Two days later, at noon, the sky was overcast.
Chen Shouyi stood waiting in the residential compound, a backpack on his back and a sword in his hand.
Residents coming and going kept glancing at him.
A middle-aged man with a scraggly beard pulled out a pack of cigarettes and walked over cheerfully. "Big brother, want a smoke?"
Big brother?
Chen Shouyi glanced at him. From his face, the man looked about as old as his father. He quickly declined. "Thanks, I don't smoke."
"You look kind of familiar. You're the martial artist from our compound, aren't you?" the man asked, putting away his cigarettes.
Chen Shouyi nodded. "Is there something you need?"
"No, no. I just came to thank you. If you hadn't been here, our compound would've lost who knows how many people." The man sighed. "Our neighborhood had the fewest deaths in the whole lower district. Other places were just awful—blood everywhere."
Chen Shouyi fell silent. The number of people who had died in the lower district this time was impossible to count. He had seen hundreds of bodies alone.
"You're a martial artist, so I wanted to ask you something. My son's nineteen. He never really studied martial arts before. Is it too late for him to start now?" the man asked, his face full of hope.
"As long as he works hard, I don't think it's too late," Chen Shouyi said reassuringly.
The man didn't keep him long. After a few more words of thanks, he left.
Chen Shouyi sighed to himself. After this incident, the number of people practicing martial arts in Hedong City would probably multiply several times over.
Martial arts had been widely available for nearly twenty years, but in truth, not many people were willing to devote a great deal of