On the way to the cafeteria, Wei Linchun and Bai Jingyou compared the thoughts they’d just been having.
Wei Linchun said, a little cautiously, “I heard she knows kung fu. That can’t be true, can it?”
Bai Jingyou scoffed. “Even if she does, it’s the small-time kind, all flashy fists and fancy footwork [1]showy but useless technique jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_2943102_1_1').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_2943102_1_1', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });, nothing more. Otherwise, how could she have swallowed it for the past two years?”
Actually, she wasn’t entirely sure either.
Her grandfather had told her that with someone who truly knew martial arts, you could tell from their body language. But she’d observed Yang Zengyue for a long time and hadn’t found any trace of a martial practitioner in her.
As for the look on Yang Zengyue’s face just now, she chose to ignore it.
Wei Linchun said, “The people in the sports department all say her speed has definitely been trained.”
But Yang Zengyue hadn’t been admitted as an athletic-talent student. Her major was the best one at Nanyuan University, with a very high admission cutoff back then. And Yang Zengyue had been admitted as the top scorer, and had held the number-one spot in the year ever since.
Bai Jingyou’s tone turned scornful. “I know a few guys from the sports department who studied sanda. They’ve graduated now and opened a martial arts training class outside. I’ll get a few of them to teach her a lesson, teach her how to behave, otherwise she won’t know how high the sky is or how deep the earth. [2]she doesn’t know her place jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_2943102_1_2').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_2943102_1_2', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });”
Bai Jingyou, used to being queen of her own household, could never swallow the mouthful of anger from earlier. In a flash she thought of a few “brothers” on good terms with the Bai family. It was true they’d opened a martial arts training class, and their kung fu had even earned her grandfather’s praise. If they agreed to help her vent this grudge, then she’d graciously invite them to the next Bai family banquet.
The two whispered their plan. They’d found Yang Zengyue an eyesore for a long time now.
Wei Linchun was secretly thrilled. Bai Jingyou’s connections were excellent, with her stepping in, Yang Zengyue was sure to end up in a wretched state.
She could just sit back and enjoy the show.
Hmph. Who told the boy she liked to like Yang Zengyue instead? Ever since she’d found out, she’d kept it in her heart, convinced Yang Zengyue had “sedu~ced” the man she’d set her sights on.
She’d wanted to find someone to teach her a lesson for ages. Now she finally had a reason. And an opportunity.
The Nanyuan Bai family surely had capable people.
That village girl Yang Zengyue didn’t know Bai Jingyou’s true status, but Bai Jingyou had heard plenty about it from her family, which was exactly why she’d always fawned over Bai Jingyou.
Yang Zengyue, meanwhile, cared nothing about all this. She quietly worked out the feasibility of her plan, and still had forgotten coursework to make up. These past few days she’d been up nearly every night.
So as not to disturb the others, she rented a room outside the school. When she got tired of studying, she’d research materials, and she also contacted her childhood friend Fan Jinggang, telling him to have the materials she needed ready so she could use them the moment she got back.
Fan Jinggang asked nothing. Within a few days he’d helped procure everything and had it all hauled to the foot of Sikun Mountain.
By late June, Yang Zengyue had finished all her exams and booked her high-speed rail ticket back to Sikun Mountain. As for that matter Yan Lingjun had spoken to her about, she wasn’t going to give it any thought at all.
On her way out of the school toward the rail station, Yang Zengyue was stopped by four muscular men.
She narrowed her almond eyes. She caught sight of a face at the back, its figure blocked by the other three, and it startled her, because this was a person she knew all too well.
In the seven years of the apocalypse, they had worked together on the same team for three of them.
In their final mission, he had been gravely wounded and settled by the team in a cave to recover. He was the one most likely to leave Zhaoqi Mountain alive, the only one, in fact. Ren Xiyuan.
Yang Zengyue tossed her backpack lightly to the ground, balled both hands into fists, stepped her right foot back, and readied herself to fight, not a shred of hesitation about it.
Seeing her movements, Ren Xiyuan knew this was a professional, not the flashy amateur Bai Jingyou had described.
Yang Zengyue said mockingly, “Bai Jingyou sent you, didn’t she?”
Her two “good” roommates actually knew Ren Xiyuan, that was something she hadn’t guessed. And that Ren Xiyuan would come to give her a “show of force” over a single word from Bai Jingyou… the relationship between these two would need some careful looking into.
The three men in front were clearly taking their orders from Ren Xiyuan. After turning to glance at him, the three surrounded Yang Zengyue. Without a word, they went straight in with their fists.
Yang Zengyue quickly twisted aside, reached out and gripped the fist of the fastest man, then wrenched it back hard. With a crisp “crack,” she snapped his wrist clean.
The man cried out in pain—”Agh, my hand, my hand’s broken…”
Seeing this, the other two sped up their attack. Yang Zengyue crouched and swept her right leg, tripping the man charging in, then stamped down viciously on his back. Her strength was so great that the man couldn’t get up at all.
The last man broke into a cold sweat at the sight. This girl smiled like a blooming flower, yet gave no quarter at all when she struck. And at that moment there was a thick killing intent on that beautiful face, he didn’t dare press forward.
Ren Xiyuan had been watching the fight between the four the whole time, and found that his three friends had no power to resist whatsoever. Her movements were fast, ruthless, and precise, her reactions sharp, the other three couldn’t even follow what she was doing.
Clearly, this person had a foundation in kung fu, and no shallow one.
Bai Jingyou and the others’ exact words had been: even if she knows kung fu, it’s nothing but some three-legged-cat flashy fists. [3]amateurish, half-baked skill jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_2943102_1_3').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_2943102_1_3', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });
She’d misjudged.
How could a flower raised in a greenhouse ever grasp how formidable someone becomes after diligently training through the bitter cold and scorching heat?
Still, thinking of the Bai family behind Bai Jingyou, Ren Xiyuan decided he’d give it a try himself. He told the other three to get lost to the side.
Yang Zengyue watched, unhurried, as Ren Xiyuan walked toward her. The face before her still looked quite young. As for his strength, it couldn’t compare at all to the Ren Xiyuan of seven years into the apocalypse.
Seeing him make a “please” gesture in keeping with a martial practitioner’s etiquette, Yang Zengyue returned the same courtesy.
That in his youth he would actually obey Bai Jingyou’s word left Yang Zengyue rather struck.
Still, fight first, talk later.
Ren Xiyuan’s moves weren’t exactly gentle, but they couldn’t be called fierce either, clearly he had no intention of putting her in a fatal spot. He only wanted to teach her a lesson and make her lose a little face.
In no time at all, Ren Xiyuan discovered that even in a pure contest of strength, he was no match for Yang Zengyue. This girl who looked so delicate and frail had boundless strength.
In all their ordinary dealings, Bai Jingyou had never noticed this, or rather, she’d never cared enough to.
Right now Yang Zengyue was using less than a tenth of the strength she’d had at her past peak. With Ren Xiyuan’s current body, one that hadn’t yet been tempered by the apocalypse, if she truly brought out her power, he couldn’t take a single move. Those three moves earlier had only been out of the sentiment of three years serving on the same team, so she hadn’t let him lose too badly.
As for everything else, she would investigate it thoroughly herself.
Ren Xiyuan found that he could barely last three moves under Yang Zengyue’s hands, and his face had already gone ashen. He pressed together those thin, rather cold-hearted-looking lips, the defeat had turned him somewhat grim. This was a side of him Yang Zengyue had never seen.
She arched her delicate brows and lowered her eyes, hiding the doubt in them.
After Ren Xiyuan joined her team, he had always behaved himself. In the final battle he’d been the first to be wounded, so they’d settled him in a cave. And now, no sooner had she come back than she’d found him keeping close ties with the Bai family, and by the looks of it, still infatuated with Bai Jingyou.
In those three years of living and dying together through the apocalypse, all she’d known was that Ren Xiyuan had a beloved sweetheart, one she’d never actually met. Could that person be Bai Jingyou?
Those three moves had been deliberate on Yang Zengyue’s part, precisely to test this teammate she’d once “shared life and death” with. Since he’d known the Bai family people all along, and to the point of being willing to stick his neck out for Bai Jingyou, then why had he joined her team in the first place?
After all, her grudges with the Bai family during the apocalypse were far from one or two.
There was only one possibility: he was a chess piece of the Bai family, and had entered her team for some ulterior purpose.
Linking this to how their movements had always somehow been discovered by others, Yang Zengyue understood completely.
Ren Xiyuan’s appearance made her realize all of it was suspect. Before her death she had already worked out that it was a trap, she’d simply been stretched too thin by then.
Retreat, and everyone on Zhaoqi Mountain would end up in the beasts’ bellies, advance, and she and the others could save all of them. They had chosen the latter. They saved the six thousand survivors of Zhaoqi Mountain.
Ren Xiyuan, in the end, must have been rescued. The people behind him would surely have left him a way out, they wouldn’t have let him die in that cave. Or perhaps Ren Xiyuan had been wounded on purpose. The more Yang Zengyue thought about it, the deeper it went, and the more suspicious it seemed.
Still, she decided to set the matter of Ren Xiyuan aside for now. She had more important things to handle back at Sikun Mountain first. Once she’d settled things there, she would return to Nanyuan before the winter month arrived, and pay a visit to the Bai family and the other clans.
She gave the four of them a glance, bent down and picked up her backpack, patted off the dust, slung it over her shoulder, and left.
The other three watched her stroll off with an easy, carefree back, feeling the whole thing had been an utter humiliation.
The man Yang Zengyue had stamped on gritted his teeth and said, in a tone as if he wanted to swallow her whole, “Xiyuan, today’s humiliation, we have to get it back someday.”
Ren Xiyuan spoke coolly. “Get it back with what? With the little we’ve got, do you really think it’s possible?”
With that, Ren Xiyuan strode off. He had to go back and tell his grandfather about today. The Ren family’s kung fu, while not top-tier in Nanyuan, was absolutely not flashy fists and fancy footwork. He’d trained since the age of three, and by now had kept at it for a full twenty-two years, ranking among the best in all of Nanyuan.
Yet under Yang Zengyue’s hand he’d lasted only three moves. Even granting Yang Zengyue extraordinary talent, this defied all reason.
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