Atop Jianmen Pass.
The evening breeze blew.
As the brother and sister walked away, they still turned back from time to time to wave at them.
Lian Youming exchanged a glance with Shorty Xu beside him, and both looked at each other's hands.
One had a bloody gash cut through his palm by the thin cord while saving the children; the other had scraped all ten fingers raw climbing the mountain cliffs. "You brat, all I did was glance at you, and you chased me for miles, hacking away."
Shorty Xu's smile was somewhat teasing.
"And what did you just call me?"
Lian Youming grinned cheekily. "Martial uncle, of course. My master and Elder Du are the closest of friends. Both are Green Gang disciples and forged a bond as fellow disciples. You and Elder Du come from the same lineage, so we're connected through our connections. Calling you martial uncle shouldn't be overstepping, should it?"
Du Xinwu's friendship with his master originated in the Green Gang. They had bowed to the same elder, sworn a blood oath, and become brothers bound by life and death. The man before him should be Du Xinwu's fellow disciple.
That brought them to the Nature Sect.
The Nature Sect was also a martial arts sect in the jianghu, founded during the Late Qing and Early Republican Era. Its founder was an extraordinary wanderer known as Xu the Knight-Errant, also called Xu Aishi, who was the teacher of Du Xinwu, the Great Hero of the North and South.
It was said that this man's martial attainment was so lofty that he could walk on water as though on level ground, and often raced back and forth through the mountains of Hunan and Sichuan in a single night. He was exceptionally formidable.
Though martial arts