A Wager in a Single Exchange

"Who are you?"

Several people in the main hall looked toward the screen.

The town head recognized the voice as a young man's and said angrily, "Where did you come from, you little brat? Running your mouth... making baseless accusations against decent people!"

He had originally had even harsher words in mind, but remembering how he had suddenly learned that Shopkeeper Ma was a mage, he took that as a warning and exercised a little caution.

Even so, he could barely keep his anger in check.

Those words had indeed hit upon some of his more concealed thoughts.

Although he was the town head, the Meng family had overshadowed him in recent years.

Moreover, the town's other old families were all prosperous thanks to their ancestors, with most of their wealth tied up in land deeds.

The Meng family's wealth, on the other hand, came mainly from shops and workshops. If a gang of bandits really did enter town, even if they couldn't break into the Meng compound, it would be good if they robbed those shops.

"I'm Chu Tianshu, just a physician."

Chu Tianshu walked out from behind the screen.

Meng Lianfa said, "This is Physician Chu, the one I mentioned just now who beat the bandit to death."

The wealthy men had never heard how formidable a leopard cat warrior was, so naturally, they hadn't paid any attention to the man who killed the bandit.

But when Chu Tianshu came out and drew a little closer, the old men in their chairs grew uneasy.

The air around this young man's body was noticeably hotter than elsewhere.

He looked refined and cultured, but if they closed their eyes, the feeling he gave off was like, like an old black bear coming down the mountain to forage!

A middle-aged man beside the town head had a long face, a short beard, and a sword at his waist. Seeing his employer shrink back, he said, "Young man, it's good that you've developed some skill, but don't let it go to your head."

"Whether you practice boxing or medicine, you should show respect to these esteemed gentlemen."

Chu Tianshu turned to stare at him, then suddenly smiled. "In that case, should I apologize to you gentlemen for what I said earlier?"

The long-faced man nodded slightly. "It's good that you know you were wrong..."

"I was indeed wrong. I shouldn't have relied on words alone."

Chu Tianshu kept smiling. "You have an imposing bearing, brother. You must be the most skilled of the guards the town head hired."

"I had a hard time fighting that bandit. Why don't I exchange a few moves with you too, brother, and see how it turns out?"

The long-faced man gripped his scabbard and glared. "You want to fight me?"

The town head said, "Brother Wang Fu was once the chief escort of the Hewei Escort Agency. Brother Meng, if your guest fights him..."

Chu Tianshu cut him off, looking Wang Fu straight in the eye. "What, you don't dare?"

Chu Tianshu hadn't issued the challenge at random.

On the way to the Meng residence with Shopkeeper Ma, they had talked quite a bit.

According to Shopkeeper Ma, the leopard cat warrior alone posed no small threat to the town.

The escort agency and martial arts school trades were most developed in the north, especially around the capital. Under the former Qing, some experts from the escort agencies there had even been summoned to the palace for rewards on a regular basis. The southeast came next.

Yi Province, however, lay on the southwestern frontier and was relatively impoverished. Men who came out of escort agencies and martial arts schools to guard households in town certainly had skill and were generally well trained, but when it came to fighting one-on-one... they were nothing special.

There was practically no one among them who could handle an adult leopard cat warrior alone.

Wang Fu didn't know what Shopkeeper Ma thought of him, but the wet-behind-the-ears brat before him had already provoked him.

"Fine, boy. I'll give you a few pointers and teach you to rein yourself in."

Wang Fu walked into the front courtyard and suddenly turned on the flagstone path. As he spun, his longsword slid from its scabbard with a hiss.

He was indeed experienced, guarding against a sneak attack from behind that would leave him no time to draw his sword.

His sudden shift in movement took his opponent by surprise. He pivoted and drew his sword in the blink of an eye.

"Over the years, the bandits I've killed with this sword number at least fifty, if not eighty. Even among those armed with guns, I've chopped the hands off more than one or two."

"Boy, what weapon do you use?"

Empty-handed, Chu Tianshu stepped over the threshold, his voice mild.

"You'll see my weapon when the time comes. Are you ready?"

Wang Fu snorted. "Putting on a mysterious act. Come on!"

As soon as he spoke, he saw a flash of silver from Chu Tianshu's left hand.

Clang!!

The silver needle aimed at Wang Fu's right knee was knocked down by his sword.

But a flicker of urgency crossed Wang Fu's face. His body inclined backward as if to dodge, and he hastily flicked his wrist and raised his sword.

Under the moonlight, his longsword seemed to spread a fan of afterimages before him, sweeping from his right knee to his left shoulder.

The blade just managed to block the second silver needle shooting toward his left shoulder.

"Hit!"

Chu Tianshu lunged forward, the accented word bursting from his mouth. He spread his five fingers in the air and thrust out his palm, striking Wang Fu's blade.

Wang Fu had blocked the needles in haste, leaving the spine of his sword facing outward. His wrist had yet to recover from the lightning-fast change of direction.

Chu Tianshu's lunging palm strike was nothing like an attack against a dangerous longsword; it was more like slapping a sheet of iron.

His palm struck Wang Fu's chest through that sheet of iron.

Bang!!!!

Wang Fu's back arched as he staggered back three or four steps. He braced his longsword against the ground and pressed his left hand to his chest, his lips clenched tight and his face flushed crimson.

Chu Tianshu paid him no more attention and turned back into the house.

The people in the main hall had been about to watch the fight, but they saw Chu Tianshu's back seem to move twice. He had only just darted out when he turned around and came back.

"What happened? Are they not fighting anymore?"

The town head went to the threshold, and Master Zhu and Master Tan also craned their necks to look outside.

Under everyone's gaze, Wang Fu's face grew redder still. His Adam's apple bobbed, and in the end he couldn't hold it in.

"Urgh!!"

He doubled over and vomited all over the ground. It felt as though a stone pestle were stirring in his stomach. After the first heave, he found it even harder to straighten up and kept vomiting.

One exchange, and he had been beaten until he vomited.

Even a fool could see that, with Wang Fu in that state, Chu Tianshu could have knocked him flat with one more casual move if he had wanted to.

The town head took half a step back, momentarily at a loss.

Master Zhu, Master Tan, and the guards beside them all changed expression as well.

They had all seen Wang Fu kill bandits before and knew how formidable he was, which made the sight before them all the more shocking.

"Sorry for dirtying the Meng family's courtyard."

Chu Tianshu's voice reached their ears. "That was the only place I could hit without really injuring him. If I'd hit somewhere else, I was afraid he wouldn't accept it if I held back, but if I hit too hard, the town would have lost a skilled fighter for nothing."

He had struck the cardia, where the esophagus joined the stomach, behind the xiphoid process of the sternum. His force had been incomparably precise.

Vomiting for a while wouldn't harm him.

When Chu Tianshu looked at the town head and the others again, they all somewhat avoided his gaze.

"What are you gentlemen afraid of?"

Chu Tianshu's brow was stern as he said, "I'm not a bandit. I won't break into your homes and kill you, but when the man whose corpse is on the ground fought me, he tore my clothes and nearly killed or wounded me."

"If that whole gang of bandits breaks into town and attacks your grand homes and walled compounds, are you really confident that the guards in each of your households can hold them off?"

Shopkeeper Ma spoke up at just the right moment. "And as I've already said, they're from Jiaozhi. Even if you want to negotiate with them, they might not understand what you're saying."

The town head and the others went pale and finally took his words to heart.

Meng Lianfa rose. "I'll send out half my household guards right now to coordinate with the militia. If the worst happens and the bandits come here first, my guards know the roads, so a large force can also come to my family's aid as quickly as possible!"

Master Zhu, who had smoothed things over earlier, immediately called out, "How can we let Brother Meng shoulder this alone? I'll send someone home at once and have half my men dispatched."

The town head and Master Tan loudly agreed as well.

Shopkeeper Ma clicked his tongue inwardly, looked around at everyone, and cupped his fists. "Since matters here are settled, I must return to the restaurant to prepare."

Chu Tianshu said, "I'll go back with you."

The town head hurriedly said, "Why don't you two come to my house for a while? Whatever you need to prepare, I'll have someone bring it over from the restaurant. If anything's lacking, I..."

Meng Lianfa put out a hand to stop the town head.

The two men turned a deaf ear and had already gone around the spirit wall and out the door. Before leaving, Chu Tianshu wrapped the straw mat in hemp rope and carried the corpse away.

Shopkeeper Ma had drawn a spell on the corpse to create interference and prevent the bandits' sorcerer from detecting too soon that the man was dead.

But a spell drawn with an empty hand lasted only a limited time, so he needed to reinforce it with cinnabar at the restaurant.

"Those people... are really troublesome."

As Chu Tianshu walked down the road, he said, "I'm beginning to understand why you keep your abilities under wraps, Shopkeeper Ma, so you don't have to deal with people like them."

Shopkeeper Ma strode along with his lantern. "This town is already fairly good. If you went into a city, it might seem safer, but in truth there's more turmoil, and more things that can get a person killed."

"Speaking of which, you kept a fairly low profile before. I didn't quite expect you to take the initiative like that just now."

Shopkeeper Ma's tone softened. "You haven't been in town long, after all. Didn't you consider leaving to avoid the trouble?"

Chu Tianshu kept walking. When he heard this, his eyes shifted.

If he wanted to leave, he could have found reasons to do so.

But he also had many reasons to stay.

For instance, he could easily attract the attention of beastly vicious spirits, so leaving alone might not be safer than staying in town. Hiding in a house might not be safer than helping bring a larger group together and joining it...

Then there was collecting evil spirit materials, earning progress toward his fortune, and so on.

Yet, setting those things aside, he still wasn't quite willing to leave just like that.

"These are chaotic times, after all. From what I've read in the newspapers, countries everywhere are undergoing changes. I'm afraid the chaos will reach an unprecedented scale."

Chu Tianshu said, "I can hide here today and there tomorrow, but am I supposed to keep scurrying around like a rat, with my head down, never accomplishing anything?"

He deliberately kept his tone even, but couldn't completely suppress the restlessness and ruthlessness in it.

"I really hate the feeling of having no choice but to run. If I have even a thirty percent chance, I should take a gamble!"

Shopkeeper Ma walked on in silence. After a while, he laughed. "Good. Someone who can cultivate both sorcery and boxing really does have spirit."

Chu Tianshu didn't ask how he knew that he cultivated both. He merely smiled.

Old Ma was also from out of town, though he had arrived earlier. He had no family here, either, and he was already so old.

But he clearly intended to take an active stand against the bandits, both for the restaurant and for more than just the restaurant.

The old man and the young man could both sense something similar in how they felt.

It felt good to have someone traveling the same road.

When they returned to the restaurant, Chu Tianshu saw the dishes that had been left on the table for him. He wasn't very hungry, though, so he only poured himself a cup of tea.

"Come with me."

Old Ma left those words and strode ahead.

Holding his teacup, Chu Tianshu followed and stopped at the door to Old Ma's room.

He watched Old Ma push the bedding toward the inner side of the bed a couple of times, then lift the bed board straight up.

The bed was shaped like a large chest, containing yellow paper, cinnabar, an inkstone and brushes, a bronze mirror and basin, willow-wood rods, and a coin sword.

He took out piles of things and stacked them all on the table.

Finally, he picked up a sturdy peachwood sword. Talismans were carved into its hilt, and its blade was covered in fine cinnabar spell marks. It was a jujube red all over, darker where the spell marks lay.

"You should have a good weapon when fighting bandits who know evil arts. I used this when I was young, but now that I'm old, it no longer suits my hand. Take it."

Chu Tianshu took the sword and immediately felt that its weight wasn't quite right. He examined it in his hands, then pulled it apart with both hands.

Shing!!

A thick-spined iron sword was hidden inside the peachwood sword. When he drew it, it shone dazzlingly bright; only when he looked closely did he see the blue forging patterns like fish scales on its silvery blade.

"The wooden sword cuts down ghosts; the iron sword cuts down men."

A hint of reminiscence appeared in Shopkeeper Ma's eyes. "However, the way this sword's edge was forged, the balance of its weight, and so on make it best suited to a boxer pursuing the dragon coiling around the body."

"Going out as a general and entering as a minister, three united in one body-but I wonder which path you're following now?"

Chu Tianshu was admiring the sword. Puzzled, he asked, "What do you mean, three united in one body?"