The summer heat grew stronger.
Yet Yang Ge grew more peaceful by the day.
The warmth of human company and everyday life at the Welcome Inn was like a steaming pot of black tea in winter, warm and sweet in just the right measure. Little by little, it dispersed the gloom and killing intent that had settled in his heart, allowing the midsummer sunshine to fall upon it once more...
At last, he could sleep soundly.
Nor did he need to struggle to squeeze out strained, friendly smiles anymore.
Even the people at the Welcome Inn and the neighbors on Firewood Gate Street felt that the cheerful, easygoing young Yang of old had returned.
Ordinary people's lives were filled every moment with firewood, rice, oil, salt, soy sauce, vinegar, and tea. Nobody had that much time to investigate whether Yang Ge was really the Hero Zhang, Zhang Mazi, from back then.
Martial wanderers who knew Yang Ge's identity, however, flocked to the Welcome Inn in wave after wave.
But most of them felt utterly at a loss when faced with Yang Ge as he was now: an inn waiter who welcomed everyone with a smile.
They wanted to see Second Master Yang, the "Manifest Sage Lord," whose mighty reputation blazed like the sun at its zenith.
Even an overbearing, swaggering Yang Erlang would have suited the occasion better than this smiling, utterly unremarkable waiter.
Their awkward feelings were like those of recruits eager to serve their country and bring glory to their ancestors, only to see a peerless general who had conquered new lands and won magnificent victories retire from the army-not to a life of silks, delicacies, and crowds of attendants, but to shoulder a hoe and till the fields alongside ordinary old farmers. It shattered their illusions.
On