Fang Yunhua vs. Chu Liuxiang

The doors to the reception hall stood wide open, giving the Mount Hua disciples a good view of the fight.

"Who's that fighting Senior Brother Fang? What exquisite lightness skills!"

"And he's so handsome, too!"

"Hmph! However handsome he is, he can't compare to Senior Brother Fang. Do you think the title Amorous Young Master is just for show?"

"But don't you think Senior Brother Fang's martial arts are a little outrageously powerful?"

Anyone who practiced the sword could see that Fang Yunhua now wielded the Thirteen Forms of the Clear Wind as effortlessly as his own limbs. In terms of sheer proficiency, he had long since surpassed mastery, outstripping even the sect's elders.

This made the disciples all the more curious: who among the younger generation could exchange such fierce blows with their senior brother?

By then, Master Kumei had begun to catch a hint.

Her wayward disciple appeared to be evenly matched with his opponent, but in truth, the other man had been defending and counterattacking throughout. To say he was going easy would belittle her wayward disciple's strength too much, yet there was indeed a gap between their fighting prowess.

As her wayward disciple pressed him relentlessly, the increasingly sublime lightness skills his opponent displayed brought a renowned expert to her mind.

"The Thief Marshal, Chu Liuxiang."

Hearing their sect leader identify Fang Yunhua's opponent, all the disciples present looked astonished.

As an iconic protagonist in Gu Long's world, one of his essential traits was that he began his story already at the height of his abilities. Though Chu Liuxiang seemed to go on to experience one astonishing adventure after another, full of twists and turns,

the truth was that even before the account of his theft of Jin Ban Hua's White Jade Beauty, he had already been a celebrated master for many years.

The companions who had once roamed the martial world at his side had even decided to retire into seclusion.

Yet the martial world still spoke his praises: "With goose and butterfly as twin wings, flowers and fragrance fill the world."

This made all the disciples present begin to worry for their senior brother.

After all, however they looked at it, the Thief Marshal and Fang Yunhua seemed to belong to different eras. The latter's title of Amorous Young Master had only just begun to make its mark, while the former had already completed a circuit of adventures. Only the recent White Jade Beauty affair had stirred the martial world's memories of the Thief Marshal again.

In reality, however, Chu Liuxiang and Fang Yunhua were only five or six years apart in age.

In the original story's Great Desert arc, Hu Tiehua had said during a conversation with Chu Liuxiang, "It must have been almost nineteen years now. Back then, I was only a child of eight or nine."

From this, one could deduce that the two were now around twenty-eight, in the prime of their youth.

Then, during the events of The Legend of the Bat, which had always troubled Fang Yunhua, Hu Tiehua had said, "Fancy you still remembering my age. For someone like me to live to thirty-three-now that I think about it, it really hasn't been easy."

Since Chu Liuxiang was roughly the same age as Hu Tiehua, he could be estimated to be about thirty-two then.

Having calculated that there was still some time before the affair that would detonate the powder keg within Mount Hua, Fang Yunhua was not particularly anxious.

But back to the matter at hand.

Chu Liuxiang's illustrious reputation made the disciples watch the fight even more closely, but none was more anxious than Hua Zhenzhen.

Her eyes were wide, and she clutched the hem of her clothes tightly, her gaze darting back and forth with every exchange. Her right hand had unconsciously closed around her sword hilt. From her stance, the moment she noticed Fang Yunhua in danger, she would rush forward to help without a second thought.

Fang Yunhua, meanwhile, was utterly absorbed in his battle with Chu Liuxiang.

After another round of probing exchanges, a brilliant gleam flared in Fang Yunhua's eyes. Where his blade swept past, hair-thin sword marks appeared simultaneously on the hall's six red-lacquered pillars. Every stroke in his previous flurry had been gathering momentum for this decisive strike!

With nowhere left to dodge, Chu Liuxiang finally met the attack with his hand for the first time. The middle finger of his right hand lightly flicked the seventh ripple along the sword's spine.

Ting-

A tremulous note like a dragon's cry lingered for three full breaths.

Fang Yunhua realized with a start that this seemingly casual flick had sealed off every follow-up variation of his sword move. Just as he was about to change his attack, Chu Liuxiang's left palm pressed against the Yanggu Acupoint on his sword hand.

There was not the slightest force behind that touch, yet it made the meridians throughout Fang Yunhua's right arm feel as though they were bathed in a spring breeze. The power he had accumulated involuntarily softened into silk that could wind around a finger!

"Do you know, Young Hero Fang?" Chu Liuxiang drifted back to an antique display shelf in the corner of the hall, brushing his fingertips over a porcelain vessel. "The greatest subtlety of the Thirteen Forms of the Clear Wind lies not in its sword moves..."

Before he finished speaking, the porcelain suddenly exploded into a skyful of fragments.

Fang Yunhua had secretly stored power beneath his feet, and now it erupted through the blue-brick floor.

In that hairbreadth instant, Chu Liuxiang spun, snatched the wineskin from his waist, and flung out a curtain of wine!

Every drop struck a porcelain shard with perfect precision, the ringing notes seeming to weave a rendition of "Rainbow Skirt."

As the final note faded, Fang Yunhua's sword tip stopped an inch from the point between Chu Liuxiang's brows, while the Thief Marshal's folding fan was already pressed against his Shanzhong Acupoint!

"Wait!"

Just as the spectators were about to rush forward en masse, Master Kumei stopped them in time. She had noticed that Fang Yunhua seemed to have fallen into a sudden enlightenment.

This made her turn a wary gaze toward Chu Liuxiang.

Chu Liuxiang merely smiled. After tucking his folding fan into his robes, he rubbed his nose, found himself a reasonably intact chair amid the wreckage of the reception hall, and sat quietly to wait for Fang Yunhua's enlightenment to end.

At the same time, much of his earlier suspicion toward Fang Yunhua had dissipated.

Through their exchange, he had sensed that the other man had found the threshold of intent. Experts who had yet to grasp "intent" could hardly discern someone's character from his moves.

But a master who had gained an initial understanding of "intent" could recognize an opponent's true nature through the clash of individual moves in battle.

Fang Yunhua was one such example.

During their fight, Chu Liuxiang had discovered that the other man was like a free, ungraspable breeze. Though that breeze held the cutting ferocity of a windstorm, someone so proud and unyielding would not use a pregnant woman to carry out some scheme.

Of course, he would still need to confirm the details in their later conversation.

As for Fang Yunhua, he felt that his current state was rather peculiar.

Dimly, he seemed to have grasped something. The Thirteen Forms of the Clear Wind he had suddenly thrust at Chu Liuxiang at the end had truly broken free of the constraints of prescribed sword paths, attaining the technique's true essence: each move was like an antelope hanging by its horns, leaving no trace to follow.

With those restrictions lifted, his increasingly powerful swordplay had resonated with a will hidden deep within him.

Something is still missing...

This fight had given him tremendous inspiration. He also truly realized that, after awakening his memories of his previous life, he had stepped straight across the threshold into the ranks of those peerless prodigies he so envied.

After all, a single sparring match had been enough to raise his fighting prowess another level.

Once he came back to himself, he sheathed the Skyward Sword and saluted Chu Liuxiang with clasped hands.

"Marshal Chu, thank you for your guidance."

Chu Liuxiang rose and solemnly returned the salute.

"Then shall we consider my impersonation of Jin Ban Hua settled?"

"Settled." Fang Yunhua nodded earnestly.

Only then did he notice that he and Chu Liuxiang now resembled monkeys in a zoo, being gawked at in the reception hall by junior brothers and sisters packed layer upon layer outside the doors.