The Pang Residence threw open its gates on all four sides and brought out every fine wine and delicacy in its stores to entertain the heroes of the Rivers and Lakes who had come to witness the ceremony. Even that was nowhere near enough, so servants were hastily dispatched across the city to scour restaurants and wine shops, hiring even their cooks and the foreign girls serving wine behind their counters to help entertain the guests.
The rooms could not possibly hold everyone, and even the courtyards were packed. But after witnessing such a soul-stirring battle, the assembled heroes had lost interest in wine. Everyone was asking about the girl in red.
Who exactly was she? What was her connection to the Seven Sunset Techniques? Why did she carry Chen Shigu's Fish-Intestine Sword? Why had she trained in battlefield martial arts so rarely seen in the Rivers and Lakes?
Many guessed she was the new leader of the Setting Sun Courtyard, but they simply refused to accept it. Thanks to Chen Shigu's decades of perverse, unorthodox behavior, his disciples had poor reputations abroad. The martial world had always regarded them as a pack of ill-omened fiends and heretics.
Yet this girl in red was not only young and beautiful, but brimming with martial virtue, inspiring goodwill at first sight. Bathed in her reflected radiance, even that band of walking disasters from the Setting Sun Courtyard looked far more agreeable.
Some also privately harbored doubts about the words "overthrow the Great Tang and plunge the world into chaos." But the last sect to question them publicly had been exterminated to the last member. However fiercely their curiosity itched, no one dared court death by raising the matter again.
Baozhu sat in the place of honor in the reception hall Pang Liangji