Chapter 51: Stabilizing the Situation

Seeing this, Qiu Zhiqing finally understood that these people might truly be here to take his life!

A large group of men brandished their sabers and shouted, rushing in all at once. Qiu Zhiqing executed a movement called Bright Moon Shines on the Waves, using the flat of his sword to beat back two men a few paces, and then thrust straight forward with his sword. His target was precisely the man wielding the sword, who was using a double-fuller Han sword. That attack was difficult to dodge, so the man could only...

Indeed, the swordsman crossed his long sword horizontally, crossed both hands, and used the flat of his blade to block Qiu Zhiqing's swift, direct thrust. He was greatly astonished, for he did not feel the immense force he had expected from before.

Amidst his astonished gaze, Qiu Zhiqing's long sword began to bend, bending further, and then suddenly snapped straight. A fierce, tyrannical surge of internal energy rushed toward him like surging waves and rolling breakers. Before he could make more preparations, it instantly blasted him flying.

Fortunately, the man dressed as a scholarly literati caught him, spinning around a few times to dissipate the momentum. Even so, he had to retreat a few more steps to steady his footing. At this moment, the spearman struck with a move called Phoenix Nods Three Times, attempting to rescue his comrade by besieging the savior, but it was already too late!

Qiu Zhiqing executed a move known as Sparse Stars and Fading Moon, his sword light falling like shooting stars plunging from the sky, accurately striking and deflecting the tip of the spear. Such immense force made the spearman's hands slightly numb. In the flash of a second, the two brushed past each other, and Qiu Zhiqing's long sword smoothly retracted, the hilt striking precisely upon the Jianjing acupoint on the man's shoulder.

The spearman only felt his shoulder go numb, followed by half of his body losing sensation, and soon he completely lost consciousness! Naturally, he was not dead; he had merely been sealed in several major acupoints by Qiu Zhiqing.

With a backward kick, Qiu Zhiqing sent the spearman flying into the main hall, where he landed beside the dark-faced burly man who had fallen earlier. Borrowing the momentum, Qiu Zhiqing surged forward to fight, but unexpectedly, the middle-aged scholar-dressed man was actually wielding a coiled-dragon staff, rushing forward to meet him alongside the swordsman!

This seemed somewhat inconsistent with his scholarly demeanor. With a long sword in his right hand and a horsetail whisk in his left, Qiu Zhiqing took down over a dozen men in mere moments, right in the midst of his fierce slaughter.

A fierce gust of wind assailed him from the right. Without even thinking, Qiu Zhiqing moved to deflect it. Everything was within his calculations, yet his right shoulder took a blow, and his sword almost slipped from his hand—this was somewhat beyond his expectations.

With a flick of the horsetail whisk in his left hand, he forced back several robust youths attempting to seize an opportunity, and hurriedly backflipped to create distance, his peripheral vision catching sight of the retracting coiled-dragon staff.

It turned out that the head of the staff could actually be detached; once separated, it functioned like an elongated nunchaku. He had accidentally been ambushed by this very device just now!

"Quite a clever mind, and truly shameless behavior. We came to help you all slaughter bandits and protect the village, and this is how you repay us?" Having taken that blow, he needed to stall with words first to buy himself time to regulate his breathing.

Clearly, he had thought too much; the opponents did not stop at all, pressing forward with their staff attacks. This staff technique could be extended or retracted at will, at times functioning as a long staff and at times as a long-handled nunchaku, putting Qiu Zhiqing through a most uncomfortable ordeal.

Coupled with the flanking support of the swordsman and the stealthy sneak attacks of the common youths, they managed to fight him to a complete standstill for a moment!

"Winners are kings and losers are villains. Today, all of you are destined to turn into a heap of loess. If you surrender immediately and willingly, we can still leave your corpses intact. Otherwise, the dignified Five Greats of the martial world and the third-generation senior leader of Quanzhen are going to be buried today in this nameless little village!"

Seeing that Qiu Zhiqing remained unmoved, the middle-aged scholar launched a fierce attack while instructing, "Two of you, go send the Nine-Fingered Beggar on his final journey first!"

Although he knew this was an attempt to make him divide his focus, they had clearly succeeded! Naturally, Qiu Zhiqing was not one to be easily bullied. The most threatening person among them was undoubtedly this middle-aged scholar holding the coiled-dragon staff...

...and the man wielding the double-fuller Han sword. As for the rest, in his eyes, they were no different from men offering their heads for the taking! The swordsman did not seem to be using any particular standard set of sword techniques; amidst orthodox uprightness, there occasionally lurked a trace of cunning.

It was evident that he followed the military strategist's path of "using the orthodox to engage and the unorthodox to conquer." Clearly, the man had not mastered this style: in terms of grandeur and majesty, he fell far short of Qiu Zhiqing's Quanzhen swordplay, while in terms of eeriness and craftiness, he was completely countered by Qiu Zhiqing's Xiaoyao style.

At this moment, the whistling sound rose once more. This time, Qiu Zhiqing did not dodge; instead, just like the first time, he intended to use his sword to deflect the coiled-dragon staff! Exactly as anticipated, the head of the staff lashed toward his shoulder like a willow branch whipping in the wind.

This time, however, the opponent failed to achieve his desire. Qiu Zhiqing flicked his horsetail whisk, entangling the iron chain connecting the two ends of the staff, and smoothly swept his long sword toward the hand wielding the staff. Shocked, the man hastily let go.

Qiu Zhiqing whipped his horsetail whisk forward with force, and two men wielding broadswords who were rushing to hack at Hong Qigong were instantly struck, sent flying sideways by the incoming coiled-dragon staff, vomiting blood as they crashed forward.

How could such a fine opportunity be missed? Qiu Zhiqing's figure flashed like lightning. In the span of a moment, he executed three moves, knocking back and repelling the surrounding youths while simultaneously piercing the sword point precisely into the shoulder acupoint of the swordsman, temporarily crippling his right arm!

Without a pause, his figure whirled, and with a single sword strike, he cleaved apart the broadsword that the middle-aged scholar had just picked up. The man did not panic at all; stretching out his hand, he lunged to grab Qiu Zhiqing's wrist. With a swift hook and twist, he prepared to execute a set of close-combat grappling techniques...

What he did not expect was that while he managed to grab the wrist, the moment he attempted to snap Qiu Zhiqing's wrist, Qiu Zhiqing turned his long sword and twirled a sword blossom, almost slicing off the man's own forearm. Fortunately, he withdrew his hand swiftly!

He was fast, but Qiu Zhiqing was even faster. Seeing him retract his hand, Qiu Zhiqing smoothly thrust his long sword forward, halting it right before the man's throat. The man retreated in a panic, but Qiu Zhiqing's long sword clung to him like a shadow, until his back pressed firmly against a wall, and he silently muttered that it was all over...

My name is Zhang Zhu. My ancestors were the trusted confidants of the old Guo family. Later, when the old Zhao family usurped the Guo family's empire, they slaughtered every last one of my ancestors. Fortunately, people who survived that era possessed a sense of vigilance.

My ancestors had prepared a body double for themselves, allowing them to escape disaster. Yet the matter did not end there. It was one thing for you to seize the Guo family's empire, but why did you have to slaughter my entire family? You didn't even ask if I was willing to surrender before you captured me like that...

Having nowhere to seek justice, my ancestors had no choice but to bide their time in the shadows, secretly earning money and cultivating their forces! Through the unremitting efforts of generation after generation of ancestors, they finally escaped the pursuit of the Imperial City Inspectorate with the remaining influence left behind by the Guo family, eventually expanding their network quite extensively.

With a foundation established, my ancestors searched everywhere for targets to invest in. However, after the descendant of the former supreme master changed his surname back, he was treated well and fed lavishly by the old Zhao family, and actually had no desire to undertake this grand enterprise, even urging them to surrender to the old Zhao family?

Heh! Farewell!

Hearing that the Tangut Li family had ambitions, we invested in them! No other reason—I simply loved investing in dreams. There were no other returns, except for happily receiving a prescription for poison, which I heard was originally called something like "Fading Breeze of Sadness"?

Later, finding it too obvious that it caused tears, it was modified through the hands of an expert so that it no longer caused tears. For details, one could refer to the so-called Five Greats lying paralyzed on the ground! Unfortunately, the Tangut were untrustworthy, so this investment was counted as a loss.

Not only was this wave of losses sustained, but we were also besieged by the Song imperial court's City Inspectorate—a disastrous loss!

The Liao Dynasty? We couldn't invest in them; the risk was far too great!

Then came my grandfather. Once, when my grandfather went to the Northeast to harvest wild ginseng, he discovered a semi-wildman with great ambitions. His dream was simply to have enough to eat and not be oppressed—how touching! We invested in this dream.

Not only did grandfather invest, but he also mobilized connections to have the Great Song invest as well! Unexpectedly, this investment yielded a bumper harvest, not only capturing Bianliang in one fell swoop to avenge the extermination of our ancestors, but also being bitten back by those wildmen, plunging the pain deep into our marrow!

Regrettably, after those wildmen entered the Central Plains, they degenerated even faster than that bunch in the south. Soon enough, they were failing again. This time, the Mongols came along, so I seized the opportunity to raise an army and fought a great battle against them in Hebei!

Then, feigning surrender to the enemy, I was naturally heavily relied upon, rising to the rank of a myriad-household commander within a mere few years! Over the years, the heritage left to our family by the old Guo family had dwindled. A few years ago, the last stronghold in Lin'an was also destroyed by the City Inspectorate!

I had thought that after training this final batch, I could peacefully serve as a myriad-household commander under the Mongols. At that time, Mongol morale was soaring, and they would surely annihilate this rabble of the Zhao family in one stroke, washing away our generational blood feud.

Over the past few years, they had sent plenty of people and wealth to the residences of those officials. When the time came for the armies to arrive at the city gates, with a single cry from atop the ramparts, would they still fear that the old Zhao family could turn the tables?

Of course, these were mere polite words; he knew very well that by now, after two or three hundred years, the hatred no longer amounted to much. The crucial point was that the chain of interests had broken.

He himself no longer wished to continue in this profession. He believed he could destroy the Zhao family, and he also did not want his descendants to continue living in the dark side of the world...

To think that while inspecting the main altar this time, he would be besieged by the Mongols. How did they discover this place? There was no time to explain, nor any way to explain, because at this moment he should have been on the battlefield in Hebei!

Helpless, he had no choice but to try and finish them off first, yet unexpectedly Hong Qigong appeared as well—tsk, tsk, one shock after another. Having finally managed to catch Hong Qigong off guard and lay him low, he never expected this so-called Quanzhen third-generation chief disciple to be so formidable.

Didn't those two fools say his martial arts were mediocre? Is this what they call mediocre martial arts? It is a pity my two personal servants are not by my side; otherwise, I would surely make those two unable to leave alive!

Hmm? Why does it not hurt? Could it be that one feels no pain once dead?

Sensing carefully, his body still had sensation. He stealthily opened one eye, only to be met with a half-smiling expression, and immediately all sensation returned to his entire body...

Along with the return of sensation came an overwhelming sense of exhaustion...