164. A'ke

Zhang Xuan led the six members of his squad to the side. Initially, he had no intention of conducting any "extra training sessions"; he simply wanted to get acquainted with the six members of his squad to avoid the embarrassment of not knowing their names during tomorrow's drills. Naturally, two of them were already acquaintances—Nie Zheng and Shi Qian—who, for some reason, happened to stand in the same row. However, upon reflecting that Yang Zaixing, Yuwen Chengdu, and Yang Hu were all planning to give their squads "extra training," it would be entirely unacceptable for him to do nothing. He ultimately decided that extra training was necessary; otherwise, finishing last in the assessment would look far too disgraceful, especially since he was the initiator of this training program.

"Let's introduce yourselves first! As your squad leader, I'll go first. My surname is Zhang, and my given name is Xuan, a single character. You can call me Brother Xuan, or Squad Leader. Of course, I won't give any of you the chance to become my squad leader. Now, let's go one by one," Zhang Xuan introduced himself briefly.

"My name is Nie Zheng. Everyone should already know me, so I won't go into detail." Nie Zheng's self-introduction was even briefer than Zhang Xuan's. Shi Qian followed suit, merely stating his name. It seemed these two genuinely enjoyed a high level of recognition within the stronghold!

"Brother Xuan, I've always been called Big Dog. I was separated from my parents when I was very young, so I don't know my actual name. I probably don't have a proper name like you all do, just Big Dog," a boy named Big Dog raised his hand and said timidly.

"Me too. Ever since I can remember, people have called me Dahua. I don't know my surname either, nor if Dahua is even my real name."

"My name is Chen Feng. I was also very young when my mother passed away from illness. My mother told me my name was Chen Feng, but as for who my father was, I have no idea. It seems I've never met him."

After listening to the five introductions, Zhang Xuan could only conclude that compared to his previous life, this world offered an ever-increasing number of tragic people and events—if you could imagine it, you would eventually encounter it. He then turned his gaze toward the sole girl in the group.

"Brother Xuan, my name is A'ke. It seems I've never laid eyes on my parents either. My name was given to me by my master, but I got separated from her, and now I have no idea where my master has gone."

Upon hearing A'ke's introduction, Zhang Xuan's eyes lit up instantly. A'ke, a master—this inevitably made him think of *The Deer and the Cauldron*. Could it be? Surely not! If so, this world was far too chaotic; could characters from wuxia novels wander about at will? If a Hero Xiao were to unleash the Eighteen Dragon-Subduing Palms, or Xuzhu wield the Formless Blade, or Guo Jing and Yang Guo make an appearance, what on earth was the point of him playing this game? A single strike from a grandmaster hero, and he wouldn't even know where he had been blown to.

Zhang Xuan steadied his mind, forbidding his imagination to run wild. "A'ke, who is your master? She wouldn't happen to be a nun, would she? Or an abbess?"

A'ke looked at Zhang Xuan in utter bewilderment. "Brother Xuan, what is a nun? What is an abbess? In my memory, my master was a musician who often played the zither for me. But we were later separated, and after that, I fell into the hands of human traffickers. Until I met you and the others, I was locked up in that stronghold's prison all along."

Hearing this explanation, Zhang Xuan let out a long sigh of relief. Thank goodness she wasn't Abbess Jiunan; otherwise, he truly wouldn't have known how to survive in this era. Or perhaps he should start collecting secret martial arts manuals, or try to transcribe the *Nine Yang Manual* or *Nine Yin Manual* from memory? He still remembered the opening lines of the upper volume: *The Way of Heaven damages the abundant to replenish the deficient; thus the void overcomes the solid, and the deficient overcomes the abundant. Its meaning is profound...* As for how the rest went, he had no idea, since he had never read the complete *Nine Yin Manual*. Even if he had, he was no Feng Heng—how could he possibly possess a photographic memory?

In truth, Zhang Xuan was simply overthinking, his mind warped by reading too many wuxia novels. Tong Yuan was one of the supreme martial artists of this era, yet even he possessed no internal energy. As for scaling walls and leaping across roofs by borrowing external force, that was feasible, but forget about genuine lightness kung fu. Since Grandfather Tong didn't possess such skills, how could anyone else? While these wuxia archetypes might occasionally surface, it was purely a remote possibility. As for profound martial arts like the Eighteen Dragon-Subduing Palms, the Six Meridians Divine Sword, or the Formless Blade, Zhang Xuan was better off keeping them as fantasies in his head—after all, nobody else here knew of such concepts anyway.

As for A'ke's appearance, she certainly looked like she would grow into a beauty, with exceptionally delicate and pretty facial features. Though her skin was obscured by clothing, her hands looked like works of art. Give her a few more years to fully blossom, and she would undoubtedly reach goddess tier—cultivating such a beauty would surely yield incredible results. However, Zhang Xuan harbored no such "ulterior" thoughts; his mind was still consumed by wuxia fantasies. It took him a long time to calm his turbulent emotions, ultimately concluding that this A'ke merely shared a name with the A'ke from *The Deer and the Cauldron*. After all, in his impression, Abbess Jiunan was never associated with playing the zither. Besides, while she might have learned music as a princess in her youth, this was the Han Dynasty, not the Great Ming Dynasty—where on earth would a princess with the surname Zhu come from? Reasoning thus, Zhang Xuan decided that the A'ke before him was simply someone who happened to bear the exact same name as the fictional character.