Midnight.
The Zhenbei Estate was completely swallowed by a dead, inking silence. The daytime clamor, the mean-spirited taunts, the biting chill—all of it was devoured by an unyielding, impenetrable darkness. Only the lanterns of the night patrol drifted like erratic ghost fires, cutting brief, dim, yellowish streaks through the winding corridors and empty courtyards.
In the eastern courtyard where the guards lived, rows of low adobe houses crouched in the shadows like silent beasts. Intermittent snores, heavy breathing, the occasional grinding of teeth and sleep-talking, mixed with the stench of cheap alcohol and body odor, stubbornly leaked out through the gaps of tightly shut doors and windows. The air was as thick as congealed grease.
The corner room, pressed hard against a back alley stinking of rancid swill, had a dilapidated door and a window with patched, tattered paper. The cold wind bored through the gaps, emitting a low, whimpering groan.
Inside, the earthen kang bed was ice-cold. Lin Feng curled up under his thin, stiff quilt, a steady, piercing pain throbbing in his right arm.
Earlier that day on the training ground, taking Wang Biao's blow head-on—even if it had been a hasty defense—the full force of a 3rd Layer Martial Artist had still sent a dull, agonizing ache rippling through the meridians of his arm. His bones felt as though they were cracked open, burning hot, every breath tugging at the injury.
He could not sleep. With his eyes open in the dark, the blurry outline of the roof beam looked just like Wang Biao's grinning, scar-marked face.
And then there was the Young Lord—that figure curled up in the corner, coughing a lung out, as humble and cowardly as a puddle of mud.
Lin Feng's chest felt as though it had been stuffed with a piece of cold stone, so heavy it suffocated him.
*Why?* he asked himself.
Was it worth sticking his neck out for a piece of trash like that? All he got in return was deeper hostility from Wang Biao, and open or veiled ridicule from the other guards. It might even cost him the meager future he had scraped together with such difficulty in the estate.
*Was it worth it?* Lin Feng turned over.
The cold kang made his injury hurt even worse. He let out a muffled groan, a fine sheen of cold sweat breaking out across his forehead.
In the darkness, he seemed to see it again: the clumsy, wretched way the Young Lord had stumbled and fallen when Wang Biao shoved him aside, and the hollow, numb eyes he had given him at the very end—though they seemed to hide something else, too.
That look was like a thorn stuck in his heart, impossible to pull out.
*Forget it.* He closed his eyes, forcing himself not to think about it.
The pain in his arm and the stifling frustration in his chest intertwined until exhaustion finally eroded his senses, and his consciousness began to blur.
Right on the edge of this half-sleep, an extremely faint unusual sound—so faint it was almost masked by the sound of the wind—brushed against the dead leaves outside the window like the lightest feather.
Lin Feng's closed eyelids snapped open!
The vigilance forged from long years of struggling at the bottom instantly shocked him awake from his daze!
His heart skipped a beat. He held his breath and stiffened his body, pulled taut like a fully drawn bow, his ears catching everything outside the window.
The sound of the wind, whimpering.
The vague footsteps of the night patrol far away, and... that extremely light, swift rustle, like a civet cat stepping over accumulated snow!
*It's not the wind! Someone's there! Right outside the window!*
Every hair on Lin Feng's body stood on end! A cold sweat instantly soaked his thin inner garments. The chill raced straight up his spine to the crown of his head!
*Was it Wang Biao?!*
*Did he take a beating during the day and send people to retaliate at night?!*
The thought coiled tightly around his heart like a cold viper!
He bit down hard on his clenched teeth, refusing to let out the slightest sound. His injured right hand silently groped beneath the pillow. Hidden there was a sharpened dagger.
The cold hilt slipped into his palm, bringing a meager sense of security. He stood frozen like a solid sculpture, unmoving, his eyes fixed dead on that dilapidated window through the pitch-black dark.
Outside the window, that subtle rustling sound paused for a moment, as if listening for any movement inside.
Time crawled by, second by second, in the dead silence. Every breath felt as long as a century. The palm holding Lin Feng's dagger was slick with cold sweat.
Just as he was about to lose control, ready to spring up and charge out to fight to the death—
An extremely faint "click" rang out, like a dead branch snapping, or something being gently placed into the gap beneath the window lattice.
The sound was too soft to hear. Had Lin Feng not been entirely focused, he would have missed it completely.
Immediately afterward, that ghost-like, subtle rustling sound rang out once more, moving from near to far, quickly vanishing into the whimpering wind as if it had never been there at all.
*Gone?*
Lin Feng's tense muscles did not dare to relax in the slightest. He maintained absolute stillness, straining his ears to listen for a full half-cup of tea's duration. Outside the window, nothing remained save the monotonous howling of the wind and the distant, muffled beat of the night watchman's wooden clapper.
Only after confirming that the dangerous presence had truly retreated did Lin Feng slowly, very slowly, exhale the stale breath he had trapped in his chest for so long. The clothes on his back were already soaked through with cold sweat, sticking coldly to his skin.
He hesitated, but in the end, he could not suppress his intense curiosity and suspicion.
Acting with utmost caution, like someone dismantling a thunder-fire bomb that could detonate at any moment, he lifted the cold quilt off his body and stepped barefoot onto the equally freezing floor without making a single sound.
Step by step, he inched toward the window.
In the darkness, his heart beat like a war drum. His right hand gripped the dagger tightly, while his left hand, holding a hundred and twenty percent of his vigilance, slowly reached out toward the underside of the window lattice.
His fingertips brushed against an object that was cold, rough, and damp with nocturnal dew—it was a flat oil-paper package!
Lin Feng's heart shrank violently! *No trap?*
He quickly pulled his hand back, held his breath once more, and listened intently. The window was still dead silent.
Drawing a deep breath, he sped up his movements slightly and snatched the oil-paper package inside!
It felt slightly heavy in his hand, carrying the chill of the night air.
He quickly closed the window, fastened the latch, pressed his back against the cold adobe wall, and gasped heavily a few times before groping his way to the edge of the kang.
Without lighting a lamp, relying on the extremely faint, ghastly moonlight filtering through the window, his trembling hands peeled back the layers of oil-paper dampened by the night dew.
Inside the package were two things.
The first was a rough, palm-sized ceramic jar. When he pulled out the cork, a rich, bitter, yet refreshingly cool medicinal scent rushed into his nasal cavity.
It was top-quality Wound Medicine! And its quality was far superior to the inferior ointment he usually had to save up months of his monthly allowance to buy!
Lin Feng's fingers froze, his eyes filled with disbelief.
The other item was a few sheets of rough, neatly folded scrap paper. The paper was yellowed and had frayed edges, looking at a glance like the cheapest kind of wrapping paper.
With even deeper doubt, he unfolded them carefully.
On the scrap paper were diagrams drawn with charred pieces of fine wood charcoal. The lines were simple, even somewhat crude and sloppy. They depicted various human figures striking poses for punching, blocking, and dodging.
Beside them, tiny, fly-like annotations had been written in the same charcoal:
*"Settle your Qi in your waist and stance, draw strength from the earth."*
*"Twist your waist and drive your shoulders, strike with your fist like a drill."*
*"Let your footsteps follow your body, avoid the solid and strike the void."*
...
This... this was clearly the diagram and mnemonic for a set of boxing techniques!
Moreover, Lin Feng's gaze locked onto the force-exerting pathways of those human figure diagrams. The more he looked, the more violent the raging waves in his heart became!
The way force was exerted, the meridians for channeling Qi, the coordination of footsteps depicted in these seemingly crude and sloppy diagrams... they were more than ten times more refined than the "Wild Bull Vigor" basic boxing techniques he had practiced for years and which were standard issue for the estate guards!
Many key bottlenecks that he usually struggled to master through hard practice—and for which the instructor even scolded him as clumsy—were suddenly illuminated, as if clearing the clouds to see the sun after only a few brief strokes and simple annotations on these rough scraps of paper. It felt as though a riverbed that had been blocked and silted up for years had been forcefully dredged open by supreme, mighty power!
This boxing technique...
Lin Feng's hand gripping the scrap paper trembled violently from excitement, and the paper let out a groan under the strain.
He drew a sharp breath, forcing himself to calm down.
His gaze swept to the very bottom of the scrap paper. There, written with charred charcoal sticks, were four smaller characters that were even sloppier, yet pierced right through the paper with a decisive, unyielding resolve:
*"Trust me. Practice this."*
There was no signature, no name, just these four characters.
They were like four red-hot branding irons, ruthlessly scorching the bottoms of Lin Feng's eyes!
*Buzz!*
Lin Feng's head felt as though it had been heavily struck by a sledgehammer, instantly turning blank!
That clumsy, sluggish figure of the Young Lord in the corner of the training ground during the day, flickering like a candle in the wind.
That pair of cold, blade-sharp eyes that occasionally swept past from the depths of his humble numbness.
That hand that looked seemingly weak and powerless, yet landed precisely on Wang Biao's wrist, forcefully choking off the other man's lethal move...
And right now! The expensive wound medicine delivered like a ghost in the dead of night!
And this boxing manual, which looked crude on the surface but was actually exquisitely ingenious and pointed straight to the core secrets of the martial path!
Along with these four simple yet heavy-as-mountains characters!
*"Trust me. Practice this."*
It was him! It could only be the Young Lord! That Qin Lie whom everyone regarded as trash, a consumptive, the shame of the Zhenbei Estate!
Lin Feng's heart was gripped fiercely by an invisible, massive hand! A suffocating shock and wild elation washed over him like a breached floodgate, instantly shattering all his doubts and misgivings!
The Young Lord... he... he wasn't trash at all! He had been acting!
Right under everyone's noses, he had put on a flawless performance!
He needed helpers! And himself... that subconscious, grievance-fueled, indignant step forward during the day had unexpectedly... caught the Young Lord's eye?!
This medicine! This boxing manual! Was this the spark cast out by the Young Lord?!
A massive whirlpool, filled with infinite possibilities yet fraught with fatal crises, had appeared before Lin Feng without the slightest warning.
He clutched those rough scraps of paper and the cold medicine bottle for dear life, his knuckles turning white from the force, his body trembling slightly from the immense impact and the choice before him.
Outside the window, the wind whimpered louder, and the chill seeped through the adobe wall thread by thread.
The pain in his arm seemed almost negligible under this massive mental shock.
*What should I do? Practice it?*
This boxing technique was peerlessly ingenious; once mastered, his strength would inevitably skyrocket! This was a chance to change his fate! It was an olive branch extended by the Young Lord! But it also meant thoroughly standing on the Young Lord's seemingly sinking ship, which could go down at any moment!
Wang Biao, Zhao Gui, the Second Branch, and even... the Second Prince and the Chancellor's Estate! For these behemoths, crushing a minor guard like him was no different from crushing an ant!
*Don't practice? Pretend I know nothing? Keep acting as a low-level guard?*
Surviving out of breath under Wang Biao's oppression, trembling on the edge of the estate's power struggles. Maybe he could live a little longer? But living like that... how was it any different from being dead?!
Lin Feng's breathing grew heavy.
In the darkness, his gaze struggled and shifted violently: fear, hesitation, longing, unwillingness...
All sorts of emotions surged at the bottom of his eyes like boiling magma.
In the end, all the struggle and all the fear settled onto those four small characters that pierced the paper with a desperate, all-or-nothing resolve:
*"Trust me. Practice this."*
The Young Lord—that Young Lord struggling amidst everyone's spurn, that forbearing, dormant, unfathomable Young Lord—he dared to gamble! He dared to hand this faint spark to him in the middle of a desperate situation!
*What... did I have to fear?!*
A scalding wave of heat burst violently from the deepest depths of his heart, instantly dispersing all hesitation and coldness!
Lin Feng snapped his head up!
In the dark, his eyes glowed terrifyingly bright! Like a lone wolf about to pounce on its prey, they flashed with a ruthless, resolute determination to burn his boats!
He no longer hesitated. He popped the cork of the ceramic jar and poured the bitter, cooling ointment directly onto the still-stinging, swollen injury on his right arm without the slightest hesitation!
The moment the ointment touched his skin, a strong, stinging coolness, like countless tiny ice needles, instantly penetrated deep into the burning flesh, skin, tendons, and bones!
The piercing pain miraculously eased by more than half!
The congested Qi and blood also seemed to loosen up a fraction!
*Good medicine!*
Lin Feng's spirits lifted!
This medicinal efficacy was even better than he had expected!
The Young Lord...
The last shred of doubt in his heart completely dissipated, replaced by an even firmer determination.
He carefully put away the medicine bottle, holding it as if it were a rare treasure.
Then, he took a deep breath and carefully spread out the rough boxing manual's scrap paper on the cold kang.
Using the faint, almost negligible moonlight filtering through the window, he widened his eyes, gazing at the manual like the most devout believer revering a divine oracle.
Every single word!
Every single line!
Every force-exerting mark!
He looked at them with extreme care and earnestness!
In his eyes, those seemingly crude charcoal drawings transformed into a supreme secret path leading to the peak of strength!
He forced himself to calm down, banishing all distracting thoughts. Deep in his mind, he recalled the postures on the diagrams and the words of the mnemonics over and over again:
*"Settle your Qi in your waist and stance, draw strength from the earth..."*
He tried imitating the first, most basic horse-stance posture on the diagram.
His feet were slightly apart, neither too wide nor too narrow, knees slightly bent, attempting to sink his body's weight into the Yongquan points at the soles of his feet, down into the solid, freezing earth.
This posture looked simple enough, and "Wild Bull Vigor" had similar stances. But right now, after adjusting the center of gravity and the angle of his waist and back according to the subtle markings on the scrap paper, an unprecedented sense of stability naturally welled up!
It felt as though his feet had truly grown roots, connecting as one with the frozen earth!
*"Twist your waist and drive your shoulders, strike with your fist like a drill..."*
Taking the stability of the stance as his foundation, he attempted to slowly twist his waist and hips like a millstone. Power rose from the soles of his feet, passing through his calves, thighs, spine, and shoulder blades, linked joint by joint until it finally converged into his clenched right fist!
Then, like an suppressed volcano, it erupted fiercely! He threw a punch!
There was no target; he merely struck the cold air. His movements were still stiff, carrying a clear sluggishness and distortion due to the injury in his arm.
*But!*
The moment his fist struck out, a faint yet condensed current of air carrying a spiraling, piercing force burst through the empty air right along with his fist-edge, emitting a tiny, extremely faint "chi" sound!
Though weak, it vanished in a flash.
Yet in Lin Feng's ears, it sounded like a thunderclap!
He abruptly pulled his fist back and stood rigid in place.
In the dark, he stared in disbelief at his own fist, then snapped his head down to look at the scraps of paper on the kang.
His eyes were filled with extreme shock and wild elation!
*This boxing technique! This seemingly crude boxing technique! Is it... truly this wondrous?!*
Merely the most superficial attempt, merely adjusting the way force was exerted and shifting his center of gravity—
The power of this single punch was actually stronger in penetrating force and smoother in execution than the full-strength punch he had hammered out after training in "Wild Bull Vigor" for years!
And it consumed even less energy!
*The Young Lord... just what kind of person is he?!*
*And this boxing technique... what tier is it?!*
Lin Feng's heart beat wildly in the dead room, pounding like a dense war drum: *Thump-thump! Thump-thump!* It felt as though it might burst right through his chest!
Excitement! Wild elation! And a trace of awe toward unknown power thoroughly overwhelmed him!
He no longer hesitated, forgetting even the pain in his arm. Like a dying traveler in the desert who suddenly discovers a spring, he greedily and repeatedly pondered the diagrams and mnemonics on the scrap paper over and over again, refusing to let a single detail slip.
Outside, the moonlight quietly shifted a fraction, casting a pale patch of light right onto those few unfolded scraps of rough paper.
It illuminated those four small characters that pierced the paper:
*"Trust me. Practice this."*
It also illuminated Lin Feng's young face, slightly distorted by excitement and intense focus.
All the confusion and struggle in his eyes had vanished, leaving only a burning, almost devotional flame!
He drew in a deep breath of the cold, earthy air, assumed his stance once again, and—facing the boundless darkness, facing his unknown destiny, facing that tightly shut door symbolizing the faint spark handed down by the Young Lord—
Punch by punch, in total silence, he lashed out!