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The following morning.
The wind and snow had continued without cease since the New Year. Today was a rare clear day, so the White Lotus followers, cooped up for days, had risen early and gotten themselves ready. Each wielded their weapon of choice, pairing off in the courtyard to spar and loosen their limbs.
Those brought all the way to Liaodong were mostly the White Lotus's elite. Quite a few had once made considerable names for themselves in the martial world.
The forms they practiced might not have looked as pleasing as the routines taught in martial arts schools, but their fierce, murderous edge far surpassed them. If this had not merely been practice, the defeated side would most likely have ended up dead or crippled.
Of course, not everyone in the White Lotus was a master.
Take Zhang Talented Scholar, for instance. With a body full of excess flesh, he clutched a two-foot saber and swung it about in smug self-amusement. Even being generous, he was still a hundred thousand miles away from a farmer's crude martial arts.
Yet Zhang Talented Scholar was also the first person in the courtyard to break into a sweat.
He dropped his bulky backside onto the corridor railing, panting as he fished a handkerchief from his sleeve pouch. Wiping back and forth from his left temple to his right, he shook his head with a laugh. "No good, no good. I really am not cut out for this. If we truly run into a disaster of blades and war, I'll still have to rely on my brothers to lend a hand."
The people around him immediately laughed along. One patted his chest and promised, "Through mountains of blades and seas of fire, I will not