Chapter 488: The Inside Story

Liu Yu walked over from the side, holding two water skins in his hands; he tilted his head back to gulp down a few mouthfuls, then handed a water skin to Huo Luan.

Hearing Cheng Feng's words, he cleared up the confusion: "Eat with peace of mind; I know exactly who her master is.

Twenty years ago, she was the personal disciple of the Southern Border Gu King; ten years ago, she was expelled from the sect for privately refining Forbidden Gu, and since then, she has been wandering the jianghu, taking on jobs to kill, and also working in the trade of saving lives.

Gu Niangzi was taken in during that time, and she has never done anything heinous.

Well, those who brought it upon themselves don't count.

Her background is not clean, but her origins are—that is enough."

Gu Niangzi's smile faded slightly, a complex look flashing in the depths of her eyes, but it was quickly covered up by her habitual flirtatious expression.

She shrugged, her tone carrying a hint of self-mockery: "My master was expelled from the sect, and I won't defend the Forbidden Gu incident.

When the master has troubles, the disciple serves the labor.

But those are all things of the past; now I only want to follow Wang Ji and steadily earn a future."

Gu Niangzi's charming voice made even Cheng Feng have a bit of a reaction.

After all, he was also a man of hot-blooded vigor.

Liu Yu did not enter into this topic, only saying, "Rest for half an hour, continue in the afternoon," then turned and walked to the edge of the high platform, spread out the roll of cowhide map again, and began to modify something on it.

Huo Luan lay on the ground, hands pillowed behind his head, squinting his eyes at the blue sky above, and suddenly spoke up: "Cheng Feng, you said Gu Niangzi looks at you as if looking at a Gu insect, then what do you think she looks at Lord Liu as?"

Cheng Feng thought for a moment and said: "Like looking at a saber."

Huo Luan rolled over and asked with interest: "How so?"

"Liu Yu, this person, is a saber from the inside out." Cheng Feng's voice was not loud, but every word was spoken very seriously, "His standing posture, his walking pace, the way he grips a saber, even the tone of his speech, all resemble a saber ready to be unsheathed at any moment.

There is wariness in Gu Niangzi's eyes when she looks at him, because she knows this saber could strike at her at any time.

But at the same time, she also wants to borrow the power of this saber, so she will carefully keep her distance, neither getting too close nor staying too far away."

Huo Luan was silent for a while, then sighed softly: "You are right. I had heard of Liu Yu's reputation back when I was in the army: 'Snow-Slaying Saber', the fastest saber in the Zhennan Army. Years ago, he led a scout team of one hundred and twenty men to ambush an enemy unit of a thousand in the snow, beheading over three hundred, while his own side only lost nine men. After that battle, it is said his saber was stained red and didn't wash clean for three days and three nights."

Cheng Feng did not speak, only casting his gaze toward the figure on the high platform who was lowering his head to modify the map.

Liu Yu's back was always held straight; even when bending over to look at the map, his spine maintained an arc ready to exert force and draw his saber at any moment, just as Huo Luan had said—he was a saber from the inside out.

The afternoon's joint training was even more brutal than the morning's.

Based on the problems exposed in the morning, Liu Yu readjusted every connection point of the formation.

He made Huo Luan and Cheng Feng repeatedly practice two-man positioning coordination, requiring the two to judge the other's intentions based solely on a glance or a tiny movement, without any verbal commands.

Huo Luan came from an army background and was no stranger to this kind of tacit training, but Cheng Feng was self-taught; his combat instincts relied entirely on suppressing others with his cultivation and breaking technique with brute force.

It was completely different from the systematic army routines Huo Luan used.

However, Cheng Feng was also constantly making up for his own shortcomings.

The two practiced just the two-man positioning for an entire afternoon, colliding countless times; Huo Luan's Steel Saber nearly hit Cheng Feng's head several times, and Cheng Feng's Body Refining physique nearly knocked Huo Luan flying.

"Your shoulder moves first when you go left; I know you're going left when I see your shoulder, but there's absolutely no warning when you go backward!" Huo Luan rubbed his bruised shoulder and shouted at Cheng Feng with a helpless expression.

Cheng Feng was silent for a while, then said: "I'll try again."

He took a deep breath, consciously controlling his body, tilting his shoulder slightly before moving to give Huo Luan a signal. The two tried a dozen more times and finally found a rough but effective tacit understanding—Cheng Feng used the tilt angle of his shoulder to hint at the direction of movement, while Huo Luan used the changes in his grip on the Steel Saber to convey his intentions; the coordination between the two gradually changed from chaotic to orderly.

Gu Niangzi was not idle either. She was arranged by Liu Yu on the other side of the Martial Arts Arena, specifically practicing the precise control of Gu insects.

Liu Yu's requirements for her were extremely harsh—the flight path of the Gu insects had to be precise to the inch, and the timing of the attack had to be locked onto the nodes of the opponent's formation changes; a moment too early or a moment too late would not do.

"Your Gu insects don't need to kill the opponent, they only need to make the opponent distracted at a critical moment." Liu Yu stood beside her, his Narrow Saber swinging out from time to time to strike down the Gu insects she released one by one.

"But if your timing is wrong, and you only strike after the opponent's formation change is already complete, then it is meaningless."

Gu Niangzi bit her lip, her forehead covered in sweat.

Her Gu insects were struck down again and again under Liu Yu's saber; although the ones being struck down were only Ordinary Gu insects and not the Life-Bound Gu she carefully cultivated, every loss of a Gu insect felt like a knife carving into her heart.

Each of these Gu insects required a massive amount of time and energy to cultivate, and being struck down one by one by Liu Yu like this made her heart bleed.

But she gritted her teeth and didn't make a sound, because she knew Liu Yu was right.

Furthermore, Wang Ji would provide compensation for these losses.

If she could not provide effective interference at the precise moment, then in a real military formation confrontation, she would be the weakest link in the entire team.

The opponent would strike her, the "disruptor," first, and then calmly deal with the rest.

For an entire afternoon, no fewer than a hundred Gu insects released by Gu Niangzi were struck down by Liu Yu, and a layer of insect corpses fell onto the ground of the Martial Arts Arena.

But her control precision also improved at a visible speed during this near-brutal training—in the last ten attempts, seven were locked onto the timing nodes specified by Liu Yu.

Liu Yu sheathed his saber, glanced at the dense insect corpses on the ground, and said in a flat tone: "Continue tomorrow."

Gu Niangzi's legs went soft, and she nearly sat on the ground. She steadied herself by holding onto her black lacquered wooden box, looked back at those insect corpses, her mouth twitching, then fished a cloth bag out of her sleeve and squatted on the ground, picking up the insect corpses one by one to store them.

Huo Luan wanted to go over to help, but was waved off by her: "No need, although these Gu insects are dead, the materials on their bodies can still be recycled. You don't know how to handle them, don't go ruining them for me."

She squatted on the ground, the sunlight stretching her thin shadow out very long.

Cheng Feng stood in the distance watching her back, suddenly feeling that this charming Gu woman was much more resilient than she appeared on the surface.

Well, her legs were long, too...