I Alone Will Take On All of You!

I Alone Will Take On All of You!

Liang Qu went home, found a clean set of clothes to change into, and jogged all the way toward Ping Yang Town.

The leaves piled along both sides of the road grew thicker and thicker. The upper layers were red and yellow, while the lower layers were blackish brown.

The wind blew against him like ice blades, yet Liang Qu felt only boundless energy. Neither cold nor hot, the thing burning in his chest was called passion.

Liang Qu raised his head. The enormous setting sun slowly sank, reflecting a brilliant rainbow gold in his pupils.

The setting sun gradually took its light from the earth. The pale-red woods turned blackish red, and night would soon descend. This was the last glimpse of the sunset.

He suddenly felt that this world was not bad at all. There was no pollution, no cage, and the air was even fresher.

A brief spell of hardship was not a bad thing. As long as the direction was right, frying and simmering could both turn into ways of making something delicious. So could fueling oneself up. One day, he would rise above it all.

"Roar!"

Liang Qu let out a shout.

A mule pulling a cart by the roadside was startled and dragged the cart toward the woods. The driver cracked several whips before steering it back onto the road, then muttered a curse. "Idiot."

Did that word exist this early?

Liang Qu was startled, but he was not angry. He merely smiled back. Seeing this, the driver left while cursing under his breath, convinced he had truly run into a fool.

When he arrived at Ping Yang Town, Liang Qu figured Li LiBo and Chen Jiechang were probably hungry, so he bought a few steamed buns and took the familiar shortcut to Yang Martial Hall.

The entrance to the martial hall was brightly lit. A large oil lamp stood every few meters after entering, and a lantern every ten meters.

Carrying the oil-paper parcels, Liang Qu made his way through the corridor with practiced ease.

There were far more people in the Martial Arts Field now, more than fifty in all.

Many people went home to practice on their own after learning the fist techniques, only meeting again at the end of the month. The thirty people he had seen on registration day had not been everyone.

Yet there did not seem to be any proper Martial Masters among the crowd. They were all apprentices.

Liang Qu assumed the Martial Masters had something to do, or perhaps had gone to pay their respects to Master Yang early. He did not think much of it. Yet in secret, many people kept casting glances his way, whether deliberately or not.

"Strange. Why are they all looking at me?"

Liang Qu could not make sense of it. He was down on his luck, and people usually ignored him. Though some were willing to befriend him, there was no reason for them to stare at him like this.

Had he arrived late?

He remembered once waking up late in high school and getting caught by the homeroom teacher who had come to check on morning reading. Many close classmates had pretended to read while actually watching the show. It was exactly like now.

Liang Qu could only pretend not to notice and head alone to the corner by the flower bed to find Li LiBo and Chen Jiechang.

Hearing footsteps, the two raised their heads. Upon seeing Liang Qu, they lowered them again in unspoken accord, but the bruises around their eyes and their swollen cheeks could not be hidden.

Knowing the two liked to needle each other, Liang Qu thought they had taken it too far. "What happened? Did you two get into a fight? You hit that hard?"

The two exchanged a glance, both silent.

Liang Qu realized something was wrong. He crouched down and asked in a low voice, "What exactly happened?"

After a moment of silence.

Chen Jiechang broke it.

His swollen cheeks made his voice muffled. "After you left, Lu Tingcai brought a group of people to demand money from us. They said we smelled and affected their martial arts practice, so they wanted Two Taels of Silver from each of us as compensation. We couldn't take it, so we fought them."

Two taels?! Liang Qu was startled.

Was this asking for money?

This was asking for his life!

"Where's that Lu fellow?" Liang Qu had no respect at all for Lu Shaohui, and fury surged in his chest. "And Senior Brother Xiang? Didn't you look for him? Senior Brother Xiang should have helped, right?"

"That Lu fellow didn't even give us a proper look." Li LiBo gritted his teeth. "He turned and left! And we don't know where Senior Brother Xiang is either. From noon until now, the martial hall has had no one left but us apprentices."

Liang Qu could hardly believe it. How could things be such a coincidence today?

"I knocked one of them out first. With Brother Chen, it was two against three, so our odds of losing weren't high. But then another three people came to help them, and we lost."

Chen Jiechang snorted coldly at those words. He was deeply unwilling to accept it. He could have badly injured Xue Dingyi, but who would have thought the other side had help? In the end, he had only managed to leave a few bloody marks on Xue Dingyi's neck.

"Now they want us to scrape together Ten Taels of Silver, or they'll come 'spar' with us every day from now on. Hah."

Chen Jiechang laughed at himself. He did not regret it, only felt regret that the latter three had arrived too quickly, leaving him no chance to strangle Xue Dingyi to death.

There was no use saying anything now. He sighed. "The two of us discussed it. We started the fight, so we'll cover the extra four taels."

Li LiBo nodded. They both felt somewhat guilty. They felt it was because they had insisted on fighting that each person's share had gone from two taels to more than three. Liang Qu's family was already struggling, so naturally they had to make up the extra amount.

The corner by the flower bed fell silent.

With no human voices around, the crickets in the flower bed felt safe again and began chirping intermittently. Their calls were not clear and bright, but instead sounded very old.

It was already early winter. In less than half a month, it would be midwinter, and the crickets could barely chirp anymore—it was about to die, perhaps freezing to death on some night when the temperature suddenly plunged.

In the Martial Arts Field, the people exchanging techniques and training often looked toward that corner by the flower bed, a place they had never paid attention to before.

There was mockery, there was indifference, and some found it amusing.

After Third Master Zhao finished looking at the flower bed, he turned to another corner.

Lu Tingcai and the others there were silent as well.

Could they still gain anything after making such a mess of things?

Impossible.

Zhao Xueyuan knew it clearly. They would be punished, and more severely than before.

In the past, this group had been able to collect protection money because the people they bullied did not dare make a sound.

Besides, they had always acted outside the martial hall. Only today were all the Martial Masters absent, making things different.

People at the bottom had been used to feeling inferior. Born afraid of those with higher status, they were fooled by Lu Tingcai's smooth talk and did not dare seek help from the Martial Masters.

Most people, after suffering a loss, would not think of reporting it to the authorities, would they?

Relying on a routine of deception and beatings, these several people had always gotten their way. They had not expected to run into two tough opponents this time, who came up swinging with a brick.

He just did not know whether the last apprentice from the same hometown had hard bones or soft ones.

Zhao Xueyuan was very curious.

Lu Tingcai and the others now felt only regret and fear. But when their brother had gotten his head split open, their blood had rushed up, and how could they have cared about so much then?

Now they had smashed the jar and were eating from the shards. Like red-eyed gamblers at the end of the road, they were more dangerous than ever.

The difference was that those they had deceived were still kept in the dark.

Everyone was waiting to watch the show.

The rammed-yellow-earth Martial Arts Field was lit orange-yellow by the oil lamps. Liang Qu stood up, and the lamplight stretched his shadow long across the plank wall, where it flickered slightly.

Li LiBo and Chen Jiechang looked up to find two oil-paper parcels in front of them.

"Take them."

"This is..."

"Take them!"

The crickets in the flower bed fell silent.

Li LiBo and Chen Jiechang reached out and accepted them. Feeling the warmth within the oil-paper parcels and smelling the fragrance wafting out, they guessed there was food inside.

Liang Qu turned and walked toward the center of the Martial Arts Field.

Everyone looked at him.

Liang Qu swept his gaze around.

He had never been here before, much less enjoyed the treatment of being the focus of everyone's attention.

Tired. So tired.

He had once worked overtime until midnight, tired as a dog, yet he had never been as tired as he was now.

The scoundrels who played dirty could live. The street toughs who monopolized the water source could live. Even the petty official who kicked the hu could live.

And yet!

Those who wanted to live well could not live! The whole society was like an airtight net, trapping everyone who wanted to climb upward.

Everyone who tried to squeeze through was crushed into a savage visage in those narrow mesh holes, their skin and flesh mangled.

Those spiders, poisonous insects, and centipedes clung to one netted node after another, waiting for their bloody prey to struggle until exhausted before fighting over the flesh and blood.

Liang Qu looked toward the corner on the other side.

They were all there: Lu Tingcai, Xue Dingyi, Yu Weilong, Xiang Quji. These... poisonous insects! Liang Qu's gaze suddenly changed, becoming very calm. He raised a hand and pointed at the seven of them.

"I want to fight you!"

The Martial Arts Field was deathly silent.

"Hah."

Someone laughed.

Liang Qu's expression remained blank as he stared at them.

"Ahem..."

The atmosphere became deathly silent once more.

Forced by the pressure of everyone's gazes, Lu Tingcai and the others had no choice but to stand. The crowd slowly parted, clearing a path.

Even if they regretted it, remaining seated in the face of such arrogant provocation would be too humiliating.

"You alone?" The white bandage wrapped around Lu Tingcai's head made him look ridiculous, but with the six people behind him, no one found it funny. "You can't even weigh your own—"

"Shut your mouth, you idiot!"

Lu Tingcai froze. Everyone froze.

They were like chickens with their necks wrung, veins bulging, yet unable to squeeze out a more imposing curse in reply.

How pathetic.

Liang Qu felt suffocated in his chest. The feeling of being filled with rage yet having nowhere to vent it was like holding a volcano inside his heart.

He took deep breaths, his chest rising and falling as he restrained that volcanic fury. Even the sound of the wind fell still.

"I alone am enough! I alone will defeat all of you!"