Chapter Ninety: Two Paths

Kou Li pushed open the door and found Zheng Xiaobao sitting upright on the bed, looking at him with a calm, unruffled expression. Only after a moment did a trace of warmth appear in those eyes, and he said softly, “Brother Kou, you’re here.”

“Little Senior Brother hasn’t been practicing his fists, and these past few days he’s hardly been eating at all,” Xia Tou reported in a hushed voice.

As expected, Zheng Xiaobao’s once plump, bun-like cheeks had thinned into an unhealthy yellow pallor, and his mind seemed plainly unsettled.

“Brother Kou, my master is coming to take me away.”

“Your master? Did Master Lin tell you something?” Kou Li frowned. For some reason, Zheng Xiaobao in this state gave him a faintly familiar feeling.

“No, not him. Another one. My master’s dharma name is Xin Kong. I’ve already seen him several times in my dreams.”

“Brother Kou, I can swear Little Junior Brother hasn’t left the place these past days, and he certainly hasn’t met any monks or Taoists. Could he have gone mad?” Jiang Yazi asked anxiously.

Kou Li shook his head, then suddenly understood where that sense of familiarity had come from. The aura around those amber prayer beads was exactly the same as the aura on Zheng Xiaobao himself.

“I told my master, could he take Brother Kou along too? My master said Brother Kou is not one of our path, and this matter cannot be forced,” Zheng Xiaobao said with surprising maturity for one so young. “But my master also said that since those amber prayer beads were already given to Baoer, they now belong to Baoer. So now Baoer gives them to you, Brother Kou.”

Kou Li let out a long breath. It seemed that over these past two months, Zheng Xiaobao had successfully passed the immortal’s trial. That was a good thing, and he was happy for him.

“Whatever the case, come with me first. The martial hall is about to become unsafe.”

“It no longer matters, Brother Kou. I still have an old karmic bond unfinished. Sooner or later, this battle must be fought.”

“Just go!”

This time Zheng Xiaobao did not insist. He obediently followed after him, only his expression carrying a kind of clear-eyed understanding, his bearing like that of an old monk in a temple.

Kou Li had only just returned to the training ground when two martial hall apprentices rushed up in panic, shouting, “Bad news, bad news, Senior Brother Kou, they—”

Before they could finish, a savage glint flashed in their eyes, and two short blades came swiftly from their hands, stabbing toward Kou Li and Zheng Xiaobao.

Kou Li snorted coldly. He did not even seem to move, yet the two men were flung back with even greater force, crashing heavily to the ground and howling in pain.

The sudden scene instantly silenced the previously noisy training ground.

“What are you trying to do? Who are you trying to assassinate?” Jiang Yazi asked curiously, poking his head out and rolling his dark eyes around and around.

“Let them explain it themselves. Saves me the trouble of wasting my breath,” Kou Li said lightly.

The first apprentice, face deathly pale, cried out, “It’s finished. Burning Body Hall is finished. Master Lin still hasn’t come back, Senior Brother is dead in an assassination, Second Senior Brother is gone too, and now all the fist masters in Guangdong are coming to kill us, ahhhhh—”

“It’s all his fault! Everything was fine before. The moment he arrived, the martial hall’s whole situation changed. Those two are disasters, they’ve ruined our families and brought us nothing but misery. This is all their doing!” the other apprentice said venomously.

“What exactly happened? Senior Brother Kou, what became of Senior Brother and the others?” Zhao Instructor asked hastily.

Kou Li’s ears twitched, and a flicker of something strange passed through his eyes. Slowly he said, “What he said is already very clear. Something major has happened to the martial hall. Master Lin cannot come back. We don’t know where the three senior brothers are now. At present, the situation is this: more and more enemies are coming. Staying here means certain death.”

“Impossible. Tidewatch belongs to Burning Body Hall. No one who comes here will be allowed to make trouble!”

“That’s right. This is Tidewatch. We’ll call on the locals, as many as we can get, and block them—”

“If the authorities send men, will you block them too?” Kou Li shouted, sweeping them all with a cold glance. “Do you still not understand? Right now, all the pugilists and martial halls across Guangdong are targeting us. Their patrons and forces are joining hands. Can one ordinary martial hall resist that? Why hasn’t Master Lin returned even now? Why are the three senior brothers also missing? Use your heads and you’ll know someone has already moved against them. Do you think you can beat them?”

After a long silence, Zhao Instructor finally said bitterly, “Senior Brother Kou, then what do you think we should do now?”

“You have two choices. First: take off your training clothes, change into fishermen’s garb, and quietly make your way back to your own homes. If anyone asks later, never admit you ever trained martial arts in this hall. Tidewatch is large; they can’t search every household one by one. If it comes to it, sail out to sea and hide for a while. Maybe you’ll live.”

“Or there’s another choice: follow me and fight our way out. I’ll carve you a path to survive. But you must understand this clearly: I, Zheng Xiaobao, and Jiang Yazi are all disciples Master Lin has publicly acknowledged. A tall tree attracts the wind; the enemy will never stop hounding us. This road is bound to be a narrow escape from death. And once you take it, either you die far from home or return in wealth and glory. But no matter what, once you go, there is no turning back. Never.”

Kou Li looked around. Human warmth and coldness, the world’s fickleness—fear, worry, anger, hesitation, shame, each face showing something different.

At last, one person said hesitantly, “I—I’m going home. My family still needs me to help with the work.”

He did not even dare look at the others, and turned to run.

“My parents are still at home. I can’t die here.”

“I don’t want to die. I only came to learn boxing. That old bastard Lin Xianshi already ate two sacks of rice from my family.”

“That’s right, I also gave a sack of dried fish. I don’t owe any of you a thing.”

“What are you staring at? I never wanted to stay here in the first place—”

As more and more people left, their words grew stranger and stranger. Some were filled with guilt, some were pretending at composure, and some were outright cursing and despising the martial hall, saying that Yue Wu and Huo Tai were far too brutal, that Mo Yi looked down on them.

In the end, only a little over a dozen people remained in the martial hall. Some had no family and no ties, with nothing to hold them back; others were thinking of the more than ten years of kindness Lin Xianshi had shown them.

Among the young apprentices Kou Li knew, the most gifted one, Tan Yu, had gone. Ma Yuan, descended from General Fubo, had also left. Jiang Shuiyuan dragged his feet for a long while, but in the end he actually stayed.

This was somewhat beyond Kou Li’s expectations. He had assumed this smooth-talking youth, with his instinct for reading the wind, would be the first to run. He had not expected him to remain.

Seeing Kou Li’s strange look, Jiang Shuiyuan originally wanted to puff out his chest and strike a lofty, righteous pose, but in the end he only shrank his neck and said mournfully, “Senior Brother Kou, tell me the truth. Of those who left, how many do you think will survive?”

Kou Li studied him deeply. This fellow did have a bit of quick wit.

“I hear a great many footsteps, the scrape of armor plates, and the sounds of men and horses. Do you know what that means?”

“Imperial soldiers?” Jiang Shuiyuan’s face turned ashen.

“Even if the enemy’s backing is formidable, without a proper pretext, they still cannot misuse public power to send troops to surround and wipe out a martial hall. So what kind of pretext would allow them to mobilize so many soldiers?”

...

“Master Lin Xianshi of Burning Body Hall, a surviving remnant of Lohan Temple, has secretly planted his influence in the Tidewatch region and harbors treasonous intentions. By imperial command, he is to be exterminated. Any resistance is to be met with immediate execution!”

With the mounted officer’s command, arrows flew like a plague of locusts. The martial hall apprentices who had just left were struck head-on. Before they had gone far, they were shot full of holes like hedgehogs.

Even the few who were skilled with fists and feet could not withstand more than a few exchanges under the assault of iron armor and spears.

Cries of agony and shouts of injustice rose almost at the same time, but the slaughter continued. The young military officer turned his head and said with a teasing smile, “Captain Zhai, how does it feel to see former comrades slaughtered, especially when you were the one who led the way?”

“The bandits are rebels. In accordance with military law, every man has the right to kill them,” Zhai Guan said, his mouth twitching, his face dark with resentment.

“Then I must trouble Captain Zhai to guide us. I never expected to run into an old comrade from the army in a place like this. The heroic bearing General Zhai once displayed in battle remains vivid in my memory even now.”

Without a word, Zhai Guan lifted the guandao from his back and ran toward several martial hall apprentices fleeing not far away. One of them turned back in terror, and upon seeing a towering armored man charging toward him, his expression shifted from shock to joy, and he cried out, “Senior Brother Zhai!”

“Great, it’s Fifth Senior Brother.”

“Fifth Senior Brother, save us quickly—”

Alas, while men may show mercy, blades do not. Wherever he passed, limbs and severed arms flew in all directions. Zhai Guan had become a silent killer.

“That country bumpkin even thought of competing with me for military merit back then. I’ll kill him sooner or later,” the deputy general Cao sneered under his breath.

At that moment, a soldier came to report, “Sir, the martial hall is empty. Not a single person remains.”

“They got away?” Cao murmured to himself, then gave a dry laugh. “No. They can’t get away.”