An Le had never learned how to fight, but fighting was human instinct.
The Five-Animal Body Tempering Technique had allowed him to successfully open his qi and blood and step into the first realm of martial arts. Coupled with the Sword Dancer Dao Fruit's enhancement, he used his umbrella as a sword and easily defeated the seasoned gang enforcers.
For the first time, An Le witnessed the gap between ordinary people and cultivators.
He also truly understood why people said that all pursuits under heaven were lowly, and cultivation alone stood supreme.
The three groaning gang enforcers did not continue to hold out under An Le's questioning.
They were no hardened men. They would not keep Liu Qingyan's secret to the bitter end. Liu Qingyan had sent them to break a cultivator's hands—how was that any different from sending them to their deaths? What obligation did they have to keep quiet?
An Le picked up the bloodstained oil-paper umbrella and looked calmly at one of the burly men.
The man looked at An Le, endured the pain, and said, "It was Liu Qingyan, the painter Liu Qingyan!"
"He was jealous of your painting skills and hated that you took his chance to paint for Lin Manor, so he told us to break your hands!"
"Really, everything we said is true! Spare us, sir!"
The three burly men were trembling with fear.
Cultivators all stood high above them. Compared to ordinary people like them, who could not cultivate, they were as far apart as clouds and mud. At this moment, all they had left was reverence and fear.
The painter Liu Qingyan?
An Le froze. He could not help recalling the scene of painting at Tianbo Water Pavilion yesterday—the elderly painter whose work Girl Zhuifeng had called shit?
No matter how he thought about it, An Le had never expected that painter to be so vicious.
"Just because my painting was better than his and took his chance to paint for Lin Manor, he wanted to break my hands?"
An Le drew a deep breath.
The spring rain fell in fine, dense strands, sprinkling over his face and skin, making him feel the chill in people's hearts.
Liu Qingyan was the mastermind, but these enforcers were not innocent either.
An Le had not considered killing them. Deep down, he was still law-abiding. However, he knew Captain Huang well and could have Captain Huang arrest them.
Attacking a Juren scholar in the street was more than enough to send them to prison.
Suddenly.
An Le looked toward the entrance of Quiet Street. The spring rain hung thick and low, while dusky clouds pressed down in darkness.
A timely spring rain had darkened the sky, turning daylight into evening.
At Quiet Street's entrance, a familiar carriage slowly approached. A breeze stirred, making the carriage curtains rise and fall. The carriage was as luxurious as ever, rainwater dripping from its eaves like a curtain of interwoven pearls.
This carriage...
An Le remembered seeing it when he had left Lin Manor that day. There had been a man sitting inside, wrapped in dozens of strands of Time Qi—a fat sheep through and through.
At the time, An Le had merely assumed that the man was some noble from one of the nearby residences and had paid him no mind.
But now, the appearance of this carriage carried a deeper meaning.
The carriage stopped thirty yards away from An Le. On the driver's seat sat a burly coachman in a straw rain cape and bamboo hat, holding the reins. The exceptionally handsome horse was utterly docile in his hands.
An Le's gaze fell upon the coachman. The burly man's body was like a small mountain, and his concealed Qi and blood were suppressed to an extreme degree. Even the falling threads of spring rain twisted their paths as they neared him.
Clearly, this coachman's Martial Body Tempering cultivation was exceptionally high.
In An Le's eyes, the coachman had neither more nor fewer than ten strands of Time Qi. He was not comparable to Girl Zhuifeng or Fairy Yun Rou, but to An Le, he still counted as an expert.
Most importantly, inside the carriage, that luxuriously dressed man lifted a corner of the curtain with one hand. His amused yet profound gaze was like a blazing sun rising amid the spring rain, searing down upon An Le.
In that instant, An Le felt as though heaven and earth had lost their colors. The Spiritual power he had only just nurtured through Entering Stillness froze in place, while his Qi and blood became like a northern river sealed in ice, unable to circulate even a trace.
Merely meeting the man's gaze made him feel as though a hand had seized his heart. It began to pound violently, hammering again and again, its sound like a great bell resounding through every corner of his body. It felt as though, if it kept pounding like that, his heart would burst open with a great hole like a war drum smashed by a mallet!
Spring rain slid down An Le's cheeks and gathered at his chin in silken threads.
He closed his eyes, forcibly cutting off that gaze, but the man's eyes still shone upon him like the Blazing Sun.
An Le visualized the Sword Waterfall Diagram. A sword descended from the ninth heaven, splitting apart the blazing radiance, and his mind returned to normal.
Yet his heart remained impossible to restrain, still pounding wildly without cease, as if it would explode out through his chest.
An Le mobilized his Spiritual power, trying to control his body's condition, but it was incomparably difficult.
His legs began to tremble slightly, as though he could no longer endure it and would kneel upon the rain-soaked ground of the alley, bending the spine that symbolized his dignity.
But An Le understood that he could not kneel. Once he did, his heart of cultivation might become a precious treasure covered in dust; clearing away that dust afterward would be fraught with every imaginable hardship.
That day, An Le came to understand two kinds of disparity.
One was the gap between ordinary people and those who had just entered cultivation.
The other was the gap between powerful cultivators and weak cultivators. The distance between the latter...
Was even harder to cross than the former.
The vast, level lake stretched to the distant heavens, while misty drizzle dampened the pale smoke.
Tianbo Water Pavilion.
A spring rain made the scenery of the water pavilion even more delicate and enchanting.
Across the Great Pond, ripples spread in round circles. The poetic atmosphere resembled the blank space left after an artist splashed ink across a painting.
Within the main hall of the water pavilion, Madam Hua reclined on a couch. Her plump and graceful figure was like a ripe peach, overflowing with mature charm. Red charcoal heated water on the stove, and the boiling water sent up a hazy steam.
Madam Hua quietly read Knowledge and Action, written by a great Academy scholar. On the table lay a painting as well—the beautiful woman's Sketch Portrait An Le had painted for Madam Hua.
Her pale, delicate fingers turned a yellowed page. Then, suddenly, Madam Hua's fingertips paused, and her eyelids lowered.
"Great Zhao has few neutral forces. The Three Great General Families—the Lin Family, Zhong Family, and Ye Family—yet in His Majesty's eyes, neutrality represents the unknown. The leverage formed by these three great families is too weighty... enough to stir the winds and clouds of the Imperial Court."
"Now that His Majesty's end is approaching, if he cannot take that peerless final step, a choice must be made regarding the Crown Prince's position for the continuation and future of the imperial dynasty. Thus, neutrality to His Majesty instead... carries the unease of the unknown and the uncontrollable."
Being neutral now did not mean they would remain neutral in the future. The Lin Family, Zhong Family, and Ye Family stood within the Imperial Court like mountains, enough to shatter any side's balance.
"And with His Majesty's intentions leading the way, all those nobles have begun entertaining thoughts of their own, seeking to probe the attitudes of the three families."
"Now... even any random cat or dog dares to strut their might before my Lin Manor."
Madam Hua sighed softly.
She gently closed Knowledge and Action, then sat upright. Her crystalline little feet slipped down from the couch and stepped upon the floor.
With Madam Hua's cultivation, she had naturally sensed everything happening on Quiet Street.
At first, she had not planned to intervene, because she was astonished to discover that An Le had successfully achieved Opening Qi and Blood and stepped into the first realm of Martial Body Tempering.
Moreover, the opponents An Le faced were merely two martial arts men of the jianghu, not cultivators. They posed no threat to An Le.
Therefore, Madam Hua did not act and merely watched.
But when the carriage appeared, and the cultivator inside used his imposing presence to oppress An Le, seeking to bend An Le's spine and crush his spirit...
Madam Hua could no longer stand by.
Setting the painting aside, Madam Hua quite appreciated this young man. Though his cultivation enlightenment had come too late, he did not wallow in self-pity. His mindset was excellent, and he had entered stillness in three quarters of an hour and achieved Opening Qi and Blood in a single night.
Such talent truly stirred Madam Hua's desire to cherish talent. Naturally, she could not watch a youth she admired, having only just stepped upon the path of cultivation, have his spirit erased and his Dao heart covered in dust.
Furthermore, she knew that An Le had been implicated because of Lin Manor. Thus, she had reason to intervene.
Most importantly, she disliked the man in the carriage using strength to bully the weak.
Madam Hua rose from the couch, her crystalline feet stepping across the floor as she walked to the main hall's railing. Her graceful figure leaned against it as she watched the spring rain in the sky.
The spring rain was like oil, drifting and falling.
The wind sweeping through the hall blew without cease, tilting and scattering the steam rising from the pot of boiling water.
Gazing at the spring rain filling the sky.
Madam Hua extended her crystalline white hand.
Toward the dusk-hazed sky, she reached out as though plucking flowers.
In an instant!
All the spring rain above Tianbo Water Pavilion abruptly stopped, as though each drop were a flower being picked petal by petal.
"A great cultivator past the fifth realm, bullying a youth who has only just stepped onto the path of cultivation—does that give you such a sense of accomplishment? Then I'll bully you too, and see whether it gives me any."
Madam Hua murmured indifferently.
Then, she spread her hand and cast it out.
She plucked three thousand drops of spring rain and scattered Sword Qi to shatter the azure clouds.
All for a young man's breath of spirit.
The raindrops, frozen like ice pellets, were stretched into thin swords in midair. Howling, they crossed Tianbo Water Pavilion, crossed the layered eaves of Tianbo Tower, crossed Stone Tablet Jade Workshop.
They rained down toward the Quiet Street Entrance, toward the carriage using boundless pressure to force the young man to bend at the waist.
A corner of the carriage curtain, which had been lifted, suddenly fluttered upward, as though severed by something sharp. It fell weakly onto the waterlogged ground, like duckweed floating upon the surface.
Inside the carriage, the aloof man whose expression had remained unchanged.
Finally showed emotion.
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