Liu Shan Men’s interior truly was torn apart as Ouyang Xiong briefly mentioned. Su Xiao checked on everyone from their windows and was relieved to find nobody was hurt. The whole point of visiting at night was to avoid detection, but he couldn’t help inconspicuously helping them tidy up as he watched everyone trying to clean up the scattered bricks and concrete. It was even harder for him to leave when he saw how badly damaged Ming Feizhen’s place was.
The cornerstone of qinggong was how one breathed. With Night Steps as his breathing foundation and his recent progress, nobody noticed Su Xiao’s presence. He spent an hour watching the people around him whilst helping up with the tidying, and then pulled out a big chest from under Ming Feizhen’s books.
Big Brother Ming reads books now? And this many?
Su Xiao was about to open the heavy chest when he heard arguing in the distance. As he had yet to adapt to his amplified hearing, he was startled when he heard the dialogue as clearly as if they were right next to him.
Due to the ten-odd constables standing around Liu Yuan, he had to keep raising his voice to be heard over them.
“You signed the agreement when you joined up. Unless there were problems outside of anyone’s control, you can’t leave until your term of employment is over. How long has it been since you signed the agreement for you to leave?”
“And when are we going to leave if not now? When we’re beaten so bad that we need to be taken out in a casket?”
“Look at the buildings. Does it look like we can be put together like buildings?”
Judging from the fact that Su Xiao couldn’t recognise some voices, they had to be new recruits who joined Liu Shan Men after the Nanjiang campaign.
“Sir Liu, if this is not beyond anyone’s control, what is? I’m so embarrassed now that I don’t want to tell anyone I work at Liu Shan Men…”
“Prestige is nothing compared to keeping our lives. We aren’t strong. We’re no match for these bullies.”
“Sir Liu, please let us leave.”
“Shut up!” thundered Liu Yuan. “You can’t fight when the enemy attacks, but you run faster than anyone. We protected you precisely because you’re not strong. Did any of your seniors push you to the frontlines?”
“Well said!”
“Eh? Xiao? Xiao Han?”
A brief moment later, Su Xiao was spotted zooming over. Given the chest weighed around thirty kilograms at a glance, the youths were thoroughly impressed Su Xiao could land so softly from a vertical descent with it in his arms.
“Xiao Han, how come you’re back?”
“I came back to visit everyone after I heard about what happened at the office.” Su Xiao cracked a smile as he scanned the new recruits, unintentionally scaring them. “Do you still remember why you joined Liu Shan Men? Have you achieved your initial goals?”
One muttered, “Not yet… but it’s not worth risking our lives for…”
“And your safety is guaranteed after you quit?” At a speed faster than Liu Yuan’s eyes could track, Su Xiao already had his index finger barely an inch away from the speaker’s forehead. “Someone has died every day for the past month in the capital, some of whom we know and some of whom we don’t. You could be strolling along the street, and your head could be rolling across the street before you realise it. Do you think it’s safe?”
Needless to say, the newbie was terrified.
“I’m not trying to scare you. If you’re this scared when you practice martial arts, how do you think those who don’t train at all feel? How do you think your relatives at home feel? How would your future wife and children feel? Do you intend to let them suffer the same humiliation? When I first joined, I couldn’t do anything right. I’ve only started to improve a little thanks to the opportunities Vice-Captain gave me. How can you expect to grow if you never leave your comfort zone?”
Liu Yuan flicked up a thumb and whispered, “That’s the most effective tactic.”
“Vice-Captain once said, as long as there is still someone, Liu Shan Men still exists… Uh… Big Brother Ming also said, as long as pork shoulders are served, he’ll still be around.”
Liu Yuan frowned at the mention of Ming Feizhen. Nevertheless, he couldn’t dispute the fact that the last batch of constables Ming Feizhen trained behaved themselves exceptionally well.
“We need to retain our members. Sir Liu, please tell our fellows colleagues that we all need to bear with it a little. Once we lose our sense of direction, it’ll be hard to bring us to together.”
“Well said!”
The person who responded was standing on the opposite end of the area. He had a tobacco pipe in his mouth, a broadsword hanging from his belt, a tiger fur waistcoat over his shoulders and a medical patch on his right foot. Sauntering over, he said, “You took the words right out of my mouth.”
Su Xiao: “Zha Pi?”
The new recruits suddenly assumed disciplined postures you’d only find in the disciplined army. “Brother Zha!”
Zha Pi casually bobbed his head in response. He glanced at one of them through the corner of his eyes, walked over and, as soon as they met eyes, whacked the new recruit over the head. “You’re leaving?”
“N-no?”
“You?”
“No…”
“Then who?! Who else?!”
“N-no one!”
“No one? Then, what are we all standing here for? Everything done already? Go help civilians on the street, then! Buzz off!”
Within a second, they had sped off.
“Hahaha, you’re like a big boss, Zha Pi,” remarked Su Xiao.
“You speak in jest. It’s all thanks to Master Ming’s teachings.”
“What did he teach you?”
“He said that newbies aren’t mentally, so he told me to keep an eye on them. If I do well, he’ll give me thirty silver taels as a reward.”
“So, the money is the real motivation?”
Zha Pi shook his head. “Is that the sort of person you see me as? Master Ming also said, if I failed in my duty, he would rip me apart and feed me to the wolves at the back of the mountain…”
Liu Yuan and Su Xiao: “Oh, I get it now.”
