Mister Feng laughed unbridledly and unscrupulously in front of Chen Ji, laughing heartily and thoroughly.
Laughing to the end, he placed his hand on Chen Ji's shoulder and bent over laughing, startling a flock of birds in the mountain forest into taking flight and circling in the night sky.
Chen Ji stood leaning on his blade. The edge of the blade was in close proximity to this Mister Feng, yet the other party seemed completely oblivious to it, or perhaps, the other party had never worried about what a minor Practitioner in the Houtian Stage could possibly do to him.
Chen Ji looked down at Mister Feng in front of him, considering whether to take the opportunity to kill the other party with a single slash. However, after sizing him up for a long time, he discovered... there were no openings.
That hand seemingly casually resting on his shoulder would definitely be faster than his blade.
After a long time, Mister Feng straightened his back and wiped the tears from the corners of his eyes with his thumb. "The young man is truly humorous. One moment you were still persuading me to abandon the dark and join the light, and the next moment you cleanly and decisively changed your colors."
Chen Ji said seriously, "Since a smart person like Mister Feng is willing to follow the Liu Family, presumably the Liu Family must possess outstanding qualities that I am unaware of."
Mister Feng stared at him with a half-smile. "You've said all the words. Let me ask you, what conditions do you have for working for me?"
Chen Ji pondered for a moment. "Let the Prince Heir and the Commandery Princess go."
"It's that simple?"
"It's that simple."
Mister Feng thought for a minute and said, "I cannot make the decision on this matter. Change the condition."
Chen Ji said helplessly, "If Mister Feng can't even make decisions on such a trivial matter, then what's the point of staying in the Liu Family? You might as well come with me to Prince Jing's Estate."
Mister Feng didn't know whether to laugh or cry. "You say that as if you can make decisions for the Prince's Estate. What if I say I want thirty thousand taels of silver a year?"
Chen Ji: "Alright."
Mister Feng looked at Chen Ji, dumbfounded and speechless. After a moment, he sighed, "You really dare to agree to anything. I clearly know you're stalling for time, yet I couldn't help but want to hear what kind of nonsense you could spout out in order to survive. However, I don't need to personally arrest the Prince Heir and the Commandery Princess myself. What use is there for you to just stall me?"
Chen Ji said earnestly, "Mister has misunderstood. I sincerely wish to work for Mister."
Mister Feng ignored his nonsense and lowered his head, pondering. "What on earth are you stalling for time for?"
"Waiting for Prince Jing? What a pity that all the experts beside Prince Jing over these past few years have been eliminated by the Directorate of Ceremonial; waiting for the Secret Spy Division? The Secret Spy Division is far away in Luo City, and it's fundamentally impossible for them to know what happened here..."
Mister Feng looked up at Chen Ji, his smile growing even wider. "Young man, it seems you have no way out."
This time, Chen Ji remained silent.
He seemed to have caught on to something from Mister Feng's words. Something felt off, but for a moment, he couldn't figure out exactly what was wrong.
Mister Feng smiled and patted his shoulder. "I know you must be waiting for something, but it doesn't matter. If you want to stall for time, I will stall for time with you. I heard that you beat Prince Jing and Zhang Zhuo in chess. I haven't had the chance to play chess with those two, so why don't you play a game with me?"
"Alright."
Chen Ji felt a bit strange.
This Mister Feng did not seem like someone who would get carried away. The other party could clearly kill him right now, which would be the smart thing to do. Yet, the other party inexplicably was willing to wait along with him.
He was waiting for reinforcements, but what was the other party waiting for?
Mister Feng waved to his back. "Jiang Yan, fetch the chessboard and the chess pieces from the saddle!"
Not far away, two warhorses were tethered to a dead tree.
Jiang Yan reached into the saddlebag, pulled out a handful of beans, and fed them to the warhorse. Then, he took out a cloth chessboard from another side of the saddlebag, returned, and spread it out flatly on the ground.
Chen Ji and Mister Feng sat cross-legged under the moon.
Mister Feng looked Chen Ji in the eye. "We will play fast chess. Each move cannot exceed ten breaths. If you haven't moved after ten breaths, Jiang Yan will chop off your head from the side and send it back to the Liu Family's grand residence; if the person you're waiting for hasn't arrived by the time this game is over, you will also have to die."
Having said that, he surprisingly took the black pieces and played the first move.
Chen Ji silently counted breaths and placed a white piece at the last moment. Just as his fingers left the chess cloth, Mister Feng had already placed the second black piece.
Every time, Chen Ji stalled until the last breath, whereas Mister Feng never hesitated.
After just a few short moves, he suddenly frowned.
The agility and sharpness of this Mister Feng's thinking was something he had rarely seen in his life. The other party used the worry-free corner as a defensive posture. His white piece had just crashed into it, and the other party immediately played wide and sweeping moves, opening up another battlefield without getting tangled up in a fight with him.
This person's thinking was on the overall situation, not in a single corner.
Chen Ji's chess skills weren't exceptionally strong, but the chess moves he learned from AlphaGo had never been defeated so quickly before.
If these moves were the result of the other party deliberating for a long time, he could still understand, but this Mister Feng broke the board without a second thought!
At this time, Mister Feng's gaze left the chess cloth, and he looked up at Chen Ji teasingly. "These chess moves aren't your own, right? Why do they feel so rigid and dull when you use them?"
Chen Ji was shocked; he was actually seen through!
In his moment of distraction, Jiang Yan by the side slowly raised the edge of his blade. He hastily placed a piece on the chess cloth.
Mister Feng was instantly dissatisfied. "Terrible move, terrible move. This move was affected by my talking just now. I'll allow you to take it back!"
Saying so, he picked up the white piece Chen Ji had just placed and tossed it back into Chen Ji's hand. "Giving you another ten breaths!"
Chen Ji took a deep look at Mister Feng, then took a deep breath and looked toward the chess cloth. At the moment the last breath was about to pass, he placed the white piece near the bottom at the 'Autumn' position.
Mister Feng's eyes lit up, and he praised, "What immense audacity, young man! Now this looks like your own chess style. I didn't know where you picked up those scraps from earlier; you learned it into a completely nondescript mess."
Chen Ji didn't pay any attention to him. He just stared silently at the chessboard, motionless, as if he had discarded the outside world.
The swaying branches, the blown dead leaves, the sparrows under the moon, all fell silent.
The two of them exchanged moves continuously on the chess cloth, playing faster and faster. On the chess cloth, Chen Ji's weakening white dragon rampaged through the corner, narrowly almost carving out a bloody path from within heavy encirclement several times.
As he placed a piece, Mister Feng said, "This technique for managing isolated groups truly has essence, qi, and spirit. No wonder you could slaughter your way all the way here. Young man, a talent-cherishing heart has arisen within me again. If you can work for me, I will help you fulfill a wish. How about it? It's just that I have a great use for the Prince Heir and Commandery Princess, so I cannot agree to that matter for you."
Chen Ji replied without raising his head, "Alright."
Mister Feng smiled. He wasn't annoyed; he just casually placed a piece on the chess cloth.
In an instant, Chen Ji's white dragon could no longer make a single move.
Holding a white piece between his fingers, he hesitated for a long time, not knowing where to place it. It was a dead end.
One breath, two breaths, three breaths...
Ten breaths.
Mister Feng sighed with emotion, "The people you were waiting for didn't arrive in the end. Although I developed a talent-cherishing heart, for characters like you, it is still more reassuring to kill them while they are insignificant."
Beside Chen Ji, Jiang Yan silently raised his blade and chopped down like a thunderbolt. However, as if Chen Ji had long been prepared, he gripped the hilt of the Whale Blade and swung upward!
However, the blade that was absolutely certain to sever Jiang Yan's wrist missed.
Jiang Yan's wrist stopped just barely on the edge of the blade's trajectory. Powerful control allowed him to evade this blade, and only then did he strike down again.
This was a crushing defeat brought on by the difference in realms!
Xiantian Stage!
Gripping the blade, Chen Ji rolled backward in a sorry state to dodge the slash. He then got up and fled toward the mountain forest without looking back. He had stalled all the time he could, and he had done everything he could do; at this moment, he could only flee!
He glanced back, only to see Mister Feng slowly getting up from the ground, seemingly not intending to chase him.
Chen Ji ran for hundreds of paces. As he ran, he was shocked to find something wrong...
He slowly stopped in his tracks, looking from afar at two tall warhorses tethered to a tree. Jiang Yan stood by the horses, gazing coldly at him while feeding beans to the warhorses.
Further away, Mister Feng smiled and said, "Where are you trying to run to?"
Chen Ji slowly retreated backward.
Ghost Building Walls? No, this was the method of a Practitioner.
He looked around, not letting a single clue slip by. But this mountain forest was just an ordinary mountain forest; he couldn't discern the slightest anomaly.
Run!
Chen Ji ran another hundreds of paces. This time, he ran to the other side of the warhorse, and Jiang Yan was facing away from him, feeding beans to the warhorse.
Weird.
It was too weird!
Mister Feng said loudly, "Stop wasting your efforts. This is Jiang Yan's Eight Gates Golden Lock Formation; ordinary people can't escape."
Right as the words fell, a "meow" echoed from behind Chen Ji. He abruptly turned around and headed straight for the source of the sound!
Following the sound, he ran for hundreds of paces. He didn't circle back to the original spot; instead, he crashed into an invisible wall.
"Open!"
Chen Ji roared angrily and swung his blade. The Whale Blade struck the air, as if tearing through a canvas. The world was completely renewed, and even the mountain wind became a bit more irritable.
Mister Feng let out a soft exclamation of surprise, "Interesting."
"Mister, should we pursue?"
Mister Feng smiled, "What's there to pursue? He took the Gate of Scenery (Jing Men); wait for him to come back."
"Yes."
Mister Feng stood with his hands behind his back, humming lightly, "The Gate of Scenery governs bloodshed, lawsuits leading to selling estates and manors. Disasters and calamities should be aplenty, descendants suffer torment. Relatives perish outside and die violently, the six domestic animals also see injury. Parting in life and separation by death; those who enter must beware. Haha, must beware."
In the mountain forest, Chen Ji sprinted madly. He didn't wait for the people he had hoped to wait for, but he waited for his cat.
As he passed by a large tree, Wu Yun leaped down from the tree crown and landed lightly on his shoulder.
It extended its paw and touched Chen Ji's ear. An enormous Molten Flow poured down, igniting the furnace fires in Chen Ji's body one after another!
Forty-two, forty-three, forty-four... Fifty-six lamps!
Chen Ji only felt that the exhaustion from previous close-quarters combat completely vanished; it was as if he had gained a new lease on life!
But he ran for hundreds of paces, then gradually slowed his footsteps.
Expressionlessly, Chen Ji plucked Wu Yun off his shoulder and tossed it into the mountain forest, then continued walking forward.
The mountain forest parted like ocean waves, and he saw Mister Feng, holding the transverse flute, standing by the bluestone. He asked with a beaming smile, "Where did you go for a stroll that it took you so long to come back?"
Chen Ji frowned, could he not escape even with this?!
Mister Feng walked toward him holding the transverse flute. The long green tassels dangling from the transverse flute swayed back and forth, almost sweeping the ground.
He said slowly and methodically, "Everyone has dreamed the dream of youthful chivalry, but what it ultimately brings in exchange are all lessons. Young man, stop struggling. I promise you, I will take your complete corpse back to the Liu Family... Hmm?"
Before he could finish speaking, the sky brightened tremendously.
A streak of white light went from far to near, illuminating the mountains.
Chen Ji suddenly looked back, only to see a shooting star like a white Tian Ma shattering the canopy of heaven, tracing a soul-stirring parabola as it flew over from the vast distance.
Boom! This arrow seemed to have shattered something; the world shattered like colored glaze.
On the other side, a fire suddenly started burning in Jiang Yan's sleeve. He slapped his sleeve forcefully, dropping out half of a burning talisman paper.
He looked up at Mister Feng. "Mister!"
Mister Feng ignored him and instead looked at Chen Ji. Suddenly realizing, he said, "So what you were waiting for was Tian Ma."
(End of Chapter)