There was a chivalrous air about Guo Jing now—one look and you knew: this man was a hero, loyal to the marrow and true to the bone.
After trading that single exchange with Ouyang Feng, Guo Jing didn't press the attack. He rode the momentum to Yin Zhiping's side instead.
"Would you be Taoist Master Yin of the Quanzhen Sect?"
After the last mistaken identity, Guo Jing had learned his lesson—no more greeting people by name on sight, even at nine parts certainty.
That white Taoist robe was rather hard to miss, after all.
"Hero Guo. It has been many years—I trust you've been well. Might I ask whether my junior brothers have reached Xiangyang?"
Yin Zhiping remembered this protagonist of the Condor Heroes era vividly—once one of his own favorite characters, in fact.
One line—"the greatest heroism is to serve one's country and its people"—had won the man how many devoted readers?
Ouyang Feng, for his part, made no rash move either. Mad as he was, and without recognizing Guo Jing, he could feel that the newcomer was no easy meat. He had no confidence he could carry his son off past this man's interference—to say nothing of the fact that his son didn't want to go.
Still, Ouyang Feng did not give up.
"Son, that man might be my mortal enemy! Come with papa, quick—stay far away from him. If he goes for you, papa might not reach you in time!"
He was still at it, still trying to coax Yin Zhiping away.
Yin Zhiping could only feel a weary helplessness. He'd said it countless times—I am not your son—and the man simply would not listen, would he?
"Taoist Master Yin, Taoist Master Li and the others are inside Xiangyang, waiting for your return. Only... you and Ouyang Feng, this is—? Could you not explain it to him?"
It wasn't that Guo Jing believed Yin Zhiping would take a villain for a father. No one alive knew the enmity between Ouyang Feng and the Quanzhen lineage better than Guo Jing.
"There is no explaining it. Words are useless. He has simply decided, beyond appeal, that I am his son."
Yin Zhiping spread his hands—the picture of a man who had genuinely run out of options where Ouyang Feng was concerned.
"It seems it wasn't only the title of number one under heaven—Ouyang Ke's death struck him just as hard."
Who could say otherwise? The man had been his own child—borne, no less, by his sister-in-law. A love that forbidden must have run deep indeed.
While Yin Zhiping and Guo Jing talked, Ouyang Feng saw his precious son standing there unmoving, and panicked outright.
He folded away the Toad Skill, swung up into his handstand, and brought out the reversed Nine Yin Manual.
Above, his feet lashed out in a storm; below, his hands were anything but idle.
He bypassed Yin Zhiping entirely—and went for Guo Jing.
And who was Guo Jing? Ouyang Feng's oldest sparring partner, near enough. Even with the reversed Nine Yin Manual, the man could not outmatch Guo Jing's orthodox original.
The only reason Guo Jing had lost to him at that Mount Hua Sword Contest was the shallowness of his accumulation in those years.
Things were different now.
Dragon Appears in the Field.
Say what you would—next to the Nine Yin Manual, it was still the Eighteen Dragon-Subduing Palms that sat closest to Guo Jing's heart.
This time Yin Zhiping saw it clearly. Guo Jing's Eighteen Dragon-Subduing Palms carried no dazzling flourish: true essence driven through the palms, straight at the enemy—the hard, head-on road of pure ferocity.
No wonder busybodies called it the most dominant palm art under heaven.
It earned the name.
Ouyang Feng gave not an inch. True essence sheathed both feet, and with a swaying weave he scattered Guo Jing's palm-force.
Guo Jing leapt into the air, palms alternating downward from on high, with the momentum of a descending dragon and the majesty of absolute hardness.
Flying Dragon in the Sky.
Ouyang Feng dismantled it move for move, feet and hands together; even Flying Dragon in the Sky's qi-force did nothing to him.
Yin Zhiping raised his sword. Time to join in.
His feet tapped the earth; the long sword wove; the Vast Billows Sword form was already blooming.
Guo Jing knew the Quanzhen arts as well as anything alive—one glance told him this was the Quanzhen Swordplay the Seven Masters themselves used most.
Shock Spreads a Hundred Li.
Guo Jing's single palm hammered out, palm-force wrapped around deep, thick true essence, pouring forth like a bursting river.
Guo Jing and Yin Zhiping closed the pincer, Ouyang Feng caught between them.
Ouyang Feng's attention had stayed fixed on Guo Jing. The attack from Yin Zhiping—from his precious son—fell outside every calculation.
In that scrambling instant, Ouyang Feng chose to meet Guo Jing's Shock Spreads a Hundred Li with everything he had, and let his son's Vast Billows Sword be.
If his boy wanted to stick him with one sword-stroke, then let the boy stick him. But that so-called mortal enemy would not be allowed to draw his blood.
That was the single thought that flashed through Ouyang Feng's mind.
Hands and feet together, Ouyang Feng gathered one great wave of force and hurled it to meet Guo Jing's incoming palm.
The collision of true essence went off like a detonation; the scattering shockwave shoved Guo Jing and Ouyang Feng apart.
Even Li Zhichang and the others, still hurrying over, saw that distant burst of force set the whole sky rippling.
The fight had started. They pushed faster.
Blasted backward, Ouyang Feng tumbled straight into the path of the arriving Yin Zhiping—and having spent everything on Guo Jing's blow, his old strength exhausted, his new strength not yet born, he had nothing left with which to resist or dodge.
Ouyang Feng could only eat the Vast Billows Sword raw.
Even Guo Jing thought: today Ouyang Feng is badly wounded at last—perhaps even taken alive.
But to Guo Jing's astonishment, at the instant the point should have struck home, Yin Zhiping's blade drifted one cun off line. Aimed at the chest—it took the right shoulder instead.
By then Ouyang Feng's new strength had risen. Thick true essence sheathed his palm as he struck at Yin Zhiping's sword-hand.
Yin Zhiping seemed to have foreseen exactly that. His left hand—the Vast Heaven Palm, long since drawn and waiting—met Ouyang Feng's palm-force square.
The palms touched and parted. Borrowing the very force Yin Zhiping lent him, Ouyang Feng sailed away, far and fast.
Even a madman knew the ground had turned bad. Stay longer today, and the odds ran grim.
Fleeing calamity is every creature's instinct. Ouyang Feng seized the opening and was gone without a backward glance.
"Taoist Master Yin, that... was that not releasing the tiger back to the mountain?"
Guo Jing had been in the same helpless position himself at that moment, feet only just finding the ground, unable to act.
But his eyes were sharp. That one cun had been deliberate—unmistakably.
"Hero Guo, my thanks for the timely aid. But Ouyang Feng is mad. And these past days, besides hounding me, he also helped me temper my martial arts. I kept him fed in exchange—yet by my ledger, I still owed him a little. Consider it repaid. I beg your understanding."
A kindness was a kindness; a grudge was a grudge. Yin Zhiping kept the accounts separate, and kept them exactly.
He had spared the man this once. Given another chance, his hand would not soften again.
Likewise: Guo Jing had helped him today, and Yin Zhiping would repay that debt in the defense of the city.
And besides—what standing did Guo Jing, of all people, have to lecture him?
Back when the man suspected Old Heretic Huang of murdering the Five Freaks of Jiangnan, he'd thrown his life at the man, and his mouth had been anything but clean—every ugly word ready at the lip.
Then the truth came out that Ouyang Feng was the killer, and suddenly the mouth was mild again—and he politely let the man walk away. Three times. Only a lovestruck fool like Huang Rong would let that pass without a word, seeing nothing but his virtues.
It was absurd!!!
Naturally, Yin Zhiping said none of this aloud.
"Hero Guo, the pressing matter is Xiangyang. Ouyang Feng, mad as he is, would not be easily killed—why pour that much time and strength into him?"
Guo Jing accepted the explanation.
Never a man of words, he felt something was off somewhere—and couldn't for the life of him say what.