Thirty li outside the city, a band of unidentified deserters had appeared on Wangjiang Mountain. They had made the mountain their stronghold and called themselves the Black Wind Stronghold.
In recent days, they had repeatedly robbed merchant ships and fishermen on the river, earning a fearsome reputation.
At first, the authorities had paid them no mind. Then, two days ago, they robbed an official vessel as well, finally rousing the County Magistrate.
The higher-ups were furious. The County Commandant personally led the County Soldiers out to suppress the bandits, and this time the operation was truly a major affair.
"Brother Zhao, your eldest brother's there too," Zhao Chunzi suddenly said.
Zhao An had already spotted him.
Zhao Ke was among them, along with several constables and soldiers.
He could even see that Zhao Ke looked rather displeased, as though he had no desire to take part in a military campaign like this.
No wonder Zhao Ke had vanished after leaving that day. It turned out he'd run into an even bigger headache.
Whether his dear elder brother would make it back alive from this bandit hunt was anyone's guess. He hardly had time to worry about being humiliated by Zhao An.
"Move out!" The County Commandant's voice was low and resonant, full of vigor, like a great bell.
The next moment, the County Soldiers set off and marched out of the city.
"Brother Zhao, do you think the County Soldiers can win? I heard the leader of the Black Wind Stronghold calls himself the Black Wind King, and he's incredibly powerful. Quite a few Martial Masters have already died at his hands," Zhao Chunzi said, scratching his head.
"If even the County Commandant loses, Lianjiang County might end up occupied by those mountain bandits," Zhao An said casually, heading back to the courtyard.
If the sky fell, a tall man would hold it up. The big shots in the Inner City weren't worried, so he had no reason to fret about the bandits.
For now, it was far more important to keep expending Soul Slaves, make full use of this windfall from the Python Gang, and improve his own strength as much as possible.
Even if a chaotic age truly came, with formidable strength he could protect himself alone, advancing or retreating at will.
Back in the inner room of the courtyard,
military texts he had collected were piled on Zhao An's table.
Some were stacks of paper, page after page; others were bundles of bamboo slips.
These military texts all came from poor scholars in the Outer City.
They were destitute and had yet to pass the civil service exams. Zhao An had tempted them with silver, and most were willing to let him study their family-inherited military texts.
Of course, Zhao An had no intention of reading them himself.
After all, he had a whole host of Soul Slaves at his disposal, and he could put them to good use.
Even if a Soul Slave had been illiterate in life, as long as Zhao An could understand the text, he could teach the slave the characters he knew and feed the contents of all the military texts into the Soul Pool.
The Soul Slaves would then be able to understand military strategy, study its methods and core principles, and draw further conclusions from them.
No matter how dull-witted they were, if they memorized the texts word for word, year after year, they could eventually reproduce the entire military treatise from memory—more than enough to get through a mere county-level exam.
"If I could kill a few wicked men who used to be commanders of a thousand, military officers, or generals, they'd be perfect for this job..." Zhao An mused to himself.
After assigning the Soul Slaves to study military strategy, Zhao An paid them no further attention. What concerned him more was improving his own martial arts.
To ultimately transcend the mortal and attain sainthood, he had to focus on the present and build up his gains one step at a time.
He had nearly mastered the Fierce Tiger Blade Art, with no room left to advance. Reaching the Silver Snake Hand's great perfection was only a matter of time; he just had to assign Soul Slaves to grind away at it steadily.
The mysterious technique from Golden Scale Mountain left him baffled and was of no use for now.
At the moment, what he coveted was the lost finger technique of unknown grade he had seen in the medical text. He wanted to obtain it.
So,
Zhao An opened his hands. A Little White Fruit floated above each palm.
One was the fruit he had obtained earlier, and the other had just come from that young scholar.
Two Virtue Fruits meant he could make two wishes.
But even two Virtue Fruits weren't enough to get him a manual for the Heavenly Profound Pulse-Severing Finger!
"If I could combine them into one..." Zhao An murmured, slowly bringing his hands together.
It had been a sudden idea, but the Virtue Fruits really could be combined.
The two Virtue Fruits intertwined and fused in an instant.
Zhao An received a glowing white Virtue Fruit.
White light rose from its surface like smoke, reaching about half a chi high. It was hazy, with an otherworldly air.
It held both the energy formed from virtue and the essential source of all things in the world, capable of transforming into anything!
"If I combine two Virtue Fruits, could it work?"
Zhao An made another wish with the fruit in his hand. Smoke manifested within it, and the finger technique manual appeared clearly—but he still couldn't take it out.
"Still not enough?" Zhao An thought to himself, but he wasn't in a hurry.
Now that he knew the method, all he had to do was save up a few more ordinary Virtue Fruits!
If two weren't enough, he'd try four, eight, or ten!
For the next two days, he went searching for more Virtue Fruits, wandering through the streets and markets.
And sure enough, he managed to gather three more.
One came from a midwife who had safely delivered hundreds of mothers and babies in her lifetime. The virtue she had accumulated made the fruit purer than an ordinary one, and it gave off a faint glow.
Zhao An had obtained this Virtue Fruit in a straightforward way: he killed a band of bullies who had tormented the midwife's family day after day, then followed the trail and wiped out a small but notorious street gang.
Along with the Virtue Fruit, he gained seven Red Name Soul Slaves and more than ten taels of silver.
The remaining two Virtue Fruits came from an old boatman and an elderly man who could barely walk.
In this chaotic age, both men needed money to keep their wives, children, and elderly family members alive. So Zhao An bought the virtue from the two impoverished households for fifty taels of silver.
Perhaps that was a little steep for their virtue.
But to Zhao An, it was nothing. He still had more than two hundred taels of silver left from what he had seized from the Python Gang.
Besides, virtue didn't have a set market price. The terms of an exchange were vague; only when the other party's needs were truly met could the virtue be obtained.
After that, Zhao An wasted no time combining the three Virtue Fruits.
In the end, he obtained a gleaming white Virtue Fruit, several times larger than before.
The smoke and light rising from this fruit reached more than a chi high!
"Make a wish: the Heavenly Profound Pulse-Severing Finger manual!" Zhao An made another wish.
During these days, every time he obtained a Virtue Fruit, he combined it with the others and made a wish.
Every attempt had failed.
But today, after all that waiting, he finally got an answer.
As the smoke swirled inside the Virtue Fruit, the manual appeared again—and fell into his hands!
His wish had come true!
"Heavenly Profound Pulse-Severing Finger..."
Zhao An gently stroked the manual's cover.
The manual was pristine, its characters neat and orderly, as if they had been printed.
"That wasn't easy..." Zhao An sighed inwardly.
Five ordinary Virtue Fruits, combined, had won him this little manual.
He had brought a martial art lost to the ages back into the world!
But whether he could truly master it remained to be seen...
He opened the book and studied it word by word.
His studies in reading and writing over the past few days had finally paid off. Even without anyone guiding him, he could now read through the entire manual on his own.
The manual ran to tens of thousands of characters. Some passages were concise but obscure, requiring careful study, while others offered lengthy, detailed annotations that made their meaning plain.
It also included many anatomical illustrations explaining acupuncture points, meridians, and the various ways a martial artist circulated qi through the body.
It was called a finger technique, but it seemed almost like half a medical text.
Fortunately, Zhao An had also asked the Female Physician many questions about medicine while learning to read. He now had enough of a foundation to understand the manual.
After reading it from beginning to end, Zhao An's eyes shone. He had genuinely understood it.
He was no longer a complete novice in martial arts, either. Studying it over and over revealed one astonishing insight after another, each giving him a sudden flash of understanding.
"What a marvelous book! What a remarkable person!" Zhao An exclaimed in admiration.
Before you continue