Zhou Zishu suddenly felt a gaze shoot towards him, like someone was watching him in specific, and turned his head at just the right time to meet with Ye Baiyi’s line of sight. The man was also standing in the crowd at a distance neither far nor close; he indicated nothing, not even nodding or calling out to greet him, and only stared at him with unblinking eyes. That expression was serene, as if in that moment, he was telling Zhou Zishu “you’re about to die”.
You’re about to die, and you’ve been a tortoise with your head drawn into that shell on your back all your life, Zhou Zishu narrated silently within himself. He thought: what’s with the seriousness? Everything’s gotten to this point; what road is being so conscientiously paved, and what for? What’s with the plotting, too? If someone goes their whole life never being impetuous, wouldn’t that be too oppressive, too miserable?He spontaneously discovered the reality that his wish turned out to be nothing more than not being a bastard turtle that tucked its head away.
Just then, all these unceasingly noisy people heard a soft chuckle. His laughter should not have normally been so clearly audible in the clamor of the crowd, but he had used some sort of method to exponentially keep everyone’s voices down. After that, a man of sickly and plain looks walked out and laid things straight in a lowered voice. “All of you – what’s the logic in making things difficult for a child under the eyes of so many?”
Zhang Chengling opened his eyes, parted his lips, and soundlessly mouthed “shifu”.
Cao Weining had referred Zhou Zishu for Gao Chong, so Gao Chong had paused for a moment before calling out his identity. “Brother Zhou.”
He felt it very odd, though. This man currently had an imposing aura that was characteristic of a masterly type, so it stood to reason that Gao Chong absolutely should have had an imprint of him in his memory. On the contrary, the day Cao Weining had brought them to the Gao’s Manor, he had never paid attention to him. Even right now, he could only barely recall that his surname was Zhou, and he couldn’t remember his first name. There was a faint chill in Gao Chong’s heart.
All he saw was Zhou Zishu beckoning to Zhang Chengling. “Get over here, brat.”
Zhang Chengling promptly pounced into his arms with no questions asked, practically more affectionate than if he had seen his own dad.
“And who are you?” Feng Xiaofeng asked in his shrill voice.
Zhou Zishu loosely held Zhang Chengling by the shoulders as he inclined his head to glance at Feng Xiaofeng, and, upon witnessing his appearance, felt extremely upset. He subsequently provoked him, calmly. “Do you not recognize who your daddy is, dwarf?”
Feng Xiaofeng was enraged. Gao Shannu didn’t wait for him to say anything this time, giving a deep roar as he rushed to throw himself at Zhou Zishu. His form was massive, and every time he took a step, it seemed like the ground’s surface shook thrice with him. Paired with the enormous momentum of his leap was a meteor hammer about the size of a human head swinging in his hands, since he wanted to hammer Zhou Zishu into meat paste.
He seemed to treat every person that had the audacity to humiliate Feng Xiaofeng as if they were an arch-nemesis that had killed his father. The relationship between the two was really quite bizarre.
Zhou Zishu’s form flickered and was no longer in the same place, casually bringing Zhang Chengling with him. The meteor hammer slammed into the ground and smashed a huge pit into the bluestone tile.
Gao Chong looked on with a detached eye, getting the sense that this man’s qinggong had apparently reached the stage of perfection, as he still had such a speed while holding someone.
As Gao Shannu’s hit failed to land, he raised his arm and swept the hammer out again with a whizz. Zhou Zishu kept watch for the timing carefully, then used the tip of his toes to lightly nudge its chain up a little bit, pulling it another two chi. Then, going along with the path the weapon’s swing was taking, he added a kick to the hammer’s head — it was unknown how much strength he used for it, but by the time people reacted, the hammer was already circling back and flinging itself straight towards its owner.
Gao Shannu didn’t have a very nimble figure, so he truly wasn’t able to avoid it. In a fit of desperation, he braced his entire body, shrunk back his head, and barely managed to lean to the side. With a huge shout, he used his shoulder to take the blow, and his entire person flew out from the hammer strike and got thrown down to the ground.
Feng Xiaofeng screeched as if he was the one struck. He didn’t care about others at this moment, leaping up to go take a look at his Gao Shannu before anything else. Gao Shannu’s shoulder was shattered on one side, but he ultimately had thicker skin and flesh than anyone else, so he was still alive, awake, and fully conscious. He was huddled up into a huge lump on the floor, not making a sound, and his eyes gazed at Feng Xiaofeng with such pain.
Feng Xiaofeng lifted his head then, casting Zhou Zishu a ferocious look.
Zhou Zishu looked as placid as water. “He wanted my life, but I don’t want his.” He tugged at Zhang Chengling. “Let’s go.”
“Hold it!” This time it was the Hua Shan Patriarch, Yu Qiufeng, the few Elders of the Hua Shan Sect all following behind. His complexion was utterly poor as he examined Zhou Zishu, and soon after he half-heartedly and sloppily cupped in fists in salute towards him, gritting his teeth as he spoke. “Wayward champion, you’re taking this child away right before the eyes of this land’s heroes, but aren’t you paying too little attention to the elephant in the room?”
Zhou Zishu shot him a glance. “What about it, then, Patriarch Yu?” he asked with indifference.
“You can go,” Yu Qiufeng said, “but first, make him say why he’s been repeatedly chased by people with the intent to kill him. Is there or is there not actually a relationship between the Zhang family and the Lapis Armor? And who has the Lapis Armor right now?!”
Zhou Zishu put on a skin-deep smile as he watched the incredibly bitter Hua Shan Patriarch. He lowered his head to question Zhang Chengling. “Do you know what he’s talking about?”
Zhang Chengling pursed his lips and shook his head.
“Do you want to say anything about what he asked you?” Zhou Zishu questioned once more.
Zhang Chengling reached out and cautiously tugged at his clothes, not saying a word. Zhou Zishu nodded, turning his head back to Yu Qiufeng. “Patriarch Yu. What you’ve asked, he can’t answer. Let’s just leave it at that, and any of our future meetings will be fine.”
Finished speaking, he pulled at Zhang Chengling and lifted his foot to walk away. The Cang Shan Patriarch, Huang Daoren, laughed coldly from behind Yu Qiufeng. “This punk thinks everyone beneath him!” He thereafter took the lead in making trouble. This Huang Daoren was absolutely nothing special to look at, with a dark, egg-shaped face whose ugliness had the utmost of ability to make gourds break open, and he had a preference for wielding a folding fan all that year. It wasn’t clear what he was thinking, standing behind the eternally-elegant Yu Qiufeng’s sort. He unexpectedly acted out of resentment at this moment, shooting over like a colossal potato.
Zhou Zishu inwardly laughed. Saying that he thought everyone was beneath him was correct. All the hennish commodities here that could only make noise were things he couldn’t bear to look at, in any case. He looked on as Huang Daoren’s maneuver drew near. Zhou Zishu never once released Zhang Chengling’s hand – the crowd was only aware of a pattern blooming before their eyes as the two exchanged an untold amount of blows that lasted as long as a spark, following which Huang Daoren let out a muffled groan, retreated backwards three steps, spurted out a mouthful of blood, and fell right on his ass.
He had turned into one withered-up potato.
Alarmed cries of “Patriarch!” and “Shifu!” rose up at once. Yu Qiufeng had anxiety in his eyes, pointing a finger at Zhou Zishu. “What crooked, evil path did you come from? Are you an affiliate of those Ghosts? Don’t let him get away!”
They couldn’t beat him, so they secured a nice big label on his head. Zhou Zishu’s lips hooked. He picked Zhang Chengling up and got a few zhang away in the blink of an eye, as he had no intention of getting tangled up with them. The scene was chaos; there was Cao Weining stuttering as he defended him, Gao Chong, Zhao Jing, and others cryptically standing by, and that gang of riled-up good-for-nothings headed by Yu Qiufeng who were following after him to cause trouble for reasons unclear. The humongous fuss was akin to a market of dogs.
Zhou Zishu shuttled through the throng of people like a spirit, occasionally striking out and dispatching a few that ran into him. The kid in his arms, due to his connection to the Lapis Armor, had pretty much become a hunk of meat everyone wanted to take a bite of. Yu Qiufeng suddenly seemed to be the reincarnation of a rabid dog, as he was pursuing him from behind relentlessly. Zhou Zishu only felt that this Hua Shan Patriarch was after him like an old wife and wasn’t letting up for anything!
His heart yet burned with rage. He paused in his steps, whirled around, and planned on meeting him head-on.
In that moment, the image of a whip split the air in the nick of time to cut off Yu Qiufeng’s path, followed after by the nose-assaulting stench of alcohol. That drunk-smelling person in disheveled clothing was the one who had left without saying a word last night: Wen Kexing.
His eyes were noticeably scarlet, his steps the distinctive messy ones of a drunkard. He grinned at Zhou Zishu in a way that was completely racy – he intended for his over-the-shoulder glance to have a smile that was infinitely charming, but his intoxicated hiccuping destroyed that. “Ah-Xu, you… you go on ahead, I’ll stop them f… for you.”
Before he was done talking, he stumbled, looking like a tumbler doll in the wind with his head bobbing and tail-end swaying. It was terrifying to watch, but he ended up avoiding Yu Qiufeng’s calling out to him.
While he careened back and forth, the whip in his hand flung out without any regard for order, and through mysterious means, very ‘coincidentally’ wound around Yu Qiufeng’s calf. While everyone was watching, the Hua Shan Patriarch tripped and did a huge faceplant.
Wen Kexing rubbed at his eyes with vigor, walking on soft, noodle-like legs as he stepped like he was doing a Yang ge dance, and simultaneously cocked his head to peer at the utterly indignant Yu Qiufeng. He waved his hand in front of the other’s eyes, his tongue thick as he spoke. “Hey, that’s… two. Two heads. You… you drink too much, too? Why’re you on the floor?”
Zhou Zishu gave him a quick glimpse, mentally shaking his head. He got the sense that Hua Shan Sect was going to become irreconcilable enemies with Wen Kexing this time around.
He’d gotten Wen Kexing’s message, and without delay, he snatched the chance to grab Zhang Chengling and strut away. Somehow, he thereafter managed to get two horses by stealing them under the cover of the crisis, threw Zhang Chengling onto a horse’s back, and brought him away so quickly the horses’ hooves didn’t even touch the ground.
Zhang Chengling was no good at horse-riding — he could hardly do anything at all, and he didn’t get very far before he wasn’t quite able to catch up with Zhou Zishu, wobbling to and fro on the horse.
Zhou Zishu sighed in his heart, aware that he was a chunk of rotten wood and shouldn’t be asked to be a support beam. They abandoned the horses after a spell, and he took Zhang Chengling into a courtyard that had been abandoned for quite some time, ordering the teen that had been on edge for the greater part of a day to stop and rest.
There hadn’t been a whole lot of time to work on that when the entrance of the desolate courtyard was suddenly pushed open by someone from the outside. Zhang Chengling promptly jumped up in blind panic just to see that it was Wen Kexing, who hobbled in with three sways to every step.
At the start, Zhang Chengling had believed that he was faking drunk, but against all present expectations, he found out that the other couldn’t distinguish between any of the cardinal directions and was moving about like a headless fly. The man plopped into a one-knee kneel in front of Zhou Zishu, then threw his body forwards and fell down.
Zhou Zishu quickly hefted the other’s face upwards for a look, seeing that his ruddy complexion showed absolutely no signs of injury and learning that he was smiling like an idiot at him. With two arms firmly embracing Zhou Zishu’s legs, he rolled to the side and laid on the ground, using those legs as either a pillow or a quilt (who knew which). “Did you fall into a wine jug?” Zhou Zishu couldn’t help but ask.
“Yesterday, I… found a wi— wine cellar… mmm, I soaked in it for a night, drank a dozen jars… merry, merry!”
He really had drunk too much, as once he started laughing, he couldn’t stop. He tightly hugged Zhou Zishu’s legs, snuggling his face onto them, and kept indistinctly mumbling “merry”.
Zhou Zishu silently watched him with a tilted head as he snored deeply in broad daylight. He thus concluded that this man had more than enough of his fill.
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