Chapter 104

In this world, it was never simply the person with the biggest fist who had reason on their side.

But a fist could smash everyone else’s mouths shut, leaving you the only one speaking in the whole place. No matter how soft your voice was, it would still carry.

One old man and one middle-aged man passed through the courtyard gate and kept walking.

No words were needed. No prior notice. No signal. The two of them walked out of the school’s residential compound, passed the cafeteria, crossed the athletic field, and did not stop until they had gone out through the school gate.

Lin Fu'an looked at his disciple. Chen Shoumen looked at his master.

Though they had no blood relation, half a lifetime as master and disciple had made them closer than father and son. Yet in terms of tacit understanding, never had they been so perfectly in sync as they were now.

Chen Shoumen murmured, “Qin Li.”

Lin Fu'an said quietly, “Dragon King.”

Chen Shoumen had once seen that man who liked tending flower racks at the Longjiang estuary, draining the blood of a hundred-meter corpse centipede.

That blood, mixed in red, black, yellow, and purple, had splashed across both banks. By now, a vast spread of brilliantly thriving flowers had grown there, and the locals had even built a riverside park on the spot.

Back then, Chen Shoumen had still been young, at the age when passion burned as hot as the summer sun.

And yet, he had seen the real sun.

When that hundred-meter corpse centipede appeared, its terrifying pressure and dense corpse aura had shaken him so badly that his body trembled on its own, and he could not even open his Vertical pupils.

The only thing worth being proud of was that, while fighting against his instinctive fear, he had not truly retreated. He still remembered the mission of the Officers of the Command Banner.

Then he saw a young man about his own age burst up from beneath the river’s surface, his whole body flowing with talismans, and punch that corpse centipede straight onto the bank.

Only then did he understand that the terrifying evil thing that had frightened him the instant it appeared had in fact been chased all the way out of the riverbed by a single person and beaten into fleeing.

Was it humiliating?

Not really.

When the gap was large enough, comparison itself stopped making sense.

The other man had not used spirit medium ritual. There was no underworld deity on him, nor any spirit descent, immortal invocation, or mediumship from other regional traditions. He had relied purely on his own brute strength to beat that monstrous thing until it could not fight back at all.

Tentacle after tentacle snapped. Segment after segment of bony body shattered. Its shrieks, sharp enough to pierce the valley, were nothing more than background accompaniment beneath his fists and feet.

Later, Chen Shoumen tried his best to gather information on that man and learned that his name was Qin Li. He belonged to the Qin Clan, and he was the first river-walker the Qin Clan had produced in modern times.

Later still, he heard another piece of news.

That man had failed his river walk.

From then on, he vanished completely, with no one knowing whether he was alive or dead.

Chen Shoumen could not understand it. Just how difficult was a river walk, if even someone like that had failed to make it through?

But from that point on, whenever his master Lin Fu'an told his grandson—who was also Chen Shoumen’s own disciple—stories about the Dragon King’s clan, Chen Shoumen, proud and arrogant as he was, would stand quietly at the side and listen with them.

Whenever little Lin Shuyou asked which was stronger, the Dragon King’s clan or the Officers of the Command Banner, Chen Shoumen, as his master, would say nothing. Lin Fu'an always had to be the one to guide him:

“They are all fellow cultivators who uphold the righteous path. There’s no point comparing who’s higher and who’s lower.”

And then Lin Fu'an would add one more sentence:

“But their inheritance runs deep. If you ever meet someone from the Dragon King’s clan in the future, Shuyou, you must be respectful.”

Chen Shoumen had truly never imagined that the shadow which had once stunned his youth would crash so abruptly into his middle age.

The instant he passed through the courtyard gate, he thought of that corpse centipede from years ago. In the memory playing in his mind, the centipede being pinned down, beaten apart, and shattered seemed to become himself.

Lin Fu'an did not know Qin Li personally, though he had heard this story from his disciple after his return from the temple.

Unfortunately, Chen Shoumen could not draw.

But Lin Fu'an, an old veteran of the Officers of the Command Banner, could still perceive traces in a person’s aura that ordinary people could never see, even without opening his Vertical pupils.

When his gaze swept over them earlier, the woman tying up her hair had seemed like a horned python rearing its head, as though some deep frustration was pent up within her and ready to burst out at someone.

As for the man, the dust and dirt beneath his feet had already begun to tremble, like a flood dragon opening its eyes, about to tear through the clouds and reveal its true form once more.

The two generals of increase and loss had once been ghost kings in the mortal world and could observe the sea of fortune. On that man and woman, Lin Fu'an had clearly sensed dragon aura. It was damaged and in decline, but it was undeniably there.

For ordinary people, finding even the faintest thread of dragon aura would be enough to make them weep in gratitude and burn incense in thanks to their ancestors.

But for those two, the ancestors they burned incense to were the Dragon Kings themselves.

And besides that man and woman, Lin Fu'an had faintly sensed that there was an even greater dragon aura up on the third floor of the building. It was so vast that even though he had not raised his eyes, that pressure and presence had still rolled straight into his field of vision.

He did not dare look up any further.

He had a feeling that if he really did look up, then he would not be leaving today.

Nor tomorrow. Nor the day after. Nor the day after that.

If he got lucky, after some time passed, he might turn into a freshly grown loofah vine.

“Shoumen.”

“Master.”

Even after leaving the school gate, both of them kept their voices extremely low.

Because they had come uninvited, and they had arrived under pressure and force. By the rules of the jianghu, that meant they had come to challenge someone on their own ground.

And once you made the first move, it was only reasonable for the other side to finish the whole thing for you.

When Liu Ting had tied up her hair earlier and Qin Li had rolled up his sleeves, that had meant they were preparing to fight.

There was nothing else to be done. The other side had already pressed all the way to their door. For a so-called lonely widow and orphan from a “small household,” they had to “force themselves to put up a fight,” no matter what.

In truth, this kind of experience was a first for them too.

Though Dragon King Qin and Dragon King Liu were no longer what they had once been, and the old lady no longer cared to go out and read the concealed mockery hidden beneath people’s respectful gazes—

a centipede could die and still not stiffen. Beneath that whole table of spiritless memorial tablets, there was still an old lady speaking to them from time to time.

In all these decades, no one had ever really dared bully their way to the door.

After calling each other by name, master and disciple both swept their peripheral vision around the area.

Then, in perfect understanding, they said nothing more and kept walking until they reached the infirmary. They entered the hospital room and sat down on either side of Lin Shuyou.

Late last night, Shuyou’s destiny mark, which had flared back into full resonance after he ran away in anger, had caused his family to think the boy had finally come to his senses.

Who would have thought that the moment it reconnected, he would immediately look like he was about to die?

The whole family had fallen into chaos—setting out the ritual table, arranging the life-and-death board, carrying out yin-yang divination. After enormous effort, they had finally managed to stabilize him again.

Ordinarily, this kind of setup was something the temple’s Officers of the Command Banner prepared in advance before going out to deal with evil things, just in case.

Once the temple learned that the youngest in the family had gotten into trouble, they held a discussion and sent Lin Fu'an and Chen Shoumen on the earliest flight to Jinling.

At the time, they had thought that with the two of them going, no matter how big the problem Shuyou had encountered was, they would be able to settle it easily.

Both of them had believed that.

Neither had expected things to turn out like this. Passing the other side’s door, they had not dared go in, and did not even dare stop.

The old man felt gloomy. It was not exactly anger, and not exactly grievance. It was just an unbearable sense of wrongness.

What was worse was that there was nowhere he could vent it.

He could hardly haul up his grandson and throw a few punches at him to blow off steam.

Not to mention that the boy had just been injured and was still weak. A few punches might truly beat him to death.

And even if he did want to beat him, that was no longer Lin Fu'an’s choice to make. More precisely, this was no longer the kind of matter that could be settled by hitting his grandson a few times.

The inheritance of the Officers of the Command Banner was not passed down strictly by a single surname. It depended on the temple system.

For example, Lin Fu'an’s son was not first in line among the next generation. That position belonged instead to his disciple, Chen Shoumen.

If this had all been within the family, the old man could have put on a show by disciplining the child, shut the door, and muddled through it.

But once it concerned an entire temple, brushing it off like that was no longer appropriate.

Because if things went badly, his grandson could get the entire temple wiped out.

On matters like this, Lin Fu'an understood more than his disciple Chen Shoumen did.

Since ancient times, there had never been many Dragon King families on the rivers. After all, their status had to be won generation after generation by fighting through river walks. Scarcity was built into the position.

But the style of the Dragon King’s clan had always been the same. They could ignore the smaller tributaries and lakes, but if any river or lake dared churn up trouble, then if they did not move in and suppress it, it would truly be indefensible. Otherwise, outsiders would think the Dragon King had no temper.

And in the previous era, the most prominent Dragon King lineages had been the Qin and Liu families.

Because Dragon King families were natural hereditary enemies, each generation in their clans, when walking the rivers, had either suppressed the other side or been slaughtered by them.

If you set the two families’ ancestral tablets side by side, you could trace a deeply tangled web of grudges.

“Your great-grandfather killed my great-grandfather.”

“My grandfather killed your grandfather.”

“Your father killed my father.”

But no one had expected that, amid such complicated blood hatred stretching across generations, Dragon King Qin and Dragon King Liu would actually marry.

At the time, when the wedding invitations were sent through the jianghu, the entire jianghu was shaken. Everyone thought that from then on, the jianghu would belong to those two surnames.

It was only because both families later broke off collectively that this momentum did not continue.

But even a starving camel was bigger than a horse. What the master and disciple had just seen with their own eyes made that much clear. They would not even need the older one on the third floor to act. Just releasing the two in the courtyard and sending them straight to their temple would be enough to erase it from existence.

In fact, sending only one of them would probably be enough.

It was not that Lin Fu'an was afraid. Anyone who could become one of the Officers of the Command Banner had no cowardice in their bones.

If it truly came to the point where the temple was destroyed and the people died, then at worst, everyone would throw away their lives and fight it out.

But every family knew its own affairs. If the enemy was the sort of evil thing that liked to hide alone or secretly harm people, then the Officers of the Command Banner could handle it—whether one-on-one or in formation.

In this peaceful age under a bright and orderly sky, evil things no longer gathered in roaring hordes the way they had in times of chaos.

But if it came to jianghu combat, especially the kind decided purely by the strength of an individual, then the weaknesses of their temple would be magnified without limit.

Especially the terrifying thing about The Qin Family’s Guide to Viewing Flood Dragons was that it allowed a person to use their own qi to draw in the momentum of a flood dragon, endlessly cycling and self-renewing. Saying one person could hold off a thousand troops was certainly an exaggeration—

but saying that one person could keep fighting for several days and nights really was not unusual at all.

All he had to do was come to the gate of their temple and show up on the doorstep. Then what?

Would they enter spirit medium ritual or not?

Once they did, he would leave.

Once their time ran out and the generals departed, he would come back.

An ordinary Officer of the Command Banner needed several months of rest after entering spirit medium ritual once. Under normal circumstances, that was enough, since there were only a few temple festivals a year anyway.

A seasoned Officer of the Command Banner still needed half a month of rest after doing it once.

Their temple, with its deep inheritance, could manage it once a day. When Shuyou was little and just starting to learn, he had invoked twice in one day. Though he had fainted for a long time and nearly could not be saved, the whole temple had treated him as a treasured genius because of it.

But each invocation did not last long. Even if you lit three pagoda incense sticks overhead to extend the duration a little, once the incense burned out, the generals would leave when they chose to leave.

Since the inheritance first began, no one knew how many Officers of the Command Banner had died not because they were too weak, but because their time ran out. The great ones would drift away, leaving behind only their exhausted, ordinary selves, and then the evil thing would kill them.

So all the other side needed was to send one person whom their entire temple, even in formation, could not be fully sure of surrounding and killing.

Then that person could fly them like a kite.

And wear out their whole temple to death.

After wearing down an entire temple, that person might not even carry much injury at all, because all he had to do was strike ordinary people.

Ordinary jianghu sects and clans did not have monsters like that.

But the Dragon King’s clan did.

And while temples could usually form alliances with one another to face outside threats, if the one you had offended was the Dragon King’s clan, then no one else would dare ally with you.

Lin Fu'an said, “If they used Shuyou like a weapon, I suppose that’s not impossible either.”

Chen Shoumen said, “If it was a Dragon King elder using Shuyou, then what for? If anyone should be the one doing the using, it ought to be a junior from the Dragon King’s clan.”

Lin Fu'an said, “Dragon King Qin and Dragon King Liu have both become thin in numbers. There probably aren’t many young juniors left. And if there are, they should be the true direct heirs of the two Dragon King families.”

Chen Shoumen said, “Then Shuyou was used by a direct heir.”

Here, “direct heir” did not refer to bloodline, but to importance and standing within the inheritance.

In the past, if someone said they served the Dragon King, others might not dare provoke them, but inwardly they understood that the Dragon King’s clan was huge and had many branches. The one you served was probably not a direct heir at all. There were layers upon layers of thresholds and rank within it.

A true direct heir was a different matter entirely. Family resources, instruction, inheritance—everything would be poured into you. Once you succeeded in walking the river, you would truly stand above the common run.

Given the present condition of the Qin and Liu families, if they really did produce a junior direct heir, then that child would be cherished to death and smothered in resources.

Even if, for the sake of preserving the family’s inheritance, that person never went on a river walk, they could still build real power just by living off the family’s accumulated reserves.

Because the Qin and Liu families still had another layer of shelter behind them.

At this point, both master and disciple gave slight nods.

The tension they had been carrying eased for a moment.

Only for a moment.

Because immediately afterward, they both thought of something else.

If this was only a matter between a direct junior heir of the Dragon King’s clan and their own Shuyou, then what exactly did it mean that the two of them had interfered?

Originally, if it was just a conflict between juniors, then children fighting and making trouble was still only a matter between children. Even if the motives were impure, even if they were using you like a monkey for their own amusement, at the end of the day it was still just the younger generation’s business.

Even if someone died, would you not still have to swallow it?

When Emperor Jing of Han was still a child, he killed the son of a feudal prince with a chessboard. And what came of it?

Not to mention that no one had died here. They had even put the boy in a hospital bed and treated him.

But the two of them had rushed over in a panic.

Not only had they come, they had also released their pressure and walked openly and squarely toward the other side’s door.

If they had first sent a visiting card, that would have been one thing. The other side might still not have seen them, but at least that would have counted as following proper etiquette.

And even if the other side had agreed to see them, they would not have dared bring up the children’s matter directly. They would have offered greetings, asked after their well-being, and then left. If the other side had any interest, they could have made inquiries below and perhaps sent word to them afterward.

Of course, even that step would already have been extremely dangerous, because the other side’s possible reaction could have been:

What, you’re unhappy about this? You dare come to my door to pressure me?

So the truly correct procedure would have been this: my child is lying badly injured in a hospital bed, but I have still come to apologize in person. The posture had to be low enough.

But the path they had chosen this time was: you hit one of our juniors, so our elders came.

And that meant the other side’s elders came too.

They had successfully escalated a conflict between juniors into a conflict between lineages.

Chen Shoumen said darkly, “It’s possible Shuyou and that junior from the Dragon King’s clan didn’t even have any grudge.”

Lin Fu'an’s chest heaved, as though a mouthful of old blood had risen into his throat before he forcibly swallowed it back down.

There might really have been no grudge at all.

But because the two of them had come, a grudge had now been forged.

Chen Shoumen continued in that same hollow tone, “Shuyou also said we should go back and prepare to give him his own separate page in the clan genealogy. Doesn’t that mean Shuyou may already have formed some kind of connection with that person from the Dragon King’s clan?”

Lin Fu'an felt like his disciple’s words were knives stabbing straight into his heart.

Chen Shoumen went on, “If both times Shuyou was injured were related to that person from the Dragon King’s clan, then no matter how cold-hearted that person is, they should have softened by now. And even if they haven’t… the people around the Dragon King should have.”

Chen Shoumen looked toward the washbasin on the bedside cabinet, along with the change of clothes and toiletries inside it.

That person had brought them. Later, that same person had gone straight into the Dragon King household and greeted them in an easy, familiar way.

“That person should serve the Dragon King.”

Then Chen Shoumen pointed at Lin Shuyou’s stomach. “When we first got here and treated Shuyou’s injuries, we found that his natal life-mark hadn’t been patched up where it was broken. Instead, something had been borrowed from elsewhere, divided evenly, and used to reorganize it.

“In the whole temple, the only one who can draw a natal life-mark is you, Master. I still haven’t fully mastered it. As for Shuyou himself, he probably can’t patch it up either, much less do something like returning the original form in order to repair the missing shape. This kind of method… can you do it, Master?”

Lin Fu'an’s face flushed red.

Can I? Can I my ass!

That’s an array! An array! If it breaks, you wipe it clean and redraw it! Have you ever seen anyone fix a damaged array by borrowing a few pillars from here and a few banners from there, sticking them back in place, and having it work again?

Chen Shoumen drew a breath and prepared to go on.

At last, Lin Fu'an could not endure it any longer. In a low growl from deep in his throat, he said, “If you keep talking in that tone, I’ll cleanse the lineage first.”

Chen Shoumen covered his face with both hands and lowered his head.

Lin Fu'an said, “You’re a grown man. What kind of posture is that? Honestly…”

Just then, Lin Shuyou slowly woke up and opened his eyes.

Lin Fu'an covered his own face with both hands and lowered his head.

There was no other reason.

He had no face left.

“Grandpa, Master…” Lin Shuyou had slept very soundly. His body had been adjusted a little by his master and grandfather, but he still remembered the conversation that had been interrupted earlier. His master and grandfather had clearly not believed him when he said he was about to obtain some inheritance. “I really did get an enormous lucky break.”

Lin Fu'an and Chen Shoumen looked at each other, neither willing to speak.

What were they supposed to say?

Child, be good. Your lucky break is gone, and we even helped you make an enemy.

Lin Shuyou clenched his fists, his face full of excitement.

“Believe me, Master, Grandpa. That thing will be incredibly useful to us Officers of the Command Banner. It’s exactly what we need most. Once I get it, Grandpa, you can share it with the other temples, and all the Officers of the Command Banner will be able to defend the righteous path and eliminate evil even better!

Grandpa?”

Seeing Lin Fu'an’s expression, Lin Shuyou assumed his grandfather was delighted. He became happy too, mistaking it for proof that his grandfather had finally believed him.

Influenced by Tan Wenbin, the usually upright and reserved boy even started trying, for once, to flatter someone.

“Grandpa, haven’t you always wanted to become chairman of the temple leaders’ association? With this, you’ll be able to get the position. Wouldn’t that be great?”

Lin Fu'an forced out a smile and took Lin Shuyou’s hand.

“Good boy. It’s not as though Grandpa absolutely has to become chairman of the temple leaders’ association…”

Because right now, whether the family temple could even survive was still uncertain.

Chen Shoumen rubbed his face hard. “Shuyou, Master needs to tell you something…”

Lin Fu'an shot to his feet at once. “Shuyou just woke up. Let him sleep a little longer. We’re going outside first.”

Chen Shoumen could only follow his master into the corridor outside the hospital room.

“Master, are we not telling him the truth?”

“We can’t. We’ve already taken one wrong step. We can’t keep going wrong.”

“Then do we go back now?”

“We can’t go back. There has to be some explanation. If we leave just like this, then the matter won’t be settled. If it isn’t settled in Jinling, that’s the same as forcing them to go to our hometown and settle it there.”

“Then do we send in a visiting card?”

“We can’t send in a visiting card.

“Yes, we’ve already gone from arrogance to humility. But if you literally do that again, then you’re plainly telling them:

If it weren’t for the fact that you’re the Dragon King’s clan, today we would have come to challenge your gate and wipe out—break down—your household.”

Chen Shoumen said, “Then what do we…”

Lin Fu'an said, “We wait here. We wait for them to speak first.”

At that moment, Doctor Fan Shulin, who had already gone home, slept, and returned to work, came back.

Today, not only had he brought jujubes, he had also brought a bag of oranges and a box of rice cakes his mother had made herself.

As he passed by, he glanced at the old man and the middle-aged man standing there, then walked into the room.

“Oh? Binbin’s not here?”

Fan Shulin set the things down on the bedside cabinet.

“Brother Fan, Brother Binbin isn’t here, but he probably was just here a little while ago. He brought me some things.”

Lin Shuyou knew that last time it had also been this young doctor who had operated on him. This time was probably the same.

“Heh, looks like your big brother treats his little brother pretty well. He even brought this much food.”

Fan Shulin picked up a bottle of milk, twisted it open, and took a drink. The richness of the milk was just like the thickness of the red envelope he had received last night.

“It’s my fault for making my big brother worry.”

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