Tai Sui Lord!

"Take everyday matters, for example. The more outstanding and clever you appear, the more cautious and guarded others will be when they deal with you in the future, and the harder they'll be for you to handle. But if you usually seem utterly unremarkable and unknown, no one will be wary of you. Even if they truly come up against you, they'll underestimate you and grow careless. So the first lesson in actual combat I'm teaching you is this: keep a low profile. Understand?"

"Understood! Understood!"

A chorus of agreement immediately rose from below.

As for how many had truly taken it to heart, Old Zheng did not care.

Zhou Chen's eyes lit up. It was the first time he had heard such a theory, and he felt he had benefited immensely.

"Having others look down on you isn't a bad thing." Old Zheng smiled, his grin carrying a touch of cunning. "Back in my younger days, I was famous for being lecherous. Lots of people thought that was my weakness, but heh heh..."

He gave two dry chuckles, then abruptly changed the subject. "Also, I see some of you are practicing hidden weapons—throwing knives, iron spikes—and you're doing fairly well. But I'll tell you this: you've all practiced for nothing."

"Why is that? Please enlighten us, Master!"

A disciple with throwing knives tucked at his waist stepped forward and bowed.

"Idiot!" Old Zheng flung his sleeve and pointed at him, tearing into him from head to toe. "Hidden weapons, hidden weapons—the key lies in the word 'hidden'! You practice with such blazing enthusiasm in broad daylight, letting everyone know you can throw hidden weapons. What the hell are you practicing for? When you face someone later, they'll already be guarding against you by three parts. How will you strike from the shadows then? Stupid! Fool! Pig-brained idiot!"

The disciple's face flushed scarlet from the scolding. Hunching his neck, he retreated dejectedly.

After cursing someone out, Old Zheng went on to explain more practical combat techniques. Foam even gathered at the corners of his mouth before he finally wiped his mouth, clasped his hands behind his back, and strode away.

Sitting below, Zhou Chen felt that he had gained quite a lot today. Coupled with his earlier experiences in real combat, he vaguely began to sort some things out in his mind.

At the root of it all, there were only three words: ambush, strike, run.

Ambush meant keeping a low profile. Usually, do not show mountain or reveal water; let others fail to keep you in mind. But when you made your move, it should be an unexpected dirty trick. Any move would do—as long as it could catch the other party off guard, that was your skill.

Strike meant that once a dirty trick succeeded, you beat them to death. Wild Bull Fist cultivated strength, and Old Zheng had also said, "Strength breaks ten thousand laws." If your force was great enough, one punch would render all their fancy tricks useless.

Run meant running if you could not win. If you could not beat them, could you not at least outrun them? With nimble legs, you could at least pick your life back up.

"Winning openly and honorably, or ambushing someone to death—the result is the same, isn't it?" Zhou Chen secretly nodded. "But ambushing someone to death costs far less and is much safer."

Once he had the means, it would be best to learn a leg technique and a hidden-weapon art.

"But hidden weapons require someone's guidance too. A respectable hidden-weapon martial art probably won't be easy to obtain. Even if one is for sale, I can't afford the silver."

Zhou Chen frowned as he calculated. "Those people practicing hidden weapons merely know that they cannot reach Initiation within three months, so they learn a few more means of self-defense. When they join a gang or become guards in the future, they'll have a few more chances to survive. I'm different from them. I'll definitely step into the martial path. So is there some way for me to quickly get started with a hidden weapon that is both sneaky enough and vicious enough?"

He thought it over and over, and suddenly his eyes brightened.

At dusk.

Zhou Tian returned, propping himself up against the boat in exhaustion. Zhou Chen hurried over to help push the cart, then casually carried the fish buckets off the boat.

Most of the catch had to be handed over to the boat boss. Only the scraps that remained belonged to the family to sell.

During this period, Zhou Chen had been practicing boxing at the martial hall, so the burden of selling fish had fallen upon his mother and younger sister.

"Father, go get some rest. I'll sort the fish."

Seeing that Zhou Tian had returned exceptionally late today, his face exceptionally weary, with several wounds on his arm, Zhou Chen urged him to lie down inside. He himself carried out a small stool and squatted at the doorway, sorting through the fish in the buckets with his younger sister, Zhou Yu.

They were all miscellaneous fish, and they had to pick out the edible ones from the inedible ones one by one.

Zhou Chen would not let Zhou Yu touch them. Quite a few fish had dense rows of backward-pointing teeth in their mouths and could bite people.

He only had his sister squat beside him and watch that the fish did not leap from the buckets while he lowered his head and busied himself.

After sorting out the Handfish, he picked out several dozen more inedible miscellaneous fish.

These fish were brightly colored, with round, bulging bellies. The locals called them Pufferfish. Their bellies held poison sacs; people could not eat them, and even touching them would burn the skin red and raise blisters. Normally, they were dumped far away.

But today, Zhou Chen kept every one of them. With a knife, he removed the Pufferfish poison sacs one by one and collected them in a bowl.

That was right. He intended to crush the Pufferfish poison sacs, mix them with ash and dirt, wrap them one by one in fish bladders, and make poison pouches.

When the time came, he could fling them at people. Once the fish bladder burst, ash and powder would scatter everywhere, making anyone who inhaled it dizzy and light-headed. If it smeared across someone's face, blinding them on the spot was not impossible.

When he returned inside, he heard Zhang Fang chattering away about how prices in the city had risen sharply lately, and how the lives of Outer City residents were growing ever tighter.

Zhou Tian suddenly added, "When I was fishing today, I saw boats coming from upstream in the distance. Big boats—the kind I've never seen before."

"Upstream?" Zhang Fang stopped working and asked in confusion, "Isn't upstream Black Mist?"

"It is. But those boats came out from inside the Black Mist. Three or four of them, perhaps. Their hulls were stained with blood, yet there wasn't a soul aboard. The boat boss was terrified and quickly reported it to the nearby patrolling Martial Warriors. The Martial Warriors then reported it to the Inner City. They said some lords had gone to take a look, but no one knew what exactly was going on."

"If anything happens, the Inner City lords will bear it."

Zhang Fang muttered that, then said no more.

But Zhou Chen remembered the matter. Ever since coming to this world, Black City was the only city he knew of. What lay beyond the Black Mist, and whether there were other cities like theirs, was something few people knew.

Tomorrow at the martial hall, he could ask his senior brother about it.

Early the next morning, he sought out Lian Taoze to ask about the boats that had appeared on the upper reaches of the Black River.

His senior brother was well-informed, and in just a few words, he explained the whole matter.

It turned out that several hundred li from Black City, there was another place called Azure City.

But Azure City had been restless these past two years. First, the Outer City had repeatedly suffered harassment from Mist Monsters. Later, even a Special-Grade Mist Monster entered the city and began eating people. The Inner City Martial Warriors launched several campaigns against it, but failed to kill it; instead, the Mist Monster ate several of them. In the end, they simply washed their hands of it. With no restraint, the Mist Monster devoured nearly a thousand people in a few months.

Just as the Outer City residents were falling into despair, a Heaven-Breaking Sect suddenly emerged. It gathered the impoverished commoners and built up a force. The Heaven-Breaking Sect's leader was immensely capable. First, he exterminated that Special-Grade Mist Monster, then led the sect members in an assault on the Inner City, wiping out several aristocratic powers in one breath.

From then on, Azure City's Inner City fell apart and was taken over by the Heaven-Breaking Sect. The surviving aristocratic families packed up their belongings and fled for their lives by boat along the Black River.

According to Lian Taoze, those bloodstained empty boats were most likely scouts sent out by the Inner City aristocratic families to probe the way ahead. They had encountered something within the Black Mist midway, and the people were gone.

However, the Inner City aristocratic families had always possessed ways to deal with Mist Monsters. Their main forces should still be behind them, and more boats might arrive in the coming days.

"Senior Brother," Zhou Chen lowered his voice, "didn't you say the Inner City aristocratic families control the Heavy-Armor Repeating Crossbows? How could the Heaven-Breaking Sect overturn them with its people?"

"Shh. I don't know either. I've been wondering about it too."

Lian Taoze quickly swept his gaze around. Only after confirming that no one was looking their way did he lean closer and whisper, "I think perhaps it's because Azure City is only half the size of our Black City, and the aristocratic powers there are much weaker than ours. More importantly, peripheral cities like Azure City and Crimson City do not have a Tai Sui Lord stationed over them."

"Tai Sui Lord?" It was Zhou Chen's first time hearing the term. "What is that?"