Chapter 12: Alley
The young woman in black made her way deeper into the alley, occasionally coming across houses with large festive red lanterns hanging outside. In contrast with the other outsiders who had arrived in this town, the young woman didn't have the backing of any powerful clan or sect, nor was she accompanied by any stellar allies. She had made her way into the town all on her own.
Not far away in the alley stood a brocade-robed young man with a green jade seal held aloft in both hands. The seal was around the size of a child's palm, and there were coiling dragons and crouching tigers engraved onto its surface. It was glowing radiantly under the light of the sun, and faint traces of light were visible within the seal. The brocade-robed young man was inspecting the prized treasure in his hands with his head raised and his eyes narrowed slightly in a look of entrancement.
Beside him, a tall and broad old man was kneeling down on one knee, using his sleeve to carefully wipe at the dirt on his boots.
The brocade-robed boy had already spotted the strange young woman out of the corner of his eye. Judging from her peculiar veiled hat, the saber strapped to her waist, and her firm and stable footsteps, it was clear that she definitely wasn't a local resident of the town.
However, the brocade-robed young boy paid no heed to her and continued to carefully observe the antiquated jade seal. In fact, deep down in his heart, he was even hoping that the young woman would be struck by the urge to try and take the treasure from him. Otherwise, he would be practically dying of boredom.
Having obtained a pair of prized treasures, this trip was already far more fruitful than he anticipated. If he couldn't find something to do, then he would have to leave with his old servant, and he felt like it would be quite a pity to end the trip on such an uneventful note.
For those who had been selected to come to the town, each of them carried three tokens that were placed in embroidered pouches. One of those pouches contained the toll that had to be given to the gatekeeper in order to be granted entry into the town. Regardless of the status of the gatekeeper, regardless of the condition of the town gate, even the ruler of a nation or the founder of a sect had to follow this rule upon coming here. The other two embroidered pouches signified that each of them was only permitted to take a maximum of two treasures to be taken out of the town.
Outside of the maximum allotted quota of two treasures, regardless of whether one managed to collect 10 treasures, or even 100, every single one of them had to be returned. The tokens in the pouches consisted of three special types of copper coins, one of which was used by the common folk to celebrate beam-raising ceremonies, another was hung up with the peach wood charms in the imperial palace each year to welcome the arrival of spring, and the final type of coin was offered up to be placed on the palms of city god statues.
These three types of coins were all referred to as copper coins, but in reality, they had been minted using gold essence, which was an extremely precious material. For the majority of the town's residents, even official silver was a very rare sight, let alone hefty bags of gold, so it was no wonder that these people were willing to sell their clans' prized treasures, some of which had already been passed down for generations.
There were no official historical records of any of those three types of copper coins, and on the way here, the brocade-robed young boy had studied them intently, but was unable to find anything special about them.
Up ahead, the young woman wearing the veiled hat continued directly onward, not even sparing a single glance at the brocade-robed boy and his elderly servant.
All of a sudden, the brocade-robed boy changed his mind, stowing the jade seal into a cloth pouch that he had prepared earlier. He tied the pouch to his own waist, then remained standing directly in the middle of the alley, displaying no intention of moving out of the way.
The tall and broad old man also rose to his feet as he said in a high-pitched voice, "Your Highness, I can sense that she's quite a skilled martial artist, so we can't let our guard down. If we were outside this town, there would naturally be nothing to fear, but even as a pure martial arts practitioner like myself, my body is constantly being severely restricted and suppressed by this world.
“If I were to circulate my aura with all my might and open up my acupoints to their fullest extent, all of my meridians and acupoints would instantly be flooded, resulting in catastrophic consequences. Of course, my own demise is nothing worthy of concern, but if I were to fail in my duty to look after you, resulting in even the slightest hiccup on your path to pursuing the Great Dao, then I wouldn't know how to face His Majesty and Her Majesty."
A displeased look appeared on the brocade-robed boy's face as he said, "You've become rather chatty and meddlesome ever since we left the palace, Grandpa Wu. Back in the palace, you only said the same few things over and over again. Even that dumb parrot kept by my sister had a bigger vocabulary than you!"
The old man was constantly groveling at the young boy's feet, yet he seemed to take pride in debasing himself in servitude, and that indicated that he had to have been a eunuch from an imperial palace, a castrated servant who served his imperial masters with the utmost loyalty.
It seemed that the young boy hadn't comprehended what he was implying, so he could only offer a more direct and straightforward explanation to elaborate. "Your Highness, what I'm trying to say is that in this setting, that woman can pose a threat to you."
A dismissive smile appeared on the brocade-robed boy's face as he said, "I've heard that there are countless different factions on the path of cultivation, and that there's no lack of strange and sinister forces among them, but this is only a chance encounter between her and me, surely she wouldn't try to kill me just because she's taken a liking to my treasure! If everyone on the mountain were like this, then wouldn't the entire world have already been plunged into complete turmoil?"
The old man heaved a faint sigh. The empire at the foot of the mountain and the immortal families on the mountain appeared to have close and amicable ties with one another, but in reality, both parties absolutely detested one another.
The brocade-robed boy was a little disillusioned, and he sighed, "Fine, fine, I'll let her pass. It's unbefitting of a man like myself to pick on a little girl anyway."
By the time the young woman had arrived in front of him, her left hand was already resting on the hilt of her saber.
The brocade-robed boy smiled as he turned to the side, granting the young woman free passage.
The young woman slowed down slightly as she also turned, and beneath the veil of her hat, her eyes were filled with alertness and caution.
The elderly eunuch's brows furrowed slightly as he noticed the young woman's hands, which had been bandaged with strips of cotton cloth.
"Insolence!" the old man abruptly roared, and his furious voice rang out like an explosive thunderclap as his feet seemingly slid along the ground, instantly bringing him directly in front of the brocade-robed boy. He then leaned back gently to press the boy delicately against the wall of the alley while simultaneously spreading open the fingers of his left hand.
A dull thump instantly rang out from the palm of his hand, and as it turned out, someone had hurled a rock at the side of the boy's head as a hidden weapon.
The rock had been thrown with astonishing power, possessing sufficient force to punch through a wall, had it not been caught by the old man.
The old man crushed the fist-sized rock in the palm of his hand, but instead of going after the assassin, he threw a punch at the young woman with his right fist.
The young woman's hand was still resting on the hilt of her saber, but she forcibly suppressed the instinctive urge to draw her weapon as she cocked her head to the side, perfectly evading the powerful punch that had been thrown her way.
Such was the power of the old man's punch that his fist swept up a ferocious gust of wind, instantly casting the veil trailing down from the brim of the young woman's hat into disarray.
The old man immediately switched his straight punch into a horizontal sweep, aiming his fist directly at the young woman's head.
The transition from straight punch to horizontal sweep was completely smooth and seamless, as if it had been choreographed in advance.
The young woman was forced to hurriedly raise her arms, crossing them over one another beside her ear, forming a protective barricade in the path of the oncoming fist.
In the next instant, her entire body was sent sliding over 10 meters to the side.
She gently exhaled as she reached out a hand to adjust her slightly crooked veiled hat, revealing in the process that even more blood had soaked into the makeshift bandages around that hand.
She was rather angry, and she turned to face the old man, who was looking around with a wary expression, then said, "If it weren't for me, he would already be dead."
The old man paid no heed to her, and as a seasoned eunuch who had a wealth of experience when it came to dealing with assassination attempts, he was already regarding the young woman as only the secondary threat present. As for the primary threat, that position belonged to the man on the other side of the alley who had hurled the rock at the boy's head.
Aside from the boy, the old man, and the young woman, there was only one more person in the small alley, and it was a masked man with a tall and thin figure, but his arms were extremely well-built, with bulging muscles that resembled steel balls.
There was a pair of pouches hanging from the man's waist, and those pouches were filled with a collection of round objects.
He was standing still on the spot, as if to say that the attack he had unleashed just now had only been a warning.
As his cold gaze passed over the young woman's body, a smirk appeared on his face, and he stuck out his tongue with a lecherous look in his eyes.
A cold smile appeared on the young woman's face as she suddenly yelled, "Return!"
As soon as her voice trailed off, a sword flew over to her, decapitating the masked assassin along the way, then began to rapidly revolve around her like a small child seeking the attention and approval of his mother.
"Piss off!" the young woman snapped, and the flying sword instantly vanished into the distance, leaving the boy and the old man to look on with dumbstruck expressions.
The old man wasn’t stunned by the flying sword technique itself. Instead, he was genuinely horrified at the ease with which the young woman was able to control the flying sword.
This feeling made the old man feel as if he had returned to the days of his youth, when he had only just entered the palace. One day, he had been petrified by the sight of a man in a red python robe making his way along the foot of the palace wall in the distance.
Of course, his awe and veneration weren’t directed toward that eunuch, who he didn’t even know the name of. Instead, he was fearful of that red python robe.
After returning to his senses, a self-deprecating smile appeared on the boy’s face, and he approached the old man with a concerned expression as he asked, “Are you alright, Grandpa Wu?”
The old man wore an extremely grim expression as he replied, “There’s no need to worry about me, Your Highness. We have to be on our guard here. If worse comes to worst, I’ll hold her off while you…”
The boy hurriedly waved a hand to cut off the old man, then suggested, “How about we give her an apology?”
The old man was very much taken aback by this proposal, immediately following which he was overcome by a wave of intense remorse and sorrow.
As the saying went, the servant should die before allowing shame to befall their master, and that was particularly true in the imperial palace.
However, the brocade-robed boy was completely unbothered, and he smiled as he said, “It’s fine, Grandpa Wu. We made a mistake, so we should apologize. There’s nothing hard about that.”
The old man was still very much against the idea, but the brocade-robed boy was already approaching the young woman.
In that instant, a myriad of emotions surged through the old man’s heart.
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