Chapter 49: Broken Porcelain
Among a pile of shattered rubble, the old ape’s ears twitched slightly at a faint sound. He grinned, bent down to pick up a broken tile, weighed it in his hand, then stood up and hurled it with savage force. The tile sliced through walls and rooftops as easily as a knife through tofu, carrying a sound like wind and thunder as it shot through the air toward the source of the noise.
But unfortunately, the old ape saw no trace of the youth. He tapped his toes, his burly frame launching upward, one foot stamping on an old roof beam and using the rebound to leap high through the hole in the roof, landing on the ridge.
Looking into the distance, the old ape saw the youth carrying a wooden bow, standing on the upturned eaves of a roof far away, his expression solemn as he stared at the white-robed old ape.
The old ape realized he had miscalculated. The noise from throwing that tile had been too loud; it had likely scared the snake, letting that little mud-legged brat from Mud Vase Alley sense trouble. The youth had completely abandoned any thought of exploiting the advantage of bow range. The old ape smiled and spread his hands, showing he had nothing in them, then crooked his finger, signaling that the youth could continue his fancy tricks—he was happy to oblige and stretch his limbs a bit more.
If anyone accused the old ape of playing tricks, they would be wronging this guardian ape of Zheng Yang Mountain. A thousand years of cultivation, a thousand-zhang true form—his techniques and methods were worthy of the praise “towering between heaven and earth.”
During the long years of the Mountain-Moving Ape’s cultivation, especially in the early days of Zheng Yang Mountain’s founding, when the small sect was surrounded by enemies and circled by wolves and tigers, after the founding ancestor died in battle, as the number one general, what fierce battles and bloody struggles hadn’t the old ape experienced? Today’s “petty skirmish” in the alleyways and rooftops shared a similar essence with those past fights. In those stirring great battles, the top cultivators and grand qi refiners had also used treasures and heavy artifacts to keep the old ape at a distance, never daring to engage in close combat. It was like the swift Great Qiang light cavalry on mortal battlefields, who would never directly charge into the heavy armored infantry of Great Li, but instead used fast knives to slowly cut meat, bit by bit seeking opportunities to shave away the surface of the iron barrel formation.
Now, aside from the vassal king Song Changjing, the old ape was one of the most suppressed figures by the local laws of heaven. That military grandmaster with the tiger tally, due to his special status, was “favored” by this world, so although his cultivation was extremely impressive, the effect was not very obvious.
At this moment, facing a vigorous youth unlike any ordinary town resident, the old ape actually found a hint of the exhilaration he had felt in those bloody battles of old.
The old ape didn’t deny it—the youth had given him many pleasant surprises. He could calculate human hearts, set traps, use the terrain to his advantage, and most importantly, he had no small amount of courage.
The old ape looked up at the sky. The sun was sinking in the west, dusk had arrived, and visibility would become increasingly affected. Moreover, he was completely unfamiliar with the town’s geography. This was probably one of the youth’s advantages, barely qualifying as a protective talisman.
The old ape began to sprint, his momentum like a galloping horse, each stride covering over ten feet—a terrifying sight.
The moment the old ape moved, the youth turned and bolted. Instead of following the continuous alleyways and rooftops northward—where Fortune Street and Peach Leaf Alley were filled with wealthy households hiding dragons and crouching tigers, and someone might stand up for the old ape—Chen Ping’an decided he wouldn’t be able to escape encirclement. So he resolutely fled westward. Toward the south, the direction of the covered bridge, the view was open with nowhere to hide. Given their speed difference, Chen Ping’an judged that once he lost the cover of obstacles, it would be hard to escape the Mountain-Moving Ape’s pursuit.
West of the town was deep mountain forest, lush with vegetation, with many hidden paths where hunters had set traps.
Traveling in the mountains was difficult, and even harder off the beaten path—this Chen Ping’an knew better than anyone.
The youth’s reasoning was correct, but he misjudged the old ape. The old ape, as the guardian ape of Zheng Yang Mountain, had a far deeper and more long-term understanding of mountains and rivers than the youth.
When the youth leaped off the last rooftop and landed, he bent his knees, skillfully absorbing part of the falling force, quickly glanced back, then continued running forward with his back hunched.
During the sprint, the wooden bow and the quiver had both disappeared.
Once in the forest, if Chen Ping’an chose to abandon the paths trodden by generations of ancestors and “run in panic,” they would inevitably become burdens.
Seeing that the youth was about to slip away like a loach into water, the old ape grew irritable. He looked back in the direction of the Li family mansion on Fortune Street. Once in the mountains, the old ape wouldn’t claim full advantage of the terrain, but it would definitely be easier than chasing that little brat around town in a chaotic chase.
The old ape made up his mind, quickly weighed the pros and cons, took a deep breath of “fresh qi”—just enough, if no major deviation, to kill a person. His face rippled with a cyan-purple hue. His burly form, without warning, exploded upward from the ground. The poor house beneath his feet collapsed more than half under the force of his step. Fortunately, the residents of the western part of town were poor, and the buildings were far flimsier than those on Fortune Street—the wood used for beams and pillars was not up to par. The house had a family of four, but luckily none of them were inside at the time.
The old ape leaped high, drawing a huge arc in the air. When he landed, he was right beside the youth. His feet dug two large pits into the ground, sending soft spring mud splattering everywhere.
The old ape punched toward the youth’s back center.
On a person’s back lie the various yang meridians, so the back connects to both meridians and internal organs. The center of the back is especially close to the heart—a mere inch away—making it the most vulnerable.
Between life and death,
Hearing the movement beside him, the youth suddenly exerted force, his speed two or three tenths faster than before when he had lured the old ape onto the rotten roof!
This at least meant the youth had been hiding his strength all along.
As a result, the old ape’s punch did not pierce through the youth’s back center, did not manage to shatter his heart, but merely “grazed” his back about an inch below the center.
Though he hadn’t taken the full force of the punch, the youth was still knocked flying like a bell struck by a battering ram, his feet leaving the ground.
What happened next showcased the youth’s astonishing agility and flexibility to the fullest.
The straw-sandal boy, a trickle of blood at the corner of his mouth, after being sent flying by the punch, would normally have fallen face-first into the dirt. But instead, he stretched out his hands, and as they touched the ground, he bent his elbows first, then pushed off, performing a smooth flip in midair. He landed on his feet and, using the forward momentum, continued his desperate flight without losing any speed.
Even the battle-hardened, widely experienced Mountain-Moving Ape felt a twinge of irritation at the town boy’s tenacity.
The old ape raised his hand. The back of it was a blur of blood.
This injury was nothing—the old ape shrugged it off with a smile. But his determination to kill the youth only grew stronger.
The reason for the injury was not complicated.
In the chill of early spring, the boy from the poor alley, who usually wore thin clothes, appeared before the old ape today in noticeably thicker garments. Besides his own clothes, he had also put on a loose old robe belonging to the taller youth Liu Xianyang, worn as an outer layer. Between the two layers of clothing lay a hidden trick. The boy had crafted a “wooden-porcelain armor”—six long strips of seasoned wood, each drilled with holes, strung together with silk cords. Three pieces on the chest, three on the back. And most importantly, this crude wooden armor was studded with dense, tiny fragments of porcelain.
At this moment, the old ape felt like a high-ranking official who had accidentally stepped in dog shit—and it was hard to shake off.
The old ape clenched his fists, held his breath, and stood still, forcibly suppressing the surging, violent qi in his body. The cyan-purple ripples on his face shifted to a purple-gold hue, then vanished in a flash.
The old ape flew into a rage. At that very moment, a pebble shot out from the forest, streaking toward him.
The old ape reached out and caught the unusually hard stone, the size of a fingernail.
Then came a rustling sound, showing that the youth was fleeing deeper into the forest.
The old ape’s face darkened to an extreme.
He turned his head to look at the town under the evening sky.
He feared this might be the other party’s real plan of luring him away.
But instinct told the old ape that it was best to quickly kill that straw-sandal boy in the mountains.
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The Descendants’ Locust tree on Fortune Street, which had earlier been climbed by the youthful assassin, now had its highest branch—strong enough to support a person’s weight and far above the rooftops—occupied by another uninvited guest. Below him stood another person.
The abrupt appearance of these two forced the Li family mansion, already on high alert, to grit their teeth and pretend not to notice. Because the white-robed man sitting up there was none other than the Supervisor of Works. He had brought Song Jixin up the tree, claiming he would show him a good show. But by now it was the end of dusk, and Song Jixin’s eyesight wasn’t good enough to see properly, so he could only listen to Song Changjing narrate the ridiculous chase that had started on the rooftops of Mud Vase Alley.
The man rested one hand on his knee and propped his chin with the other, gazing into the distance. Between snippets of the chase’s telling, he occasionally interjected with little-known secrets of the town or random cultivation insights.
“Leaving aside opportunities and focusing on actual tools and treasures, that famous sword manual you’ve heard of could be ranked in the top three in this town right now. If you stretch the timeline across the entire three thousand years of the town’s history, it might barely make the top ten, but it’s definitely in the top twenty. Don’t think that rank is low—in fact, it’s very high.”
“And with that mole armor, if that kid surnamed Liu can digest all of it, in my view, his fortune is no worse than any of you five.”
Song Jixin didn’t look up, because the other guy’s feet were dangling right above his head. The youth asked curiously, “Then why was he killed with one punch by the Zheng Yang Mountain ape?”
Song Changjing said calmly, “Too much good luck invites jealousy. With no backing to speak of, is that hard to understand?”
Song Jixin looked puzzled and asked, “Then why didn’t you win him over more thoroughly when you were in Mud Vase Alley?”
The Great Li vassal king above the youth burst into laughter, utterly delighted. He laughed for a long time before saying, “When it comes to those cultivation geniuses up on the mountains… anyway, after you get out and hear one of my nicknames, you’ll understand why.”
Song Changjing suddenly stood up, looking into the distance with a slight change in expression. He gently rubbed the jade belt at his waist, his eyes blazing with heat.
In the eyes of this martial grandmaster who had nearly “reached the peak of mountains,” in the westernmost part of town, when the Mountain-Moving Ape had broken the rules, the qi surged and exploded violently, causing the energy in that area to become chaotic, like shattered porcelain flying everywhere.
Song Changjing said slowly, “You might find it strange why those outsiders all look at others like ants. Do you really think it’s just because they’re arrogant by nature, with eyes on top of their heads? Character is a small part of it; more of it is the general trend. You’ve never left this town, so you don’t know how transcendent those immortal masters are in the world outside.”
Song Jixin replied, “I’m not strange at all.”
“Talking to someone who reads books is always tiring.”
Song Changjing wasn’t surprised and continued on his own, “Because there is a line drawn between you and them. That line can be insignificant—for some people, it’s no bigger than a small ditch. As soon as they encounter it, they can step right over. People like you, the former Liu Xianyang, and Zhao Yao—the scholar seed chosen by a Daoist sect from another prefecture—all fall into that category. But it can also be vast. For the vast majority in this town, looking at that line is like staring at a heavenly moat; they can’t even summon the courage to cross it.”
“The gap between the two sides separated by that line is as great as that between humans and plants—no different from the barrier between yin and yang, or even greater.”
When he reached this point, the Great Li vassal king suddenly let out a surprised “Eh,” then laughed with schadenfreude. “That old beast got unlucky this time. He had to pick a fight with such a little hedgehog—really hidden deep. Song Jixin, I understand you a bit now. No matter who has to deal with such an opponent, it’s troublesome. Aside from finishing him with a clean punch, it’s a really disgusting bother.”
Song Jixin’s face darkened.
Not far away at the Li family mansion, shouts and orders rang out loudly, and even the hidden pillar of strength made a furious move.
That straw-sandal youth indeed had allies responding.
And not ordinary ones at that.
Song Changjing smiled. Even though a silhouette of an assassin flashed past under the Descendants’ Locust tree, this vassal king had no intention whatsoever of stopping them.
In his field of vision, the old ape’s burly figure was striding back from the west, constantly “rising and falling” among the town’s rooftops. He didn’t care at all whether his landings collapsed houses or ruined people’s courtyards.
That Zheng Yang Mountain ape seemed to have found a punching bag.
Song Changjing suddenly frowned, then relaxed, and erupted with a surge of fighting spirit.
The Great Li martial artist Song Changjing, in his life, loved three things: building skull pyramids, killing geniuses, and fighting immortals.
The next moment, Song Jixin’s eyes widened. Without knowing when, the man above his head had already landed on Fortune Street, and he collided with the approaching burly old man in a simple, almost brutal smash.
Great Li vassal king, Mountain-Moving Ape.
Each exchanged a punch to the other’s chest.
Song Changjing didn’t retreat but advanced, taking a step forward. The old ape took a step back.
Another exchange of punches, this time to each other’s foreheads and glabellas.
Song Changjing strode forward boldly. This time, he was the only one throwing punches.
He stepped forward heavily, planting his foot, bent his knees slightly, stretched his left hand forward, and pulled his right fist back.
The man, dressed in pure white robes, his wide sleeves fluttering, stood amidst a ground of shattered blue flagstones.
He punched straight forward.
The old ape had no choice but to raise a palm to block Song Changjing’s fist.
Between heaven and earth, two cracking sounds seemed to echo faintly.
The old ape slid backward more than ten zhang, plowing a shocking furrow into the blue flagstone ground.
Song Changjing flicked his sleeve lightly, placed one hand behind his back, and rested the other on his white jade belt. He grinned, “Qi Jingchun, you’re not going to stop this? Are you really going to just smash the pot and let it break? Don’t do that—hold out a little longer.”
The old ape exhaled a mouthful of turbid qi.
Song Changjing raised one palm and waved it, chuckling, “Wait until I get out before we fight. For now, we each mind our own business.”
The old ape grinned, “Song Changjing, you’d better be able to beat me by then, or the Great Li southern border army won’t be too comfortable.”
Song Changjing smiled, “As you wish.”
The old ape snorted coldly and went into the Li family mansion alone. The young lady was unharmed, not even startled. After the old ape learned the details, he found it was nothing but clumsy tricks. He pondered for a moment, then grinned ferally and headed toward the western edge of town.
Going into the mountains to hunt.
(Sanqi Zhongwen)