Hu Ma's Death

At that moment, all of Jiaqing County was in an uproar.

The news that Hu Ma, hall master of the Black Wind Gang, had flown into a rage over a beauty and drawn his blade to kill the son of Master of Qingsong Hall spread from Willow Pavilion like cold water splashed into boiling oil. Once it erupted, there was no containing it.

Rumors had legs of their own. From street corners to teahouses and taverns, from peddlers and laborers to the inner courtyards of grand residences, it took less than half a day for half the county to be buzzing about the matter.

The tellers gesticulated wildly; the listeners gaped in disbelief.

In the end, they always shook their heads and added, "That was the only son of a Seventh-grade martial artist. He just killed him like that? How many heads did Hu Ma think he had?"

The lamps were still burning in the study in the rear residence of the County Yamen.

County Magistrate Zhang Li had not lost his composure like this in a long time.

His chest heaved violently as he swept the books, brushes, and inkstone off the table before him. Ink splashed across the blue-brick floor, spreading into a large stain.

Broken porcelain and wood chips littered the floor. The maids and servants standing outside the door did not dare so much as breathe.

"Idiot! What a colossal idiot!" Zhang Li's voice went hoarse, as if someone had gripped his throat and forced the words out.

"All for a woman. A woman from a brothel!"

"He could do something so stupid! What did he think he was? Some street thug? Or a bandit king ruling the mountains?"

The more he cursed, the angrier he grew. He turned and pointed at Madam Wang, the County Magistrate's wife, his finger nearly poking her in the face. "And you! You insisted on bringing him back, saying you couldn't bear for father and son to be separated after all these years. What good did bringing him back do?"

"Which part of him looks like me? He has neither my looks nor my temperament. He spends all day with a pack of thugs, and now he's really made something of himself—murdering someone in broad daylight! And the one he killed was Li Qingsong's only son!"

"What kind of man is Li Qingsong? One of the few Seventh-grade martial artists in Jiaqing County, a veteran who fought on the frontier. Even people from the capital give him some respect. Now his son is dead at my son's hands. Where am I supposed to put my face?"

"Lock it down. Do everything you can to suppress the news. Luckily, we never publicly acknowledged that he was my son. Otherwise, he'd have dragged the honor of the Zhang family's ancestors through the mud!"

Madam Wang hung her head beneath his scolding. Her eyes were already red, and tears welled up before finally spilling down her cheeks.

Her voice came in broken fragments. "What else could we have done...? The child went missing when he was little. Who knows how much he suffered out there? That's why he grew up so rough. As his parents, we already owe him so much. We should have guided him onto the right path."

"But you... you did nothing but scold and beat him. Since he came home, have you ever shown him a kind face? He was hurting and had no one to talk to, so he poured all his feelings into that male courtesan..."

"So now you're blaming me?" Zhang Li trembled with rage. He grabbed the teacup that remained on the table and hurled it to the floor, sending shards flying.

Zhang Xun had been standing quietly in the corner of the study. He was three years younger than Hu Ma, tall and slender, with fair features and the graceful composure of a young nobleman.

He hurried forward and presented Zhang Li with a freshly brewed cup of tea in both hands, gently urging, "Father, please calm down. Have some tea and catch your breath. Don't let this upset you so much. Elder Brother is only too straightforward by nature; he acted on impulse. There may still be room to turn things around..."

His words were flawless, and his tone perfectly measured.

But anyone who looked closely would have seen that beneath his lowered eyelids, his pupils were alight with uncontrollable delight.

Hu Ma, Hu Ma—you've finally gotten what was coming to you.

Zhang Xun was Zhang Li's adopted son.

That position had never been secure to begin with, and being an adopted son had not made things easy. From childhood, he had been cautious and ingratiating at every turn, and only after years of effort had he managed to establish himself in the Zhang family.

But once Hu Ma returned, he had needed to do nothing at all. The two words "biological son" had nearly wiped out the results of Zhang Xun's decade of painstaking work.

Though his father claimed not to like Hu Ma, blood was still blood.

Zhang Xun knew better than anyone that if Hu Ma stayed with the Zhang family for another year or two, there would be nothing left for him in that sprawling household.

But now things had worked out perfectly. Hu Ma had been stupid enough to stick his neck out, and Zhang Xun would not even need to lift a finger. All he had to do was wait for the ripe fruit to fall from the branch on its own.

"Did you find any leads after I sent people to look for that bastard?" Zhang Li took a sip of tea, calming down a little, and glanced at Zhang Xun.

Zhang Xun showed no hint of what he was thinking. He bowed respectfully. "Rest assured, Father. I've sent out everyone we can spare. As long as Elder Brother is still within Jiaqing County, we'll find him. If I hear anything, I'll report it to you first."

Night had fallen over the outskirts of Jiaqing County. The moonlight was cold, and all was silent.

A narrow earthen ridge wound between the rice paddies. Usually, farmers used it as a path to their fields, but now a fleeing figure trampled along it, splashing mud and water everywhere.

A bamboo hat shadowed his head, and a black robe wrapped him from head to toe. Using the night for cover, he hurried along the paths between the banks of the rice fields.

His steps quickened, and his breathing grew more ragged.

Suddenly, he stopped short. Beneath the bamboo hat, his eyes fixed on the figure seated at the cliff edge beyond the rice fields.

The figure was not tall; if anything, he looked lean. Wearing a plain white robe, he sat quietly at the end of the ridge, his back ramrod straight.

Yet this unassuming figure, simply seated there, weighed upon the whole expanse of rice fields like a mountain. Even the frogs and insects fell silent all at once.

"Master of Qingsong Hall—Li Qingsong." The words scraped out from between the man's teeth, dry and hoarse.

In the moonlight, Li Qingsong slowly opened his eyes. He was past fifty, and his beard and hair had begun to turn gray. His face was lean and stern, but his eyes shone with startling brightness, utterly devoid of warmth.

But Hu Ma saw something else in those eyes: a killing intent so calm it was almost lifeless.

Only one word remained in Hu Ma's mind.

He did not even have time to think. His body reacted first.

He turned and poured True Qi into his legs, hurtling back the way he had come, almost skimming the ground.

The full-force burst of an Eighth-grade martial artist was undeniably fast. The rice stalks on either side of the ridge bent in unison beneath the gust of wind, and mud and water exploded behind him, flying higher than a man.

But as he ran, something began to feel wrong.

The scenery around him raced past. The muddy ground beneath his feet raced past. Even the night sky overhead raced past...

Yet the distance between him and the white-robed figure behind him did not shrink by a hair.

He could even feel that icy gaze resting steadily on the back of his neck, unhurried, like a cat watching a mouse.

Then something even stranger happened.

Hu Ma suddenly felt his viewpoint changing. It was not the world spinning around him; it was a slow, irresistible sensation of falling.

He even saw a headless corpse ahead of him, still running in a fleeing posture, taking several more steps forward.

The corpse wore a black robe and a bamboo hat just like his.

That was his own body...

Splash!

The headless corpse finally lost its balance and pitched forward into the muddy water.

A small yellow oil-paper packet tumbled from its sleeve, rolled twice through the mud, and stopped beside a clump of wild grass.

Li Qingsong walked over at an unhurried pace.

He bent down, picked up the head that still stared wide-eyed on the ground, and removed the bamboo hat.

The moonlight fell on Hu Ma's ugly, fierce face—his flat nose, broad mouth, and brutish features.

"So he's really dead." Li Qingsong's voice was low and hoarse, like a piece of deadwood that had been ground over and over.

At the edge of the woods nearby, a tall, slender figure emerged at an easy pace.

Under the trees, Zhang Xun stood with his hands tucked into his sleeves. From a distance, he glanced at the headless corpse slowly cooling in the rice field, and the corners of his mouth lifted despite himself.

He waited and waited, holding back until Li Qingsong approached with the head in hand. Only then did he arrange his expression.

"I owe you a favor." The Master of Qingsong Hall slowed briefly as he passed Zhang Xun. His voice was indifferent; it betrayed neither gratitude nor anything else.

It sounded as if he were merely stating a fact.

Zhang Xun bowed deeply and clasped his hands. "You're too kind, Master. Please accept my condolences."

When he lifted his head, the white-robed figure had already disappeared into the depths of the night. Only the faint sound of boots treading over the ridge remained, fading one step at a time.

Zhang Xun straightened and looked once more at the corpse in the rice field, sighing softly.

"Elder Brother, Elder Brother, you're finally dead. You're finally dead." He repeated himself twice. The first time, he sounded as if he were confirming it; the second time, he sounded as if a great weight had been lifted from his shoulders.

After the two men left, silence returned to the rice fields.

A moment later, another tall, slender figure darted out of the woods. With a pitch-black coffin on his back, he hurried to the ridge and deftly packed Hu Ma's body and the fallen head inside.

The coffin lid closed with a dull thud. Then the figure sprang away with the coffin on his back, vanishing into the night after a few bounds. Only a trail of faint footprints remained, soon smoothed away by the evening breeze.

As for what had happened here tonight—

Only Heaven knew.

Later that night, in a secluded fishing village on the outskirts of Jiaqing County.

A courtyard lay dark and quiet.

Lin Yi vaulted over the low courtyard wall and landed. He brushed the dirt from his clothes, then looked at the unlit house before him and muttered, "Could she have fallen asleep?"

He felt his way into the main room. Just as he turned to close the door behind him, a soft, fragrant body pressed against his back.

A pair of slender arms wound around his waist, and delicate hands roamed up and down his body.

Lin Yi froze. He turned instinctively and found himself face-to-face with a pair of eyes glowing pink.

They shone startlingly bright in the darkness, their corners tilted slightly upward. The clear, gentle look she usually wore had vanished without a trace, replaced by two pools of naked desire, nearly overflowing.

Before he could speak, warm lips sealed his.

Tsk, tsk.

Just how long had she been holding back...?

The Infatuation Path was all about embracing infatuation without shying away from pleasure, facing every desire within oneself and then immersing oneself in it completely.

Desire was one of humanity's most fundamental urges, and therefore one of the urges that most deserved to be faced.

But Yu Qinglian was a hopeless beauty addict with impossibly high standards. Over the years, plenty of people had pursued her, but not one had caught her eye.

So she had kept this desire suppressed, hidden away, and pretended it wasn't there.

Now her cultivation of the Infatuation Path had hit a bottleneck, yet she had been missing that final spark.

Now that the seal had broken, the flames she had suppressed for years spread like a wildfire.

After a long while, their lips parted.

Both of them were breathing softly.

"Now..." Yu Qinglian's voice was soft and sweet, with a clinging, languid drawl to it. "It's time to pay me."

Before she had even finished speaking, she had grabbed Lin Yi by the lapels and pulled him onto the bed.

With a flick of her hand, she snuffed out the candle. The room sank into soft darkness, with only a few faint streaks of moonlight filtering through the window paper.

The bed curtains rustled down, veiling their entwined figures.

An hour later.

The room had fallen quiet again. Only the occasional bark from a distant dog drifted in from outside.

Yu Qinglian lay on her side against Lin Yi's chest, her cheeks still flushed, her eyes half closed in a daze of satisfaction.

Her fingertips traced idle circles on his chest, one after another.

Lin Yi lay on his back, carefully sensing the changes within him.

Yu Qinglian truly had been a Cultivation Vessel. Her Primordial Yin was even purer than he had expected.

More remarkably, that aura was exceptionally compatible with the Corpse Puppet Path he cultivated.

The Corpse Puppet Path was yin, and Primordial Yin was yin as well. Rather than clash, the two yin forces complemented each other, like streams with the same source joining together, their yin energies soaking into and nourishing one another.

He could even feel the cultivation bottleneck that had held him back for so long showing signs of loosening after their union.

But Yu Qinglian had clearly made far greater progress.

Lin Yi could clearly sense the True Qi of the Infatuation Path flowing through her more smoothly. Most of the places where it had once been sluggish had now opened up.

She had been trapped at the bottleneck for a long time. What they had done tonight was like a dam, full to the brim, finally opening a crack. She was now only a thin sheet of paper away from reaching the Eighth Grade.

Lin Yi suddenly remembered something and turned his head to ask, "By the way, how did you get Hu Ma to leave?"

He had always been a little curious. Though Hu Ma was stupid, surely he was not stupid enough to leave Yu Qinglian alone while fleeing for his life.

Yu Qinglian snuggled closer against him, finding a more comfortable position. Her voice was lazy. "Easy. I told him I was scared and uneasy, and that I was starving. I said I only wanted osmanthus cakes from that old shop in the south of town."

She paused, as if recalling the scene. "So he went."

Lin Yi was stunned, his feelings complicated.

Hu Ma really was brave!

And really was one hell of a simp!

He had murdered someone in public, and the victim had been the son of the Master of Qingsong Hall. The whole county was hunting him down.

He was in a life-or-death situation, with every second counting.

And yet he had risked his life just to buy pastries for a woman.

What a... pure fool!

It was no wonder he had died.

One word—deserved it!

Simping gets you killed!

"Oh, right..." Yu Qinglian seemed to remember something. She pushed herself up from his chest, suddenly animated, her eyes sparkling like a child eager to show off.

"Before Hu Ma left, he was worried he might not make it back alive, so he gave me all the savings he'd built up over the years and all the good things he'd collected... Lots of silver, and some things only martial artists use."

She pulled a heavy bundle from the head of the bed and spread it open before Lin Yi, counting out the items one by one, a hint of pride in her voice.

"Look, there are banknotes, pills, martial arts techniques, and some things I don't recognize... See if there's anything you can use. I have no need for them, so you can have them all."

Lin Yi stared at the bundle as its contents clinked and tumbled out. There was a thick stack of banknotes, at least a dozen bottles of pills, and she handed every last thing to him.

For a moment, Lin Yi was speechless. At that moment, even his hatred for Hu Ma, his enemy, seemed to melt away.