Chapter 12: The Alley
The black-clad girl walked deeper into the alley. Occasionally, some households hung festive red lanterns. Unlike others, the veiled girl had no family’s meticulous groundwork, no hidden threads stretching a thousand miles. She simply entered the town alone, a solitary figure.
Not far down the alley stood a youth in brocade robes. He held high a square green jade seal, about the size of a child’s palm, carved with coiling dragons and crouching tigers. Under the sunlight, it gleamed brilliantly, with faint threads of rosy light flickering within the seal. The brocade-clad youth looked up, squinting at this supreme treasure in his hands, his face full of intoxication.
Beside him, a tall old man knelt on one knee, meticulously wiping mud from the youth’s boots with his sleeve.
The brocade-clad youth’s peripheral vision had long since noticed the strange girl. She wore a light veil hat, carried a narrow sword in a green scabbard at her waist, and moved with steady steps. Clearly, she was no local of the town.
Still, the brocade-clad youth paid it no mind. He continued to examine the ancient jade seal that had lain dormant for a thousand years. Deep down, he almost hoped the girl would try to seize the treasure—otherwise, things would be far too dull.
After all, he had already obtained two items, reaping far more than he had anticipated. If he didn’t find something to do, he would have to leave with his old servant. For this youth, that would feel like something was missing.
It was like back home, ten thousand miles from this town, where he wore a golden robe embroidered with nine pythons. But it always lacked one claw.
In coming to this town, each chosen person could carry three tokens, each placed in embroidered pouches. One pouch had been handed over to the gatekeeper earlier—a compulsory toll. No matter the gatekeeper’s rank, no matter how dilapidated the city gate, even a nation’s sovereign or the founder of a sect had to follow this rule honestly. The other two pouches meant that one could take at most two treasures out of the town. Otherwise, if you looted ten or a hundred treasures here, you would have to return them all. The tokens inside the pouches were three types of special copper coins: the “pressure-winning coins” that common folk used to celebrate raising roof beams, the “spring-welcoming coins” hung on peach talismans in the imperial palace each year, and the “offering coins” held in the palms of city god statues. Though called copper coins, they were actually made of rare and precious gold essence. To most mortals “down the mountain,” even official silver was uncommon, let alone a heavy sack of “gold”—it was more than enough to make people willingly sell their family heirlooms.
The brocade-clad youth had studied these three types of coins, which were absent from official historical records, all the way here, but he couldn’t figure out their significance.
Ahead, the girl exuded a cold, harsh aura as she walked straight forward, treating the master and servant in the alley as if they didn’t exist.
The brocade-clad youth changed his mind on the spur of the moment. He put away the jade seal, placing it in a cloth bag he had prepared earlier and tying it to his waist. Yet he still stood in the middle of the alley, showing no intention of moving aside.
The tall, pale-skinned old man stood up as well, his voice effeminate and soft. “Your Highness, this person is a martial artist who has entered the hall. You must not take this lightly. Outside the town, it would be of no concern. But here, even this old servant’s physique, which follows the pure martial path, is constantly suppressed by this world’s laws—it’s extremely uncomfortable. If I fully circulate my qi and open my acupoints, it will be like rivers and seas pouring backward. My meridians and acupoints will flood uncontrollably. At that point, this old servant’s death would be a small matter, but Your Highness’s safety is paramount. If, due to my negligence, any flaw appears in Your Highness’s great undertaking of cultivating the Dao, how could I face His Majesty and Her Highness after returning?”
The brocade-clad youth said teasingly, “Grandpa Wu, since leaving the palace, you’ve become talkative. Back in the palace, you only ever repeated the same few phrases all year long—even worse than the stupid parrot my sister keeps.”
The old man referred to himself as “this old servant” and was steeped in fawning humility in every bone, especially proud of his unwavering loyalty. He could only be a eunuch of the palace.
Seeing that the young master didn’t seem to grasp his implication, he had to speak more bluntly. “Your Highness, this person in the alley could already threaten Your Highness here.”
The brocade-clad youth said lazily, “I’ve long heard that on the path of cultivation, there are all kinds of riffraff and many heretical paths. But she and I are just strangers crossing paths. Would she really be moved by greed at the sight of treasure and kill me for it? That’s unlikely, isn’t it? If everyone ‘up on the mountain’ were like that, wouldn’t the world already be in chaos?”
The old man sighed deeply. In the mortal realm and the immortal sects, they outwardly maintained harmony but were secretly at odds, each despising the other.
The brocade-clad youth felt somewhat disheartened. “Forget it, forget it. Settling this rotten account with a girl isn’t the act of a true man.”
As the girl reached him, she placed her left hand on the hilt of her sword.
The brocade-clad youth smiled, stepped aside, and gestured for her to go ahead.
The black-clad girl slowed her pace slightly and turned her body a little, her gaze behind the veil filled with vigilance and caution.
When the old eunuch noticed the girl’s hands wrapped in cotton bandages, he couldn’t help but furrow his brow.
“How dare you!”
Suddenly, the old man roared like a thunderclap from his tongue. His feet seemed to glide, and his tall figure appeared in front of the brocade-clad youth. The old man pressed his back gently, using a subtle force to push the youth against the alley wall, while his left hand spread its five fingers.
A dull impact sound came from his palm.
A pebble had been thrown as a hidden weapon, aimed at the side of the brocade-clad youth’s head.
The force was astonishing, enough to pierce through a wall.
The old man crushed the pebble, the size of a fist, with a bang in his palm. But instead of striking the attacker, he threw a right hook at the black-clad girl.
The girl, her sword hanging at her side, hesitated for a moment, suppressing her instinct to draw the blade. Instead, she tilted her head, just barely dodging the heavy, powerful punch.
The force of the punch was so fierce that it instantly blew aside the thin veil of her hat.
The tall old man turned his straight punch into a horizontal sweep, his fist aiming straight for the girl’s head.
The circular motion of the punch was smooth and fluid, without any stagnation.
The girl had no choice but to raise her arms quickly, placing the backs of her hands together beside her ear in a cross-shaped defensive posture, blocking the path of the fist.
The next moment, the girl slid sideways more than ten paces.
She exhaled a mouthful of turbid air, extended the hand from which more blood was seeping through the cotton bandage, and straightened the slightly crooked veiled hat on her head.
She was somewhat angry.
Turning around, she looked at the tall old man, who was glancing left and right, and said methodically, “If not for me, he would already be dead.”
The old man paid her no heed. Compared to before, this eunuch, who was experienced in dealing with assassinations and ambushes, had downgraded the girl’s threat level to second place. The top spot had now been ceded to the person who had made the move from the other side of the alley.
Of course, aside from the master and servant, there were only two true outsiders in the alley.
On the other side of the alley stood a tall, thin, masked figure.
His arms, however, were extraordinarily thick, with muscles bulging like iron balls.
At his waist hung two bags, filled to the brim with round objects.
He stood motionless, as if saying that the earlier sneak attack had merely been a warning.
His cold gaze swept over the girl.
The man curled his lips, stuck out his tongue, and his eyes burned with heat.
The girl chuckled and said two words.
“Come back!”
The moment the words fell.
A sword flew past a head.
The flying sword came to her side, spinning rapidly around her, like a child seeking affection.
She said irritably, “Scram!”
The flying sword flickered and vanished.
The master and servant stood there, dumbfounded.
The old eunuch wasn’t shocked by the flying sword technique itself.
Rather, it was the fact that the girl could freely control a flying sword in this place that filled him with genuine fear.
This feeling made the old man, in a daze, recall his youth—his first entry into the palace, trembling with fear, and one day catching a distant glimpse of a senior figure in a bright red python robe walking beneath the palace walls.
It wasn’t reverence for that eunuch, whose name he didn’t even know. It was the fear of that piercing crimson.
After the brocade-clad youth recovered, he smiled wryly, full of self-mockery. Stepping forward, he asked with concern, “Grandpa Wu, are you all right?”
The white-haired old eunuch’s face was heavy. “Be cautious. If it comes to the worst, this old servant will…”
The youth quickly waved his hand. “How about we apologize instead?”
The old man was caught off guard, then felt grief and self-reproach.
When the master is humiliated, the servant dies.
Especially in a royal household!
But the brocade-clad youth had already smiled. “Grandpa Wu, if you do something wrong, saying sorry isn’t that hard.”
The old man still felt this was improper, but the youth had already walked toward the girl.
In that instant, a hundred emotions stirred within the old man.
It turned out the youth’s back had no trace of dirt or dust.
(Three Seven Chinese Net)