When he woke, the sun had already set. Shen Budu opened his eyes out of a hazy, flickering dream, and for a moment he could hardly tell where he was. Faintly, a tearing wind still echoed in his ears, and his body seemed to keep falling, falling—
“Crash!”
At that moment, a harsh noise from the courtyard outside yanked him abruptly from the dream back to reality. Shen Budu’s pupils trembled slightly, then his gaze slowly cleared. He pushed back the blanket and sat up, pressing his throbbing temples with a frown as he looked toward the window.
That sound was not a hallucination. Soon, several more crashes and smashes rang out one after another, accompanied by an utterly arrogant shout:
“Where is everyone? If you keep hiding like cowardly turtles and don’t come out, this old man won’t be polite anymore!”
Shen Budu got out of bed and walked to the door. Just as he opened it, he was stopped by Song Yifan, who had come hurrying over. “Go back to your room! Don’t come out!”
Shen Budu frowned slightly. “What happened? Whose voice was that just now?”
“The people of the Mad Wolf Gang.” Song Yifan had no time to explain. He only pushed Ruan Ruan, whom he had been leading by the hand, over to him, and instructed him anxiously, “You and Ruan Ruan stay in the room for now, and whatever you do, don’t come out!” With that, he ran toward the front courtyard.
Ruan Ruan looked helplessly at Song Yifan’s retreating back, biting his soft white finger, his two big eyes teary and on the verge of crying. The pitiful little sight made Shen Budu a little reluctant to leave him like that. He stretched out his hand, and Ruan Ruan, as if he had found his anchor, immediately threw himself forward and buried himself in his arms.
“Who are the Mad Wolf Gang?” Shen Budu patted the child’s back gently and asked in a low voice. “What have they come for?”
“To collect protection money.” Ruan Ruan sniffled and said softly, “They live on the next mountain over, and every so often they come around. They say the whole mountain is under their protection, and if we don’t pay, they’ll drive us out…”
Shen Budu understood at once. They must be a band of robbers operating under the name of a gang. Perhaps they had seen that the Zhenshan Sect had few people and was easy to bully, and had taken them for easy marks.
Still, such a situation was normal in the Northern Wastes. After all, the Northern Wastes was acknowledged to be a barbaric land, and those who roamed it were all wicked criminals. Here there were no rules, no order, no fairness or justice, and certainly no so-called “gentlemanly manners.”
It was not like the Upper Spirit Realm, bright and polished on the surface but festering in secret, where even filthy deeds had to be draped in a layer of hypocritical skin. This was a place where the law of the jungle was pushed to its extreme. Plundering and slaughtering openly and without shame was the way the people of the Northern Wastes survived.
Shen Budu and Ruan Ruan each fell silent for a moment, then turned to each other at the same time and said, “You stay in the room and don’t move. I’ll be back soon.”
Shen Budu: “…”
Ruan Ruan: “…”
Ruan Ruan widened his eyes and quickly grabbed the hem of Shen Budu’s robe with his little hand, as if afraid he would run off. “Where are you going? Those people are really fierce. What if they hit you!”
Shen Budu had never imagined that one day he would be warned about his safety by a four-year-old child. He found it amusing, but his gaze softened. He crouched down and stroked the child’s head. “Then where are you going? Since they’re so fierce, aren’t you afraid?”
“I’m afraid,” Ruan Ruan said softly. “But I’m worried about Uncle Song, and my big brothers and sisters…”
“I’m worried too.” Shen Budu mimicked his manner and lowered his voice as if negotiating. “How about this: we’ll sneak over to take just one look, and we won’t cause them any trouble. What do you say?”
Hearing this, Ruan Ruan nodded hard at once. “Okay!”
Shen Budu picked Ruan Ruan up, pushed open the door, and walked toward the front courtyard.
In the front courtyard at that moment, besides the few members of the Zhenshan Sect, four men of the Mad Wolf Gang were standing there. Each was tall and broad, wearing a wolf-fur hat decorated with pointed animal teeth hanging from it. The leader, a man with narrow squinting eyes, had his right foot planted on the smashed wooden fence and was idly swinging the wolf-tooth mace in his hand. Inside the pen, a flock of old hens, frightened, clucked as they scrambled into a corner, shivering with their feathers bunched up.
“Big brothers,” Song Yifan said, his face full of smiles and his manner very courteous. “Didn’t you just come a few days ago? What brings you to our door this time?”
“Stop playing dumb with me,” the squint-eyed man spat. “It’s time to pay the protection money. Hand it over quickly. This old man’s time is precious.”
“This… didn’t we just pay once a few days ago?” Song Yifan rubbed his hands and asked uneasily. “Could you gentlemen have remembered wrong?”
“Stop talking nonsense!” another man said impatiently, jabbing a threatening finger at him. “Will you pay or not? If you don’t, we’ll smash all of this!”
“Even collecting money should have a limit,” Li Xingyu said. He was naturally a shy person, but he showed no fear at all before these robbers. With a cold expression on his handsome face, he said, “If we give you all our money, what are we supposed to eat?”
“This old man doesn’t care whether you have food to eat or not!” The squint-eyed man lost the last of his patience. He stepped forward and reached out to grab Li Xingyu’s collar. “Brat, I’m warning you, don’t refuse a toast only to end up drinking the forfeit—”
A clear whistling sound split the air. The squint-eyed man was startled and immediately pulled his hand back. Almost at the same instant, a long saber whistled through the space between him and Li Xingyu and sank deep into the wooden post opposite.
The squint-eyed man’s eyelid twitched. He turned his head and fixed his eyes on the vivid red figure that had leapt into view, and said viciously, “Damn girl, it’s you again!”
“What are you calling this granny for?” Nie Weiyu sneered. She stepped forward and pulled the saber out of the wooden post, then, with a swish, pointed its blade at the tip of the squint-eyed man’s nose. Her voice was crisp and pleasant, like a string of crackling little chili peppers going off. “Have you sewn the crotch of your pants back together, the ones I shredded last time? Come to make a fool of yourself again, have you?”
The squint-eyed man’s face turned green all at once.
The Zhenshan Sect was one of the small sects that regularly paid tribute to them. It was poor and shabby, yet the two girls within it were strikingly pretty, and once they grew a little older, they would surely be rare great beauties. The first time they had come to the Zhenshan Sect, they had wanted to take this pair of sister flowers back to the Mad Wolf Gang. But Nie Weiyu and the boy called Li Xingyu knew a bit of martial arts and were not easy to deal with. On top of that, everyone else in the sect had fought desperately to protect their own, with an attitude of “take the money, but don’t even think about the girls, or we’ll die together with you.” So the squint-eyed man had abandoned the idea.
He was not stupid. He knew there was no benefit in a fight to the death where both the net and the fish were destroyed, so every visit afterward he had simply collected the money and left.
Who would have thought that while he did not bother to quarrel with these people, that damned girl called Nie Weiyu would not know what was good for her? The last time he came, he had only casually touched Gu Yanyu’s chin and teased her with a couple of remarks, and that girl Nie Weiyu had gone mad. She had charged up and slashed his pants to shreds with a single saber stroke, and after he went back, his brothers had laughed at him for days.
Had she not mentioned it, it would have been fine, but the moment she did, his anger flared up. He stepped forward with a savage grin. “Stinking girl, do you really think I can’t deal with you?”
Seeing the men’s expressions turn dangerous, Song Yifan immediately took a step forward in a single stride and shielded the children behind him. Beaming, he said repeatedly, “Big brother, calm down! The children are ignorant, so please don’t take it to heart…”
The squint-eyed man was in the middle of his rage and had no patience to listen to his nonsense. He raised his foot and kicked out. “Get lost!”
Song Yifan instantly became like a paper kite, floating off lightly for several zhang before crashing heavily to the ground.
“Uncle Song!!”
Li Xingyu and the others cried out in alarm and rushed forward to help Song Yifan up. The squint-eyed man was a cultivator, and having deliberately wanted to vent his anger just now, he had held nothing back in the kick. Song Yifan had been kicked square in the chest, his face turned pale, and a trail of blood immediately ran from the corner of his mouth.
He was only an ordinary person, and after taking that kick he felt as though all his internal organs had shifted out of place, the pain so great he wished he could faint. But he gasped for breath with all his strength, and the first thing he did after being helped up was to push the three children back behind him, giving them a stern look they had never seen from him before. Then he turned back to the squint-eyed man and put on a smile again. “B-big brother, calm down… cough, we have the money, we’ll give it to you right away…”
He pulled a heavy money pouch from inside his robe, and enduring the pain, stepped forward, bent at the waist, and offered up the pouch with both hands. The middle-aged man was covered in dust, his face a pale bluish-white, dried blood sticking to the corner of his mouth, and yet he bowed and nodded with a humble, fawning, ingratiating smile. The sight was truly not a pleasant one, but the three half-grown children watching it each felt their noses sting and their eyes burn, and they clenched their fists tightly.
The squint-eyed man saw that the pouch was thick, and seeing the man before him in such a wretched state, he felt most of his anger subside. Not bothering to haggle further with this broken-down sect, he waved his hand and led his gang members away.
Only then did the few people of the Zhenshan Sect let out a breath. They hurriedly helped Song Yifan into the house. Li Xingyu dashed off to fetch the medicine chest, but in his panic his mind went blank, and he could not tell which medicine to take at all. As he stood there at a complete loss, a hand rested lightly on his shoulder. “Do you have Water Rhyme Pills and White Jade Ointment?”
Li Xingyu looked up and saw Shen Budu bending down to ask him. He answered instinctively, “Yes!”
“Have him take three Water Rhyme Pills orally, then apply the White Jade Ointment to the wounds,” Shen Budu said. “Don’t panic. His injuries aren’t too serious, and they’ll ease after he takes the medicine.”
In his desperation, Li Xingyu would grasp at any help, and he did not stop to verify whether Shen Budu’s prescription was reliable. He quickly found the medicine bottles and fed the pills to Song Yifan.
Fortunately, after taking the medicine, Song Yifan’s complexion did indeed improve considerably. He patted the children’s hands one by one, signaling that he was fine and telling them not to worry. Nie Weiyu was full of self-reproach and anger at once. “Next time they come, I will absolutely not let them off!”
“Hiss.” Song Yifan coughed and shook his head, looking at her with the helpless, indulgent expression one gives a willful child. “Little ancestor, you still haven’t cooled down? If you ask me, that temper of yours really does need to change. Actually, what that man said was right. It isn’t that they can’t deal with us. The only reason they haven’t gone all out is that they can still get benefits from us. If we really anger them, I’m afraid our whole sect wouldn’t be enough for them to crush for fun.”
Nie Weiyu frowned and wanted to retort, but she was interrupted by an old voice from the doorway. “Yifan is right.”
Everyone said together, “Zhongbo!”
Zhongbo walked unsteadily over to Nie Weiyu, shook his head, and sighed. “If you don’t rein in that temper of yours, you will bring great trouble down on us.”
Nie Weiyu stiffened her neck. “I—”
“I know that you rely on having a bit of skill, so you don’t take those people seriously. But two fists cannot beat four hands, and even a fierce tiger fears a pack of wolves. Don’t you understand that?” Zhongbo glanced at the girl. “Besides, you are only a little tiger whose teeth haven’t even grown sharp yet.”
Nie Weiyu gritted her teeth and clenched her fists.
“Not showing weakness before enemies, and wanting to protect your companions, that is very good. But you must also learn to yield and be flexible,” Zhongbo said. “Yifan is right. The reason the Mad Wolf Gang hasn’t gone all out is that they want to keep getting benefits from us. Their gang has a full two hundred members. If one day they all swarmed into the Zhenshan Sect together, how many people do you think you could protect with that saber in your hand?”
Nie Weiyu was silent for a moment, then suddenly raised her head. “I know I act impulsively, and it was my fault that Uncle Song was hurt. But do we have to keep being bullied by them for no reason at all?”
“Last time he wanted to take advantage of Yanyu, and this time he wanted to lay hands on Xingyu. Am I supposed to stand by and watch with my own eyes?” Nie Weiyu said, enunciating every word. “The weaker and easier to bully we are, the more they push their luck, and the less they take us seriously!”
Zhongbo looked at the girl’s stubborn, reddened eyes and sighed. His expression suddenly turned somewhat weary. “What you say makes sense. But child, we don’t have the capital to be tough.”
The air fell silent.
It was true. No one was willing to be humiliated, and no one was willing to be oppressed forever without resisting, but the reality was this: they were too weak.
A small sect of fewer than ten people already found it difficult enough to survive amid the storms and turmoil. What capital did they have to stand up against the hundred-strong Mad Wolf Gang?
Nie Weiyu took a deep breath and said quietly, “I’m going to practice my saber,” and left without looking back. Gu Yanyu hurried out after her. Shen Budu stood in the doorway, feeling the heavy, oppressive atmosphere spreading through the room, and his brows drew faintly together.