Settling the Trouble

"Liao Hu!"

A thunderous shout rang out at the entrance of the wine shop.

The voice was incomparably resonant, making Liao Hu's right hand freeze at once, suspended in midair.

Everyone was startled and immediately turned to look toward the entrance.

A tall young man strode inside.

He was in his early twenties, nearly six feet tall, with a square face, thick brows, and large eyes.

He wore only a coarse sleeveless shirt on his upper body, his bare arms clearly defined with muscle, beads of sweat still rolling down his bronze-colored skin.

He had clearly just finished training, his entire body radiating the vigorous masculine vitality of a blazing furnace.

The young man swept his gaze over the fat woman and Liao Hu, then glanced at Jiang Qinghe and the servants in the hall.

His thick brows rose as he sneered:

"Your Iron Saber Gang is quite impressive. You even bully a half-grown boy now. What promise!"

Liao Hu turned around. When he saw the young man's face, a flash of wariness crossed his eyes, and he secretly thought:

That brute Zhao Guangyi should be cultivating hard at the martial academy. What is he doing here?!

Though he cursed inwardly, Liao Hu did not move slowly. He quietly withdrew the clawed hand that had stiffened in midair.

"Oh my! So Martial Instructor Zhao has honored us with his presence. A misunderstanding, a misunderstanding!"

Liao Hu's voice turned slick, and a smile piled onto his horse-like face.

"My cousin's husband has been missing for several days. I merely came to the wine shop where he worked to ask around and see whether anyone had any clues."

"I was only asking a few ordinary questions. Why would I lower myself to argue with mere servants? Bullying? Surely that is a joke!"

He paused, then added, "Martial Instructor Zhao, it is so hot today. Why not sit down in this wine shop? My treat—we can have a couple of drinks?"

Zhao Guangyi Raised Hand and refused without ceremony. "No need."

He could not be bothered with Liao Hu any longer and walked straight to the counter, saying to the shopkeeper, Zhang Deqing:

"Shopkeeper, get me ten jin of soy-braised pork elbows. Freshly braised and sliced. Wrap them tightly for me to take away!"

"Right away! Please wait a moment, Martial Instructor Zhao!"

Zhang Deqing hurriedly answered and immediately sent a quick-footed servant racing to the kitchen to pass on the order.

For a moment, the front hall of the wine shop fell silent.

The fat woman on the ground could more or less tell by now that this Martial Instructor Zhao Before One's Eyes was someone her cousin could not afford to offend.

During that slightly awkward silence, another servant standing in the corner, who seemed to have been holding back his words for a long time, spoke up.

Perhaps seeing that Zhao Guangyi, a seemingly upright martial instructor, was present had emboldened him somewhat. He quietly interjected:

"A few days ago, after the wine shop closed, I did see Steward Qiu. He, he was heading toward Yihong Courtyard..."

The moment the words left his mouth, he caught sight of Liao Hu's murderous glare fixed on him.

His face instantly drained of color, and the rest of his words caught in his throat.

Just then, a waiter ran over and handed the wrapped soy-braised pork elbows to Zhao Guangyi.

Zhao Guangyi took the oil-paper parcel. Hearing the servant's final mention of Yihong Courtyard, he could not help but sneer, teasingly saying:

"Liao Hu, did you hear that? Your brother is so happy he has forgotten his way home! I think you should stop making a mess here and hurry over to that land of tenderness to search nearby. Hahaha!"

Humiliated in public, Liao Hu's horse-like face turned green, then white, but he did not dare lose his temper.

After all, Zhao Guangyi could suppress him as easily as turning over a hand.

He did not even dare snort. He merely swept his gloomy gaze across the servants, lingering on Jiang Qinghe for a few extra moments.

Then he lowered his voice and said to the fat woman:

"Move! Haven't you embarrassed yourself enough?!"

With that, he turned and strode out of the front hall.

After hearing what the servant had said, the fat woman's face was now ashen as death.

Supporting her bulky body, she struggled to climb to her feet, then followed Liao Hu away in a daze.

Jiang Qinghe watched Liao Hu's retreating figure and inwardly breathed a sigh of relief.

If he had truly exposed his unusual strength just now, it would certainly have aroused Liao Hu's suspicions.

I'm still not strong enough. Jiang Qinghe sighed inwardly.

That Martial Instructor Zhao had needed only a few words to render Liao Hu silent as a cicada in winter. What imposing dominance.

Grow steadily and cautiously. One day, the hidden dragon will rise from the abyss! He clenched his fists, a trace of determination flashing in his eyes.

Over the next few days, time passed like a white colt flashing through a crack, vanishing in an instant.

Liao Hu never appeared again. Instead, the Magistrate's Manor sent over a constable, who asked a few routine questions before hastily wrapping things up.

Perhaps they did not care much, and without any concrete clues, the matter was simply dropped.

The atmosphere in the wine shop became noticeably more relaxed. With Qiu San's ugly face gone, a stone weighing on everyone's hearts quietly lifted away.

Shopkeeper Zhang Deqing hired a new steward and waiter, and everything seemed to return to normal.

As the weight on Jiang Qinghe's heart eased by more than half, he also felt a touch of melancholy.

Without a prominent family background or powerful backing, in these troubled times, ordinary people's lives were as cheap as grass.

When someone like Qiu San died, it was like a stone tossed into water—after stirring a few ripples, it left no trace behind.

A few days later, the struggle for control of West Street finally settled into the dust.

Rumors on the streets said that the Iron Saber Gang had narrowly defeated its opponents and brought this commercial street under its sphere of influence.

The gang conflict that had dragged on for so long had finally come to an end, and the merchants could at last lower their anxious hearts a little.

The Iron Saber Gang's victory meant that every shop on West Street, even the stalls of roadside peddlers, had to pay monthly protection money.

It was said to ensure their safety, but in truth, it was simply extortion.

Those who refused would suffer smashed shops and ruined goods at best, or broken hands and feet at worst.

For most people, paying was better than being caught between two feuding gangs every day, living in constant fear.

In these troubled times, common folk understood best the wisdom of preserving themselves.

If they were implicated one day and met with disaster—

what use was money if their lives were gone?

These days, Red Leaf Wine Shop had grown lively, with a constant stream of customers coming and going.

In a corner of the back courtyard, Jiang Qinghe chopped firewood, but his heart had long since left this tiny patch of ground.

His thoughts drifted to Wanping Martial Academy south of West Street, one of Lin'an County's only two martial academies.

The other academy was called Golden Thunder Martial Academy, and it faintly stood above Wanping Martial Academy.

Yet its threshold was also suffocatingly high.

Fifty taels of silver! It was an enormous sum that an ordinary family of three could scarcely hope to save even after years of frugality.

It was no less than the savings needed for several major events in life: buying land and property, marrying a wife, and raising children.

Without anyone realizing it, this shut out the vast majority of commoners who dreamed of becoming Martial Practitioners.

By comparison, Wanping Martial Academy, though also a martial academy, seemed far more approachable.

For only twenty taels of silver, one could become a Martial Disciple there.

It meant that if an ordinary family were willing to tighten their belts and live frugally,

then after saving for a while, they could barely scrape together this entrance fee that could change their fate.

In this world where the nation was founded upon martial strength and the strong were revered, the height of one's martial Cultivation Level almost directly determined one's class and destiny.

For common folk struggling along the line between hunger and survival, especially orphans without anyone to rely on like Jiang Qinghe,

studying for the civil service examinations? That required generations of scholarly heritage.

Getting rich through trade? Without capital, connections, and patrons, that was nothing but a fool's dream.

Only martial training!

Only by mastering strength!

could those at the bottom change their fate in this world where the weak were meat for the strong.

Over the years Jiang Qinghe had worked at the wine shop, he had seen too many poor people like himself.

They struggled along the line between hunger and survival their entire lives.

In the end, they either worked themselves to death or died of illness.

Therefore, only by going to a martial academy could there be hope!

If one could Showcase extraordinary talent at a martial academy, it would truly be a carp leaping over the dragon gate, soaring upward on the wind and ascending to heaven in a single step!

From then on, there would be no more bitter struggle at the bottom.

Even if one's talent was merely average, with only ordinary aptitude, if one gritted their teeth and endured the martial academy's half-year foundational training period, then diligently learned a proper cultivation method,

the road ahead would still be far broader.

Whether joining the Magistrate's Manor and securing a constable's job,

or being hired by a merchant caravan as an escort Guard,

or even joining a gang and becoming its most ordinary thug,

all of it would be far, far better than chopping firewood in this wine shop's back courtyard for an entire lifetime.