The road home was peaceful.
Perhaps because they'd cleaned house on the way down, the bandits and highwaymen they met were few—nothing like the journey out.
And say what you would, they were men fresh off a battlefield. Some of that slaughter-air clung to them; ordinary folk couldn't have named it, but they could feel it: this party was not to be trifled with.
The lands around Mount Zhongnan had not yet fallen to the Mongols—though Yin Zhiping, who knew the original story well, knew it was only a matter of time.
The day would come when the Song dynasty huddled in its corner of the map, and the realm split in two along the line of Xiangyang—Song on one side, Mongol rule on the other.
That was also why the Mongols hadn't pressed Xiangyang with their full weight this time.
It had been a trial run. Take the city if it fell easily—then mass the armies, drive through, and snuff out the once-glorious Great Song in one campaign.
And if it didn't fall? No matter. Occupy everything else first, then concentrate force and grind the city down at leisure.
The hardest bone is always saved for last. Only when it finally cracks do you taste the sweetest marrow.
***
A month later, Yin Zhiping led his junior brothers back through the gates of the Quanzhen Sect.
Having dismissed them to rest and recover, he went to Chongyang Palace to pay his respects to his master and martial elders.
They had been waiting a long while.
"Your disciple greets Master, and my Martial Uncles and Aunt. I have not disgraced my charge—the junior brothers are home, all of them safe."
Seven rush cushions sat in Chongyang Palace. Five held their masters now; the other two belonged to the departed—Ma Yu and Tan Chuduan.
The Seven Masters had been close as born brothers, so the two cushions stayed exactly where they had always been, as if the two men were still among them.
"Zhiping! This battle at Xiangyang has swelled our sect's name beyond measure! The whole world is saying it—the Quanzhen Sect is about to flourish! Hahahaha!"
From the moment Yin Zhiping entered, the smile had not once left Qiu Chuji's face.
He looked at the disciple before him with eyes full to the brim—pride, satisfaction, delight!
Look!
All of you, look!
My disciple!
"It was Master who saved this disciple's life from the bandits all those years ago. Everything I am today began there. I have never forgotten it."
A courtesy, yes—but an honest one. Without Qiu Chuji he'd have died long ago; there would be no cultivation to speak of.
Every sip and every peck—all of it decreed by heaven.
"Zhiping, you should have seen him! When word came of your great battle against the Mongol masters at Xiangyang, your master was so happy he talked in his sleep—'I have such a fine disciple!'—hahahaha!!!"
Wang Chuyi grinned as he dragged his senior brother's embarrassing episode into the light, and Sun Bu'er, Hao Datong, and Liu Chuxuan roared with laughter.
Yin Zhiping kept his smile in place. It was his own master, after all—warm in the chest, but it wouldn't do to show it.
"Nonsense. I have never talked in my sleep in my life."
Qiu Chuji didn't truly mind—jokes between martial siblings, seasoning for the mood, that was all.
He was happy today. He chose to file it all under jealousy.
"Zhiping. We hear that on this trip down the mountain, you met that old venom Ouyang Feng?"
The laughter done, it was time for real matters.
Anything touching Ouyang Feng was no ordinary business.
That Yin Zhiping's party had run into him—Qiu Chuji and the others could not help reading deeper into it.
The grudge between Quanzhen and Ouyang Feng went all the way back to Wang Chongyang.
In those years, Wang Chongyang had feigned death to bait Ouyang Feng into coming to steal the Nine Yin Manual—then broken his Toad Skill with the One Yang Finger, the art he'd traded from Lord Duan of the Five Greats. Ouyang Feng had spent a long convalescence on that wound.
From that day on, he had nursed his hatred of the Quanzhen Sect.
Later, he had killed Tan Chuduan of the Seven Masters.
But after the last Mount Hua Sword Contest, Ouyang Feng had gone mad.
And Qiu Chuji had thought: mad is mad—let the ledger close with it.
Better that than Quanzhen disciples going out of their way to provoke the man.
He had never dreamed his own disciple would run into him on a rare trip down the mountain.
"Master, we did meet Ouyang Feng. He mistook me for his son. With the junior brothers' safety in mind, I drew him off, and we made for Xiangyang by two separate roads.
He dogged me the whole way. Near Xiangyang, Hero Guo lent his aid, and together we drove Ouyang Feng off."
Yin Zhiping gave the plain version. In truth there was nothing to it—pure coincidence.
Who could have predicted that Ouyang Feng, wandering at random, would stumble across the descending party—and be so taken by Yin Zhiping's bearing and looks that he decided the man was Ouyang Ke?
If blame had to land somewhere, it landed on Yin Zhiping being too handsome and dressing too sharp.
One white robe, an air of standing above the dust—and what did it reel in? Not a single pretty girl. One decrepit old man.
Where does a man even file that complaint...
Though it did prove one thing: Ouyang Feng's eye was genuinely discerning.
In the original story, across all those years, the man had refused everyone—and then claimed Yang Guo, of all people, for a son.
And in Return of the Condor Heroes, Yang Guo was not merely the protagonist. He was the story's certified heartthrob.
"One look at Yang Guo ruins a lifetime"—the line was written about Guo Xiang, but wasn't it the honest epitaph of half the women in the book?
Lu Wushuang, Cheng Ying, Gongsun Lü'e—all of them loved Yang Guo, and none of them got him.
Even Guo Fu, if you read her closely, loved him too.
Such was the wattage of Yang Guo's face.
"Ouyang Feng's martial arts are deep past measuring. If you meet him again—caution, always caution."
Against Ouyang Feng, even Qiu Chuji had no answers.
"The grudge is closed" made fine speech. The truth beneath it: closed or open, the Quanzhen Sect could do nothing about Ouyang Feng either way.
With Zhou Botong absent and two of the Seven gone, the sword formation could no longer be raised. The Quanzhen of those years simply was not Ouyang Feng's match.
Even now—even with Yin Zhiping at Innate—Qiu Chuji did not believe his disciple could beat Ouyang Feng. At most, he had earned the right to stand in the same fight.
Mad or not, the man was a master with decades of made name behind him. That body of strength was not to be taken lightly.
Yin Zhiping was not Guo Jing, with his ladder of miraculous fortunes, his arsenal of the age's supreme arts.
The Nine Yin Manual alone had been enough to close the whole distance of years between Guo Jing and an old monster like Ouyang Feng.
Guo Jing's road could not be walked twice. Just one Huang Rong—how many centuries did the world wait between women like that?
"In truth, Master—Ouyang Feng never meant me any harm. If anything, he did your disciple an enormous service."
Yin Zhiping had heard the worry under Qiu Chuji's words.
He simply judged the worry unnecessary.
Ouyang Feng would not be coming to trouble the Quanzhen Sect.
At present, the man couldn't even remember what the Quanzhen Sect was.
"How so?"
Sun Bu'er's interest sharpened. Ouyang Feng, helping a Quanzhen disciple? Now that was a rarity!
"He took me for his son and would hear no argument against it. I couldn't shake him loose either. So I made the best of it—used our bouts to bank experience against a top-tier master. It was Ouyang Feng's help, in truth, that let me stand so steady against the Golden Wheel Dharma King at Xiangyang."
Yin Zhiping laid it out evenly, tilting nothing.
"By that telling—meeting Ouyang Feng was a stroke of luck for you?"
Qiu Chuji's face did something complicated. Ouyang Feng, benefactor of a Quanzhen disciple: the sentence sat crooked in his chest and refused to settle.
"You could say that..."
It was, in fact, exactly what Yin Zhiping believed.
An aggravation, certainly. But the help had been real, and enormous.