When the two met again after more than a year, they exchanged not a single pleasantry, instead taking up stances to fight.
Lian Youming could not help feeling a surge of wonder.
A martial artist's thoughts were pure and natural.
And Gong Wuer was among the finest of them. Living far from the mundane world and devoted to the Martial Way, her disposition had probably become pure to the extreme. Precisely because of that purity, every thought, word, and deed expressed her true intent, without a trace of falsehood.
It was a realm difficult to imagine.
But it was also far too detached from worldly affairs.
Lian Youming set the sword in his arms down inside the pavilion. The instant he released it, he sprang up, flipping three to five meters with the swiftness of a fleeing hare. He stood before Gong Wuer and cupped his fists.
Their eyes met. Without another word, he arched his spine, his Zhongshan Suit snapping taut as he drove a fist straight toward her chest.
But in the instant Lian Youming's intent stirred and his fist rose and fell, a fair right hand drifted over and rested against his knuckles. With that single touch, Gong Wuer seemed to adhere to his fist.
When Lian Youming thrust his fist forward, she floated backward; when he swept a fist to the left, she moved right; when he attacked right, she turned left again. She was just like a drifting peach blossom, light as nothing.
Gong Wuer stepped with incomparable lightness, offering pointers as she spoke. "Listening Jin isn't about listening with your ears. At minor attainment, you need contact between fists or palms. What you listen to is the offensive force produced by the surging of your internal breath, the changes inside your body. Think of