At dawn's first light, Fan Yi was already standing by the small river. A brisk autumn breeze swept across the water, causing ripples and carrying the occasional croak of a frog.
Nearby, a few maple trees seemed slightly intoxicated by the enchanting atmosphere, looking like landscape painters who had carelessly spilled cinnabar over themselves.
Fan Yi assumed a few bizarre postures, his muscles twitching rhythmically with his breathing. Gradually, as the postures shifted, his whole body turned as red as a cooked shrimp, accompanied by rising wisps of white vapor.
The golden sun rose, and the purple qi came from the east.
"Ha!" Fan Yi let out a sharp cry and took a deep breath, actually exhaling a stream of white vapor over a foot long. His bulging muscles then contracted, and in a flash, his entire body seemed to shrink by a few sizes.
Even though his cultivation level would automatically improve, Fan Yi felt it was still best not to give up practicing Tongbei Fist.
After all, cultivation could not entirely determine the outcome of a mortal combat; otherwise, opponents would simply announce their cultivation levels to each other and immediately surrender.
Next came the eighteen basic sword forms.
Fan Yi practiced them meticulously a hundred times, and when he finally snapped back to reality, the sky was bright and his stomach had started to rumble.
As expected, the past few days of investigation had yielded not the slightest clue. After all, the professional yamen still had very few leads, let alone an amateur like him.
However, Fan Yi had no intention of giving up. His only guess was that that gang might be hiding on Carp Mountain.
Fan Yi planned to go take a look today.
"Didn't he come?" Fan Yi looked around and noticed that the little fellow who had stubbornly come to watch him cultivate every day for the past few days was nowhere to be seen.
A trace of disappointment lingered in Fan Yi's heart. Actually, one of them wanted to take a master, and the other—with his restless little mind—quite wanted to take a disciple, simply for the novelty of it.
Originally, Fan Yi had been barely able to contain himself today, planning to play hard to get for a moment before half-heartedly yielding and accepting this brat. Who would have thought the kid wouldn't even show up?
"Why do I feel like I'm being a bit cheap?" Fan Yi muttered as he sheathed his sword.
"Did something delay him? Should I... go look for him?" Fan Yi felt that kids nowadays lacked patience. Whether he took him as a disciple didn't matter; the main point was that this kid needed some education.
This big brother might not accept you, but you damn well can't refuse to become a disciple!
That's how arrogant he was!
Silently finding a good excuse for himself, Fan Yi decided to pay a home visit. The town was only so big, and he had long since found out whose kid he was over the past few days.
Just kidding, was this master someone you could just decide to apprentice under? Didn't he need to check your background, character, and family situation?
Even if it was useless, it still made things look more formal. After all, he was at the Ninth Heaven of Dark Force.
Fan Yi turned and walked toward the town. Channeling his dark force, every step he took seemed short, but as each foot touched the ground, the dark force exerted downward and diagonally from the soles of his feet. So while it looked like he was walking, he was actually gliding at a low altitude.
Mainly because this world lacked true qi and lightness skills—wasn't that frustrating? Therefore, after much research and development, Fan Yi had come up with this move, which could barely be used to show off—err, travel.
As for whether he was tired, looking cool was all that mattered.
Fan Yi floated along all the way until he reached the town without encountering a single soul. Damn it, what a waste of emotion.
As for inside the town, Fan Yi felt it was better not to float. Even though the local customs were honest and simple back then.
What if? What if someone accidentally fell to the ground and refused to get up? What could you do then? Draw your precious sword and chop them down? Or run away on the spot? As for paying compensation, Fan Yi had never thought of it, nor did he dare to.
So once he reached the town, Fan Yi withdrew his divine ability and obediently walked on his own two feet.
Making a few turns, Fan Yi slipped into a small alley. Treading on the blue stone slabs, he paced along silently, hoping to run into a woman as graceful as a lilac.
Perhaps because it wasn't raining and he wasn't holding an oil-paper umbrella, the only person he ran into in the alley was an old woman coming out to pour water.
Tch, Fan Yi instantly felt it was all terribly uninteresting.
It must have been because of the oil-paper umbrella. Thinking of the lilac girl, thinking of the white snake maiden on the Broken Bridge, Fan Yi felt that the precious sword in his hand suddenly lost its appeal. Clearly, oil-paper umbrellas and beauties shared some sort of causal relationship.
Out of the small alley and around another corner, a row of small cottages came into view.
Shortly after Gu San was born, his father was drafted into the military. By the next year, the town's pension had arrived, and there was no corruption to speak of—after all, the reigning emperor back then was not to be trifled with, and military funds in particular were monitored extremely closely.
The pension was just enough for the mother and son to set up a small business without starving or freezing.
Later on, however, Gu San's mother caught the eye of Butcher Zhao from another street. Over the years, Butcher Zhao had helped Gu San and his mother out quite a bit.
Gu San's mother was also a woman who loved and hated fiercely. Gu San was six years old now, and his father had been dead for five years, so Gu San's mother decided to marry Butcher Zhao and live together. As a result, Gu San threw a fit and sulked with his mother every single day.
His very first encounter with the boy had been when Gu San prepared to drown himself in the river as a form of emotional blackmail, only to realize he didn't know how to swim and gave up...
"Don't come any closer!" Fan Yi had just raised his hand to knock on the door when he heard Gu San shouting in his childish voice.
"You little brat, getting a bit too big for your britches, aren't you? Your old lady can't manage you anymore, is that it? Get down here right now!" A fiery, booming voice undoubtedly belonged to the heroine herself, Madam Gu.
"I won't! If you marry that Crippled Zhao, I'll die to show you!" Gu San stood on the rooftop, making a motion as if to jump.
"Go on, jump! Just like your father, a chip off the old block. This old lady doesn't believe you have the guts to jump. Didn't you still shouting about drowning yourself in the river a few days ago? In the end, didn't you just make up some story about a great hero saving you? Aren't you ashamed?"
Fan Yi's mouth twitched. This mother and son were truly a pair of rare oddities.
Up on the roof, Gu San's legs were already trembling uncontrollably. At this moment, his mother's aggressive stance had long since made him feel guilty as hell.
"Gu San, if you're a real man, jump down. This old lady's sugar cakes will be mine to eat by myself."
"Sugar cakes?!" Gu San's two watery eyeballs blinked, his little nose sniffing hard as a sweet fragrance rushed into it.
This time, Gu San was in a dilemma. He felt that his mother was bullying him too much; should he... eat the sugar cake first and then jump?
Gu San looked down and thought, Oh lord, it's so high, it's terrifying.
Wait, that person is... the hero?
Gu San's big eyes weren't just for show. With a single glance, he spotted the hero at the doorway, along with that precious sword.
Gu San's little face scrunched up in shame. After all, the heroes in storybooks always meant what they said. Here he was, dilly-dallying and hesitating, and he had even almost been tempted by a sugar cake. Could a hero like that possibly think well of him?
Gu San gritted his teeth, closed his eyes, and with a loud howl, jumped off.
"Gu San!!!" the woman screamed in terror.
She rushed over to catch Gu San.
The roof wasn't high, but Gu San was only a six-year-old child. If she caught him properly, fine; if she missed, he would undoubtedly fall seriously ill, breaking bones and fracturing limbs.
When Fan Yi saw that Gu San had already been subdued by his mother's carrot-and-stick approach, what kind of maneuver was this, jumping the moment he caught sight of him? Was he really that terrifying?
There was no time to overthink. Fan Yi unleashed his dark force from the soles of his feet, and with a creaking sound, several imperceptible cracks instantly appeared on the blue stone slabs.
Leveraging this reactive force, Fan Yi shot forward like an arrow released from a bow. Mid-air, he reached out and scooped up the howling Gu San. Without any loss of upward momentum, he reached the rooftop, tapped his right foot against the eaves, and then, clutching Gu San, slammed heavily onto the ground.
Upon landing, Fan Yi felt quite bitter inside. Look at those literary descriptions—others always lightly tapped and landed quietly. What about him?
Damn it, it was disheartening. He really wanted to cultivate a breath of true qi.