Chapter 989: Jianghu Showdown

Taverns in Zhao had one distinctive custom: they sold only wine.

No food.

The people of Zhao loved drinking and insisted that drinking meant drinking. Anyone who needed dishes to go with his wine simply did not understand wine.

There was even a story widely circulated throughout Zhao.

Once, the Ruler of Zhao invited Great Yan’s Regent Prince to drink.

The Regent Prince looked at the table before him. There was wine, but no food.

He could not help asking:

“Where are the dishes?”

The Ruler of Zhao answered firmly:

“In Zhao, when we drink, there are no dishes. If dishes are to be served, the wine must be cleared away first.”

The Regent Prince was displeased.

“This Prince wants something to go with his wine!”

The Ruler of Zhao insisted:

“The rule cannot be broken.”

The Regent Prince slapped the table in anger.

“Bring this Prince dishes!”

The Ruler of Zhao immediately shouted back:

“Since Your Highness has entered Zhao, then Zhao’s customs must be observed! In my State of Zhao, the rules of drinking stand higher even than the Son of Heaven!”

In the end, the Regent Prince stopped insisting.

He and the Ruler of Zhao drank three cups according to Zhao custom.

Only then was the wine removed and food brought in.

This story circulated extremely widely among the common people of Zhao.

Whenever they told it, they would unconsciously lift their chins, faces glowing with pride.

Of course... anyone with even a little standing knew that the story did not survive the slightest scrutiny.

To begin with, the current Ruler of Zhao had rebelled against his own father when the Yan army surrounded the capital.

He had only been able to take the throne with Yan support.

Did he really have the courage to stiffen his neck in front of Great Yan’s Regent Prince?

Much less roar something like *the drinking customs of Zhao stand higher than the Son of Heaven.*

If he truly dared say that, did anyone believe the Regent Prince would not simply slap him to death and choose someone else to be Ruler of Zhao?

But common people loved hearing stories like this.

And they preferred believing them.

In truth, throughout history, even official histories had never lacked records of famous ministers openly rebuking foreign rulers to their faces.

The writing was always grand enough to pierce the clouds.

Qian had produced the most examples.

Mm.

Most of the rulers being rebuked happened to be rulers of Yan.

And usually, before the awe-inspiring righteousness of the Qian envoy, the Yan ruler would be struck with shame again and again, defeated utterly by the lofty moral backbone of Great Qian’s scholar-officials and the majesty of Qian civilization and ritual.

At the height of the fashion, if a man had never gone abroad as an envoy and displayed his awe-inspiring righteousness, he almost felt embarrassed sitting among the Ministers of State at court.

...

Inside a small tavern in Zhao, business was brisk.

The town stood along one of the routes merchant caravans used when traveling toward South Gate Pass and onward into Jin, so it had never lacked customers.

The tavern itself did not sell food.

But outside were plenty of hawkers offering everything from candied fruit, melon seeds, and peanuts to cooked meats and other things suitable for drinking.

A group would enter, order wine, claim a table, then send one companion outside to make the rounds and buy snacks.

The tavern did not object.

When all was said and done, the custom of Zhao taverns had originated a century earlier, when Zhao was a land fought over from all four directions and ordinary people lived bitter lives.

Back then, a wine stall needed nothing more than a cloth awning, a few benches, and two jars of old yellow wine before it could open for business.

There simply had not been spare effort or money to prepare food or improve the surroundings.

Over time, people became accustomed to this kind of makeshift arrangement.

Once the habit lasted long enough... it became custom.

On the second floor of the tavern, a woman in white held a jug of wine and drank from it freely.

Quite a few jianghu men at nearby tables—even some downstairs—kept sneaking glances in her direction.

They only felt that the woman possessed an extraordinary bearing.

Even the way she drank made people itch to look longer.

Across from her sat a little girl.

The girl was concentrating on eating sweet rice dumplings.

One grown woman.

One little girl.

The two looked strikingly alike.

Most likely, they were mother and daughter.

Public order in Zhao could not be called terrible.

But neither had it reached the point where lost property sat untouched by the roadside.

Especially after Great Yan’s Regent Prince, in a fit of rage years ago, slaughtered the capital of Liang and large numbers of Liang people migrated into Zhao, small gangs engaged in black business had sprung up everywhere like mushrooms after rain.

Even so, nobody was stupid enough to see a mother and daughter sitting alone and immediately go over to molest them.

There were two things anyone traveling the jianghu needed to remember.

First, do not dress too richly, or you might be mistaken for a fat sheep.

Second, any women traveling with you should not be too conspicuously beautiful, or they might invite wicked intentions.

Even ordinary commoners knew these principles when traveling far from home.

Add in years of repeated warfare, general disorder, ordinary people becoming bolder and bandits becoming more numerous... and those who dared show themselves openly without concealment usually had the confidence to back it up.

The tavern had a storyteller.

He was bald, fat-faced, and short.

Beside him, drawing a bow across the strings to accompany the tale, sat his daughter.

She had the sturdy look of a proper tiger-girl.

The storyteller’s surname was Zhou.

Today, he was telling the story of the war in Chu.

He said the commander of Fan City was the reincarnation of the Savage King, leading tens of thousands of Savage troops to smash the Xie Clan Army of Great Chu’s Pillar of State flat into the dirt.

He said the Heir Prince Jingnan and the Regent Prince’s beloved general Chen Xianba each led a force of iron cavalry to hunt and slaughter Xie Zhuyang, nearly preventing the man from escaping back to Guyue City alive.

He said Great Yan’s Regent Prince stood alone before the army with Wuya in hand and fought eighteen martial instructors of the Chu imperial-clan Imperial Guards, personally killing seventeen and sparing only the final survivor after the man’s courage shattered completely.

He said the Yan army not only rode Pi Beasts when charging enemy formations, but even used Pi Beasts behind the lines to haul grain carts for the laborers.

A million iron cavalrymen of Great Yan charged at a single command and nearly stabbed a hole directly through the sky over Chu...

The storyteller rattled off one miraculous account after another.

There were plenty of holes in his story.

Plenty of things that could not possibly be reconciled.

But he did not give his listeners a chance to interrupt.

Wave after wave.

Round after round.

Flying sand.

Rolling stones.

Every imaginable description was thrown in to keep the crowd’s emotions climbing.

At last... he smacked the storyteller’s block against the table.

Then sighed:

“Damn his mother. Great Chu has stood in splendor for eight hundred years, but after this round... I’m afraid the whole damned thing is finished.”

Then he picked up his teacup and drained it.

His daughter set down her bow, grabbed a large sieve, flipped off the platform, and started moving through the crowd asking for tips.

The drinkers, having finished listening to the “battle report,” immediately began shouting their own opinions.

“Chu is finished. So whose turn is next?”

“Hey, Chu hasn’t been destroyed yet. Ying Capital is still standing, isn’t it?”

“If someone digs away half your family’s measly acre and a third, how much vitality do you think you’ve got left?”

“Could they be going after Qian next?”

“Yan men aren’t made of iron either. The way I see it, without three to five years of recuperation, even Yan won’t be able to fight again.”

“That makes sense.”

“I think Yan may keep fighting. That Regent Prince has conquered half of Chu already. That territory is practically a country of its own. Maybe next he’ll simply swing his army toward Yanjing and make the old Emperor change who sits in that chair.”

“Bullshit! How many damned years have people been saying the Regent Prince is going to rebel? Has he rebelled? Has he? People were saying he’d rebel before my wife even got pregnant. Now my son is old enough to run out and buy soy sauce, and people are still saying His Highness is about to rebel. I say the Prince is a loyal pillar of Yan!”

“Exactly! The Regent Prince is a man who understands the greater situation. Why would he start some nest-fighting nonsense?”

Zhao had once been ruled by Yan.

Although Yan no longer stationed troops inside Zhao now, Zhao was already a dependent state of Yan.

The people of Zhao had indeed suffered war when the Yan armies first arrived.

But that disaster was long over, wasn’t it?

Besides... it had been the previous Ruler himself who foolishly decided to fight the Yan.

Then Yan taught him a lesson.

You could hardly blame the Yan for that.

You had to blame the idiotic former Ruler.

So in Zhao, quite a few people had already begun thinking of themselves as “Yan people” in spirit.

They admired the Regent Prince enormously too.

“A pity I already have a wife and children. Otherwise, I’d truly like to take a saber and head to eastern Jin, join the Regent Prince, and earn myself a future in the army. Only under the Prince in eastern Jin can a man rise by ability alone, regardless of what people he comes from or what state he was born in!”

Another long-bearded man with a saber at his waist laughed gleefully.

“Hahahaha! You can’t go, but I can. I’m heading toward South Gate Pass right now. I’ll cross into Jin and then continue to eastern Jin.”

As he spoke... he turned with a grand, heroic air toward a swordswoman sitting at the neighboring table.

“I wonder where this heroine is traveling. If our roads happen to be the same, this Guan can offer some protection.”

This wandering swordsman Guan Xing had noticed the young swordswoman at the next table long ago.

She sat alone, drinking wine and eating noodles.

That pretty face.

That figure...

Tsk, tsk.

He was not thinking of forcing himself on her or doing anything truly vile.

But if the two of them happened to find an opportunity for mutual affection... would that not be perfectly natural?

Years ago, the Regent Prince had once teased the Sword Saint about the jianghu.

He said men and women wandered the jianghu for two reasons.

Half went around drawing sabers to right injustices when they saw them.

The other half... were there to hook up.

People always imagined they would find the other half of their soul somewhere out in the jianghu and become an immortal-like heroic couple together.

And if that failed... well, the Red Tents of different regions each offered their own particular flavor.

Strip away all the romantic language and that was the truth of the jianghu.

The Sword Saint’s generation stood at the absolute peak.

One tier beneath them were famous heroes from sects around the realm.

But they were still a minority.

Most of the jianghu consisted of young heroes and heroines chasing some distant dream.

In essence... they were not very different from the free-travel literary youths of later generations.

Faced with this roaming swordsman openly casting bedroom eyes her way... the swordswoman merely glanced at him coldly and ignored him.

That contempt wounded the wanderer’s heart.

He immediately shouted:

“Who knows? Maybe someday I’ll become a general under His Highness. Then you might even be able to—”

“Being together with that bastard is something worth bragging about?” the swordswoman interrupted.

“...” Guan Xing.

“What did you say?”

A burly man at another table suddenly stood.

There were plenty of people inside this tavern who admired the Regent Prince.

The swordswoman wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, set half a broken piece of silver on the table, and answered loudly:

“Zheng Fan is a bastard!”

“You! Your daddy here will teach a little girl like you a lesson on behalf of His Highness!”

Every era had irrational worshipers.

The person being worshiped knew nothing about them and could never know about them.

Yet the worshipers would still start fights for their idol.

The swordswoman extended one finger.

The burly man’s body instantly froze and slowed.

She walked past him and kicked.

The man flipped onto the floor.

Then... the swordswoman raised her head slightly.

She glanced at the white-clad “mother and daughter” sitting upstairs.

Then left the tavern directly.

“A swordsman,” the woman said.

“Fifth Grade,” the girl replied. “But probably more than that. She seems to be suppressing her Grade.”

The woman nodded.

“Her sword qi is extremely pure. Far beyond an ordinary swordsman.”

“She has a grudge against that Regent Prince,” the girl reminded her.

“Yes.”

“Let’s go introduce ourselves.”

“What about the other one?” the woman asked. “That Qian man?”

“Bring him too.”

“Fine.”

The girl stood.

The woman stood as well.

Then both left the tavern.

...

The swordswoman galloped north.

After nightfall, she took a room at another inn.

She bathed inside her room.

When she came out to dump the water, she noticed another party arriving below.

A man was pushing a cart.

On the cart sat two women, one grown and one small.

Both wore white.

They looked like mother and daughter.

The swordswoman’s gaze lingered slightly longer on the man pushing the cart.

The man looked toward her too.

Their eyes met briefly.

Then the swordswoman returned to her room.

Vague sounds continued outside.

The inn servant was helping new guests settle in.

The swordswoman lay on the bed and closed her eyes.

One knee rested over the other.

Her hands spread loosely at her sides.

She looked half asleep... half meditating.

The quiet atmosphere did not last long.

Someone knocked on the door.

The swordswoman said nothing.

The door opened.

The little girl walked in carrying food.

She set it on the table, then obediently hopped onto a chair.

The swordswoman sat up.

The grown woman came in next, carrying a jug of wine.

The door remained open.

The middle-aged man who had been pushing the cart sat on the threshold.

He only smiled foolishly.

“I don’t know any of you,” the swordswoman said.

“Now you do,” the woman replied.

“Why should we know each other?”

“Because we very likely have the same enemy.”

The sword beside the swordswoman came out of its sheath.

It was an utterly ordinary sword.

No decoration.

No flourish.

The sort one could buy from any blacksmith in an ordinary county town.

Calling it exquisite would have been too generous.

But at that moment... a streak of sword qi shot directly across the room.

The woman raised one hand.

Without sound or spectacle... the sword qi dissolved.

“Sit.”

Perhaps this was simply the way jianghu people greeted one another.

Exchange one move first.

Then decide whether the other person possessed the qualification to sit at the same table.

The swordswoman rose from the bed and sat at the table.

“You two are mother and daughter?”

“Yes and no,” the girl answered.

“What about him?”

The swordswoman pointed toward the middle-aged man sitting on the threshold.

“Is he your father or her husband?”

“A friend. A friend we met on the road. Before we met you,” the girl answered.

“A friend?”

“Yes. Both of us twisted our ankles and couldn’t walk, so he pushed us along in the cart. He’s a kindhearted person.”

“You twisted your ankles and couldn’t walk?”

The swordswoman found that absurd.

The girl’s eyes were perfectly clear.

Not the clear innocence of an ordinary child.

Rather, a deep and mysterious clarity that seemed to probe hidden principles.

Barring some surprise, she had to be a Qi Refiner.

The swordswoman simply had no idea how she had achieved this apparent return to childhood.

As for the grown woman... when she dissolved the sword qi earlier, the surging blood qi she revealed made one thing obvious.

She was a very powerful Martial Artist.

These two had twisted their ankles?

Couldn’t walk?

Needed someone to push them in a cart?

The swordswoman looked at the grown woman.

“He wants to sleep with you?”

The woman shook her head.

“I’d be willing.”

The swordswoman looked at the girl.

“Then could it be you?”

“Hehehe.”

The girl sneered.

“He’s simply a kindhearted man.”

“Oh. Then he really is strange.”

“He is,” the woman agreed.

The girl picked up the wine jug and started pouring.

“The two of us just came from Chu. We originally thought the Chu could hold back the Yan. Who would have imagined the Yan would slaughter them into complete rout?”

“You ran too?”

“We ran. Before running, we at least helped rescue Xie Zhuyang,” the girl answered.

The woman lifted her wine cup.

“I nearly managed to kill the Heir Prince Jingnan amid the chaos. In other words, the Regent Prince’s nominal eldest son.”

“Nearly?” the swordswoman asked.

“He was stronger than I expected. My surprise attack failed. I only wounded him. I was afraid of being surrounded, so I could not continue.”

The girl said:

“I still cannot understand why he would appear there carrying a Yan banner.”

The swordswoman laughed.

“I know that person. His father is Prince Jingnan. His adoptive father is the Regent Prince. Why would it be strange for him to fight for Yan beneath the Black Dragon Banner?”

The girl shook her head.

“Disordered.”

The woman nodded.

“Very disordered.”

The swordswoman frowned slightly.

She was beginning to think something might genuinely be wrong with these two women’s heads.

“You hate that Regent Prince, yes?” the girl asked.

“Yes. He killed my master.”

The girl nodded.

“Do you want revenge?”

“Yes.”

The swordswoman answered without the slightest hesitation.

“Wait.”

The girl raised both hands over her eyes.

Then slowly pulled them apart.

A smile appeared.

She confirmed:

“You did not lie.”

“You were spying into me just now?”

“Only a Qi Refiner’s method. Great Qian’s Silver-Armored Guard often uses something similar when interrogating prisoners, but I doubt they use it quite as smoothly as I do.”

The girl ate a bite of food.

“We intend to enter Jin and look around. More specifically... eastern Jin.”

“The Regent Prince is in Chu,” the swordswoman reminded her.

“He has thousands upon thousands of troops around him. We cannot touch him.”

“Then why go to eastern Jin?”

“We may not be able to touch him, but we can go look at his home. Perhaps we might find a chance to pay respects to his family.”

“Despicable,” the swordswoman said.

“Yes.”

The girl nodded.

The swordswoman leaned forward.

“But I happen to know that the defenses around his Residence are practically impregnable.”

“We know that too. But we are in no hurry. We will simply go look. If it truly is impregnable, fine. What if we happen to find an opening?”

The woman smiled.

“What about him?”

The swordswoman pointed toward the middle-aged man still sitting nearby.

“He is from Qian. The Regent Prince has led troops against Qian several times. As a son of Qian’s jianghu, naturally he ought to relieve the country’s worries. Isn’t that right, kindhearted man?”

The middle-aged man nodded.

“But as far as I know, anyone who ever tried to attack the Residence—whether from the court or the jianghu—has met a bad end,” the swordswoman reminded them again.

“Hehehe.”

The girl laughed.

“If there’s no angle, we turn around and leave. That’s what we did in Chu too. Preserving a useful body is the most important thing.”

“And if you truly find an opportunity?” the swordswoman asked.

“That is a strange question. He killed your master. Have you never thought about killing his family for revenge?”

“Debts have owners and wrongs have culprits. The debt between him and me will be settled between us. I will not drag his family into it.”

“A person shouldn’t be too upright,” the girl advised. “You have no chance against him directly. But perhaps you could seize one of his women or one of his children and use them to force him... to submit?”

“He is a ruthless great lord,” the swordswoman reminded her.

“No. According to what I know, he cares deeply about personal bonds,” the girl said with certainty. “Believe me. We have our own channels of information. We understand him better than you do.”

The swordswoman froze.

She pointed at her own nose.

“You understand him better than I do?”

“Yes.”

The girl nodded.

“We have read the Phoenix Nest Internal Guard’s investigations into him. Unless you grew up beside him from childhood, we can say with complete certainty that we understand him better than you.”

The swordswoman could not hold back any longer.

She stood.

“I will not accompany you in doing something this low.”

The girl once again covered her own eyes with both hands.

Then slowly pulled them apart.

After a moment... she sighed helplessly.

“She’s telling the truth again. What a stubborn idiot.”

The girl rose.

The woman stood as well.

They prepared to leave.

At that moment... the swordswoman drew her sword.

“I might have ignored it if I knew nothing. But now that I do know, I’m sorry. Since you intend to attack his family, not only will I refuse to help you... I cannot let any of you leave this inn alive tonight.”

“Hehehe.”

The girl laughed.

“There are three of us and one of you. We weren’t worried about you leaking anything, and we had no intention of silencing you. Yet now you say you’re going to kill all three of us?”

The swordswoman shook her head.

Then raised her voice:

“So what about you? Do you intend to help them do this too?”

The middle-aged man sitting on the threshold slowly rose.

His gaze was clear.

There was something naturally warm and gentle about him.

Facing the question, he answered:

“You became impatient. I originally planned to call for help when I pushed them through South Gate Pass.”

The woman raised one hand.

Slap!

She slapped the girl across the face.

A bright palm print appeared immediately.

The girl’s head tilted from the blow.

Then she cursed back:

“They really weren’t lying!”

There had been nothing wrong with the lie detection.

The girl was absolutely certain of that!

The problem was... she had somehow chosen two people who genuinely had no problem.

And those two people... had become the greatest possible problem.

“So?” The woman pointed toward both sides. “Whenever I stay with you, I feel like I become stupid.”

“You’re even stupider without me,” the girl shot back. “Even when picking a body, you always rush to choose the one with the bigger chest.”

The Sword Maid pointed her sword at the woman.

“I choose her. She wounded the little brother I watched grow up.”

“I disagree.”

Hero Chen removed his conical hat.

He carried no sword.

Facing the Sword Maid’s choice, he said:

“The little one is easier to fight.”

No matter how varied a Qi Refiner’s methods were... and no matter how high the Grade... in direct close combat, they were still comparatively easier to deal with.

Martial Artists were different.

A dignified expression appeared in the Sword Maid’s eyes.

She reminded him:

“I’m the senior sister.”

Hero Chen nodded.

His steps shifted toward the girl.

“Fine.”

“Use the proper form of address,” the Sword Maid reminded him again.

“Fine, Senior Sister.”

[End of Chapter 989]