"My Tang Family has always been good for its word. Say we'll fight, and we fight. But let's settle one thing first: fists and feet have no eyes. If someone gets hurt, no one's to blame." Tang Yan shoved Xiaocui aside, rolled up his sleeves, and looked all too eager to start swinging.
Liu Yuan nearly laughed out loud. This idiot really was a one-track fool, blurting out everything that crossed his mind.
"Young Master Tang is refreshingly blunt. Then let's begin! Everyone here, bear witness for me, Liu Yuan - it was Young Master Tang himself who said fists and feet have no eyes."
The exchange between the two had long since drawn the eyes of the crowd.
But neither the Liu Family nor the Tang Family was anyone to provoke, so naturally no one dared step forward to testify. Still, in private they all settled in for a good show, waiting for Tang Yan to kowtow to Liu Yuan.
"Young Master Tang, shall we begin?" Liu Yuan asked.
"Of course. Then let's start. But first, a warning - see this folding fan in my hand? It's no ordinary fan. It's a miraculous Dharma Treasure. Its eighteen ribs can turn into eighteen sharp arrows, piercing iron and splitting gold without the slightest effort."
At that, Liu Yuan's expression shifted. No wonder this fellow dared shout him down - he was leaning on a Dharma Treasure. Such things were rare, the kind of treasure a fortune couldn't buy. He himself owned none, but Tang Yan was the Tang Family's only direct heir, and Old Master Tang would surely have moved heaven and earth to find the boy some means of saving his own skin.
Liu Yuan was just about to declare that Dharma Treasures were forbidden in the match when Tang Yan suddenly bellowed, "Behold the treasured fan!"
With that, he flung the folding fan toward the sky. With a sharp hua, it snapped open in midair.
At Young Master Tang's shout, everyone around tipped their heads back to look. Even Liu Yuan's two guards were now fixed on the open fan, watching with keen interest.
A Dharma Treasure - in Yun City such a thing was a rarity, something even many sons of noble houses would scarcely glimpse in a lifetime.
Liu Yuan's heart clenched, his eyes locked on the fan spinning overhead. He had been careless enough to come without a weapon, and a surge of anxious fury rose in his chest.
The corner of Tang Yan's mouth curled. He lunged forward and drove a foot straight at Liu Yuan's lower belly.
The kick was fast, vicious, and dead-on, sinking into Liu Yuan's gut. Poor Liu Yuan had been gathering strength in his Dantian, bracing for the power of the "treasured fan" - and instead a brutal force slammed up through his stomach, hurling him backward to crash hard against the ground.
Everyone froze. What the hell was going on? Where was the promised Dharma Treasure? How had Liu Yuan gone flying just like that?
In his past life Tang Yan had been a ninth-grade Alchemist, and across that life he'd endured more coercion than he could count. His stubborn, unbending nature had carried him through countless fights, leaving him seasoned and sharp - the kind of man who never gave an enemy room to breathe. The very instant the kick landed, he was already charging in again, dropping astride Liu Yuan and hammering both fists down onto his head, bang bang bang.
Kicked once, then thrown to the dirt, Liu Yuan was already seeing stars. Fists fell like rain on his skull, and in a blink his eyes had swollen into a pair of blackened bruises.
He tried to draw up a breath of True Qi, but his lower belly screamed with pain. The slightest movement felt like countless needles driving in at once, and a cold sweat broke out across his forehead.
The ceaseless pounding on his head kept reminding him, blow by blow, that he was being beaten. To think he was being thrashed by a useless wretch with a crippled Dantian - Liu Yuan could have wept, if he'd had any tears to spare.
Returning home like this, he wouldn't see a single Reward. Worse, his father, his ancestor, and everyone else would surely curse him raw. His hot-tempered father had probably already laid out the whip.
Ground down by shame, fury, fear, and pain all at once, Liu Yuan's vision finally went black, and Tang Yan beat him into a faint.
It was only when the fan clattered down with no reaction at all, and Tang Yan booted Liu Yuan flying once more, that the crowd finally caught on - this brat had no Dharma Treasure whatsoever. He'd just pulled a damn sneak attack!
"Haha, Third Young Master Liu, you actually dozed off!" Seeing Liu Yuan out cold, Tang Yan chuckled and patted him down - and sure enough fished out two thousand taels in silver notes along with some loose silver.
The onlookers' mouths twitched at his words. He was knocked out by you, wasn't he? But most of them simply looked at the unconscious Liu Yuan with pity.
Dropped by a single kick from Tang Yan, that idle good-for-nothing playboy, and beaten so badly he hadn't landed a single blow in return - after this fight, Liu Yuan's name was mud. The Liu Family's face would lose a fair few measures along with it.
"Wow, Young Master, you won!" Only Xiaocui believed her young master had won fair, square, and brilliantly.
"Naturally. Your young master is quite something, hahaha..." Tang Yan scooped the fan up off the ground, fanned himself twice with an elegant flick, and swaggered off with a lazy, splay-footed strut.
Liu Yuan's two guards finally came to their senses, hurriedly lifting their young master and racing off toward the Liu Family at full tilt.
The crowd drifted apart as well, but the fight just now was sure to become Yun City's favorite gossip over tea and after meals.
Tang Yan, meanwhile, ambled brazenly down the street with Xiaocui in tow, turning over in his mind what to do with the two thousand taels he'd just won - buy some shoddy Pill Cauldron, or put the silver to better use.
About a quarter of an hour later, a glance from the corner of his eye caught a street not far ahead lined with herb sellers.
A flash of inspiration lit his mind. He drew a thousand-tael note from his robe and pressed it into Xiaocui's hand. "Take this and head to the Hundred Herbs Hall up ahead. Buy three liang of Thousand Flavor Grass, one liang of Green Sandal Incense, half a liang of Dried Peony Flower, two liang of Rice Tree Core..."
He rattled off more than ten herbs before stopping. Fortunately Xiaocui had a sharp memory; once she'd fixed them all firmly in mind, she took the note and headed for the shop.
The moment he saw her go inside, Tang Yan ducked into another herb store nearby.
"Shopkeeper, two liang of Crystal Sand, three qian of Pearl Powder, nine qian of Heavenly Star Grass, half a liang of Butterfly Flower..." Young Master Tang sang out the moment he crossed the threshold.
At his call the shopkeeper broke into a broad grin. The quantities were small, but with more than twenty kinds of herbs all told, it still came to a tidy sum. Once everything was weighed, the shopkeeper rattled away on his abacus, and Tang Yan was left with a little over three hundred taels.
He had the shopkeeper bundle the herbs, then returned to where he'd started. A good while passed before Xiaocui emerged from the medicine shop.
"I kept Young Master waiting," she said, eyes full of guilt at the sight of him.
"It's fine. Let's go." Tang Yan smiled. He knew his maid well - the girl was painstaking in everything she did. Dawdling this long, she'd no doubt been double-checking the weights in the shop, making sure not a single herb came up short.
"Young Master, where are we going?" Seeing that he wasn't cross with her, Xiaocui let herself relax.
"Myriad Pill Pavilion!"
"Myriad Pill Pavilion? Young Master, you... what are you going there for?" Xiaocui tensed at once. Surely Young Master wasn't planning to go stir up trouble there?
"We buy herbs and then head to Myriad Pill Pavilion - to refine medicine, of course," Tang Yan said with a faint smile.
At that, Xiaocui quietly let out a breath. Trailing behind him, she stole a glance up at his back. His walk was as careless and unruly as ever, yet after all her years serving him, she couldn't shake the feeling that her young master was a little different from before.
Take today's errand - if she'd dragged her feet like this in the past, he'd have scolded her at least a few times. When had he ever been this easy to deal with?27Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡAvSHVJFhn6
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