Zhang Haoying did not understand what he meant, but he changed his clothes quickly all the same and came to the hall's training ground. Lu Yushi stood at its center. Seeing him arrive, he spoke in a low voice. "Come, run through the Storm Strike. Against me."
Zhang Haoying assumed Lu Yushi wanted to test how his training was coming along. He answered at once, drove his inner breath and attacked — but unexpectedly, the other man set his own inner breath moving too and launched the first strike of the Storm Strike.
BANG!
A crisp sound of impact rang out. In terms of inner breath, Zhang Haoying was naturally no match for Lu Yushi, but the latter seemed to be deliberately holding back his strength. This blow was an even trade, neither side gaining the upper hand, and both immediately followed with the second strike.
BOOM!
This time Lu Yushi was half a beat faster, and his blow somewhat stronger, yet the inner breath fluctuating around him stayed perfectly steady — he had clearly not suddenly added force. Zhang Haoying had been training this Storm Strike for nearly five years, and he understood at once that his master had switched meridians — most likely to Broken Dragon, the one Ji Zhao had mentioned yesterday. But this blow alone was not enough to lay the foundation for victory. What came next, though...
Before the thought had even finished forming in his head, the third, fourth and fifth strikes came one right after another. The inner breath fluctuating around Lu Yushi stayed as steady as ever, but each attack came faster than the last and heavier than the last, and Zhang Haoying's expression changed again and again, until, with the fifth strike finished, Zhang Haoying's stance had completely collapsed. At that moment, if Lu Yushi had wanted his life, he need only have raised his inner breath and followed up with a sixth strike, and that would have been the end of it.
"This...?!"
Zhang Haoying cried out despite himself.
"It's the route that third boy of the Ji family described yesterday." Lu Yushi withdrew his hands, his gaze dark and somber, a hint of weariness in his voice. "I didn't add any inner breath — I even used a little less than you. And I'm not practiced at running this route... Do you understand, Haoying?"
"No... No, surely not?" Zhang Haoying could hardly believe it. "Master, you mean that the moment he began training, he found a better inner breath route?"
Lu Yushi sighed. "What else could it be? I thought about it all night, and just now I sparred a round with you. Doesn't that prove how superior this inner breath route is?"
"But..." Zhang Haoying seemed at a loss, stammering even as he spoke. "But his footing is unsteady, and his foundation in internal arts is shockingly poor. Martial Warden Ji is someone who keeps to the rules — she couldn't possibly have taught him the Luo River Pavilion's martial techniques in private. Which means he has no experience practicing martial techniques either. How could he alter the Storm Strike just like that... In all of history, no one has ever heard of such a thing!"
The Storm Strike was not some especially profound martial technique; in the jianghu there were certainly quite a few people who could alter it. But those could never include such a complete greenhorn with no experience at all!
"Haoying, you're wrong." Lu Yushi sighed. "There was once a man who did this very thing — and far more outrageously at that. At the time he didn't have a shred of inner breath; he had only read a few books, yet in the midst of battle he guided a martial artist to alter his inner breath route and helped him defeat his enemy. And not long before that, that man had also been struck on the head."
Zhang Haoying's mind went completely blank; it had all but stopped working entirely, so that he could not even reach the obvious answer. He asked by reflex, "Who?"
Lu Yushi did not answer. He raised his head and looked at the hall's signboard, on which three bold, powerful characters were carved.
On the afternoon of the twenty-sixth day of the ninth month, someone brought a food box to the Ji household. Who knew what had gotten into Ji Tan today, but for once in a blue moon she actually came out of her room to eat with Ji Bei and Ji Zhao.
Ji Bei had long been displeased with this troublesome younger sister, and at once said coolly, "So you can bear to come out today? I thought you had some treasure in that room that would be stolen the moment you left."
Ji Tan's expression did not change. "You're not wrong there. There really is an extraordinary treasure in that room."
Ji Zhao, having a loose tongue, just had to go and play the straight man for her. "What?"
Ji Tan gave her hair a light flick, her tone careless and confident. "Me, of course!"
The remark was a bit unhinged, but one had to admit it had a point. In Ji Zhao's words, she was so beautiful she didn't look like she could possibly be a blood relation.
None of the three Ji siblings was bad-looking. Ji Bei had a heroic look to her, somewhat hard to tell male from female; Ji Zhao had inherited the beauty of his courtesan mother; but set beside Ji Tan, both fell far short. Politics aside, her looks were enough to make her a Noble Consort — why not Empress? Because an empress is politics made flesh.
Ji Bei clicked her tongue. She had plenty on her mind lately, and coming home only to face this problem brother and problem sister was truly exhausting. Still, she was a responsible sort after all, and did not lash out at the two of them for no reason; her face was merely a little dark.
"Speaking of which." Ji Tan clicked her chopsticks at Ji Zhao like a crab waving its pincers. "I remember there being a dagger in the storeroom. It's gone. Did you take it?"
"I did." Ji Zhao admitted it openly. "After what happened, I've been a bit jumpy, so I wanted to keep a blade on me for self-defense."
"A grown man like you, you should defend yourself with your own hands and feet." Ji Tan sighed. "Give me that dagger. I have a great use for it."
Ji Zhao did not make a sound, but Ji Bei shot a cold look over. "What do you want a dagger for?"
— She was genuinely afraid this lunatic of a sister would get up to something bizarre. It was the same frame of mind as a parent who wants their child nowhere near a dangerous, restricted blade.
"To kill myself with." Ji Tan's expression was placid, her words astonishing. "I've been observing the heavens at night lately, and this Anchun of ours is like the heroine's chastity in a trashy smut novel — liable to be lost at any moment. For a beauty like me, if the city falls, the consequences would be so dire I can't even bear to think of them myself. So when that time comes, I'll have to save myself... Ji Zhao, hurry up and give me the dagger."
Words only Ji Tan could say... Heaven had granted her astonishing beauty and, in the same stroke, turned her into a lunatic.
Ji Bei's face darkened abruptly. She ground out each word through clenched teeth: "Ji Zhao, get out."
— She was about to shut the door and scold her own child. The elders of the Ji family had passed early, and Ji Bei, as the eldest sister, crushed her younger siblings in every respect — age, ability and martial strength. It would not be going too far to call her a strict mother.
Ji Zhao, his expression unchanged, carried his rice bowl toward the door. But just as he was about to step out, he turned around calmly and said, "I won't give it to you, because none of us is going to die."
Neither Ji Bei nor Ji Tan paid the words any mind, taking them for Ji Zhao's offhand comfort, and Ji Zhao did not mind either.
It was a promise, true. But the promise was not made to the two of them. It was a promise to 'Ji Zhao.'