Blood splattered three inches

“Oh, these candied hawthorns sold out quickly today. If every day could be this leisurely, how wonderful that would be.”

Perched atop a roof in the western part of the city, the very same candied hawthorn vendor from days past lay stretched out.

He held a duck leg in his left hand, his right propping up his head, while beside him rested a half-uncorked jar of wine, brewed from some unknown concoction.

“This is the life,” he murmured.

“Now, if only a theatrical performance would start, that would truly be something.”

He lifted the wine jar, took a deep gulp, and let out a satisfied ‘Sighaa’ sound.

As his gaze casually swept across the scene, his eyes suddenly widened.

“Hey, speak of the devil!” he exclaimed.

“Isn’t that the young lad the Empress took a liking to? And standing opposite him, that’s…”

He sat upright, squinting intently for a long moment, then scratched his head, unable to recall the other person’s identity.

“Never mind, probably just a nobody. But judging by their stances… looks like I’ve got a show to watch.”

He picked up his wine jar, took several hearty bites of the large duck leg, and then, with a joyful sway of his legs, settled in to enjoy the spectacle.

****

Inside the alley.

Yún Mù stood at a crossroads, facing a grim-faced Shangguan Ce.

“You little beast,” Shangguan Ce sneered, “looking at your clothes, did you perhaps steal them from some household? Or could it be…”

Before he could finish, a resounding ‘Boom!’ echoed as the blue bricks beneath his feet abruptly burst, scattering fragments of stone.

In the next instant, his figure materialized before Yún Mù, his five fingers seizing directly for the young man’s throat.

“Hm?”

In that fleeting moment between life and death, Yún Mù’s hips dropped sharply, his entire body shrinking by nearly half a foot, barely evading the lethal strike.

The center of gravity of his crouching body instantly shifted to the tip of his right foot.

His right arm, pulled back, tensed with muscle, and then, with a twist of his waist and a turn of his shoulder—

—Boom!

A right fist, utterly ferocious and bordering on exhaustion, met the attack head-on.

“Bang—!”

Fist and palm collided with brutal force.

“Crack—!”

A bone-chilling sound of splintering bone distinctly pierced the air.

Shangguan Ce’s right hand had completely enveloped Yún Mù’s fist.

What shattered, however, were Yún Mù’s fragile metacarpals and finger joints.

“Urgh… ah…”

The excruciating pain transformed the slender youth’s muffled groan into a sharp, agonizing cry.

Blood erupted from the twisted, deformed gaps between the fingers of his right fist, as if spurting, instantly staining half his forearm crimson.

“Boy, you didn’t actually think you could…” Shangguan Ce’s sneer had just begun to form.

“What!?”

The young man, seemingly recoiling in agony, unleashed a terrifying force from his left arm, far surpassing anything he had shown before.

Before the arc of his twisted body could fully straighten, his coiled left fist, imbued with a gale-force power even more formidable and violent than his right, struck without any flourish, slamming fiercely into his opponent’s face, which had relaxed in triumph.

“Bang! Crack!”

Two sharp sounds nearly overlapped as the young man’s punch landed squarely, and the excruciating pain of a collapsing nasal bone instantly detonated.

Stars exploded before Shangguan Ce’s eyes, and he felt the world spin.

His left hand, still clamped onto Yún Mù’s right wrist, involuntarily loosened its grip, and he stumbled back several steps, almost losing his footing entirely.

“Cough! Ptooey!”

Blood mixed with broken teeth spewed from the corner of his mouth.

Clutching his almost disfigured, collapsed nose, a furious rage ignited within his heart.

He had no idea that Yún Mù’s dominant hand was his left.

Even more critically, he was unaware that Yún Mù was equally proficient with his right hand, making that initial right punch a mere diversion, designed to draw his attention.

“You little beast! You truly deserve to die!”

A hysterical roar tore through the alley’s silence.

Shangguan Ce’s once handsome face was completely twisted and contorted by pain and fury, all traces of reason vanished from his eyes, replaced only by a murderous madness, ready to devour his prey.

Yet, his enraged gaze swept across his surroundings, only to find the young man’s figure had once again vanished into the alley’s shadows.

“Get out here! Get out here, you hear me!”

Amidst his roars, Shangguan Ce, plunged into utter madness, became like an uncontrolled beast, unleashing a torrent of punches, each imbued with surging power.

Bang! Boom!

Old wicker baskets piled on the right were instantly shredded by the violent force, transforming into a swirling myriad of bamboo fragments.

Yet, apart from the rising dust, there was nothing there.

He spun and charged towards another pile of debris.

Wherever he struck, the walls bore the deep indentations of his fists, bricks cracked, and shattered stones flew wildly.

At that moment, Shangguan Ce was utterly consumed by rage, his reason completely lost.

His sole desire was to pulverize this entire area, along with the hidden young man, into dust.

“Hah… hiss…”

Deeper within the alley, Yún Mù slumped against a wall, his back pressed firmly against it.

He clutched his right arm, his face ghastly pale, his right hand already twisted into a grotesque, unnatural shape, with several white bones faintly visible, piercing through his skin.

The sounds of crashing blows and furious roars echoed in his ears.

He gritted his teeth, suppressing the agony, and forced himself to stand upright again.

Tucked into his waistband was a cleaver—a purchase he had made from a butcher for two copper coins on his way there.

As for the copper coins, he had earned them previously by working as a helper at that very butcher’s shop, a full circle that brought them back to their origin.

Imperceptibly, the crashing sounds began to subside, replaced by Shangguan Ce’s suddenly elevated shouts.

“Ah, Yún Mù, why are you hiding from me? Your big brother wouldn’t kill you.”

He altered his address and self-reference, still pacing the alley.

“Yún Mù, don’t hide any longer. Your big brother won’t keep it from you—I’m actually here to protect you. After all, you’re Shangguan Qiūyuè’s (TL Note: Shangguan Qiūyuè is a female character, likely an important figure or love interest to Yún Mù, implying he is cherished by her) dearest, aren’t you? What would she do if something happened to you?”

Clearly, he had calmed down at this point, gambling on the possibility that Yún Mù merely sought revenge for years of beatings and abuse, rather than having discovered his scheme to abduct young boys and girls.

“Little brother Yún Mù, I know you resent me for bullying you all these years, but your big brother also had his difficulties, you see.”

He continued with his conciliatory words, though his ‘difficulties’ were nothing more than a pretext to find a punching bag.

“If you truly hate me, I won’t blame you. Come out, and I’ll let you vent your frustrations properly, how about that?”

The footsteps grew closer, the voice louder, until, just a single turn away, Shangguan Ce’s laughter seemed to press against Yún Mù’s very face—

“Little brother Yún Mù, no need to hide anymore…”

Suddenly, however, a cold glint flashed, without the slightest warning.

A silver gleam of a blade, imbued with a heavy scent of blood, abruptly cleaved out from the dark corner of the wall.

Its target was precisely his neck, which had been slightly elevated as he spoke.

The young man had drawn the cleaver tucked into his waistband; it was Yún Mù’s desperate counterattack, fueled by every ounce of his accumulated strength.

Shangguan Ce’s pupils contracted sharply, but the cold edge was already upon him.

He could even discern Yún Mù’s dark red bloodstains clinging to the blade.

“Sshh!”

A faint sound of flesh being sliced echoed, but alas… it was ultimately short by just an inch.

His extreme backward lean had saved his life.

The blade’s tip narrowly grazed an inch in front of his throat, leaving behind only a thin, elongated line of blood.

Even so, the chilling aura of the blade and the sheer terror had already made his heart pound violently.

A drop of blood oozed from the wound on Yún Mù’s twisted right arm, poised to fall.

Reflected in Shangguan Ce’s pupils was this very blood drop.

His body, reeling from the sudden terror, stumbled uncontrollably backward, on the verge of losing balance completely and falling…

“Freeze.”

A languid voice seemed to whisper directly into their ears.

In that instant, the world stood still.

Dust motes swirling in the alley froze mid-air.

Yún Mù’s body, leaning forward from the full force of his cleaver swing, solidified like a stone sculpture.

Shangguan Ce’s backward-arching body was held aloft by an invisible force, suspended barely an inch above the ground, unable to fall further.

The blood drop, suspended in mid-air, was crystalline, scarlet, and reeked of iron.

The very space within the alley seemed to have solidified, and the actions of both men were similarly frozen in this precise moment.

“Oh my—I didn’t expect to actually catch such a good show during my idle time; not bad at all,”

The languid voice spoke again as the vendor silently appeared beside them, his lips still glistening with grease.

“This young man certainly looks presentable, but his temper, tsk tsk tsk, I can’t commend it.”

He pursed his lips, then turned his gaze to Yún Mù, scrutinizing him from head to toe.

“It seems I, Hú Délù, misjudged you earlier. To think you’re quite resilient, not only enduring such grievous injuries but even nearly counter-killing? My mistake, my mistake.”

“It’s just a pity, though—”

“You’re too rigid, too stubborn. If you had accepted my candied hawthorn and eaten it, ah, you’d wake up with your meridians open, communicating with the stars. Even if you didn’t truly step into the threshold of cultivation, wouldn’t it be simple as pie to butcher this Shangguan Ce fellow?”

“Unfortunately, as I said, once this village is passed, there’s no other shop (TL Note: A Chinese idiom meaning ‘this is a one-time opportunity’), so that previous one is gone. But… considering you’ll be meeting the Empress in the future, I do have a healing fruit for you.”

As he spoke, he retrieved a string of candied hawthorns from his bosom, plucked one, and placed it into the young man’s mouth.

Immediately, the candied hawthorn transformed into a green ray of light and disappeared into Yún Mù’s body.

“Hm, excellent, this foundation is truly superb, simply superb,” he nodded with satisfaction.

His gaze then shifted to the immobile Shangguan Ce.

“As for you, alas, consider yourself lucky. If I weren’t worried about this little fellow killing you and messing up subsequent events, I’d truly be too lazy to bother.”

Saying this, he took out another bamboo skewer, playfully flicked it twice with a smile, then jabbed it sharply towards Shangguan Ce’s forehead.

Strangely, no blood splattered.

The skewer, like a flash of spiritual light, simply merged into his body.

“Hm… erasing a little memory shouldn’t be a big deal, right? Never mind, it’s none of my business anyway. The main thing is to prevent him from knowing that Yún Mù can already draw upon the power of the stars even before establishing contact with them.”

He waved a hand, letting out a long sigh of relief.

“Phew~ For the rest, I’ll just carry this boy away and toss him back into the Shangguan family’s side courtyard, to avoid any further trouble.”

With that, he hoisted Yún Mù onto his shoulder as if carrying a candied hawthorn stand, hummed an off-key tune, and then vanished like the wind.

****

A few breaths later,

In the alley,

Shangguan Ce suddenly dropped to his knees with a thud, letting out a pained hiss.

“Strange, I remember I wasn’t going to…” He clutched his head, his brows furrowed deeply.

“What was I supposed to be doing…?”