After a late-night snack, Chen Ping'an took Ning Yao for a walk through the capital. They had no particular destination; they simply wandered along brightly lit streets and alleys. Vendors pushing carts passed them constantly. Some sold chilled desserts made from lotus roots and water chestnuts, their carts often trailed by a few hungry children. Trade flourished in the capital, and merchants operated icehouses large and small, storing blocks cut each winter to sell in summer and autumn.
They had walked together like this at the Sword Qi Great Wall, too. But it would have been hard to call those walks relaxing.
Passing a small martial arts school, Chen Ping'an could not help laughing. "After the battle at the Secondary Capital ended, Treasure Bottle Continent named four new Martial Arts Grandmasters. Pei Qian was the youngest and the only woman, and she ranked just below Song Changjing, so she became far more famous than her master."
Martial arts schools filled the city. Many martial sects made their living here; once they made a name for themselves in the capital, it was easier to spread into other prefectures and counties and establish new branches. Chen Ping'an knew of one instructor who had waited for days and nights at the Secondary Capital until he finally caught a chance to spar with Grandmaster Zheng. The match lasted all of four punches—and that was only because the young but scrupulously honorable "Zheng Saqian" had let him throw the first three. Yet when that Golden Body Realm martial man returned to the capital, foaming at the mouth after taking a single punch, young men and wastrels arrived with fistfuls of silver to study under him. They nearly crushed his school's threshold. Supposedly, he had even enshrined the pouch of gold leaves that Grandmaster "Zheng Qingming"