Joy of Life

A whistle sounded.

Several men in black leapt down from the rooftops of the houses that adorned both sides of the lane. Quickly, they dashed into the crowd of the young, brattish nobles, separating their numbers through the middle. The Qinian Unit had trained as spies for several years, and their ability to assess and react accordingly was phenomenal. They went for the legs of their horses, toppling the kids that were upon them.

Much to Fan Xian’s group’s surprise, however, the kids did not tumble off and fall to the ground as expected. Although it was slightly awkward and without true finesse, the kids were able to land on their two feet. It seemed that these sons of dukes had been taught well.

“Screw you! Cut them up.”

The leader of the immature group was about 14 years old, but he had eyebrows of aged aggression. Despite seeing that their opponents outnumbered them, they were unafraid. These kids had been out on the streets for a long time and by this point, were too far gone; nothing could strike fear into their hearts. They grasped their swords and to the nearest man in black they could find, swung their blades wildly in a bid to cut them down. One was in their sights.

The subordinate that had been targeted knew who his noble foes were. He saw his nearest assailant swinging like a madman, with no concern for his own defense. His chest was free to strike, but the man in black did not raise his own sword. The opponent looked so young, and his fighting style painted him as little more than a kamikaze fighter. The man in black chose to dodge the attack, but he suffered a gash upon his left shoulder.

The child arrogantly laughed and mocked him. “These people know who we are. They won’t dare to attack us. Come on, my brethren, let’s kill them all!”

The horde of kids was like a swarm, and the scene could be best depicted by the image of an elephant surrounded by an army of ants. But because of the Qinian Unit’s knowledge of their identity as noble descendants, they each stayed their hands and dared not strike out at them. These children would rampage through the streets ceaselessly, in full knowledge that the government would not suppress them, out of honor and respect for their heroic forefathers. And now, they all bore down upon the Qinian Unit as a herd of berserkers. At the very least, they hoped to break the resolve and mess up the formation and composure of the Qinian Unit.

All the Qinian Unit did was keep them at bay, knocking them back. And even though they did this to many, it was still an even fight.

The swooshing sounds of swung blades were drowning the entire atmosphere of this night-veiled lane. The darkness was enveloping them all, and so the kids brought forward their torchbearers to shed light on their enemies. In the chimney-red and Halloween-orange of the torch’s glow, one could see the spite and bloodlust that were consuming the kids.

Fan Xian, who was still in the carriage, was watching the scene. As time progressed, his face grew dour. He knew that those in the Qinian Unit were his closest bodyguards and even though they weren’t as talented as Gao Da or the Tiger Guard, he thought they could have dealt with these kids with little to no hassle. It was only because of their years of service to the Overwatch Council and government that they did not dare to bring grievous harm to the self-proclaimed “Rangers”.

He was, however, aware that his subordinates were taking Fan Xian’s own well-being into consideration also, for they did want to bring political trouble on him for the slaying of these kids. But the Qinian Unit was choosing to gamble with their lives by not putting a permanent end to the young nobles’ advances. Still, it brought Fan Xian’s blood to boil through an overwhelming sense of unfairness, viewing his own men having to fight like wimps in the face of such petty enemies, whose arrogance continued to grow with each passing second. In Fan Xian’s mind, he compared the complete turnaround to a football match in his past life, of when AC Milan was vexed by Liverpool’s six-minute miracle goals.

“Nonsense!” Fan Xian had leapt from his carriage when he yelled this out in annoyance. The shout was infused with his zhenqi and so his voice boomed, billowing down the length of the street.

The battle that had been splintered into a number of smaller groups by this point was brought to a pause. The Qinian Unit took advantage of this and hastily retreated to the carriages. Two of them had been brought to calamitous harm, however, and blood gushed from their wounds down to the cobbles of the street. Due to the Qinian Unit’s inability to fight back properly, the kids had all aimed at their weak spots.

Fan Xian looked upon his subordinates with a face that conveyed no emotion or sympathy and told them, “When you guys were fighting in the northern Qi Kingdom, how come you weren’t this useless then?”

The subordinates were embarrassed and ashamed of their performance, and so they looked to the ground. In their pounding, breathless hearts, they too felt the state of affairs to be unjust. The little bastards were inferior to them in skill and yet they were taking pride in being able to beat back those who could not do the same. They could not murder the grandsons of the dukes themselves and thus, this disadvantage was too great.

Deng Ziyue exited the carriage now to join them. His face was motionless, as if chiseled from stone. He saw the kids approach, laughing with blood-smeared swords; their eyes conveyed the look of butchers preparing to decapitate another chicken.

“Sir, the identity of our opponents is... Don’t worry, we can resolve this.” Deng Ziyue noticed Fan Xian’s face descending further and further into ugliness by the second.

Fan Xian was brought to such anger that it was almost lunacy. And in this fervor, he began laughing. “What identity? All I know is they are a bunch of thieves. And now, we have injured men in our ranks. If anyone hears of this, they will laugh themselves to death.”

“Hey, you with that guy – what are you guys talking about?” The noble kid who was leading the swarm of brats had now gotten extremely close to the carriage. The bloodlust and hostility harbored in his eyebrows was becoming increasingly obvious. He called to them, “Hand over that woman in the carriage, make all your useless men chop off one of their own arms, and then we will let you go.”

Fan Xian looked at the kid for one brief moment, and then looked away.

With a callous, soulless smile, the kid said, “Hey, pretty-boy! Yeah, you! I’m talking to you. Hand over that woman. How dare you cross the Baoyue Brothel. Do you have a death wish or something? Perhaps you would like to be the latest victim of our newly-invented torture method? We call it ‘the cudgel’!”

Each word and accompanying tone was filled to the brim with humiliation, and it disgusted Fan Xian. A cacophony of laughter emerged from the crowd behind him.

Fan Xian, however, disregarded everything the kid had proudly told him. Smiling to his subordinates, he told them, “As long as they are our enemies, then we have to fight our best and be as cruel as possible. It does not matter if they are from outside our country or within; these principles, have you not yet learned them? Is it because following me around has been so relaxing and uneventful that you have laxed in your ability to fight and utilize all that Chen Pingping has taught you?”

The noble kid who was in front of the carriage, faced with Fan Xian’s resilience to pay him any heed, had become furious. In his anger, the explicit requests that were made by the Baoyue Brothel was momentarily lost to him and it was in this madness that he ran towards Fan Xian with a horse whip in hand.

The distance separating Fan Xian and the noble youth was short by this point, but the horse whip was only a few inches long. It would have been impossible for him to hit Fan Xian’s head, so it must have been a bluff.

Fan Xian’s eyes detected the horse whip’s immediate proximity, and with split-second reactions, he raised his left hand.

A cry of absolute pain resounded through the dark night.

The horse whip that was once in the noble kid’s hand dropped to the ground. The brat held his wrist and screamed in pain. A black bolt was then fired from out of nowhere, piercing the flesh of his hand.

Blood gushed from the crevice of the child’s hand. The kids in the rear were in utter shock at the sudden turn of events. They thought to themselves, “Crap! They are firing crossbows at us. Does that guy not know who we are?”

These kids had been doing wicked deeds and perpetrating crimes across the city each and every day; they had even killed. They held a fundamental disrespect toward life itself. It was as if they had been born without souls. But this was the first time someone had retaliated properly, wielding a deadly weapon against them. They weren’t only brought to shock, but they were each brought to anger, as well.

As this happened, everyone looked toward Fan Xian. His eyes were strange, as if the human inside had died.

“Sir!” Deng Ziyue was shocked as well. He was afraid that if the commissioner was made any angrier, he would slaughter each and every little bastard on that lane of battle. If something such as this were to happen, the consequences held upon Fan Xian would be most lamentable. And for the preservation of stability in the capital, no amount of the Emperor’s love for Fan Xian could spare him from this.

Fan Xian slowly brought back his left hand, and eased off the trigger on his right. He looked towards the kids, as if scanning the crowd, and did not respond to Deng Ziyue. As he looked at the children in front of him, he realized just how truly young they were. The youngest was approximately ten years old and yet even such a young face retained a look of ferocity and thirst for violence.

It was no wonder why the Qinian Unit behaved the way they did. Fan Xian took a deep breath and suppressed his fury, channeling it away from his body. Then, he looked at the noble children in front of him and said, “Whoever chooses to bar our passage will die. So tell me, who wants to be the troublesome mantis that blocks this road?”[1]

His frightening black bolt would only suppress the soulless child outlaws for a time. A little while later, the unnerved, scared faces of the children were veiled in masks of cruelty and ruthlessness once again. And the kid who had been struck by the bolt and was now in tears, called backwards, “What are you waiting for? Kill them all and bury them out in the Cang Mountains!”

“Have you ever killed anyone?” Fan Xian looked at him with an expression of curiosity as he asked this.

The noble kid heard this and began screaming. “A noble piece of dog waste like you? I have killed at least one every day!”

During this brief exchange of talk, the swarm of kids were whipped up into madness, charging forwards, consumed with a thirst for blood. But Fan Xian gestured for his subordinates to put away their drawn swords.

Amidst all this noise, Fan Xian raised his right arm incredibly fast. A kid approached and lunged towards Fan Xian with his sword, but before it could make contact, Fan Xian grabbed a hold of the kid’s wrist. An audible snapping sound pierced the night, and the kid fell to the floor, writhing in pain, fearfully clenching his crushed arm.

Fan Xian turned around and threw himself backwards into the chest of another child. He kneeled, grabbed his opponent’s arm above his shoulder and brought it down hard. Snap! Another arm was broken.

Immediately after, Fan Xian leapt up and performed a roundhouse kick to the wrist of another child who was coming at him. The sheer force of this strike caused blood to spurt from the child’s mouth, and the power of such an attack would undoubtedly mean that the injured thug would be recovering at home for the next few months.

Fan Xian stepped forward and raised his arm with ferocious speed, assaulting an attacker’s neck. Unlike the others, this kid did not scream. He merely fell to the floor.

Like a ghost, Fan Xian spirited his way through the children that were raging towards him. Whenever he raised his hand, a kid would fall to the ground. The only sounds that could be heard were the shrill shrieks of screams and the snapping of bones.

The boisterous war cries of the kids had subsided. A heavy, frightening atmosphere veiled the area like a suffocating fog. The number of fallen bodies continued to mount, their placements spreading further and further like a fractal pattern. A few kids from the outer ring had already decided to run off.

Bong. Bong. Bong. Bong.

It sounded like the striking of a gong, but in this world, there was no king of hell pounding on his gong. In their minds, the kids thought that the noises of their shattered bones were akin to the reaper harvesting their souls, coldly pounding the face of a gong.

The Qinian Unit, including Deng Ziyue, watched what was happening with mouths agape. They were in sheer admiration of Fan Xian.

Even though they would have been able to defeat the attacking children, none could have done so with such finesse. Fan Xian was doing it quick and clean, with flawless precision and unhindered speed. He was heavily injuring his opponents, yes, but was making sure that he would not kill a single person that came at him.

Shi Chanli covered his eyes, not wanting to view the scene. Sang Wen, on the other hand, gritted her teeth in suspense, eyes fixed on watching Fan Xian weave his way through the horde, battering their would-be assailants. She was fully aware of the deeds these children had performed in the past, and she knew the harm they had brought to the innocent civilians of the city, and thus she was overjoyed at the sight of their pummeling.

With their bated breaths, it felt as if this had happened for the longest time, but it had only been a few seconds. Aside from those who had run away, all that remained were the injured, writhing around on the ground. After a few more moments had elapsed, the sounds of crying children erupted like a geyser.

Fan Xian, seeing these kids, bleeding and clutching their broken limbs by his feet, felt pleased. And as he thought of this accomplishment, he gently rubbed the wrist he had just exercised. When he was young, he learnt of the human structure from Master Fei; and it seemed as if he hadn’t forgotten what he was taught, after all.

Then, he looked at Deng Ziyue with a serious gaze. “The next time this happens, do not have me deal with it. It is embarrassing.”

He walked over to the noble child who had been leading the others, and who was the first to fall. He gently smiled and told him, “To which family do you belong?”

This child was crazy. With his hand still being anchored to a crossbow bolt, he looked menacingly into Fan Xian’s eyes without blinking. He then madly retorted, “Kill me, if you have the balls! Otherwise, you can wait until your whole family is executed.”

Fan Xian continued to smile as he wagged his finger before the tantrum-throwing child and responded, “Firstly, I won’t kill you. Secondly, you don’t have the authority to plead for the execution of another. That is a privilege that belongs to the Emperor and the Emperor alone. If you say this again, perhaps it will be your family that is executed.”

Fan Xian was no longer interested in engaging the pathetic noble youth with further conversation, so he signaled to the stagecoach driver to bring the carriages around.

At this time, far away, the servants who were holding the torches for the young masters were aghast. Slowly, and with great trepidation, they walked toward the downed children. After witnessing the scene, they would not dare to commit or attempt a foul deed against the carriages – they merely wanted to find their individual masters amidst the injured. But as the stagecoaches now passed them by, they stared at the crestless carriages with eyes beaded and focused like hellhounds.

Fan Xian and his party were now nestled inside the carriages again. The Qinian Unit and their two injured and ashamed members faded away into the black of the night. Inside, Fan Xian rested his eyes in a manner that suggested nothing had just happened. As the others watched him, they did not dare say a word.

All of a sudden, Fan Xian himself roused his eyes open again and said, “That was odd. How was the brothel able to summon such a legion of little bloodthirsty bastards?

Deng Ziyue asked, “You brought great harm to numerous grandsons of the dukes; don’t you need to prepare yourself for possible backlash? I highly doubt your identity can remain hidden for much longer.”

Fan Xian looked at him and replied, “Bah. They are just a collective of down-and-out fighters. Who gives a damn? What concerns me is who was behind this assault.”

Deng Ziyue, with a lowered voice, then asked, “So, what do we do next?”

Fan Xian laughed and responded, “Tomorrow... you will go to the Baoyue Brothel and retrieve the 10,000 tael we left in their possession.”

[1] Fan Xian referenced an anecdote from Zhuangzi, an ancient Chinese text from the late Warring States period. In that story, a praying mantis attempts to block a carriage from moving forward, unaware that it is not powerful enough for the task at hand.