In Great Yan, locking onto someone with a qi dynamic was not explicitly forbidden by law, but in nature it was equivalent to stuffing a gun barrel into someone's mouth—and with the safety off, no less.
As a bodyguard, seeing your young master having a weapon shoved down his throat, could you just sit by and do nothing?
Certainly not.
Not to mention the coachman before Qin Weishu's carriage—even retained elders of the Prime Minister's Manor like Zhou Chen or Ying'er would have reacted the exact same way.
If anything went wrong with the person they guarded, under normal circumstances they would be forced to accompany them to the grave.
And that was the trap.
Xu Mengxi had locked onto you with her qi dynamic, and you were free to lock back onto her. But striking to disperse that qi dynamic constituted an assault on an imperial official.
If Xu Yuan were in Qin Weishu's position, he would most likely have given advance orders to just stick his neck out and dare Xu Mengxi to chop it, which would leave the woman herself unable to step down gracefully.
Then again, this came from his own wealth of experience.
Sect disciples like Qin Weishu generally did not care about such things. It seemed that a lack of legal awareness would lead one into a pitfall no matter what world they were in.
With that in mind, Xu Yuan looked at Xu Mengxi with a touch of wistful sighing.
After having the Great Yan laws she upheld trampled so many times by supreme prime ministerial authority, that hotheaded greenhorn had finally learned to adapt.
The procedural justice she followed was smooth and unhindered against the vast majority of people, yet there were always those who could completely block the path she insisted on walking.
Still, since that path was blocked, she chose a detour—to take another procedure. Entrapment might be underhanded, but it worked.
The battle on the street was on the verge of erupting.
"What nerve! To assault a court official at the foot of the Son of Heaven!"
Her person arrived before her voice.
The uniformed woman standing across the street stomped her foot down. The ground fractured, and as if teleporting, she arrived before the Jiugui carriage. Saber gripped in hand, she swept it across in a horizontal slash, instantly dragging out seven tiers of blade light that whirled toward the middle-aged coachman in a deadly spiral.
The middle-aged coachman's movements were also lightning-fast. In the blink of an eye, he had already raised his sword level with his brows, circulating his cultivation technique. A twister-like storm of sword wind materialized around him, shielding his body tightly.
*Clang!*
Blade light collided with sword tempest. The gust whipped up by the impact knocked the spectating crowd this way and that. The intense clash of qi dynamics agitated the beast carriages lingering on the street, causing several low-level demonic beasts to rear back on their hind legs and shriek wildly!
"They really started fighting here... Huaijiu Lane falls under the Heavenly Street Ward, and the City Defense Bureau always has a Grandmaster stationed nearby..."
"What are you still standing around for? Stop watching and get out of here! The shockwaves from cultivators like this can destroy an entire block!"
"Xiao Yi, stop rubbernecking! Hurry up and get back inside, the boss is activating the array!"
As soon as the fight began, the onlookers who had stayed to watch from afar relying on their own cultivation now realized that the combatants' cultivation levels were out of the ordinary. Most of the crowd scattered at once, while the ancient storefronts and workshops flanking the street raised their protective formations.
The Jiugui carriage at the heart of the clash was well worth its steep price tag. Though battered by the shockwaves of Grandmasters clashing at close quarters, the black-scaled unicorn horse stood calmly in place despite blood seeping across its hide; the Grade-A military steed renowned in Jiangnan alongside the Black Qilin Army's flame-hoofed horses truly lived up to its name.
Beyond that, the carriage compartment behind it remained completely still, save for the parted gauzy curtains billowing in the wind.
Yet looking through those parted curtains, Xu Yuan got a clear view of what was happening inside.
The battle outside the carriage had reached a fever pitch in an instant, but the battle inside was equally lightning-fast.
At this sight, the corner of Xu Yuan's mouth twitched uncontrollably.
As he watched, the effeminate-looking man inside seemed to notice an outsider's gaze and looked back over his shoulder.
Their eyes met for an instant, and Qin Weishu grinned at Xu Yuan, pulling up the woman prostrated before him.
"..." Xu Yuan was speechless.
The woman's exquisitely fair face and alluring figure were plainly visible.
Xu Yuan was utterly bewildered by the guy.
Did this guy have some kind of kink?
Dammit, when it came to being a degenerate playboy, Xu Yuan had never deferred to anyone—yet in this department, he was willing to crown this kid the absolute champion.
In the few breaths of this exchanged stare, the battle in front of the carriage had already shifted.
Clashes at the Grandmaster level generally unfolded in one of two ways: either a protracted battle of attrition, or a decisive, lightning-quick victory like Xu Changge's.
And this time, the engagement between Xu Mengxi and the middle-aged coachman was clearly the latter.
"It's about to end," Xiao Bai's voice murmured quietly. "In terms of raw strength, the middle-aged coachman was no match for this woman to begin with, not to mention he has to divide his attention to protect the carriage behind him."
"Is that so?" Xu Yuan murmured softly.
Xu Mengxi truly lived up to her status as a heroine in Cangyuan. After that trip to the Northern Border, her cultivation had clearly progressed significantly.
In Cangyuan's storyline, Qin Mo, as the protagonist controlled by the player, was completely invincible within the same rank, yet there were still quite a few characters capable of keeping pace with his cultivation speed.
Excluding the Lust route, of course.
The trait of the Great Joyous Union Yin-Yang Art that absorbed others' cultivation was too absurd; it required no grinding for experience at all, only procuring materials to refine pills and break through bottlenecks.
Pondering this, Xu Yuan glanced at Xiao Bai and asked, "How does she compare to you?"
Bai Muxi smiled faintly. "Young Master, without knowing her trump cards, I would need to probe her out. But in a direct confrontation, I expect a hundred moves would suffice."
"And if it were an ambush?"
"..." Bai Muxi was taken aback, glancing up at Xu Yuan's expression.
Xu Yuan realized that Xiao Bai was great in every way except for her tendency to overthink at times. He shook his head gently. "Just an offhand question. Don't read too much into it."
Bai Muxi pondered for a moment, then lowered her voice. "If her cultivation technique is not actively circulating, just one strike. If her technique is circulating, it would be slightly more troublesome."
Hearing this, Xu Yuan looked at her with a hint of admiration. For Bai Muxi to give such an assessment meant Xu Mengxi really was formidable—after all, Xiao Bai was already on the verge of completing her Dao fusion and breaking through to the Origin Realm.
While he was deep in thought, Bai Muxi suddenly spoke up to alert him: "Young Master, it's over."
Raising an eyebrow, Xu Yuan looked over and caught the final clash between the two.
With a sudden upward diagonal slash, Xu Mengxi breached the longsword guarded before the middle-aged coachman, and the escaping blade light cleaved off one upturned eave of the Jiugui carriage.
The middle-aged coachman was no longer able to protect the carriage behind him.
More critically, that upward slash left his centerline completely wide open.
If Xu Mengxi had wished, a single spell or a close-quarters martial technique could have taken his life.
While cultivators weren't entirely glass cannons, they were still fundamentally high-offense, low-defense.
Yet Xu Mengxi was a creature of procedure through and through; she did not deliver a lethal blow.
Seizing the opening, her slender, fair leg swept through the air in an elegant arc, making intimate contact with the middle-aged coachman's head.
*Bang!*
Driven by downward force, the middle-aged coachman shot out like a projectile, cratering deeply into the ground several zhang away from the Jiugui carriage.
Having dealt with him, Xu Mengxi wore a stern expression. Gripping her saber horizontally, she prepared to shear the roof off the Jiugui carriage.
From Xu Yuan's vantage point, while the battle outside had ended lightning-fast, the battle inside was only just nearing its climax.
The roof was about to be ripped off, and he was still fooling around in there.
At this ridiculous sight, Xu Yuan cracked a faint grin.
Yet the next instant, through his spiritual vision, he sensed a faint ripple of Dao charm extending from the middle-aged coachman, already linking him to Xu Mengxi.
His eyes narrowed instinctively, and he barked out at once, "Muxi, get ready to save someone."
"Save whom? The coachman?" Bai Muxi asked in confusion.
"Who do you think? In broad daylight, do you want to assault an official too?"
"..."
Though puzzled, Bai Muxi obeyed without hesitation. Her figure vanished instantly from inside the carriage.
In the next moment, just as Xu Mengxi was about to slash diagonally, her body shuddered as if struck by a massive blow, and she stumbled off balance, toppling toward the ground.
Sitting inside his carriage, Xu Yuan fell into thought.
A stickler for procedure was a stickler to the end. If she had just killed the man outright, would there have been this much trouble?
Then again...
This coachman's Dao charm seemed rather interesting.
Chapter 553