Watermelon

Geng Zhiwei laid down three conditions: first, that the Yu Family Cloth Shop give him a fifty percent share; second, that Yu Nan marry him as his sixth concubine; and third, that she be beaten in public. Yu Nan turned pale. Jia Quansheng chimed in from the side, "I think my brother's three conditions sound pretty good. Boss Yu, being able to marry into the Geng family is your good fortune!" Before Yu Nan could speak, the guards behind her could no longer hold back. "Geng Zhiwei, you bastard! Fuck eight generations of your ancestors!" Geng Zhiwei spat. "Whose dog do you think you are? Since when do you get a say here? Shopkeeper Yu, I've stated my conditions. Do you accept or not?" He hadn't come to negotiate conditions; he had come specifically to disgust and humiliate her! Yu Nan stood up and said, "Young Master Geng, it seems this matter can't be talked through. Since you won't show any decency, let's set another time to test each other's strength!" This meant a fight. "Decisive! I like that decisiveness of yours!" Geng Zhiwei laughed. "No need to set another time. Today is just fine. Let's fight right now!" Two guards behind Geng Zhiwei charged forward with blades drawn. Yu Nan drew her gun and aimed it straight at Geng Zhiwei. Geng Zhiwei sat in his chair, sipping tea without the slightest hint of fear. A guard stepped in front of Geng Zhiwei. Yu Nan pulled the trigger, firing a shot directly into the guard's chest. Blood spurted from the guard's chest. His body swayed twice, yet he raised his cleaver and kept charging at Yu Nan. What formidable physical toughness! Is he a body cultivator? Yu Nan hurriedly fired a second shot at him. Click! The revolver's hammer struck the primer of the cartridge, but the round did not go off. A dud! Yu Nan fired a third shot. Still a dud. Was she really that unlucky? It had nothing to do with luck. In Puluo Province, gunpowder worked erratically. The chance of a firearm successfully discharging was less than thirty percent, making duds a very common occurrence. This was also why Li Banfeng had never had anything to do with firearms. In Puluo Province, firearms were not the weapon of choice. A revolver was somewhat acceptable, but with a handgun that relied on recoil to chamber rounds, running into a dud meant serious trouble. Yu Nan fired six times in rapid succession. The cylinder completed a full rotation, but only two rounds went off. Both bullets struck the guard. Blood poured from him continuously, yet he never fell. Instead, Yu Nan took a slash to the shoulder from his blade. He took two bullets and didn't even react? He hadn't blocked them, nor had he dodged them. He had taken the bullets and simply withstood them with his bare flesh! This was beyond anything ordinary physical toughness could explain; this guard wasn't an ordinary human at all. In Yu Nan's estimation, this man might be a third-tier body cultivator. But why would a third-tier body cultivator serve as a guard for Geng Zhiwei? As far as Yu Nan knew, the highest-ranking cultivator guarding Geng Zhiwei was a second-tier body cultivator. What was more, he wasn't the only guard so powerful; another guard was currently clashing with two of Yu Nan's shop clerks. The clerks had no weapons on them, so they fought the guard using chairs. When a chair leg snapped off, a clerk stabbed it into the guard's body. The guard bled, yet his fighting strength did not diminish in the slightest. One clerk was run through the chest by Geng Zhiwei's guard and collapsed, unable to get back up. The other clerk fought desperately against two guards on his own. "Shopkeeper, run! Get out of here!" the clerk screamed hoarsely as a guard's cleaver pierced his belly. Battle cries echoed from downstairs as well. The clerks of the Yu Family Cloth Shop had clashed with the people from the Geng Family Medicine Shop. One man from the Geng Family Medicine Shop had his head split open by an axe, blood drenching his entire body, yet he was still fighting with a dagger. His skull was split open, and he could still fight? Could it be that everyone Geng Zhiwei brought today was a third-tier cultivator? That was impossible... Yu Nan took another cut to the leg, her eyes filled with panic. ... Late at night, Yu Nan returned to Baixiang Village with her people. Out of thirty-three clerks, eleven had died. Two bodies had been brought back, while the remaining nine were left behind at Wangchun Tower, with no telling how Geng Zhiwei would desecrate them. Everyone, including Yu Nan, was injured, and severely so. As for the Geng family, many of their men had taken serious injuries too, but before retreating, Yu Nan hadn't seen a single one of them fall. In her wildest dreams, she could never have imagined the Geng family was this powerful. After hastily treating their wounds, Yu Nan ordered her subordinates to set up a mourning hall to pay respects to the fallen brothers first. After everyone kowtowed, Yu Nan kept vigil alone. Having burned two strings of paper money, she let out a long sigh. "Brothers, walk slowly on the Yellow Springs road. I'll be joining you shortly." Li Banfeng entered the mourning hall and burned some paper money alongside Yu Nan. Though he didn't know them, it was out of respect for the dead. Yu Nan looked at the corpses in the mourning hall, lowered her head, and said with a desolate expression, "I thought Geng Zhiwei inviting me to a banquet meant he would at least observe courtesy before resorting to force. I never expected that after luring me out, he would start fighting right away. "I knew that when it came to strength, I couldn't match the Geng family. But I never imagined his strength would reach such a level. "Geng Zhiwei will probably come to Baixiang Village looking for me tomorrow. There's no escaping this calamity for me. "Seventh Master, take Boss Qin and leave immediately. I can't even save myself, so I certainly won't be able to protect you." Li Banfeng asked, "Knowing you couldn't match the Geng family, why did you insist on attending the banquet with weapons drawn?" Yu Nan hung her head. "I had no choice. He sent an invitation, so I had to go. Those are the rules of the jianghu." Li Banfeng asked, "Is Geng Zhiwei a man who plays by the rules?" "No," Yu Nan answered in a very small voice. "Then what good are your rules?" After a long silence, Yu Nan raised her voice. "If I didn't go, my brothers and I would never be able to hold our heads high for the rest of our lives!" Li Banfeng looked up at the two corpses in the mourning hall and asked, "Can they hold their heads high now?" Yu Nan lowered her head, silent. Li Banfeng asked again, "Tomorrow, if Geng Zhiwei kills you, will you be able to hold your head high?" Yu Nan had no answer. Li Banfeng asked one more time, "Tell me, what good are your rules?" Yu Nan was at a complete loss for words. She didn't want to bring up the rules of the jianghu anymore. After scrambling and struggling for so many years, she had always considered herself a person of the jianghu. Yet running into Geng Zhiwei this time made her feel as though she didn't understand the jianghu at all. After another long silence, Yu Nan let out a deep sigh. "Seventh Master, maybe I was wrong. But now isn't the time to argue over right and wrong. "Geng Zhiwei won't let me off, and he certainly won't let you off either. He'll track you down sooner or later. I only want to warn you, Seventh Master: leave quickly." She was right about that. If Geng Zhiwei had smooth sailing and kept cutting his way forward, he was bound to find Li Banfeng sooner or later. Li Banfeng wouldn't be that hard to find; Geng Zhiwei could just capture a few of Yu Nan's subordinates alive and torture the truth out of them. As they spoke, a young woman with tear-filled eyes stepped into the mourning hall, holding a pointed knife. "Shopkeeper, this knife belonged to Lao Ba. I want to keep it as a keepsake." The woman was named Wang Xuejiao, Lao Ba's older sister. Lao Ba was dead, and not even his body had been brought back. Yu Nan nodded. "Keep it." Li Banfeng looked at the knife. It was flecked with red spots that looked like bloodstains, but Li Banfeng caught a peculiar pungent smell. "Miss, could you let me see that knife?" Wang Xuejiao handed the knife to Li Banfeng. Li Banfeng sniffed it carefully. "Is this a watermelon knife?" "Nonsense!" Wang Xuejiao snapped anxiously. "That's Lao Ba's knife! He's carried it ever since the day he started following the shopkeeper. Everything on that blade is the blood of those Geng family bastards!" Li Banfeng looked at the red specks on the blade. "This isn't blood; it's watermelon juice. This knife must have been chopping watermelons all day long!" Watermelon? Yu Nan was stunned. Wang Xuejiao lashed out at Li Banfeng with curses, "What the fuck do you think you are? How dare you disrespect my brother!" Li Banfeng looked at the girl without offering any explanation. Yu Nan had someone persuade Wang Xuejiao to leave, then picked up the knife herself and gave it a sniff. There was indeed a sharp, rank smell, but Yu Nan couldn't distinguish whether it was blood or watermelon juice. Li Banfeng said to Yu Nan, "Bring over a few more weapons. We'll examine them one by one and find out." Before long, a clerk brought over a dozen weapons. Li Banfeng sniffed each of them in turn, confirming his judgment. "This is watermelon juice. Even though there's a bloody stench, it can't mask the sweetness of watermelon." Yu Nan didn't believe it. "I can't smell it." Li Banfeng picked up an axe from among the weapons and scraped off a bit of debris from the rust spots on its blade. Anyone else would have taken it for rust flakes, or perhaps bits of flesh from the Geng family men. Only Li Banfeng had discerned it by scent. It wasn't any sort of meat or rust. Li Banfeng cleaned off the fragment and snapped it open. Inside a black hull was a white kernel. "Take a close look. This is a watermelon seed." Yu Nan scrutinized it for a moment, her pupils shrinking repeatedly. This time, she saw it clearly. It really was a watermelon seed.