Fan Yi drifted down gracefully. Using Hua Jin felt simply amazing—he could practically fly by himself!
Sweeping his gaze over the corpses strewn across the ground, Fan Yi sighed inwardly. Judging by what the Assassin Leader had said, were these all retired veterans?
The internal struggles of these noble and powerful families had dragged in men who had survived the battlefield. For no good reason, a wave of irritation washed over Fan Yi.
For the first time, he realized that this was still the familiar feudal society he knew.
Back on the island, a bunch of exiled fellows had started from scratch, living through decades of slash-and-burn farming. Even a group of people who used to hold themselves in high esteem eventually came to understand that all men are created equal. It was rather ironic that on that technologically backward large island, human relationships closely mirrored those of his past life.
Although the two senile remnants of feudalism kept claiming that a thousand years from now they would contend with the Central Plains for the orthodox heritage of Huaxia, the truth was they already knew they had long since become the crumbling, ritual-less barbarians they used to despise. Otherwise, they wouldn't have been so impatient to absorb the knowledge Fan Yi brought to complete their own system.
And once they reached Bailong Town—which could be considered a land of fish and rice—everyone lived quite comfortably. All of this had blurred his perception of this world.
Today's incident had finally ripped away the dreamy, hazy veil that had been obscuring his vision.
Even the brilliant, magnificent, and awe-inspiring Xia Hong merely viewed the entire realm as his private vegetable garden, with himself acting as nothing more than a diligent old farmer.
Fan Yi shook his head, brushing away his sudden sentimentality. Thinking about it any more was useless; this was simply an ideology determined by the society's productive forces.
Did he really expect to plant red flags all across Daxia? Personal might could destroy many things, but it could change very few!
"Who goes there, Your Excellency?" the Assassin Leader ahead asked in a raspy voice, holding Feng Zhenyue like a dead dog.
At that moment, the hair all over the Assassin Leader's body stood on end. What was he seeing? That was Internal Force projection!
Aside from the five Dan Jin masters at his master's level who rarely showed their faces, every single Hua Jin master was a towering figure standing at the pinnacle of the mortal world, famous far and wide. When had such a young Hua Jin master suddenly emerged out here in the middle of nowhere?
The Assassin Leader couldn't fathom it. At most, there had been rumors recently about a young genius named Fan Yi who had become a Dark Force martial artist at the age of fifteen. But never in his wildest dreams did he imagine that this fifteen-year-old prodigy—widely rumored to have reached the Dark Force realm only to have his foundation ruined by rogue cultivators—was not only alive, but had broken through to Hua Jin.
Indeed, the inner circle was rife with rumors that Fan Yi was likely dead, because some martial artists and imperial court agents living nearby had gone to visit him, and Fan Yi had been right in the middle of a phase where his physical conditioning couldn't keep up with his mental strength. Consequently, many guessed that his foundation had been ruined by rogue cultivators and his days were numbered.
As far as they were concerned, Fan Yi was at best a newly minted Dark Force martial artist. Coincidentally, Fan Yi had chosen to keep a low profile back then, playing dumb and seemingly tacitly allowing their assumptions.
"Me?" Fan Yi puffed out his chest. He had figured it out: what he, Fan Yi, sought in this lifetime was the freedom to follow his heart. "You may call me Lord Wushuang—the Wushuang of 'A man on the street like jade, a young lord matchless in the world.'"
"..." The Assassin Leader looked at Fan Yi's utterly unremarkable face and felt that this expert's shamelessness was indeed matchless in the world.
Thinking this, the Assassin Leader dared not show the slightest bit of disrespect on the outside. Still, he was a man of some status, so he instinctively puffed out his chest as well. "I am Li Miao, a thousand-household officer of the Daxia Shadow Guards. Might Your Excellency step back a bit so we may carry out our official duties without accidentally injuring you?"
Seeing that the guy was clearly vastly inferior to him in combat yet still dared to puff out his chest and stick out his neck while talking to him, Fan Yi felt a twinge of annoyance. He had already put his skills on display; instead of trembling with fear and kowtowing in worship, the guy actually dared to imitate him?!
On the spot, Fan Yi channeled his Internal Force. His internal energy coursed effortlessly through his entire body, instantly kicking up a violent surge of force in the woods! Along the way, it also shattered the internal organs of a heavily injured assassin on the ground who had been preparing to launch a sneak attack on him.
Behind Fan Yi, the battle-hardened veteran reversed his grip on his dagger, his body shielding the two children in the carriage tightly, his eyes narrowing as he assessed the situation on the field.
The boy let out an excited smile. "Quick! Kill that bastard!"
"Hmm?" Fan Yi frowned.
"Crap!" the veteran thought to himself. The very next moment, the surge of force that Fan Yi had deliberately steered away from the three of them split into a secondary wave that rushed toward the carriage!
"L-Lord... Wushuang, please forgive us. My young lord is young and ignorant." Pinned to the spot by Fan Yi's crushing Internal Force, his face flushing crimson, the veteran stammered out a plea for mercy.
Inside the carriage, Junyao lifted her dirt-smudged face, looking anxiously at her older brother. "Brother, what's wrong? Do you not feel well?"
The boy's face was deathly pale, but he forced a smile onto his face. "I'm fine. What could possibly be wrong with your brother? Don't cry, little sister—a great hero has come to save us."
"Hmph!" Fan Yi let out a cold grunt and removed the mental suppression weighing down on the boy.
To be able to spit out a complete sentence under his suppression meant the boy's willpower wasn't bad at all. Didn't he see that the Assassin Leader on the other side was practically about to drop to his knees?
If the Assassin Leader knew what was going on in Fan Yi's head, he would have cursed up a storm. Was that even comparable?! He was the one bearing ninety-nine percent of Fan Yi's pressure!
Just as the Assassin Leader was about to bite down on the poison capsule in his mouth to commit suicide, Fan Yi abruptly released his mental pressure. "Get out of here. Whoever you are, and whatever dirty business your great families have going on, I am taking these two children under my protection. My word is absolute—even if Xia Hong comes himself, he won't be killing them!"
A shock ran through the Assassin Leader's heart, and he looked at Fan Yi with fury burning in his eyes. "You—how dare you show disrespect to the Emperor?!"
Oh ho, a die-hard loyalist to the throne. Fan Yi waved a hand. "Before I change my mind, scram!"
The Assassin Leader cast a glance at Fan Yi as if looking at a dead man, then turned and left.
"Thinking you can do whatever you want just because you're in the Hua Jin realm?" the Assassin Leader fumed inwardly. "The pugilistic world is ultimately just the pugilistic world—how could you possibly comprehend the vastness of the realm and the towering heights of the imperial court!"
Just as the Assassin Leader was fabricating charges in his heart to put out a bounty on this damned Lord Wushuang, a pebble cut through the air with a piercing whistle and pierced right through his right leg.
The Assassin Leader turned back in shock and anger. "Could Your Excellency be going back on your word?"
"No," Fan Yi's voice drifted over. "Although to me, certain promises are just farting in the wind, letting you go was a certainty. Didn't you survive anyway?"
With that, Fan Yi paid no more attention to the crippled wretch with a broken leg.
Tch, originally, because that arrogant little brat's bossy order had made him—someone who had just undergone a mental struggle and fancied himself above the nobility—decide not to listen to the vested interests of this feudal society. Whether he killed the guy or not didn't really matter; he simply didn't want to watch two innocent children get dragged into a vortex of interests and die right in front of him.
As a result, this fellow had actually looked at him with that bizarre gaze. He definitely hadn't been plotting anything good!
He said he wouldn't kill him, so he wouldn't kill him. But breaking one of his legs in the process was perfectly reasonable, right?
When he got back, he could even tell his superior that he had fought a hundred-round battle with him and was overwhelmed by exhaustion, rather than fleeing without even throwing a punch.
Ah, I am so considerate!
As for an assassin breaking a leg, it wasn't much different from being completely crippled. Fan Yi figured someone in such a dead-end profession should really just retire.
Fan Yi turned back to look at the veteran. "Huh! Aren't you going to attack me?"
The veteran froze, only then realizing that Fan Yi was referring to his earlier remark about disrespecting the Emperor.
He offered a bitter smile inwardly. For a low-ranking officer in an era where a soldier's political education was limited to pre-battle oath-taking and where morale depended largely on financial rewards, they were just in it for a wealthy second half of their lives. Sure, loyalty and patriotism existed, but more often than not, it was just for a mouthful of food, for the sake of finding a wife down the road.
He belonged to the camp that genuinely just wanted to protect his wife and children from being plundered by the steppe nomads. If his heart held the common people of the world, it wasn't entirely absent, but it was mostly filled with his wife, children, and elderly dependents. As for the Emperor, he only felt a basic, customary awe.
The ones truly dedicated heart and soul to imperial power were probably only those folks in the Shadow Guards.
Just as the veteran was about to explain, Fan Yi waved a hand. "Forget it, I don't want to hear it. Go do whatever you need to do, I'm heading back!"
With that, Fan Yi darted away. Having just sensed a few wolves prowling around a mile outside the mountain god temple, Fan Yi decided he needed to chase them off before they could do anything wrong.