Chapter Twenty-Seven: A Person Seen Once in a Lifetime
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The next morning, at dawn, in a residence in the small town near Jingfu Temple.
Someone had entered the courtyard.
Zhang Chengyi opened his eyes. He had not even finished dressing when he heard a loud crash. He simply threw on his crane cloak, put on his shoes, and stepped outside.
The horizon was beginning to pale. Kang Guangling, who had been standing guard through the night, was facing off against a burly man. Several footprints had been driven deep into the stone slabs before each of them.
There were three footprints on Kang Guangling’s side and two before the imposing man.
Seriously? Even with a cheat power-up, you still can’t beat the other guy?
Zhang Chengyi scratched his head as he watched.
The crippled beggar and a sorrowful-looking old man entered the courtyard at the sound and bowed to the man.
“Big Brother.”
“Oh my goodness, it’s Chief Qiao!”
Zhang Chengyi’s eyes lit up. He took several steps forward and extended his hand.
“I’ve heard so much about you. It’s a pleasure to meet you. I hope we’ll get along.”
Qiao Feng suppressed the surging qi and blood in his body. His numb palm hung limply at his side as he nodded at his two subordinates. Confusion clouded his face.
“Are you perhaps the great hero Zhang Chengyi himself?”
“That’s right, that’s right.”
Realizing that people in this era had no habit of shaking hands, Zhang Chengyi rubbed his hands together and gazed at the Beggar Clan Chief before him as though he were admiring an exquisite collectible figurine. He stared until Qiao Feng began to feel distinctly uneasy, then said, “Do you know I’ve done you a great favor?”
The moment the two began speaking, Su Xinghe and the other Eight Friends of Hangu appeared in the courtyard, fully dressed.
Qiao Feng swept his eyes over them all. Every one of them appeared to possess profound internal power. If they were all as capable as Kang Guangling...
He sensed trouble and could not make sense of the bizarre words and mannerisms of this Golden Mountain Ranger. Nevertheless, he maintained the smile on his face.
“What do you mean?”
“Did you know Elder Xu Chongxiao was plotting against you? I caught him in advance.”
Zhang Chengyi spoke with complete bluntness.
The wording was crude, but the meaning was clear enough.
The crippled beggar and the old beggar both changed expression slightly.
Qiao Feng, however, withdrew his smile and said solemnly, “Brother, that was merely a jest. Please do not repeat such things carelessly in front of others.”
He was a man who demanded evidence in all matters. In the stories, everyone had been convinced that Gusu Murong had murdered Ma Dayuan, yet he had been willing to spend time investigating the matter. Now that everyone believed Zhang Chengyi to be wicked to the core, he would investigate that as well.
How could he possibly accept as truth what sounded like an attempt to sow discord between him and his own elders?
Zhang Chengyi gave a chuckle.
“Believe it or not, that’s up to you.”
He had not come to expose some grand truth, still less to help Qiao Feng set things right and secure his position as Chief of the Beggar Clan.
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Whether Qiao Feng was Khitan or not was irrelevant. Whether he was Chief of the Beggar Clan was irrelevant too.
He had captured Elder Xu on a whim. If he truly wanted to help conceal Qiao Feng’s Khitan bloodline, the best solution would be to kill Elder Xu, Quan Guanqing, and Kang Min. Those three were the main forces opposing Qiao Feng. If necessary, he could kill a few more. It was hardly a serious matter.
The problem was that doing so would be far too troublesome.
He could waste time eating delicious food, meeting interesting people, or helping singers and monks he happened to encounter by chance. But he absolutely could not go to such lengths to curry favor with some grown man.
Not even a great hero he had admired while reading novels in his previous life.
It was not as though he had nothing better to do.
“By the way, why did you come looking for me?”
Zhang Chengyi immediately tossed their previous conversation out of his mind. He cared no more whether Elder Xu lived or died than he cared about anything else. As long as the commotion was big enough and lively enough, that was all that mattered.
Zhang Chengyi might not care, but Qiao Feng’s heart gave a sudden jolt. When he had seen Elder Xu the previous day, the man had behaved rather strangely. Combined with his suspicious actions, it was impossible not to entertain a few additional thoughts.
He might look rough and hearty on the outside, but inwardly his mind was as delicate as a strand of silk. To put it somewhat imprecisely, there was a ferocious tiger in his heart that could still pause to smell a rose.
Without betraying the slightest emotion, he cupped his fist.
“Qiao has naturally come because of Elder Xu’s safety.”
“I released him. If you’re interested, go find him yourselves.”
Hearing mention of the old man seemed to dampen Zhang Chengyi’s interest. He added casually, “Just assume I captured him for fun.”
“...”
Qiao Feng was speechless.
He had heard many people say that this Zhang fellow spoke like a madman, but even so, actually conversing with him was more than Qiao Feng could endure.
Could he not exchange a few polite words? Such bluntness and perfunctory indifference were truly difficult to understand.
“Qiao saw Elder Xu yesterday,” he replied stiffly.
Then the other man’s peculiar train of thought and bizarre manner of conversation left him awkwardly stranded as well.
“Oh. Then we must have just missed each other. What a pity.”
Zhang Chengyi sounded genuinely regretful.
“Is that all? If there’s nothing else, I’m going to wash up, have some breakfast, and attend the Heroes’ Gathering.”
His spirits rose at the thought. Since he was already awake, he might as well go early and enjoy the spectacle. Qiao Feng would be attending too, and once the gathering ended, Zhang Chengyi could take away anyone who might prove useful.
He planned to head south and recruit people. His first choice was Wang Yuyan, the undisputed champion of talking about martial arts. She understood martial techniques extremely well, so he would bring her back and make her study them to her heart’s content. With Murong Fu around, he had no fear that the little girl would refuse.
He merely had no idea how things were progressing on Wuya Zi’s side. Had he dealt with Ding Chunqiu yet? If he could bring back Li Qiushui and the Heavenly Mountain Child Elder as well, that would be perfect.
“...”
Looking at Zhang Chengyi’s distracted expression, Qiao Feng felt a strange urge rising in his heart. He wanted to seize the man by the shoulders and shout:
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Do you know that this Heroes’ Gathering is being held to punish you?
Do you know that if we do not reach an understanding now, we may soon be forced to fight each other?
He suppressed the bizarre impulse and sighed silently. Under Su Xinghe’s sympathetic gaze, he turned and left.
He had never encountered anyone so strange in all his life.
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Deep within Lake Tai, at Mantuo Manor, in the study.
“Who is it?”
The mistress of the manor, Madame Wang—or rather, Li Qingluo—heard the breathing of a man outside the door. She pushed open the window and shouted.
What she saw was a familiar figure sprawled before the window, his lapels stained with blood.
“Father!”
Before the words had fully left her mouth, she had already helped the white-haired old man inside. After dismissing the servants who had come running at the sound, she asked, “Father, what happened to you?”
The man she called Father was none other than Ding Chunqiu, the dreaded Old Monster of the Xingxiu Sect, whose very name struck fear into the martial world. How could he have been injured so severely?
“I’ll fetch some medicine for you.”
She hurriedly fell silent and was about to leave for the medicine room when he called her back.
“Do not... do not reveal that I have come here.”
Ding Chunqiu’s face was as pale as paper. Purple and green hues kept flickering across his forehead, clear signs that he had suffered devastating internal injuries.
He watched his “good daughter” leave the study, a complicated expression emerging in his eyes.
Back then, he had carried on an affair with Li Qiushui and caused the woman to fall from a cliff. He had then come to Suzhou together with Li Qiushui and her daughter. To conceal their true relationship, he had taken on the role of “father.”
She had called him that for thirty years. To say that he felt nothing would have been a lie. But...
The man had been “dead” for thirty years, only to appear a few days ago with martial prowess vastly greater than before. A single palm strike had nearly taken Ding Chunqiu’s life.
If not for the countless traps and mechanisms within the Xingxiu Sect, the poison he had urged his disciples to unleash in order to delay his pursuer, and the fact that the man had inexplicably stopped instead of continuing the chase, Ding Chunqiu would never have had the chance to escape with the aid of those mechanisms.
Now that her true father was hunting her adoptive father, what choice would his “good daughter” make?
The expression in Ding Chunqiu’s eyes gradually deepened.
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