Zhao An saw it clearly. After entering the city, the County Commandant had kept his face dark, veins throbbing in his forehead, his expression grim to the extreme.
"Get out of the way!" the County Commandant barked at the people blocking the street. Ignoring their cries and wails, he wished he could whip them aside with the riding crop in his hand.
He didn't stop in the Outer City for even a moment, instead hurrying straight into the Inner City.
With the County Magistrate dead and the county seat fallen, he, as County Commandant, bore inescapable responsibility.
If the Prefecture City investigated, he might not only lose his official post as County Commandant but also end up in prison. How could that not send him into a rage?
Long after the cavalry led by the County Commandant had entered the city, the County Soldiers who had gone to suppress the bandits finally returned and took up their posts at the city gates once more.
Fortunately, after the County Magistrate's death, his subordinate, the County Vice-Magistrate, had survived the fighting against the Rebel Army. He took over as acting County Magistrate, allowing the County Magistrate's residence to keep functioning.
Over the following days, the County Vice-Magistrate rushed from place to place, actively organizing reconstruction efforts.
This wave of looting had dealt a grievous blow to all of Lianjiang City, but life had to go on.
Meng Wanyi returned to her clinic the next day.
At that point, the whole city was full of wounded people. Her clinic hadn't been burned to the ground, but the injured were nearly trampling down its doorstep.
She didn't even stop to rest, throwing herself straight into treating them.
As for Zhao An's injuries, they weren't serious. They were only flesh wounds.
Even without treatment, he could heal on his own with his powerful physique.
April passed quietly, and early May arrived. The weather grew increasingly scorching.
Fortunately, heaven had taken pity on them; there were still no signs of drought.
The Great Wu Dynasty was now in a turbulent time, with warfare breaking out across the land. If drought swept through, leaving a thousand li of barren earth, who knew how many people would die?
In the small courtyard.
Zhao An stood bare-chested. His hands became serpents as he moved with the flow of his intent, his palms striking out in rapid succession.
As his Internal Breath circulated, his palm force flickered like a serpent's tongue, hissing through the air in a series of sharp cracks. His moves were sometimes fierce and forceful, sometimes soft and elusive. Li Gou'er and Zhao Chunzi, standing nearby, were dazzled.
Even with their eyes wide open, they couldn't catch Zhao An's movements at all. They could only stare in awe, without understanding what they were seeing.
Most striking of all, his palm technique carried an extraordinary sense of smooth, perfect circularity!
Only after a long while did Zhao An finally lower his hands and stop, feeling thoroughly invigorated.
"I used three batches of Soul Slaves in relays, eight in all. Nearly thirty years of cultivation, added together, were needed to take this Silver Snake Hand from the second realm to the third realm's perfection. It really wasn't easy..."
Fortunately, the result was good: he now possessed a second palm technique perfected to the utmost.
His mastery of both blade and palm had advanced in tandem. Compared with that tumultuous night, his strength had increased tremendously.
Besides that, his Internal Breath had grown considerably.
The circulation within his body now contained four hundred strands of Internal Breath, nearly matching the strength of those two formidable enemies from before.
That was also about the fastest his Internal Breath could grow at present.
It wasn't as if he could simply pile up Soul Slaves and consume them to gain a huge reserve of Internal Breath all at once. He also had to consider how much his real body could bear.
It was like eating: one needed three meals a day, giving the body time to digest and absorb the food. One couldn't eat an entire month's worth of meals in a single sitting.
That was the experience Zhao An had arrived at after experimenting over this period.
In fact, even this way of maximizing the growth of his Internal Breath still involved some waste.
When the cultivation results of several Soul Slaves were absorbed at the same time, some of the Internal Breath couldn't be absorbed and digested in time, and went to waste.
It would be better to absorb the results from a single Soul Slave once every few days, maximizing the gains. But that required patience and a longer investment of time.
With plenty of Soul Slaves at his disposal, Zhao An was willing to tolerate some waste in exchange for becoming stronger in a short time.
"Brother Zhao, that palm technique of yours is amazing! I've never seen anything so powerful!" Li Gou'er praised him from the side.
It might have sounded like flattery, but he meant every word.
In the Outer City, there really weren't many who could compare to Zhao An's Silver Snake Hand, perfected to the utmost.
With Li Gou'er's limited experience, he thought his big brother was the greatest of them all.
"Enough. Less useless blather. How did the matter I asked you to look into go?" Zhao An asked.
"Brother Zhao, I've pretty much got it all figured out. I was just about to report back to you." Li Gou'er grinned.
"Go on." Zhao An sat on a stone stool, drank two big bowls of tea, then began wiping himself down.
"The Outer City's three most famous Martial Academies are the Zheng Family Martial Academy in the east, the Tang Family Martial Academy in the north, and the Huang Family Martial Academy in the south."
"These three have the most disciples, and all three masters are extremely powerful. They say even quite a few prominent families in the Inner City have sent people to visit these three Martial Masters again and again, hoping to recruit them."
"But none of the three masters are willing to work for those powerful families..."
"Get to the point." Seeing Li Gou'er wander further and further off topic, Zhao An interrupted him.
Li Gou'er gave a light cough and got back on track.
Master Zheng of the Zheng Family Martial Academy used Mountain-Splitting Fist, a hard, powerful external-style fist technique. It specialized in breaking skill with force, heavy and domineering.
At its deepest level, one could gather a crushing force in one's fist. A single punch to the head would turn it to mush—even if the opponent were fully armed and wore a sturdy helmet!
The Huang Family Martial Academy's Gale Palm was like a fierce wind. Its strikes were as swift as lightning, defeating enemies with speed while combining force with ferocity.
"Last is the Tang Family Martial Academy's Hard Bone Technique. Brother Zhao, I hear it's an eighth-grade martial art!" Li Gou'er said with great conviction.
He'd deliberately saved the Tang Family Martial Academy for last because the martial art it taught was of a higher grade—not ninth, but eighth!
Eighth-grade martial arts were extremely rare in the Outer City.
"Oh!" As soon as Zhao An heard this, the Tang Family Martial Academy, which Li Gou'er had mentioned last, immediately interested him most.
Just the sound of an eighth-grade martial art already made it seem impressive!
But then he realized something didn't add up.
"If this man practices an eighth-grade martial art, the only one of its kind among the three Martial Academies, why is he still stuck in the Outer City, ranked alongside the other two as one of its three great Martial Academies?"
"Just as expected of Brother Zhao. You spotted the problem right away." Li Gou'er smiled.
"I spent a little silver to ask some of the Martial Academies' disciples about it. I heard that this eighth-grade Hard Bone Technique is extremely difficult to master. It takes not only time, but money too.
"Unless someone is born with exceptional talent, investing a hundred or eighty taels of silver in it is like throwing it into the water. After ten years of practice, they'll still have learned only the barest surface of it. It's hardly worth it.
"That's why this Martial Academy has the fewest disciples. Countless people give up halfway through, and the place's reputation is held up by Master Tang alone."
After hearing this, Zhao An rose to his feet.
"Brother Zhao, what are you—?" Li Gou'er was taken aback.
"Lead the way. Let's go pay those Martial Academies a visit."
He'd been worrying that both of his ninth-grade martial arts were already perfected to the utmost, leaving him with nothing new to practice.
That was why he had set his sights on the Outer City's Martial Academies early on, specifically asking Li Gou'er to investigate them over the past few days.
He wanted to see just how difficult that Hard Bone Technique could be, how the Gale Palm compared with his Silver Snake Hand, and whether Mountain-Splitting Fist was even more domineering and powerful than his Fierce Tiger Blade.
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