Chapter 793

The moment the girl's collar was grabbed by that big hand full of calluses, the coarse cloth made a harsh tearing sound.

Her shoulder was exposed from the torn collar, like a peeled tender bamboo, with bruises from being dragged one after another.

"Dad!"

Her throat had already been cried hoarse, but that childish voice still pierced the eardrums of everyone in the crowd like a red-hot iron sign.

The old man sprang up from the mud ground, ignoring his dislocated left arm swinging wildly at his side, and pounced over to hold Liu Daba's right leg tightly.

"Let go of my daughter, kill me, kill me, don't touch her..."

Liu Daba lowered his head and looked at the old man wrapped around his leg, too lazy to pretend any more impatience, and lifted his left foot, grinding it directly down onto the old man's face with his shoe sole.

The old man's nose bridge made a muffled sound, and blood splashed onto Liu Daba's trouser legs.

The old woman had already been unable to cry out; her mouth was wide open, and only a dry retching sound could be emitted from her throat, like a fish stranded on the shore.

Liu Daba kicked the old man away from his leg, and the hand he freed grabbed the girl's braid, starting to drag her toward the village entrance.

The girl's knees rubbed two blood marks on the rough mud ground; she desperately clawed at the ground with both hands, her nails split, and her hands were covered in blood mixed with yellow mud.

Zhao Lizheng stood beside, hands behind his back, a kind of leisurely, indifferent smile hanging on that fat face, his small eyes narrowed into a slit, as if watching a monkey show with no novelty.

The crowd of onlookers began to retreat.

Someone turned their face away, unable to bear watching anymore.

Someone covered the eyes of the child beside them, and closed their own eyes as well.

More people stood where they were, their bodies stiff, lips pale, like a row of wooden stakes nailed to the ground.

Liu Daba dragged the girl three steps.

Just as the fourth step was about to be taken, his foot stopped.

It wasn't he who stopped it himself.

It was a hand.

A hand that didn't know when it had reached out from the gaps in the crowd, resting lightly on the arm he was using to drag the girl.

The position it rested on was the wrist.

The force looked very light, like a passerby patting him casually.

But the moment this hand rested on his wrist, all the hair on Liu Daba's entire arm stood up in unison.

He turned his head.

A young man in a green long gown stood less than two feet away from his side, tied with a green silk belt at his waist, from which hung an inconspicuous white jade pendant.

He looked very young, less than twenty years old.

He looked very good, so good it was a bit too much.

But Liu Daba's attention did not fall on that face at all.

What he was staring at were those eyes.

Those were eyes that shouldn't have grown on a scholar's face, dark like two bottomless dry wells, with something lying at the bottom of the well, climbing upward extremely slowly.

Liu Daba had fought for ten years and killed a few people; he didn't consider himself small-hearted, but the speed at which the hair on his back stood up one by one because of these eyes was faster than the reaction of others when he held a knife to their necks.

"Who... who are you?"

He subconsciously wanted to shake off the hand resting on his wrist, but when he used force, it didn't move at all.

That hand, which looked white and slender, seemed to have been cast onto his wrist.

"Young master, what are you doing?"

Zhao Lizheng frowned and turned around, the smile on his fat face not yet having time to fade, when he bumped into Chen Yan's temperatureless eyes.

His smile froze at the corner of his mouth, the scolding originally prepared in his throat stuck in his throat, blocking it up and down.

Chen Yan did not look at him.

Chen Yan was looking at Liu Daba.

"Let go of your hand."

Three words, the voice not loud, as if a breath casually spat out from the bottom of his throat.

Liu Daba's brain turned twice, and a sense of humiliation from being ordered to his face and the ferocious instinct raised by ten years of running rampant in the countryside stirred together, temporarily suppressing the inexplicable chill on his spine.

"What kind of thing are you, daring to manage my business?"

His free left hand pulled out a sharp knife used for slaughtering pigs from his waist, and the tip of the knife gestured at Chen Yan's chest.

"I advise you to be sensible and get out immediately, otherwise I'll clean you up together."

Chen Yan lowered his head and looked at the pig-slaughtering knife.

The corner of his mouth moved.

That was not a smile.

That was an expression Hongye had seen countless times; every time this expression appeared, someone was going to die.

Chen Yan loosened the hand resting on Liu Daba's wrist.

His hand retracted into his sleeve, and his body shifted half a step to the side.

This action looked like a concession.

The ferocity on Liu Daba's face instantly expanded into an arrogant satisfaction in this half-step concession; he pushed the pig-slaughtering knife forward two inches, his lips moving as he was about to spit out an even more arrogant threat.

Chen Yan's eyelids lifted slightly.

The amplitude was extremely small, so small that the villagers frozen by fear around him couldn't capture this action at all.

But Hongye captured it.

At the moment his eyelids lifted, her body was no longer in its original position.

The moon-white narrow-sleeved skirt was pulled into an arc by the violent wind, and the long legs hidden under the skirt kicked two deep pits in the mud ground, the whole person turning into a white afterimage and sweeping out horizontally.

The sleeve of her right arm exploded in mid-air.

The fine steel short sword broke free from the restraint of the sleeve, and the cold light on the sword body that made one's scalp tingle exploded into a dazzling silver light curtain in the spring sun.

No one saw how her sword was drawn.

All that could be seen was the result.

Two slight sounds that almost overlapped, like the sound of a sharp blade cutting through raw meat.

Chi chi.

Liu Daba's right wrist and the right wrist of the thug standing right next to him grabbing the girl's other braid were cut horizontally in one breath by Hongye's fine steel short sword without any hesitation, right from the most fragile connection of the wrist bone.

Two broken hands that still maintained a grabbing posture left their respective owners, rotated half a circle in mid-air, and fell onto the mud ground beside the girl with a plop.

The fingers of the broken hands were still twitching, and a few withered yellow broken hairs pulled from the girl's braid tips were still caught between the thumbs and index fingers.

The blood didn't spray out immediately.

A layer of white fat and tendons appeared at the broken end first, and in less than half a breath, the bright red blood rushed out from the artery tube walls cut by the sharp blade, like two small fountains.

The scarlet blood mist was pulled by the wind in the sun into a fine red water bead, splashing on the gray bark of the locust tree, splashing on the mud ground, and splashing on the faces of the villagers who were stunned.

"Ah!"

Liu Daba's scream was a full two breaths later than the sound of the two broken hands hitting the ground.

He looked down at the broken end of his bare wrist, the fresh blood surging out from inside dyeing his trouser legs at a speed that was terrifying.

His brain hadn't reacted to what had happened yet, but his legs had softened before his consciousness, and he pounced onto the mud ground in front of the woman in the moon-white skirt, his scream like a pig whose throat had been cut.

The other thug with a broken hand was even more miserable; his scream turned into a sharp whimper in his throat, his body twitching and curling into a ball, rolling into the water ditch on the side of the road.

The remaining three thugs were collectively stunned.

They had seen pigs slaughtered and sheep butchered, but no butcher could cut such a knife... no, such a sword.

So fast that even the sound of the wind didn't have time to ring before it had already been retracted.

Zhao Lizheng's greasy face turned completely liver-colored.

His mouth was wide open, his chin trembling uncontrollably due to extreme fear, and the two lumps of originally rosy meat on his fat cheeks turned gray-white.

He took a step back, his heel hitting a protruding stone, almost falling backward on the spot, and was hurriedly supported by the thugs behind him.

"You, what kind of people are you!"

His voice was like a broken-barreled rooster, sharp and trembling.

"In broad daylight, drawing knives and hurting people on my territory, do you still have the law in your eyes, do you still have the Great Zhou Law!"

He pointed at Hongye with a trembling finger, his fingertips shaking as if sifting chaff.

"I am the Lizheng appointed by the Xiazhou government; if you dare to move a single hair of mine, you are going against the Xiazhou government, you are going against Chen Zhuguo..."

The last word of this name hadn't had time to be spat out from between his greasy lips.

Chen Yan walked out of the crowd.

He walked not fast, the hem of his green gown brushing over the bloodstains sprayed by the broken hands on the mud ground, stepping that piece of scarlet mud under his boot soles.

His hands were behind his back, his spine straight as a spear.

With every step, the thing that he had originally restrained in his bone gaps leaked out by a point.

One step.

Two steps.

Three steps.

By the fourth step, the air in the entire field had changed.

It didn't get cold.

It got heavy.

So heavy that the few young refugees in the front row of the crowd couldn't control their knees from softening, a stone seemed to have been stuffed into their throats, and even breathing became shallow and fast.

Zhao Lizheng's finger stopped in mid-air.

He watched this young man walk to him step by step, those eyes hidden in the shadow of the green cloth headgear more terrifying than anything he had seen in his life.

Chen Yan stood still in front of Zhao Lizheng.

The distance between the two was less than three feet.

Chen Yan was more than half a head taller than Zhao Lizheng, his gaze pressing down from top to bottom.

"You just said a sentence."

Zhao Lizheng's teeth were clashing in his upper and lower jaws, and he couldn't pop out a single word.

"You said, this is going against Chen Zhuguo."

Chen Yan extended his right hand, two fingers pinching the patch embroidered with the word "Lizheng" on Zhao Lizheng's chest, slowly pulling the distance between that piece of cloth and his greasy chest closer.

He lowered his head, leaning close to Zhao Lizheng's face, which was as white as a dough board in the yamen, his voice light like a whisper in the ear.

"Do you know what Chen Zhuguo looks like?"

Zhao Lizheng's lips trembled, squeezing out a few barely audible broken syllables from the depths of his throat.

"I... I don't know..."

The arc at the corner of Chen Yan's mouth finally unfolded completely.

That was a smile.

A smile colder than Hongye's sword.

He loosened his fingers pinching the patch, retreated half a step, and put his hands behind his back again.

His voice changed from low to a volume that could be heard clearly by everyone present; it didn't need force to spread, it only needed him to be willing to let people hear.

"Then this Duke will let you open your eyes today."

Chen Yan reached out and took off the green cloth headgear that had been washed white on his head, revealing that face that was known to everyone in the entire Great Zhou Northern Frontier.

"The people of Xiazhou, this Duke will manage today!"