Chapter 128: The Seven Mansions of the Azure Dragon, Manifest!

The moment those words—Imperial Guard—came out, the killing intent in the eyes of the ghost-market guards who had seen Li Guanyi draw his sword was visibly replaced by wariness; the three words Imperial Guard meant noble houses and trouble not worth courting.

Suddenly, laughter rang out.

"Everyone stop, stop, put those swords away."

"Quite the imposing presence, sir."

A man who looked to be in his thirties, dressed in a scholar's long robe, walked over with a smile on his face. He pushed aside the guards who had drawn their weapons, and from several paces away cupped his hands in salute: "I've come to apologize, apologize. Was the tribute we offered here not enough?"

"Our apologies, our apologies indeed."

He pulled out a large pouch, then handed it to Li Guanyi, lowering his voice. He kicked the corpse of the person beside him and said with practiced ease: "This blind fool of a thing offended the sir; he had it coming. Take this gold, consider it an apology for soiling the sir's eyes today."

"I know you're kind-hearted; you may take all these people with you."

"Come on now, hurry up and unshackle these people!" he called out loudly, smiling at Li Guanyi. Li Guanyi's sword seemed to slice through empty air. He looked at the man before him, and the latter said: "The rules, I know them. Today you take these people, and I'll give you the gold."

"But don't come again another day, lest you soil your eyes."

The man said: "Otherwise, underfoot of Jingcheng, how would we dare offend the Imperial Guard? But after all, you're a son of a noble house; saving this many people and earning a name for chivalry is enough. If you keep pressing the matter…"

A gentle smile floated onto his face, one that made Li Guanyi feel sick and greasy.

"You won't be going to some far-off countryside, would you, where you don't know how the people there live. If you keep being stubborn, then today you save one, and tomorrow I'll 'buy' two more. You kill one of mine, and I'll butcher a household of theirs. This world, bustling and bustling, is just a banquet, and the common folk are the dishes upon it."

"Inexhaustible, never running out."

"You come, and I'll set a pair of chopsticks for you."

"If you don't wish to eat, then leave."

"But don't overdo it. Otherwise, for every person you save, a household will suffer disaster. What do you say? This world is as it is; there's nothing we can do about it either…"

The youth held his sword and said: "Guess why I said 【Imperial Guard】?"

The man froze for a moment, and then the gold-obsessed youth slapped the gold aside. In the next instant, that sword came chopping down, accompanied by the youth's furious roar:

"Threatening the 【Son of Heaven's Forbidden Army】, showing no respect to Your Majesty!!"

"What monstrous dog-guts you have!"

The man was caught between shock and fury.

"You!!!"

He had never seen a person who did not follow the 'rules.' He had cultivated his Eye Aperture, his gaze was sharp. Li Guanyi's sword-chop was fast, but he could see it. His right hand reached out, two fingers going along the momentum of the sword to pinch the blade, and he truly did pinch it.

But he did not hold it steady.

The force atop that sword was not something a second-realm martial artist should possess—vast and towering, like boulders tumbling down from a mountain peak, like surging billowing waves. In an instant, half his palm was sheared off.

The youth kicked him in the chest.

The man fell, shouting: "Killing me is useless; this world is like this!"

Li Guanyi's sword came chopping down.

One thrust pierced into the throat; bright red blood sprayed out. The youth said softly:

"Then I will, see one, kill one!"

"Every single one counts."

"I will show no mercy whatsoever."

He lifted his sword and looked ahead. Li Guanyi knew that today, the only option was to make a scene.

The bigger the scene, the safer he himself would be; only by making things bigger could the matter here be truly resolved.

Master Siming darted out, following Li Guanyi's instructions to find Ye Buyi and the elders of Zhou Liu's camp to turn back. He saw behind that youth, Bai Hu raising its head, the Crimson Dragon coiling, the bearing of dragon and tiger as before—indeed, it seemed even more domineering and illustrious than in days past.

A Dharma Aspect like dragon and tiger, with such majestic spiritual might—even as it gestates, it is connected to the Sovereign Lord. A cowardly person, an enduring person, finds it hard to gain the gaze of Bai Hu, the God of Slaughter in the heavens. The Azure Dragon may lie dormant, but the Crimson Dragon is different.

But why the Crimson Dragon?

Then the surrounding people all flew into a rage together. No one knew who shouted "Kill!" first, and they all pounced toward Li Guanyi. Buye Hou leaned against the window, watching that youth. The people around were not of high realm—mostly first-realm—but their leaders were all second-realm martial artists.

Without armor, they could have buried that lad alive. Yet his expression turned solemn at once; he saw that youth standing right there, who snatched a blade with a swing of his hand, and with blade and sword together hacked outward, like a frenzied demon-god of slaughter, cutting down those around him in a bloody rout.

One slash came down, blood gushed out; Li Guanyi's foot stamped the ground within a radius.

His Qi suddenly expanded outward.

Bai Hu is in the heavens; the body is in Jiangnan.

Zhu Que is the south, Hu Xuanwu is the north; the Four Symbols revolve, Fire Qilin holds the center.

The 【Four Symbols Spirit-Sealing Array】 activated—a mere simple application of it—but those who hacked toward him suddenly found their movements skewed. Their actions deviated only slightly, and then they crashed into one another. The youth over there suddenly swung his blade out and hacked them down to the ground.

Blood dripped everywhere; a thick, rank smell.

Li Guanyi suddenly realized that the 【Four Symbols Spirit-Sealing Array】, when facing large numbers of opponents whose Yuanshen was weaker than his own, could produce terrifying effects. The foremost strange array under heaven in this era finally, at this moment, revealed its fangs.

Buye Hou watched that youth hacking away; soon over a dozen people had fallen to the ground, their bodies drenched in blood, wailing miserably. The people around instead began to feel fear. Those who fearlessly face death are, after all, a rare few; even elite legions, seeing such a monster, would be struck with dread, their morale collapsing.

Li Guanyi lifted blade and sword.

The sharp weapon bestowed by the Emperor was still keen as new.

The blade he had snatched was already too dull to use.

He tossed the thing away and looked around. Someone handed him a blade. He turned his head—it was a young boy. The boy spoke, in the tongue of the Tiele people. Here there were not only Central Plains folk; Turks, Tiele people, Jiangnan people—all were present.

Li Guanyi thanked him earnestly in the Tiele tongue.

That boy froze, eyes wide, and ran quickly back to where he had been. Li Guanyi heard him stammering to the children beside him, saying that someone from their tribe had come, that he believed his elder brothers would not abandon them, and so they too must believe.

There must be someone who hopes you all live well, too.

Li Guanyi lowered his eyes.

He gripped a blade anew, half his body stained with fresh blood. He looked at the people ahead and said: "Come on."

The youth held weapons in both hands and stepped forward.

A vast, boundless momentum.

In the air, it seemed as though dragon and tiger were roaring.

So the ghost market guards all stepped back together, panic on their faces.

Bu Ye Hou watched this scene from upstairs, his wine cup pausing mid-motion. These were just black markets that depended on the Youming Ghost Market; the Youming Ghost Market itself didn't deal in trafficking people. They would take in orphans, but even in their eyes, human lives shouldn't be something sold cheaply.

The Youming Ghost Market had always refrained from involving itself in the surrounding black markets—neither striking out for them nor against them. Bu Ye Hou turned his head and saw that someone had already arrived.

"Ha! Let's see who's looking for trouble!"

"Causing trouble on your father's turf? Sick of living, are you?!"

A burly man came charging over with more than twenty men. The burly man had his collar flung wide open, his eyes glaring in fury. The twenty-plus men behind him wore armor and held crossbows in their hands. A flicker of certainty passed through Li Guanyi's eyes—seeing warhorses for sale had already convinced him there must be armor and crossbows too.

They intended to keep Li Guanyi here.

Selling armor, trafficking people, crossbows, warhorses—such things had become commonplace in these chaotic times. Perhaps even the Emperor knew, but on the surface, even Xue Lao said the Xue family had no armor. As long as it wasn't exposed, everything could be smoothed over.

But…

The youth raised his head, gazing into the distance.

*Bu Yi, Zhou Liuying, you need to hurry. *

The burly man's gaze fixed on Li Guanyi, and he burst into curses:

"What kind of mud-legged dog bastard is this?!"

"Born of a mother but raised by no father? Dare to come cause trouble for your granddad here!" He flew into a rage and waved his hand. The armored martial artists had already set up their crossbows—not the hand crossbows Li Guanyi could shatter with a single punch, but heavy crossbows, the kind whose bolts could punch through a layer of iron armor.

The burly man strode forward in a charge, his momentum vast and domineering. Dense inner energy gathered and radiated from his body, then transformed into armor. This was a martial artist of the Third Layer Realm. Li Guanyi's pupils contracted slightly.

In these chaotic times, this was a realm sufficient to serve as a general, yet here he was, guarding a ghost market.

The burly man came charging straight at the children and the elderly; he was a vicious martial artist. Li Guanyi dodged once, and the man would have blasted the rescuers of these youths into a pulp of blood and mud. Li Guanyi could not retreat. He brought his sword down in a slash; the man dodged, his fist covered in a gauntlet of inner energy.

That inner-energy gauntlet was ferocious, shaped like a lion's head.

The translucent inner energy left a clear trail of light in the air.

Li Guanyi exhaled a breath, clenched his fist, and hurled it forward with a sudden punch.

The burly man's fist collided with Li Guanyi's fist-edge. The hems of both their clothes pulled taut in an instant. Everyone stared fixedly at the two combatants. Then they saw blood well up on Li Guanyi's fist-edge, blood dripping to the ground, and the crowd cheered.

"Good, good!"

"Dares to come cause trouble on our turf!"

"Boss Cui, beat him to death, beat him to death!"

The surrounding crowd cheered. Li Guanyi heard the soft laughter of those hooded dignitaries, as if saying, "A son of the Xue family?"

"Yet so reckless… for the sake of some mud-legged folk…"

"How foolish."

Yet the burly man felt something was off. He felt as if his fist had slammed into a mountain, shattering the rock on the mountain, but his own palm was also aching. Li Guanyi's eyes lowered; the flame in his heart was rising.

The ghost market guards surrounded him; the hooded "guests" stood in the distance.

They too were dignitaries, people of this realm. They took what had just happened as a matter of course; it was Li Guanyi's actions that struck them as strange. The idle gossip and gazes made a stifling feeling seem to rise in Li Guanyi's heart.

From Qian Zheng's ordeal and his sister, to that pair of vegetable farmers selling their daughter in the dead of night.

To the eunuch black market of the imperial palace that trafficked people.

All the things he had witnessed gathered together, then exploded into fire in his heart.

The youth stepped forward half a pace and threw a punch on his own initiative. The burly man's expression changed, and he also threw a punch. Their fists clashed. Li Guanyi's sleeves rolled back; blood ran from his fist, but the burly man's expression was also wrong.

He had been gradually suppressing the Taigu Chilong Strength to deal with the Imperial Physician.

At this moment of surging emotion, unable to suppress it any longer, the Taigu Chilong let out a long cry. The jade liquid of the Jade Cauldron kept falling with the Taigu Chilong's long cry. Yue Qianfeng had once said that this school of Taigu Chilong Strength of his came from the divine art *Taigu Chilong Pacifies the Nine Provinces*. Now it responded to the stimulus and stirred.

Li Guanyi circulated the *Six Emptinesses Four Harmonies Divine Art*.

The inner energy from the opposite side came crashing in, was wrapped up by his own inner energy, then smashed back out with the Jade-Smashing Fist of Golden Flesh and Jade Bone. One punch, two punches, three punches. The surrounding cheers gradually weakened; even those "guests" fell silent. In the air, only the sound of fist-edges colliding remained.

Li Guanyi and that martial artist exchanged a hundred blows!

The final punch was hurled out viciously.

The lion-head-shaped inner-energy gauntlet shattered. The youth's fist slammed into the Third Layer Realm martial artist's fist, and then the burly man's fist bones twisted, bent, and the color drained from his face in terror. Li Guanyi stepped forward, lowered his body.

His fist was a spear; his body itself was martial arts. The ultimate art of the Chen Kingdom's ancestors now revealed itself.

【Mountain-Smasher】!!!

A fist roared out, a shockwave erupted. This punch shattered the aura-armor on the martial artist's body. Amid a series of cracking sounds, Boss Cui was sent flying like a rag, then slammed into the wall. In the dead silence, Boss Cui was still alive.

He pulled open his clothes, saw a fist-print on his soft armor, and shouted, his face ashen:

"Loose bolts, loose bolts!!!"

Li Guanyi raised his sword. Just as the crossbow bolts and arrows were fired together, an angry shout rang out:

"Li Guanyi, catch!!!"

The sound of the fine horse was like the cry of a dragon.

The young Jinwu Guards came charging in. Those guards were pierced through by spears channeling the momentum of the horses, lifted up, and sent flying. Ye Buyi held a battle-halberd in his hand; he hurled it with a sudden throw. Behind him, the other youths were all there.

All ten of them were there.

They came charging in amid the horses' cries. Ye Buyi was also leading a spirited horse.

Li Guanyi raised his hand and gripped the battle-halberd.

Blood dripping, his right hand raised high.

All he had ever considered was when they would arrive.

He had never doubted that these youths—who a month ago had still been hostile to one another—would come.

Crossbow bolts and arrows were loosed. Li Guanyi's battle-halberd thrust out, carrying the surging-tide inner energy. His battle-halberd swept once, deflecting these arrows and bolts, each one caught up in small whirlpools. The Taigu Chilong's inner energy at this moment fully merged into Li Guanyi's body.

Thus, with surging tide, he imitated 【Wang Yang's Strength】.

The arrows stalled in mid-air. The youth swung the battle-halberd; the crimson light at its tip was like the Taigu Chilong's long cry. The flames from torches and lamps were drawn in by the raging-tide inner energy. Li Guanyi was like one dancing with a Taigu Chilong. Finally, his battle-halberd swept out, and all the arrows and bolts were swept to the ground.

Ye Buyi wore only his everyday clothes, carried the battle-halberd, held a waist-token in his hand, and said solemnly:

"Golden Guard, Night Not Doubt!"

"Golden Guard, Zhou Liu Camp!"

"Golden Guard..."

The blood-soaked boy held his battle halberd horizontally; behind him, other boys with halberds gripped their weapons, tugged their reins, and swept their cold gazes across the surroundings, then charged together—horses galloping back and forth, battlefield skill—ten men, the Golden Guard, shattered two hundred guards.

They gathered together: eleven military officers, the future eleven generals.

The Never-Night Marquis fell silent for a long while, then praised: "Master Siming's speed is astonishing, and this child..."

"Has some interest."

"The younger generation of Chen State has the bearing of heroes."

"Before the Great Sacrifice, this black market won't be able to stay open."

Li Guanyi gasped heavily; footsteps approached—hundreds of soldiers in Jingcheng Garrison armor arrived, heading straight for Li Guanyi and his group, shouting: "Who?! Who dares ride with spear and horse and injure people? Arrest them!"

"Disarm them all! Take them to the grand prison and await judgment!!!"

He intended to close the case definitively—when the next instant, a piercing sound tore through the air.

A spear pierced through the general's armor, stabbed through his side, and pinned him to the wall—cold, lethal—then came the clanking of armor; Gong Zhenyong, Commander of the Imperial Guard, rode forward on horseback and said:

"Jingcheng Patrol: duties over watchtowers, roads, water, and forage. All Imperial Guard troops from the Imperial Guard Corps and auxiliary forces on rotation fall under the Golden Guard's jurisdiction."

"I'd like to see..."

The ten youths and Li Guanyi saw the Commander of the Imperial Guard ride out on a jet-black steed, behind him ten Golden Guards; the commander's gaze was icy as he grinned: "Who dares lay a hand on my Golden Guard's lads?!"

Behind him, a hundred or so Golden Guards stepped forward half a pace in unison.

Qiu Shiyong beside Li Guanyi whispered: "I went to my uncle."

Gong Zhenyong said: "State your rank!"

His eyes fixed on the blood-drenched Li Guanyi, ready to rebuke him—but seeing him soaked in blood, he recalled his own youth, leaving home to join the army; he fell silent and said: "We take over this place. Don't worry—this black market has no reason to remain."

"I woke up in a foul mood and needed somewhere to vent."

"But you started this—how many did you kill?"

Li Guanyi said: "Thirty-seven."

"How many disabled?"

"Over a hundred."

Gong Zhenyong said: "Good."

He barked: "Left and right, seize him!"

The Golden Guards on either side pinned the boy down, whispering low: "We must take you back—it's our own matter. Otherwise, the City Defense Force will cause trouble. The General is protecting you."

Li Guanyi nodded. "Mm."

The children ran out, along with an old man; one child shouted:

"Big brother!"

"Thank you for saving me!"

Li Guanyi's arms were bound; his young back stood straight as he turned to look at the children.

Chains clinked on the boy's body; he smiled brightly.

Then his shoulders were twisted forward—he saw Master Siming. The boy whispered: "Old man, thank you; you said this couldn't be resolved?"

A clear breeze touched the boy's corner of the eye; he blinked.

He himself was bound, yet he spoke lightly:

"See? Isn't it resolved?"

"Golden Guard—uprooted! Before the Great Sacrifice, we'll plow this place under."

"I guarantee, they'll never get another chance to harm anyone."

Master Siming could not speak.

Li Guanyi said: "I once met a man—truly—he said that if the world is dark, and everyone gives a little light, a little warmth, it will get better. I didn't understand before. Now, I truly understand."

The old man looked at the black market, saw the frightened faces beneath hoods, blocked in place; saw the black market sealed off by the Golden Guard—this place would not exist anymore, not for at least two years.

The boy smiled and said: "Feel my chest."

"Look at my heart—is it still warm?"

"It's still hot, like fire."

In Master Siming's eyes, the Crimson Dragon circled beside him—different from before. Li Guanyi's heart had changed; the Crimson Dragon grew warm, carrying the same light that the ancient Crimson Emperor once raised his three-foot sword to sweep the world and illuminate the night.

Master Siming suddenly felt something.

He snapped his head up—the seven stars of the Azure Dragon in the sky.

The King's Star.

Lit up.