A cold glint flashed deep in Chen Xuan's lowered eyes.
Sure enough, the spy was still watching! That old bastard Zhao De hadn't gone far. He might even be hiding outside the courtyard wall right now, listening to what was happening inside!
Liu San clearly hadn't noticed the contingency Steward Zhao had left behind. His mind was full of how to regain face in front of everyone while currying favor with his superior. He turned, a savage, smug grin spreading across his face, wrapped the tung-oil-soaked cowhide whip twice around his palm, and advanced on Chen Xuan step by step.
"You little bastard, unless you're deaf, you heard what Steward Zhao just said, didn't you? His lordship the steward has spoken. I'm to personally teach you the rules of these stables!"
The servants watching nearby all shrank into their necks and backed away three full steps, clutching brushes and iron shovels. Not one dared make a sound. They looked at Chen Xuan as though he were a lump of dead meat.
"Chen Xuan, blame your own rotten luck. You offended the heir and still wouldn't die, and now you've dragged our stables into Steward Zhao's sights." An old servant nearby sighed and lowered his voice. "Bear with it. Brother Liu San has a cruel hand. If you scream pitifully enough, you might spare yourself a couple of lashes."
Chen Xuan stood on the muddy ground with his hands hanging at his sides, feeling the blood and Qi flowing steadily within his dantian. His early-stage Bright Force strength was like a furnace pressed beneath a sheet of ice. With a single thought, it could explode through his meridians, letting him punch this foul-mouthed Liu San into a crippled dog scrabbling for his teeth!
I can't use my real strength. I absolutely cannot expose myself now.
Chen Xuan's mental abacus clattered rapidly. It hasn't even been two hours since I broke through to early-stage Bright Force. My foundation still isn't completely stable. Zhao De's spy is watching outside, and dozens of guards as savage as wolves and tigers are in the front courtyard. If I show my martial arts for a moment's satisfaction now, they'll mince me into paste as a spy before half an incense stick burns! Playing the groveling grandson? It's not like I never did that serving those brain-dead clients in my previous life. Let him hop around a little first!
"Still standing there like a fucking wooden post?! Get on your knees!"
Liu San roared and raised the leather whip high.
Chen Xuan stayed where he was, his legs seemingly filled with lead, and did not move.
"What?! You're rebelling now! I told you to kneel and take your punishment! Are you fucking deaf?!" Liu San cursed, his eyes bulging and spittle flying.
With his back toward the spy at the corner of the wall, Chen Xuan lifted his lowered head little by little, extremely slowly.
The instant their eyes met.
The vicious grin abruptly froze on Liu San's face, and an inexplicable chill shot up his back.
What the hell! This spineless good-for-nothing usually didn't even dare breathe loudly in the stables, and anyone could trample him. Why were his eyes as cold as a venomous snake's today?! Why did one look from him make the back of my neck prickle?!
But it was only a momentary illusion.
Before Liu San could make sense of it, Chen Xuan's icy eyes instantly clouded with watery mist. His whole face puckered like an eggplant, and he wailed in a tearful voice:
"Spare me, Brother Liu San! It's not that I won't kneel! I hauled firewood all night yesterday, and now both my calves are cramping. My kneecaps feel rusted shut! I can't bend them!"
"Pah! Gave me a fucking fright. I thought you had some backbone, but you're just a weak-kneed shrimp with leg cramps!"
Humiliated and enraged by his own instant of cowardice, Liu San gave a vicious grin and swung his arm in a full arc. The cowhide horsewhip sliced through the air with a piercing whistle and lashed viciously toward Chen Xuan's right shoulder. "Can't bend them, huh? This lash will bend your leg bones for you!"
Crack-!
A sharp report exploded across the stable yard.
The whip struck Chen Xuan squarely on the right shoulder, splitting his tattered gray clothes open on the spot.
Yet the expected agony of torn skin and flesh never came.
After the marrow-cleansing tempering of the Boulder Art's early-stage Bright Force blood and Qi last night, Chen Xuan's sinews, bones, skin, and membranes were now as tough as old cowhide. This ordinary leather whip hadn't even broken through the protective blood and Qi at his body's surface. The pain was less than a tenth of what he had felt under the barbed whip the day before yesterday. At most, it felt like a bathhouse scrubber giving his shoulder a hard slap!
Hiss... That's all you've got? Liu San, did you empty your kidneys at a brothel last night? Even the giant pies my boss promised me in my previous life hit harder than this!
Chen Xuan scoffed inwardly in disdain, but his body reacted as swiftly as though he had rehearsed it eight hundred times-
The very second the whip's tip touched his clothes, he sharply dropped his shoulder and let himself lurch half a step sideways. He squeezed his throat, and an utterly wretched scream rang throughout the rear courtyard:
"Aah-! It hurts! Spare me, Brother Liu San! My shoulder's shattering!"
His control of the balance was simply perfect!
He couldn't stand motionless and let Liu San notice how tough his hide was, nor could he collapse and play dead after one lash, prompting the man to strip him and inspect his injuries. The Oscar-worthy acting he had used in his previous life, working overtime until three in the morning and playing the suffering victim to squeeze a budget out of clients, was on full display at this moment!
Crack!
"Screaming? I'll give you something to scream about! Weren't your legs cramping so badly you couldn't kneel?!"
Listening to those miserable screams, Liu San felt supremely satisfied. His wrist flicked, and the second lash followed immediately.
"Oh, mother! I won't! I'll never dare overturn the fodder cart again!" Chen Xuan staggered back more than half a step, forcing his face red, his groan thick with sobs.
"Hmph, your fucking hide's gotten a lot thicker today, hasn't it? Two lashes and you're still not down?!"
Seeing Chen Xuan merely sway without dropping to his knees, Liu San flared with anger. He gritted his teeth, advanced another step, and swung the whip repeatedly. Three lashes in succession struck viciously at the exact same spot on Chen Xuan's right shoulder!
Crack! Crack! Crack!
Five lashes had landed.
The tattered cloth over Chen Xuan's right shoulder had been reduced to strips, and the flesh beneath burned fiercely.
Although it didn't even qualify as a light injury to his Ming Jin physique, Chen Xuan caught sight of the spy Xiao Liuzi out of the corner of his eye, craning his neck by the distant wall to look this way. An alarm instantly sounded in his mind:
Shit! My clothes have been whipped to pieces, but my early-stage Bright Force flesh hasn't even broken or bled! If that old fox Zhao De or Xiao Liuzi comes over for a look and finds not even a bloody welt after five heavy lashes, my whole act will be exposed today!
In a flash, Chen Xuan followed the force of the fifth lash, bending over and covering his right shoulder.
Shielded by his broad sleeve, he hooked the five fingers of his left hand together and secretly summoned a trace of Ming Jin strength. With his rough, sharp fingernails, he viciously pinched and tore the flesh where the whip marks overlapped on his right shoulder!