same! Zheng Dadao is a battle-hardened veteran from the military. Among Manifest Strength martial artists in Changyun County, he’s said to be nearly unmatched!”
“Can the Golden Dragon Gang swallow that kind of insult?”
“Swallow it? Like hell! Gao Fu, the Golden Dragon Gang leader, mustered his men before dawn and stormed Xuanhua Ward, screaming that Zheng Dadao would pay for this in blood! But the thing is…”
“What?”
“The Raging Waves’ reaction was strange — they seemed genuinely wronged. One of their bosses even swore on his life that it wasn’t their doing — said lightning could strike him dead if he was lying!”
“Huh? So someone framed them?”
“Right! A lot of people think somebody deliberately diverted the waters to flood someone else’s field. But so what? The two gangs were already at each other’s throats over the West Market profits. The Golden Dragon Gang doesn’t care whether it was a frame job — someone died, and the blood debt is going on the Raging Waves’ tab!”
“Good lord… so Zheng Dadao is just taking the blame for free? He can’t be happy about that.”
“Happy? He’s thrilled! Zheng Dadao didn’t just refuse to back down — he mocked Gao Fu right there in the street, said the people of Changyun County had suffered the Golden Dragon Gang long enough, and this corpse was heaven opening its eyes! Then he raised the banner and called on every person the Golden Dragon Gang had ever bullied to stand up together and burn their headquarters to the ground!”
“Hss… that’s some deep cunning! What happened after?”
“After? What do you think? All-out war! The two gangs clashed in the streets, fighting until the sky went dark. I heard even the main road was ground to dust—”
“Oh, give it a rest! Your mouth’s running wild — the taller the tales get!”
The outer-court disciples were spitting with excitement, holding forth on the world’s affairs as if they had all the answers.
Then, mid-sentence, the most animated speaker cut off abruptly. His expression shifted, and he scrambled upright, stammering:
“S-Senior Brother Shen!”
The others froze, then instinctively turned to look.
There stood Shen Xiuhan, hands clasped behind his back, standing amid the courtyard’s wind and snow. When he had arrived, no one could say.
He stood tall and straight. Through the slightly open collar of his training clothes, the outlines of iron-hard muscle were faintly visible. Those deep, cold eyes regarded them in silence.
The group startled, then hurriedly stood at attention and cupped their fists in unison:
“Greetings, Senior Brother!”
Within Mei Martial Hall, the divide between inner-court and outer-court disciples was like the distance between heaven and earth.
When new disciples entered, aside from the first few days of personal instruction from Hall Master Mei Shuangfeng on stance fundamentals, they spent the remaining half-year under the supervision of inner-court senior brothers and sisters acting on the Master’s behalf.
And so, Shen Xiuhan — who just yesterday had been eating and training alongside them — now walked as an inner-court disciple. To these outer-court disciples, his status had undergone an earth-shattering transformation.
It was the instinctive deference that those below felt toward the martial artists above them.
Shen Xiuhan had been eavesdropping for a while. Seeing that he’d been noticed, he waved a casual hand, said nothing, and walked straight into the inner court.
Watching his retreating figure, the expressions on the outer-court disciples’ faces were impossibly complex.
Just yesterday, he’d been Junior Brother Shen — enrolled for barely half a month. Today, he was an inner-court true disciple who had knocked on Blood’s door and stood above them all.
One step to the heavens.