Courtyard A

The daylight outside the cavern pierced through the morning fog. Chu Ning tucked the immature Mysterious Sun Fruit into his robes. Its peel was scorching as a branding iron, yet it could not rival the murderous intent boiling in his chest.

He licked his cracked lips and reached back to stroke the longbow. The bowstring was still clotted with beast blood, and its stench had yet to fade.

"It's time to settle the debt," he murmured, his figure darting toward the cliff like a ghost.

Below the cliff, icy wind swept wildly through the snow grains. Dozens of Snow Weasels raced along the sheer rock face.

Their bodies were silver-white, with a touch of cinnabar red at the tips of their ears. Their fur glimmered faintly in the dimness.

The Snow Weasel had just caught a trace of blood—the warning scent of its kind. The instant its foreclaws dug into a crack in the stone, a sharp whistle suddenly tore through the air above its head.

"Whoosh—"

An iron arrow grazed its left ear and drove into the cliff wall, sending shards of rock flying. Its silver fur stood on end, and a terrified whimper was forced from its throat.

It recognized that sound. Three days ago, the strongest White-Brow of the group had had his throat pierced by that very whistle.

Run!

Instinct drove its limbs into a mad sprint, but the second whistle had already arrived. It kicked off the wall and flipped around, watching helplessly as an iron arrow pierced the spine of one of its kind beside it.

Warm beads of blood splashed onto its nose. It frantically burrowed toward a rock fissure, only to catch an even stronger scent of death.

The human's scent was actually pressing down from above. He hung upside down on a jutting rock, his bowstring drawn taut like a waning moon. The cold gleam of the arrowhead reflected in its pupils, which had contracted to needle points.

Thud! Thud!

It sprang toward the right at the critical instant, only to hear the agonized cries of its kin behind it. Two Snow Weasels had been skewered into bloody gourds by iron arrows and nailed to the spot where it had just been.

The rock fissure was close enough to touch. It drilled inside with all its might. In the darkness, it curled into a ball and trembled violently, the scattered wails of its kind echoing beside its ears. The human's footsteps faded into the distance, but the whisper carried by the wind and snow left its whole body rigid with cold:

"Forty-nine. Fifty."

Chu Ning knelt on one knee and stroked the Snow Weasel's silver-white fur. It was a treasure that nobles and high officials fought to possess.

Suddenly, the Chaos Divine Order thundered violently, as though ten thousand bolts of lightning had exploded inside his skull!

The conditions for repayment had been met!

Cold golden characters transformed into a flood of molten lava and poured thunderously into every limb and bone.

Chu Ning's pupils contracted sharply. He saw himself standing at the edge of a cliff amid a torrential rain, arrows piercing the curtain of rain and nailing a flapping fly dead inside a rock fissure. He saw himself in a dense forest howling with gale-force winds, an iron arrow cleaving through the falling leaves against the wind, shredding their veins into dust without damaging the leaves themselves. He saw himself beneath the moonlit sky, eyes closed as he nocked his bow; wherever the arrowhead pointed, a candle flame a hundred paces away went out with a pop.

Every scene carried the pain of reality: the scorching burn of the bowstring cutting into his palm, the bone-deep chill of torrential rain soaking him through, the beads of blood splashing onto the arrowhead when the web between his thumb and forefinger split. The bitter training that had brought him to the brink of his limits hundreds and thousands of times now turned into boiling magma, surging and roaring through his meridians.

"Hah!"

A low roar spilled from Chu Ning's throat. His tattered clothes exploded, and bloody bow patterns surfaced across his back.

His palms, which had originally been a bloody mess, healed at a visible speed. New skin shimmered with a cold metallic sheen. The instant his five fingers gripped the bowstring—

Clang!

The bow itself actually let out a dragon-like tremor.

The wind and snow all around him suddenly froze. Every snow grain drifting down was crystal clear in his eyes, and he could even hear the rhythm of the Snow Weasel's heartbeat. The hand nocking the arrow was steady as a boulder. Though the arrowhead had not moved, the force of his energy had already plowed a three-foot trench across the ground.

A gale suddenly rose. The instant Chu Ning released the bowstring, the entire cliff tilted three inches along with the arrow's momentum. The fleeing Snow Weasels scattered in every direction at once, yet the arrow remained unstained by even a trace of red. It sank deep into the cliff wall, its fletching trembling as it sent a ring of force rippling outward and cleared the accumulated snow within a radius of thirty feet.

Chu Ning lowered his bow and stood there, closing his eyes to feel the power surging through his veins.

At this moment, he was no longer a mountain hunter.

He was the bow, the arrow, and the life-reaping Yama dragged out of the depths of hell by the Chaos Divine Order!

The next day, at Shen's Leather Shop.

Shen Yan lounged against a grand armchair, his fingertips rubbing the arrow holes in the Snow Weasel pelts. His jade thumb ring reflected the candlelight. "Two weasels with one arrow. Little Brother Chu's archery has probably already reached the level of an officially ranked expert."

Chu Ning said nothing. The weight of silver pressed heavily against his chest. The instant he tightened the money pouch, he seemed to hear his elder sister's faint cough after drinking ginseng and antler soup, and see the newly pasted window paper of their ramshackle house trembling in the wind.

"You truly won't consider an Azure-Eyed Snow Fox?" Shen Yan suddenly leaned forward, his thumb ring tapping against the table. "The prefectural government's bounty has risen to three thousand taels. I heard that beast's eyeballs—"

"Not interested." Chu Ning pushed open the door and stepped into the wind and snow. Behind him came Shen Yan's low chuckle. "Interesting."

When he turned around the street corner, he suddenly stopped.

Three frozen corpses of beggars lay curled against the base of the wall, thin snow covering their bluish-purple faces. Chu Ning pulled off his ragged robe and covered the bodies. His knuckles clenched so tightly that the wooden sign creaked.

The bloodstained bluestone steps of Thunderclap Martial Hall wound upward like a python. Half a severed finger caught between the fangs of the two stone lions had already frozen solid beneath a layer of frost.

A gate disciple, bundled in fox fur, huddled inside the gatehouse. Seeing the snow mottling Chu Ning's coarse clothes, he snorted a laugh that mingled with the white vapor of his breath. "The martial hall doesn't hand out porridge. Go beg in the southern part of the city."

"Study martial arts." Chu Ning's voice was hoarse as a whetstone.

"Study martial arts?" The disciple lifted the fox fur and stuck half his face out, his gaze sweeping over Chu Ning's frost-cracked straw shoes. "Poor men study literature; rich men study martial arts. Don't go looking for trouble."

The money pouch slammed onto the desk, and three government-minted silver ingots rolled out, their snowflake patterns as clear as if carved. The gate disciple's pupils shrank sharply. The official silver was extremely pure; ten taels were worth fifteen on the open market.

"Courtyard C. Practice your fists at five in the morning. Anyone late gets his hands chopped off." The disciple swallowed, but did not hand over the wooden token. "But... add five taels and you can listen to Instructor Zhou's lessons. Add ten and you can enter the Medicine Pool in Courtyard A to temper your body."

Chu Ning tapped the silver ingots on the desk with his knuckles. Blood beads seeped from his frost-cracked webbed thumb. "Courtyard A's Medicine Pool. Add one set of Bone Forging Powder."

The disciple shot to his feet. He did not even bother to pick up the fox fur as it slipped off him. When he pulled a gilt wooden token from a hidden compartment, his voice trembled. "Y-you should have said you were an honored guest! Courtyard A, Number Seven. The Medicine Pool opens every day at dusk. This is the exchange token for the Bone Forging Powder..."

Chu Ning clenched the exchange token and turned to enter the martial hall's iron gate. Behind him, the gate disciple's obsequious flattery was swallowed by the wind and snow. Only the light clink of the money pouch remained.

He had just passed the screen wall when a fist wind blasted toward his face.

Chu Ning dodged to the side, only to see a scar-faced brawny man advancing with a savage grin, his fists striking down with the force of heavy hammers.

"The rules of Courtyard C!" The brawny man's fist cracked through the air. "Newcomers have to take three punches from me!"

Bang!

The first punch slammed straight into Chu Ning's chest. He staggered backward, blood spilling from the corner of his mouth.

The second punch came even harder, but Chu Ning suddenly stepped forward. The hidden force of the Rough Stone Hardening Technique burst forth, and rocky patterns surfaced across his skin.

Crack!

Amid the crisp snap of the brawny man's finger bones, Chu Ning had already seized him by the throat and forced him to his knees. His knee ground into the bluestone bricks. "For the third punch, I'll throw it for you."

The entire courtyard fell deathly silent. On the raised platform, the black-robed instructor narrowed his eyes and stroked his beard. The trinket in his hand was crushed into powder in an instant.

"We made a mistake!" The gate disciple rushed into the courtyard, panting, and seized the scar-faced brawny man by the back of his collar. "This is the honored guest from Courtyard A, Number Seven!"

The wooden token was raised high overhead, its gilt character for "A" glaring beneath the snowlight.

The black-robed instructor finally rose. He descended the steps at an unhurried pace. With every step he took, spiderweb cracks spread across the bluestone. "The martial hall's rules: anyone who fights privately is barred from the Medicine Pool for three days. Go to the rear mountain and haul water!"

The scar-faced brawny man looked as if he had been granted amnesty. He fled through the courtyard gate on hands and knees.

The instructor turned to examine Chu Ning. His gaze lingered for a moment on the taut muscles beneath the coarse cloth. "The Medicine Pool in Courtyard A opens at dusk. Since you've entered Courtyard A, follow me."