The young man narrowed his eyes, his voice tinged with curiosity. "Someone interfered. Was it deliberate, or just a coincidence?"
Then he shook his head and asked, "How strong were your two men? And the killer?"
You Shahu hurriedly replied, "They'd both trained in True Technique, though their foundations weren't very solid. One was at the first level of Martial Dao, the other at the peak of the second. The killer was skilled in fist techniques; the knife wounds were just a cover. Judging by the angles and marks of their injuries from the coroner's examination, the killer should be around 1.7 meters tall. But it's also possible that was meant to mislead us and conceal his strength..."
The young man frowned and shook his head.
"If he were concealing his strength, he wouldn't have left any traces. Someone at the second or third level of Martial Dao would never dare get involved in Yuan Kuanglin's affairs. It seems this was more likely a coincidence... I just don't know whether Yuan Kuanglin really left anything behind, and whether this person took it..."
It wasn't impossible.
"But it doesn't matter. Yuan Kuanglin failed to break through to the seventh level of Martial Dao. There's no way he obtained any of the Demon Sect's truly powerful inheritances!"
From his tone, he clearly didn't think much of Yuan Kuanglin's strength, nor was he particularly fixated on what Yuan Kuanglin had left behind.
You Shahu said helplessly, "My people are spread throughout the western suburbs of the county. This person vanished so quickly that either his strength is extraordinary and he escaped long ago, or he's still hiding somewhere in the western suburbs. It's even possible he's from there! I've already ordered my men to search the western suburbs and check the belongings they find. If..."
The masked young man nodded slightly, cutting You Shahu off. "In that case, keep looking. Contact me if you find anything. I've stayed in Flying Spirit County long enough. I'll take Yuan Kuanglin's corpse with me for now."
Clearly, he didn't care whether Yuan Kuanglin had carried any treasures on him, or whether some lucky person had really obtained something he'd left behind.
His only goal this time had been Yuan Kuanglin's corpse!
You Shahu couldn't help watching the masked young man leave. He wanted to say something, but in the end, he said nothing.
Time passed.
Several days went by.
News of Pi Liu and the others' deaths didn't get out at all.
It was even less talked about than Wang Gang's death had been.
Chen Fan knew the Black Tiger Gang must have deliberately kept it quiet.
Yuan Kuanglin's dying words seemed to involve something important, something beyond the reach of ordinary people.
Over the past few days, Chen Fan had also noticed the Black Tiger Gang members growing more active. They were still searching for someone.
Chen Fan assumed it had something to do with Yuan Kuanglin.
What he didn't realize was that the Black Tiger Gang was searching for him.
The Black Tiger Gang had badly underestimated the killer's strength.
They couldn't even imagine that the killer was a thirteen- or fourteen-year-old boy like Chen Fan!
Chen Fan went to work early and came home late each day. His background and everything else seemed perfectly ordinary, and he had no time to practice martial arts. He was immediately ruled out of the search.
His idle-training talent meant he didn't have to devote himself to hard cultivation.
No one could have guessed that he could spend his days working and his nights sleeping, yet still become a skilled martial artist!
Meanwhile, some low-level martial artists living in seclusion in the western suburbs suffered for it.
Quite a few were forcibly taken by the Black Tiger Gang to assist with the investigation...
Every night, Chen Fan placed the ring he'd found beneath the moonlight, hoping it would absorb the moon's radiance. Unfortunately, nothing ever changed.
In the blink of an eye, a month passed.
By then, the Black Tiger Gang had wasted too much manpower and money. They had even angered several nearby lineages and martial academies.
Naturally, the search was called off.
You Shahu had no choice but to give up.
Flying Spirit County might not be huge, but it still had a population of a million. With the wrong criteria, finding one person was no easy task.
Especially when no one even knew whether Yuan Kuanglin had really left behind a treasure!
Of course, Chen Fan knew nothing about any of this. He had no idea that, clever as he'd thought himself for killing those two, he'd already attracted someone's attention.
He simply hadn't made a move because his manuals were still training on their own.
By then, Chen Fan had mastered three more manuals, as well as the sixth form of Tiger Fist.
He now knew a full seven strength-training techniques!
His strength had improved again.
The three techniques he was currently training wouldn't take many more days to break through, either.
Unfortunately, his progress had slowed considerably.
The manuals he'd learned later were nowhere near as effective as Tiger Fist!
"I can't buy any more manuals from that guy at the Flying Tiger Sect. If I want to keep getting stronger, joining a martial academy is my only option..."
Martial academies held a special place in this world, with deep ties to the various lineages and gangs.
Chen Fan immediately quit his clerical job at the Great Passage Trading Company.
Of course, he didn't tell his sister-in-law or the others.
Taking the silver he'd found on Yuan Kuanglin, he went to White Cloud Martial Academy once more!
Chen Fan had found a silver ingot and quite a few smaller pieces of silver on Yuan Kuanglin.
The ingot had been minted by the Great Qian government and was worth fifty taels of silver.
It was the kind of money Chen Fan would have needed nearly two years of working without eating or drinking to save!
Even in the county town, it was generally more than an ordinary family could save in a lifetime.
Yet it was just something Yuan Kuanglin had casually carried with him while fleeing for his life.
Together with the smaller pieces, it was worth seventy or eighty taels in all. It immediately eased Chen Fan's financial troubles.
It also strengthened his resolve to practice martial arts.
After all, once your martial skills improved, the money would come naturally!
And if he was going to study, he might as well study at the best place.
Chen Fan was no longer a complete novice. He knew about the several martial academies in Flying Spirit County.
White Cloud Martial Academy had only opened a few years ago and lacked the long-established foundation of the others. But it charged the highest tuition and had the most students. It wasn't hard to guess how strong the academy was!
Besides, the shock Li Linliu had given Chen Fan back then had continued to kindle in his heart, filling him with longing.
Even now, with four strength-training manuals fully mastered and the ability to sense inner breath with ease, Chen Fan still couldn't imagine how much strength it took to knock down a galloping steed with a light palm strike!
He wondered which level of Martial Dao it took to reach that point.
The young woman at the front desk of White Cloud Martial Academy wasn't particularly surprised when Chen Fan brought out dozens of taels of silver.
There weren't many poor youths who came to White Cloud Martial Academy to study martial arts, but he certainly wasn't the first.
People were always willing to stake their family's savings on an uncertain future.
After signing up,
Chen Fan received the vest issued to new academy students. Then a sweet-faced girl led him to the academy's training grounds.
Students who signed up at the academy were only ordinary outer disciples, and they could wear only vests.
The youths in matching uniforms were the true core of White Cloud Martial Academy: its inner disciples. There weren't many of them, and nearly all were at least eighteen or nineteen years old.
The training ground Chen Fan had come to was only for the outer disciples' basic exercises.
The huge hall was packed with disciples wearing vests.
"We've recently opened two new fist technique classes. One is Master Bai Linjiu's White Crane Class, and the other is Master Feng Cong's Black Cloud Class. Which one would you like to join, Student Chen?"
In the previous chapters, the protagonist was called Qin Fan, but somewhere along the way he became Chen Fan. Awkward! I've changed them all to Chen Fan for consistency. P.S. Can you vote for monthly tickets as soon as a novel is signed? Thanks to the reader who sent a monthly ticket. And while you're at it, please vote for recommendations too. My stats are looking pretty bleak.
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