Vicious

The knight had known about this little vegetable patch for some time, but he had never bothered to look into it. In the vast expanse of Red Pine, the appearance of such a tiny plot of greens was like a small potted plant in a mansion. At the very least, it looked better than bare, barren dirt, and it was far neater than overgrown weeds. Since the area's caretaker hadn't intervened, the knight had been more than happy to ignore it. Whoever had gone out of their way to destroy it was being a bit of a killjoy. But wait... there was a pit trap? He walked over to the pit and peered down. His mouth twitched. Holy crap—were those sharp arrowheads sticking up from the bottom? He glanced over at the youth standing not far away, frowning slightly. "Aren't you being a bit vicious?" The youth spread his hands, answering expressionlessly, "My vegetable patch... was wrecked like this." "This patch..." The knight shook his head, choosing not to get into that controversial topic. "Do you really think Red Pine has wild animals?" To ordinary people, setting traps around a vegetable patch was meant to keep pests and beasts from eating the crops. Yet while Red Pine Martial Academy covered a massive area and boasted lush vegetation, it harbored practically zero wild animals. The overwhelming majority of martial artists couldn't go a single meal without meat. Most students were adolescents with astonishing appetites and agile moves to match. Even if a wild animal wandered into the academy by chance, it wouldn't survive more than a couple of days. However, Wu Youren replied, "I've seen ghost-corrupted warriors. More than one." "Holy shit..." The patrolling knight choked on his words, unable to stop himself from looking at the youth twice more. At such a young age, he had encountered ghost-corrupted warriors more than once? The next instant, several names flashed through his mind. Still, none of that mattered right now. He crouched down to look closely, sucking air through his teeth. "There's blood." No point talking about anything else yet; an investigation had to come first. The knight asked for the youth's name and ran a quick check on his communicator. Sure enough, it was just as he had suspected. He really had survived the battlefield against the Guizu, and had even completed a mission with a perfect rating. As standard procedure, the knight then asked for the youth's own take on the situation. Wu Youren stated that he didn't know the perpetrators and had no specific suspects, though people had indeed been harassing him recently. Naturally, the knight wouldn't just take his word for it; evidence had to be gathered. In reality, brawls between students were a common occurrence at Red Pine, with several incidents every month. Even when blood was drawn, it wasn't considered a major issue. Anyone doubting that only needed to look at the state of the world outside Red Pine. Compared to that, this was truly trivial. The night watchmen carried out their inquiries at an unhurried pace, though they weren't in the best of moods. In the middle of the night, who liked running around dealing with a mess? Before long, a squad member returned to report. When the knight turned back toward Wu Youren, his gaze had shifted slightly. "You even coated them in poison?" "No," the youth answered with an immediate shake of his head. "Just some ghost-dispelling powder." As heaven and earth were his witnesses, the buried arrowheads and steel spikes really were dusted with ghost-dispelling powder. While doing so drove the cost way up, it perfectly aligned with his justification: he was defending against ghost-corrupted warriors! "There's also something that looks like feces on them," the squad member said, glaring at him with hostility. That was the most common poison on the battlefield. Along with pus and foul discharge, it fell under the general label of bodily poison. Bodily poison rapidly contaminated open wounds. Without timely, effective treatment, it led to amputation at best and death at worst. Wu Youren spread his hands and replied with utter helplessness, "This is a vegetable garden. It needs fertilizer." "That's... damn well reasonable!" The knight was at a loss for words. He could already tell this kid was by no means easy to deal with! To disguise such a sinister, underhanded move behind an explanation so fresh and refined! Beneath a grand, righteous excuse lay deeply calculated scheming. And yet, his words truly made sense. At the end of the day... who told those fools to trespass and wreck his garden in the first place? Still, now that the sharp weapons were poisoned and blood had actually been drawn, the gravity of the incident escalated drastically. Bodily poison in particular was extremely time-sensitive. Any delay in effective treatment could result in catastrophe. That meant the harassers had to be tracked down immediately. The knight had originally planned to handle the matter at a leisurely pace, not even caring to look into how the vegetable patch had come to exist. The rights and wrongs of the situation were obvious at a glance, but having justification didn't always make someone right. Now, however, the pace had to quicken. The academy's structure was loose, but investigating something like this was remarkably easy when they actually tried. Students stayed in close contact with one another, and those who had gone to bully the Jin hostage hadn't bothered to keep it secret. In their social circle, it was practically an open secret, and they certainly didn't believe they had done anything wrong. Now that two of them were wounded in the feet, they needed emergency treatment from a professional. Very quickly, the knight pieced together the full sequence of events. Glancing at his wristwatch, he raised an eyebrow and his mouth twitched. Inwardly, he sighed. *A Jin... hostage?* Damn it all, could this end up turning into an international incident? The knight held a very poor impression of Jin—a sentiment shared by far too many Liang people. Initially, he had preliminarily judged the garden's owner to be in the right; though calculating, the kid was still the victim. Yet having learned the general background, the clean-cut, delicate youth before him instantly became repulsive. "Injuring others with lethal force," he muttered with a look of disgust, waving his hand. "Tie him up first!" The surrounding patrolmen didn't know the full details and were momentarily taken aback. *Tie up the victim?* Still, since their leader had given the order, they simply complied. Who knew what hidden twists lay behind this? An apprentice knight stepped forward and swung a kick straight at the back of Wu Youren's knee, intending to force him to kneel. He didn't think the youth would dare dodge, and the youth indeed didn't. Wu Youren took the kick head-on without flinching, gazing at the knight with an innocent, crystal-clear look in his eyes. *Are all Jin people this dim-witted?* The knight's mood abruptly soured. "Forget it!" Almost in the same breath, he caught himself: this was someone who dared coat sharp stakes in bodily poison! "I trust you wouldn't dare run," the knight said impatiently. "Who gave you permission to plant vegetables on this plot?" He definitely had no intention of running! The apprentice who had delivered the kick was utterly certain of that: *I told you so, no need to tie him up.* Yet only now did the knight think to ask about the origins of the vegetable patch. Wasn't that a little late...? Wu Youren continued to look at him innocently. "It beautifies the environment, and no one told me I couldn't." If any other student had offered such a veiled retort, the knight might have kicked them on the spot—*did I ask whether anyone forbade you?* Yet the person before him was a Jin hostage. Displeased though the knight was, he had to take that fact seriously. His understanding of hostages was on par with that of an ordinary Liang citizen, much like Rossi—what decent person went around studying that sort of thing? Even so, he could be fairly certain of one thing: a hostage could be bullied, but they didn't necessarily lack backing! Take this vegetable patch, for instance. Without someone in Red Pine backing him, could he have cleared it out? Red Pine had nearly ten thousand students, yet since its founding, who had ever heard of a student farming here? Liang people were merely unaccustomed to farming; it didn't mean none of them knew how to do it! The knight truly hadn't realized that the reality was embarrassingly simple: so long as the caretaker didn't stop him, it could be done. That was how blind spots worked: everyone assumed it had been done through official approval, when in truth, a minor figure had simply looked the other way. Unwilling to dig deeper into the patch's origins for fear of dragging in someone important, the knight nonetheless had no intention of letting the boy off easily. He sneered. "You got a perfect rating on one mission and think you're something special?" "To actually claim ghost-corrupted warriors might appear inside Red Pine—do you take the rest of us for corpses?" A squad member chimed in, "Boss, this punk's getting cocky. How about we teach him a lesson first?" Everyone could tell that the knight was already showing obvious hostility toward the youth. Another squad member immediately threw a heavy punch from behind, striking the boy hard on the shoulder blade. None of the people who handled the night watch at the academy were gentle souls; throwing a punch or a kick was second nature to them. They dealt with rule-breaking students, and a soft attitude would never keep the peace. Now that the leading knight had shown his stance, it was only natural for someone to step in physically. Even if the sky came crashing down, the taller folks would hold it up. Wu Youren took the heavy punch straight on once again, not budging an inch. He merely replied in a quiet voice. "When I was out on a mission with Instructor Keli, I saw a ghost-corrupted instructor!" "What the fuck... Keli?" The knight certainly knew Keli; the academy was actively promoting him right now. Keli's combat strength was fairly ordinary among the instructors, nowhere near exceptional, but he was a model of cooperation between the military and the academy. Even the top instructors wouldn't openly belittle his prowess—if they wanted benefits from the military, they had to talk him up endlessly. Meanwhile, the knights stuck doing the grunt work of night patrols were typically only assistant instructors. He had suspected there was a story behind the Jin hostage's perfect rating, but he hadn't anticipated the story would be this big. He had even witnessed a ghost-corrupted instructor... For a moment, the knight was at a loss for words. Soon, however, another realization struck him—the boy had taken a kick and a punch, yet he had endured both as if nothing had happened! The knight knew his subordinates' strength very well; these guys would never hold back on a strike! As fellow apprentice knights, could this Jin hostage truly possess such formidable strength? Involuntarily, his thoughts drifted back to the war between Liang and Jin more than a decade ago. During that war, he had been drafted to the front lines. Though he hadn't taken part in the fighting, he had witnessed far too many dead and wounded Liang soldiers. In an instant, rage surged from his chest, and malice flared in his gut—a Jin martial artist had no right to possess such immense potential! He let out a cold sneer. "So you think just because you have a bit of skill, you can look down on everyone?" *Tsk.* Wu Youren was completely speechless now. It truly was a case of finding an excuse to condemn someone when one was already determined to do so! The other man's hostility was laid out in plain sight. As for where the hostility stemmed from, there was hardly any need to think about it—did a Liang person need a reason to despise a Jin person? The reverse held just as true. He let out a long breath before replying slowly, "Instructor, I truly never looked down on anyone." "I've faced the Guizu, and I felt that deep sense of powerlessness. I only set traps to do everything I could to protect myself." "Still, Hong Da's evaluation of me was decent enough. He told me to be ready to deploy for battle again next time!"