Ah Su, dressed in loose white garments, was livid to see Wu Ba unconscious, shocked to see me release Heisina Duohua and then jubilant to see Young Shiyi. “You’re… The Demoness, Ming Suwen?”
“And if I am?”
Ah Su: He must be her rumoured cauldron. No wonder why they call him her pet dog… The most important tool for dual cultivation is the cauldron. Let’s see what you can do once I have your cauldron.
Heisina Duohua was scared stiff without Ah Su licking his lips whilst ogling Young Shiyi.
“Devil Claw, Ah Su…”
Duohua started to shiver as she listened to Ah Su’s rhythmic, heavy breathing.
“I was wondering who managed to work out our plans, but it turns out you called for backup, you bug. You think this is all it’ll take to rescue your tribesmen? You just brought more people to the slaughter, hehehe.”
Heisina Duohua grabbed my sleeve and quietly pleaded, “Leave… Leave now…”
Noticing Ah Su had locked on to me with his eyes, I responded, “You have a lot to say, huh?”
“You’re in for it, hehehe.” Deeming Young Shiyi to be the true threat, Ah Su flicked her a lecherous smile. “Hey, Miss, you two…”
Bang! Ah Su went back and through a shelf.
The girls massaging Ah Su were befuddled for a split second when their hands missed their targets, while Young Shiyi beamed as if she was my cheerleader.
“No point hiding my abilities when nobody here would recognise me.” As I rubbed my hands, I grumbled, “Your face sure is thick. Saved you from death, mate.”
Judging from the fact that the girls were crying, yet the guards outside didn’t budge, it was safe to assume that Ah Su gave them the order to not come in regardless of what they heard.
Face bloody, Ah Su jumped to his feet. Despite his lower legs shaking a tad, he was otherwise fine. “You know who I am? I’m going to maul you!”
The “Ah” surname in Nanjiang belongs to their royal family from ages ago. Anyone who dares to use it without their permission is punished harshly.
The Central Plain’s martial arts focus on depth. If you want to get even more specific, then the North focuses on variety, while the South focuses on depth.
In the North, you will find many disciplines, many innovative ways of thinking, perhaps even unorthodox ideas, and lots of competent young fighters.
When we refer to depth in the South, the Seven Champion White Princes represent the concept the best.
If it were up to me, I would’ve hired League of Assassins. By the way, you can get a 20% discount if you mention my name. Howbeit, I wasn’t surprised they chose to hire a guild from the Central Plain because assassins are pretty much a non-existent concept in Nanjiang. In Nanjiang, if they have an issue with someone, they fight it out man to man; they don’t sneak up on people.
For the same reason Anxi people chose to retain their primitive culture, it was also embedded in their fighting style. Their disciplines emphasised practicality and experience, so anyone considered adept there would be someone who had a triple digit fight record.
In Nanjiang, they push their physical attributes to be faster than a cheetah, jump higher than apes and to outmuscle elephants. It’s a different means to the same goal as the Central Plain’s disciplines. Additionally, the techniques that Nanjiang’s pugilists employ commonly imitate animal movements.
The Central Plain and Beijiang’s emphasise on internal styles’ principles never gained popularity in Nanjiang because Xiacang people couldn’t fathom the concept of internal strength and internal energy. Their unique concepts came from fighting again and again, which in we call “external styles” in the Central Plain. As such, their way of learning to fight is the reverse of what is advocated in the Central Plain.
Nanjiang’s style of training equips them with tougher organs, skin and limbs. For most internal style experts, the strength of Nanjiang’s pugilists makes no sense from their perspective.
In the past, a vaunted adept of Nanjiang stomped me in a match. Only when I sat down to reflect later on did it dawn on me that he had already reached Divine Realm. Unlike the Central Plain’s martial artists, he skipped all the flashy moves and gave off the vibe of “why bother fighting if you’re not going to rip his head off?”
Ah Su crushed bricks underfoot with a stomp as he prepared one hand as a claw and the other as a fist.
“Ow!”
Despite eating my knuckles, Ah Su swung his left tiger claw at me.
“Argh! You broke my arm!”
Because I disabled both of his arms, Ah Su’s kick was sluggish, not that it would’ve been hard for me to catch him. Hence, I broke his kicking leg with a kick of my own, repulsing him into the shelf, splintering the shelf.
“Come on, man. Quit playing around, will you?”
People these days, interrupting my lecture and screwing up my performance.
“What the hell, you freak?! My leg! Agh! Crud! What are you?!” Ah Su carried on grunting as he curled up into a ball on the ground.
I smiled: “You know Martial Paragon?”
“Nanjiang’s mightiest. He is worthy of being Xiacang Anxi’s great guya. The fiercest leopard is only a kitten to him. Everyone knows his name!”
“Full marks for you. I fought him when I was a kid, and he flogged me.”
“What did you expect? Ten years ago, had he n-”
“Ten years ago, I took one of his arms.”
Ah Su put on one hell of a facial expression.
Glossary
Guya – A made up title, kind of like “shogun”.
