"Senior Brother Li, what Senior Brother Yin used... was that... was that the legendary... Innate astral qi?"
Wu Zhiye was stammering. To disciples like them, Innate astral qi was the stuff of legends, wasn't it?
The only time any of them had glimpsed it was when the Seven Masters had once besieged Huang Yaoshi.
They had all assumed that after Grandmaster Wang Chongyang and Zhou Botong, the Quanzhen Sect had produced no Innate at all. Who could have known Senior Brother Yin ran this deep.
"I saw it!!!"
"We move. We travel through the night—to Xiangyang. Senior Brother Yin is an Innate martial artist. He will be fine."
Li Zhichang was as shaken by Yin Zhiping's realm as any of them, but the first priority now was to go, and quickly.
Li Zhichang understood: Senior Brother Yin had drawn Ouyang Feng away for their safety. They were the dead weight here.
***
From the moment Yin Zhiping led Ouyang Feng off, the man stuck to him like a burr.
"Son! Hahahaha! Good! Worthy of being the son of the number one under heaven! The line carries on—the line carries on!"
"As I keep saying, you have the wrong man. I am not your son. My name is Yin Zhiping, and my life's one ambition is to not be a Dragon Knight."
Ouyang Feng was welded to his conviction; no reasoning touched him. Yin Zhiping's head throbbed.
"You are my son. I couldn't be wrong. What father doesn't know his own son?"
'Plenty. There's one in front of me right now, isn't there? Keep claiming sons at random and Ouyang Ke is going to climb out of his grave and slap you silly...'
Yin Zhiping couldn't help retorting—in the privacy of his own skull.
He drove the Golden Goose Art. His feet tapped the earth, his body rose into the air, and he shot off at speed, bearing on Xiangyang.
They were far from the camp now, and Li Zhichang wasn't fool enough to linger in place.
With his junior brothers safe, Yin Zhiping had no interest in tussling with Ouyang Feng any longer.
"Son, don't go! Your papa still has so much to tell you!"
Seeing his hard-found treasure of a son leaving, Ouyang Feng's legs coiled and released—a catapult start—and he shot off in pursuit.
I flee.
He pursues.
I flee again.
He pursues again.
Yin Zhiping soon confronted a brutal truth: he could not shake Ouyang Feng.
The Golden Goose Art's ceiling was what it was. Train it to the depths and you could walk on empty air, yes—but it was not fast.
Ouyang Feng, meanwhile, had flipped upside down onto his hands. To catch his precious son he had brought out the bottom of the chest: the Corpse Hop from his reversed Nine Yin arts. Bounce by bounce, spring by spring, he was faster by more than a full notch.
The gap kept closing. He was moments from being caught. Yin Zhiping stopped like a man accepting his fate, turned, and struck out a palm—the Vast Heaven Palm again!
"Good son! Still want your father to test your martial arts? Your father will oblige!"
Yin Zhiping had hoped to catch him off guard.
But Ouyang Feng's combat instincts were rich beyond measure; a trick like this was nothing. Still handstanding, he met it with his feet in place of hands, true essence flooding his soles as they slammed against the Vast Heaven Palm.
One touch and they parted. Riding the rebound, Yin Zhiping spun and fled onward.
"Good son! So you want to play hide-and-seek! Your papa's coming to catch you! Hahahaha!!!"
Ouyang Feng had concluded his darling boy was playing with him. Another catapult start, another pursuit.
I keep fleeing.
He keeps pursuing.
This time Yin Zhiping wised up and began cutting hard side to side. Every turn cost Ouyang Feng a beat to follow, and each beat bought a sliver more time.
The two of them played from night into dawn, and from day into darkness again...
Yin Zhiping couldn't take it anymore. A full day without food or water, all of it at a dead sprint.
Yes, an Innate martial artist's true essence self-replenished without end; he could fast for ten days or half a month with ease. That didn't mean Yin Zhiping intended to mistreat himself.
From the day he'd been carried up Mount Zhongnan, he had kept three square meals a day for twenty years—and today he hadn't eaten one.
Even if it was just gnawing dry rations, he would gnaw them before running another step.
Fine—those were the excuses. The plain truth was that Yin Zhiping was about to be caught anyway.
Ouyang Feng was less than a chi behind him now. He'd be in hand within moments. Running further had no point.
In that moment Yin Zhiping interrogated himself: why did I come down the mountain? If I hadn't come down, I wouldn't have met Ouyang Feng. If I hadn't met Ouyang Feng, I wouldn't be getting drafted as his son. If I weren't being drafted as his son, I wouldn't be getting chased. If I weren't being chased, I could be eating a proper meal...
Conclusion: this is all Master's fault!!!
"Elder Ouyang, we've been running a full day. What do you say we stop and eat first? I have rations from the day before yesterday—the kitchen gramps made them for me specially before I left the mountain. Absolutely delicious."
Yin Zhiping slowed to a stop, found a reasonably flat rock, and sat. He was done running. He wanted dinner.
Ouyang Feng seized his chance—and Yin Zhiping's hand—delighted as a child.
"Hahahaha! Son, your father wins! Papa caught you! Now will you come home with me?"
Yin Zhiping could only marvel, grumbling inwardly: is this ox-hide plaster ever coming off?
Whatever. Heaven is vast and earth is wide, and dinner is vaster than both...
Thankfully the unfinished shaobing was still tucked in his robes—a little cold now, and a little dry.
He glanced at Ouyang Feng, who was watching him with naked expectation. The man had done no small amount of evil in his day. But look at him now—a pitiful creature, all told.
Soft-hearted in the end, Yin Zhiping broke the flatbread and held out half.
"Here. Take it. Can't have you starving to death on me."
Ouyang Feng's face flooded with astonished joy—and then he froze entirely.
"You don't want it?"
Yin Zhiping thought: I manage one moment of tenderness and you leave me hanging? Ungrateful, is that it?
Ouyang Feng snapped out of it and snatched the half shaobing with both hands.
"I want it! I want it! My son's filial gift—I want it, I want it!"
He cradled the half flatbread with the greatest care, planted himself attentively at Yin Zhiping's side, beamed at him—a brilliant, utterly sincere smile—then bowed his head and began to eat in tiny bites, chewing slowly, savoring, now and then tipping his head back with a look of pure intoxication.
In Ouyang Feng's hands, a slightly stale flatbread was somehow being eaten into a delicacy without equal under heaven.
Yin Zhiping looked at the shaobing in Ouyang Feng's hands. Then at the one in his own. He blinked. They were two halves of the same bread—so why did Ouyang Feng's half look so much more delicious...
Dammit! Swindled!
Nothing for it. He ate.
Afterward they found a stream—drank, washed their faces, tidied up—and the whole body felt human again.
Through all of it Ouyang Feng shadowed him without a half-step's separation, mad as ever, forever piping up with: Son, let your father teach you martial arts. Son, is there a girl you fancy? Papa will steal her back for you. Son, your father knows the Nine Yin Manual—want to learn it?
Every opening line: son, son, son. Who's your son?
And your Nine Yin Manual is defective, thank you. Wrecking your own mind wasn't enough—now you want to take me with you? Do I look stupid?
...All right. For one heartbeat, Yin Zhiping's heart had wavered.
Ouyang Feng's Nine Yin Manual was cultivated in reverse—which meant that flipped back around, it was the genuine article. Across both Condor Heroes eras, the Nine Yin Manual stood in the first rank of divine arts. Who wouldn't feel the pull?
Then he thought better of it. He had to consider his master, currently sealed away in seclusion. Learning Ouyang Feng's arts—wouldn't that be as good as accepting the man as his father?...
Qiu Chuji would die of apoplexy on the spot...
As for the whole son-and-father business—at first Yin Zhiping had kept trying to correct him. The man simply would not hear it. Eventually Yin Zhiping gave up. Let it be, he thought. Once we reach Xiangyang, Guo Jing's there, and I'll be free of him.
Two against one. The advantage is mine.
TL Notes:
TL Note: A shaobing is a baked Chinese flatbread, a common traveler's ration.