Great Li Martial God

Three days later.

Inside a quiet little building in the Great Li imperial capital, the newly appointed Heavenly Mechanism Pavilion Master, Zhu Wuming, formally took charge of the Great Li branch and began working through the Pavilion’s affairs.

At that moment, on the other side of the desk piled high with documents before him stood Song Xingwei in a moon-white dress.

Zhu Wuming was somewhere around fifty years old, built large and broad, nothing at all like the refined and scholarly air of Master Youshan. He looked more like a rough fighting man.

But his appearance was in striking contrast to his voice, which was remarkably soft and gentle, the two utterly at odds with each other.

”I have only just arrived in Shangyang City to take over the Pavilion’s affairs, and there are many things I am not yet familiar with. I will be relying on Miss Xingwei’s guidance.”

With his full beard, leopard eyes, and heavy brows, Zhu Wuming struck Song Xingwei as looking rather fierce, yet when he spoke in that tender voice of his, it made her skin crawl.

Song Xingwei reached for the booklet at her waist by instinct, almost recording a demerit on the spot, but in the end restrained herself and said with a dismissive curl of her lip, ”Whatever you want to know, as long as I know it, I will tell you. But...”

As she said this, her tone shifted, and she glanced out through the window of the small building, ”I do not actually have time to answer your questions today. I need to go outside the city and watch my good friend’s elder brother fight.”

”Watch a fight?”Zhu Wuming’s expression went slightly blank, as though he had not quite grasped what Song Xingwei was about to go and do.

At those words, Song Xingwei gave him a skeptical look and said, ”Surely not. This has spread through almost the entire capital already. You are the Heavenly Mechanism Pavilion Master, and you do not know about it?”

As she said this, her hand was already moving toward the booklet at her waist.

At that, Zhu Wuming seemed to finally recall something, and said with a dawning look, ”Forgive my poor memory. I have been so busy taking over the Pavilion’s affairs that the matter of the Eighth Prince and the Hidden Kill Pavilion momentarily slipped my mind.”

He then waved a hand and said, ”Since Miss Xingwei wishes to go outside the city and watch the clash, I will not take up your time. The Pavilion’s matters are not so urgent that they cannot wait until later.”

At those words, Song Xingwei’s face immediately brightened. She lowered her hand away from the booklet and then clasped her hands in a bow, ”Then I will take my leave, Pavilion Master Zhu. Please carry on.”

With that, she had absolutely no intention of lingering, and turned to go.

But she had only taken a few steps when Song Xingwei suddenly stopped, turned her head, and looked back at Zhu Wuming sitting behind the desk.

Her bright crescent-moon eyes flickered, and she said, ”Word has it that the Hidden Kill Pavilion’s mysterious Kill-Saint will be making an appearance. A clash between experts of that level is exceedingly rare. Would Pavilion Master Zhu not like to come and see? If so, we could go together.”

At those words, Zhu Wuming picked up one of the stack of letters on the desk, began opening it, and looked up to say, ”Master Youshan left his position in such a hurry that quite a few matters have piled up in the Pavilion, and I need to deal with them. I will not be going today.”

Song Xingwei immediately furrowed her brow, ”These things can be handled any time. But a clash between top-level experts like this, once you miss it, you never get it back.”

At those words, Zhu Wuming gave a calm smile, shook his head, and continued opening the letter in his hand, saying, ”Miss Xingwei may not know this, but there is a saying: once you have seen the sea, all other waters are pale. To be frank, I once had the good fortune to personally witness a Martial God strike, and ever since that day, I simply cannot find any clash between anyone else in the martial world worth watching.”

At those words, Song Xingwei’s eyes went wide, and a look of shock spread across her face, ”You actually witnessed a Martial God strike?”

She moved immediately, coming to stand before the desk, her fair oval face filled with curiosity as she asked, ”Which one? When? How formidable was it?”

”You are not making this up, are you?”

Zhu Wuming glanced at Song Xingwei and said with a smile, ”Naturally not.”

He then took on a look of reminiscence and continued, ”It was on a winter’s day about four years ago. I was traveling through the martial world and arrived in Xuanwu City, the northernmost city of Great Wu.”

”It happened to coincide with the Patriarch of Xuanwu City emerging from seclusion. At the time, I and a group of martial world figures in the city watched from a distance as one of the three great Martial Gods of the world, Lu Xianzhi, exchanged a single palm strike with the Patriarch of Xuanwu City on the city walls, and with that one palm sent the Patriarch retreating all the way back to his seclusion chamber.”

”That overwhelming sight... every time I think of it, I feel a surging in my heart and soul that takes a long time to settle.”

Zhu Wuming seemed to sink back into that memory, his whole manner going slightly distant, though he quickly came back to himself, lowered his eyes, and spread open the letter in his hand, saying, ”Though that Martial God only threw a single palm, it was more staggering and magnificent than any clash between experts I had ever seen, countless times over. And that feeling... it is something that can only be understood through experience, never described in words.”

At those words, Song Xingwei stared at Zhu Wuming’s face, feeling both envious and convinced that he was purely showing off, and finding him thoroughly deserving of a thrashing.

But she could only endure it, and let out a long, heavy sigh in her heart.

She had to wonder whether she would ever get the chance in her lifetime to personally witness a Martial God make a move. If she did, she would have something to boast about for the rest of her days as well.

”Hmm... actually, now that I think of it, my good friend’s elder brother is said to have the bearing of a Martial God. Perhaps that wish of mine really could come true one day.”

Thinking this, Song Xingwei’s eyes suddenly lit up, and she glanced at Zhu Wuming, who had lowered his head to read the letter.

She said nothing more, turned without a word, and left.

After all, the Martial God Zhu Wuming had seen was something he had witnessed with his own eyes, not her. Why sit and listen to him show off any further?

Better to go outside the city early and find a good vantage point, where she could get the clearest possible view of the spectacular clash between the Hidden Kill Pavilion’s Kill-Saint and her good friend’s elder brother.

At the same time, Zhu Wuming stared at the letter in his hand, his brow gradually creasing as he read, paying no attention to Song Xingwei’s departure.

The urgent sealed letter he was now holding had naturally been sent by that old storyteller in the small city of Lan Province.

But since the storyteller’s position was merely that of a small-city branch head, even though it had been sent as an urgent sealed letter, it ranked last in priority among the many matters a Heavenly Mechanism Pavilion Master had to process.

Furthermore, the previous Pavilion Master Youshan, due to the crisis caused by his mistaken decision to act against Li Musheng, had not had time to finish dealing with the letters in his hands before resigning his position and departing.

And so the storyteller’s letter had been left sitting untouched until Zhu Wuming, the new Heavenly Mechanism Pavilion Master, took office, and only now was this long-neglected and by now rather outdated letter finally opened.

Having read the contents of the letter, Zhu Wuming furrowed his brow slightly.

He was of course thoroughly familiar with the matter of the Great Li Eighth Prince Li Musheng, given that it was precisely this affair that had driven the previous Pavilion Master from his position. It was also one of the most important matters he needed to handle after taking office.

What he had not expected was that Li Musheng had apparently had this previously unknown encounter with the Heavenly Mechanism Pavilion’s people back in that small city of Lan Province.

And from the letter, Zhu Wuming naturally came to understand precisely what Li Musheng had been seeking from the Heavenly Mechanism Pavilion.

”So that is what it was. Since he has something to ask of the Heavenly Mechanism Pavilion, the matter becomes simpler. Turning hostility into goodwill between the Pavilion and him should not be difficult.”

Zhu Wuming gave a slow nod, and then his thoughts turned to Song Xingwei.

From what she had said earlier, this young woman, one of the Heavenly Mechanism Pavilion’s seven Star Lords, appeared to have some connection to the Eighth Prince as well.

”With Miss Xingwei also there as an intermediary, a problem that might have seemed somewhat troublesome is now looking like it will resolve itself quite easily.”

Having found a path forward on the Li Musheng matter, Zhu Wuming was in fairly good spirits.

Then his gaze shifted, and he picked up the envelope from the desk and tipped out a strand of black cat fur into his hand.

Zhu Wuming, the newly installed Heavenly Mechanism Pavilion Master, then examined the strand of black fur carefully.

The black fur was smooth and glossy, soft to the touch, suggesting it came from a black cat that was well-fed and well-cared for.

”But why did that Eighth Prince say that seeing this cat fur would be enough to confirm his identity?”

Zhu Wuming looked at the fur in his hand with some curiosity, then had a thought, gathered his Martial True Qi, and gently closed his hand around it.

In the very next instant, Zhu Wuming’s expression changed sharply. He immediately released his grip, and in the same breath his entire figure vanished from where he stood and reappeared at the far side of the small building.

He was now several zhang away from where he had been sitting.

His expression was grave, and he stared fixedly at the small clump of black cat fur now drifting suspended in the air behind the desk.

The fur hung motionless, looking entirely ordinary. But to Zhu Wuming’s senses, there was something hidden within it, a faint aura that made his heart clench for no reason he could name.

That aura had only revealed itself the moment he had tried to destroy the fur with his true qi.

In that instant, it had felt as though what he held in his hand was not a clump of cat fur at all, but a thread of something unreachable, an absolute will.

”Could there be a martial will left by that Eighth Prince within this cat fur?”

Zhu Wuming was clearly a great deal more perceptive than that old storyteller, and immediately understood and traced the source of what was concealed within the fur.

Then his tiger-like leopard eyes narrowed slightly, and he rubbed the thick beard along his jaw, muttering to himself, ”Interesting. Since I will not have time to go outside the city and witness that Eighth Prince act in person, experiencing his technique firsthand right here is not a bad alternative.”

With that thought, Zhu Wuming’s entire aura suddenly became profound and inscrutable. Intangible true qi of heaven and earth streamed ceaselessly toward him, then transformed into two coiling currents of terrible cloud-energy, one black and one white, twisting around each other.

Then with a casual sweep of his hand, those intertwining black and white currents billowed down over the clump of fur drifting behind the desk.

Zhu Wuming stood where he was and watched it all in silence. He saw the black and white cloud-energy envelop the fur, and then, without warning, his very soul seemed to tremble, and his consciousness flickered for the briefest of moments.

He shook his head instinctively, and found that the world before his eyes was growing increasingly blurry.

A sense of wrongness immediately gripped Zhu Wuming, and he immediately put all his strength into circulating the vast Martial True Qi within his body. His aura grew ever more profound, trying to keep his own will clear and conscious.

But all he could see was the cat fur growing closer and closer in his field of vision. Everything else blurred and faded with speed, while only the cat fur grew clearer and clearer.

Those black strands of fur seemed to transform into a series of immense black blades reaching from earth to heaven, and in an instant they occupied his entire field of vision.

Before those blades, each one seemingly capable of piercing through all of heaven and earth, he became smaller and smaller, until at last he was nothing more than a speck of dust, utterly insignificant beneath a forest of numberless cat-fur swords.

Zhu Wuming looked up instinctively, only to find that the cat fur above him could only be looked up at from below, impossibly high.

He was like an ant crouching at the roots of towering black trees that reached into the heavens. The cat fur had become something entirely beyond his reach, something he could see but never touch.

”How... could this be...”

Zhu Wuming felt his consciousness growing more and more dim, and as he stared up at those colossal pillars of cat fur, it seemed as though at any moment his awareness would shatter entirely.

But just at that moment, everything before his eyes suddenly shifted and transformed in an instant. The enormous black blade-like strands of fur shrank in a flash, and in the blink of an eye they were again a small, ordinary clump of cat fur.

Zhu Wuming’s consciousness gradually cleared. He gave his head a fierce shake.

The surroundings slowly came back into focus. He found he was still inside the small building where he had been before, and that apparently nothing had changed at all.

The strand of black fur he had tipped from the envelope was still drifting quietly in the air behind the desk, as though from beginning to end it had not moved in the slightest.

Zhu Wuming’s brow immediately creased deeply, and in the next instant he looked sharply downward, and his pupils contracted.

Only now did he suddenly realize that at some unknown point, both his legs had gone to the ground. He was kneeling.

And the direction he was kneeling in faced precisely toward that clump of black fur drifting in the air.

He had knelt before a clump of cat fur?

”This...”

Zhu Wuming reached back and touched his back, and only then realized it was soaked through, cold sweat streaming freely.

In that instant, Zhu Wuming’s expression went blank with shock, and he turned to stare at the cat fur behind the desk. Then a look of total disbelief spread across his face.

”What kind of martial will... is this?”

In that moment, Zhu Wuming finally understood.

What had just happened was the martial will within the cat fur pressing down upon him.

Nothing more than this one thread of martial will, with its owner not even present, had been enough to bring him directly to his knees, with no power to resist.

Unresistable. Unimaginable. Beyond all reach.

Utterly terrifying.

Zhu Wuming slumped to the floor where he knelt, and only in this moment did he realize he was completely drained of strength.

The vast Martial True Qi that had been circulating through his body moments before was now as thin as a thread of silk, having dissipated and vanished at some unknown point.

And of all of this, he had felt nothing. He had not even known it was happening.

Zhu Wuming’s face was white as paper, and he sat stunned and blank. But he quickly came back to himself.

”Fortunately... that martial will within the cat fur carried no killing intent whatsoever. Otherwise, just now I would not have gotten off with only my true qi scattered.”

And at that moment, when Zhu Wuming looked again toward the clump of black cat fur, he found it was already rapidly dissolving, breaking down into threads of ash that drifted slowly downward.