A Fork in the Road

Old Man Mu and Tu Gou watched two brief, dazzling bouts with their eyes wide open. At times they shook their heads, at times they nodded, but not once did they offer a word of commentary. For Old Man Mu, that was a harder demand than forbidding him to kill, yet somehow he managed it.

The two Qingcheng leaders exchanged a few polite refusals before Liu Yuanpu went first. His opponent was Molin.

Fast saber against fast sword—the two competed in speed from beginning to end. The spectators could barely find time to cheer. Only when the bout was over did all the cheers they had held back pour out at once.

Molin and Liu Yuanpu seemed to have reached an understanding. They retreated at the same time, put away their weapons, and nodded to one another. The bout ended without a winner.

For an informal bout, that was one of the rules. No one would reveal their ultimate techniques, much less cling to the fight to the bitter end.

Molin faced Lü Mian in the second bout, and the whole thing was so bizarre that almost no one understood what they were seeing. The cheers afterward were sparse. Only Deng Yuanlei clapped and praised them with exaggerated enthusiasm. His expression looked less like admiration than fear.

Most of the strangeness came from Lü Mian. Before the bout had even begun, people noticed that his face had grown redder, like a lump of charcoal blazing hot. Then he raised his long sword and began to dance with it, oblivious to everyone around him—stabbing this way, then that, with no target to attack and nothing that looked like self-defense.

Lü Mian was like a drunken scholar, taking advantage of the wine to dance with his sword, doing as he pleased with