That night, Ma the Fifth slept on the ground floor.
He had assumed Li Seven was sleeping upstairs on the second floor. At daybreak the next morning, he went up to find Li Seven, intending to take him on a proper tour around Lanyang Village. To his surprise, there was no trace of Li Seven in the bedroom.
Where had he gone?
For an outsider to wander around Lanyang Village was a perilous matter. Ma the Fifth searched back and forth through the village several times.
He could not possibly have found Li Seven, because at that very moment, Li Seven was asleep inside the Portable Abode.
The previous night, Li Banfeng had wandered the village until dawn, not only racking up enough cultivation as a journey cultivator, but also gaining a solid grasp of Lanyang Village's geography.
At the southernmost edge of Lanyang Village, Li Banfeng had spotted the entrance to the newland. Perched on a treetop, he could faintly make out specks of light, proof that someone had succeeded in opening up virgin territory.
On his way back, Li Banfeng ran into two bandits, extorted over three thousand dollars from them, and handed them over to his wife for criticism and education.
After concluding her lesson, his wife let out a satisfied belch and promised that those two would never reoffend.
By dusk, after searching in vain all day, Ma the Fifth finally found Li Seven downstairs outside the wooden house.
Li Banfeng was watching a brawl.
Down below, two mobs were clashing with each other. Their fighting style was crude and rough, practically devoid of technique.
Their tactics were straightforward: the two factions charged head-on into each other, some collapsing while others fled.
Their weapons were primitive; some brandished kitchen cleavers, while others had nothing at all.
The noodle shop owner had joined the fray as well. At first, he swung a cleaver, but later, fearing he might ruin the blade, he switched to a rolling pin.
Ma the Fifth came to Li Banfeng's side and lowered his voice. "Brother Li, where have you been all day?"
"Just wandering around," Li Banfeng answered casually, his eyes remaining on the fight.
Ma the Fifth cautioned him, "Brother Li, you'd best not watch this sort of commotion."
Li Banfeng said solemnly, "I have to watch. Our landlord is right in the middle of it!"
Ma the Fifth swept his gaze over the brawl, and sure enough, Landlord Wei was hacking away amid the crowd.
He was wounded, his face covered in blood, brandishing an axe and chopping with all his might.
In the chaotic melee, five or six men were ganging up on him alone. They were clearly targeting him.
Ma the Fifth said softly, "Brother Li, I fear your two months' rent is about to go down the drain."
Even as he spoke, the landlord took another slash across his back. His frame wobbled, nearly collapsing, and his grip on the axe began to slip.
The men around him kept hacking down with their blades. The landlord's consciousness grew hazy; badly injured, he had nearly lost his will to fight.
Ma the Fifth stared at the landlord for a moment. As if sensing Ma the Fifth's gaze,
the landlord—like a dying man injected with a dose of adrenaline—felt his fighting spirit surge back under Ma the Fifth's watch. Raising his axe once more, he threw himself into a desperate struggle against the mob.
After holding out for more than three minutes, shouts suddenly echoed from the alley: "Reinforcements are here! Bolt!"
The group besieging the landlord quickly scattered and fled. Leading over a dozen subordinates, the landlord gave furious chase: "Brothers, don't let these bastards get away! Ten silver dollars for every one you chop down!"
Before the landlord had chased very far, another crowd rushed out from the alley, seemingly his reinforcements.
Seeing the scene grow increasingly chaotic, Ma the Fifth warned Li Banfeng, "Brother Li, we should leave. If someone recognizes you, things will get troublesome."
Li Banfeng blinked in surprise at the words, then followed Ma the Fifth back into the wooden house.
The night before, Li Banfeng had paid Ma the Fifth his first day's wage: a hundred and fifty.
Ma the Fifth had bought some sauced beef, pig ears, and a bottle of baijiu. The two sat down to eat and chat.
"Brother Ma, that was your technique you used on the landlord just now, wasn't it?"
Ma the Fifth nodded. "Seeing him on the brink of death, I gave him a surge of strength. At least it saved your two months' rent."
Li Banfeng was surprised. "A Joy Cultivator's technique can grant someone strength? The Joy Cultivators I've encountered before only made people panicky and shaky."
Ma the Fifth said, "They're actually all the same technique, just put to different uses. Moistening like morning dew, it's charm art; sprinkling like a gentle drizzle, it's invigoration; pouring down like a torrential rain, it's bewilderment.
"I haven't passed the first gate yet, so for now I can only use invigoration. I haven't been able to learn the art of bewilderment."
Ma the Fifth's analogies were apt, and Li Banfeng understood them clearly.
After a moment of silence, Ma the Fifth asked, "Brother Li, aren't you curious how I ended up in such a state?"
Li Banfeng nodded. "A little. When we met at the peddler's, you spoke quite candidly. Now you're a bit less forthright."
Ma the Fifth blinked, feeling that whether he was forthright or not wasn't the main issue.
Shouldn't he be asking why I turned into a beggar?
Ma the Fifth drank a cup of liquor. "Actually, you could have seen the signs back at the peddler's. By rights, I shouldn't have gone to the peddler to buy medicine."
Li Banfeng ate a piece of pig ear. "Then where should you have bought it? Doesn't anyone who wants to enter a pathway have to go through the peddler?"
Ma the Fifth shook his head. "The Ma family still has some foundation in Puluo Province. If a member of the Ma family wants to enter a pathway, they don't need to look for a peddler; the family has its own medicine."
The Ma family?
"The Ma family of the Four Great Families?"
Ma the Fifth nodded. "My name is Ma Junyang. I'm the fifth son of the Ma family. The reason I chose my medicine at the peddler's was that I wanted to become a Joy Cultivator."
Li Banfeng thought about it. "Because your family didn't have the medicine for Joy Cultivators, you went to the peddler?"
Ma the Fifth shook his head. "Not because we didn't have the medicine, but because a Joy Cultivator could not be permitted to exist in my family at all. The Ma family is a prominent clan, and descendants of a prominent clan must cultivate an orthodox discipline.
"In Puluo Province, Literary Cultivators and Martial Cultivators are the orthodox paths. The Ma family, in particular, views orthodoxy as paramount and scoffs at other pathways.
"The Joy Cultivator is the pathway my father detests the most. Cultivating it meant disgracing the Ma family—a sheer embarrassment to the clan."
Literary Cultivators and Martial Cultivators were the orthodox paths; no wonder cultivators of those two disciplines were so numerous.
For an elite family, the reputation of a Joy Cultivator might indeed be foul, but Li Banfeng didn't think that alone was enough to reduce Ma the Fifth to such a state. "Just because of that, the Ma family kicked you out?"
Ma the Fifth shook his head. "Not quite. My father has many children. Above me are two older brothers and two older sisters, all of whom have proper cultivation. A single degenerate like me wasn't that big of a deal.
"Besides, I was destined never to inherit the family estate. My father gave me two dance halls. I ran them well, so I had no worries about money, nor about cultivation."
Li Banfeng was stunned. "Really no worries? Ten times a day isn't easy."
Ma the Fifth gave a bitter laugh. "Back then, whether tonics or medicinal pills, I could afford them all, so I held up fine."
Li Banfeng shook his head. "I was worried your cultivation partner couldn't hold up."
Ma the Fifth laughed. "One partner naturally couldn't take it, but with ten partners doing it once each, there was no trouble at all. There's no shortage of girls in Lüshuiwan, plenty throwing themselves into my arms. I truly never worried over such things.
"My steward, Chen Yupeng, came up with all sorts of ways to find girls for me every day. But then, one day, my Third Brother came to my house, kicked open the bedroom door, hauled me out of bed, and beat me half to death. That was when disaster struck."
"What disaster?" Li Banfeng took a sip of liquor.
Ma the Fifth drained his cup in a single gulp. "The woman sleeping in my bed was my brother's fiancée—my sister-in-law-to-be."
Li Banfeng smiled. "Were you childhood sweethearts with your sister-in-law?"
He had expected some melodramatic soap opera, only to see Ma the Fifth laugh bitterly again and again. "Brother Li, you sure know how to joke. My Third Brother has married sixteen wives in total. I can't even recognize all sixteen who've crossed the threshold, let alone this one who hasn't."
Hearing this, Li Banfeng frowned. "You didn't know her?"
"Not at all!" Ma the Fifth said, bitterness written all over his face.
Li Banfeng pondered for a moment and added, "You were framed!"
"Yes," Ma the Fifth nodded. "I was framed. Framed by my Third Brother and my steward together. They conspired to put this Seventeenth Sister-in-Law into my bed, laying a trap for me."
Li Banfeng set down his cup. "Why would your Third Brother frame you? How deep was the grudge between you two to justify paying such a high price?"
Ma the Fifth took a sip of liquor. "Old Three schemed against me for my money. He's the principal legitimate son of the family; the Ma family's estate is supposed to go to him in the future.
"My father already gave him two casinos, two restaurants, and a department store. In Lüshuiwan, half a street belongs to Old Three. He holds over thirty percent of the Ma family's assets, all handed to him by my father."
Li Banfeng couldn't understand. "He isn't short on money, so why would he want yours?"
Ma the Fifth shook his head. "He was broke—desperately broke. Because he's a good-for-nothing idiot. Of all the businesses he held—over thirty percent—not a single one wasn't losing money.
"Back then, the Start of Autumn was approaching. According to our Ma family rules, the accounts must be settled on the day of the Start of Autumn. This year, his ledgers were too shameful to show. He wanted me to disburse money from my dance halls to plug his deficits, but I refused.
"I only had two dance halls, which weren't even a drop in the bucket compared to the Ma family's total assets.
"But I know how to make money. Just from those two dance halls, I brought in twenty percent of the Ma family's total revenue. Old Three wanted to force money out of me, so he staged this bitter drama, sending me his bride-to-be so he could use it as leverage to extort a fortune from me."
Li Banfeng felt there was something off about how this ended up: "If he extorted money from you, the worst you could do was pay him off. Even if the affair was exposed, your family would have ways to hush it up. There's no way your father would drive you out of the family over just this."
Ma the Fifth gave a bitter smile. "They had the means, but it depended on the situation. Not long after my Third Brother arrived, reporters showed up too! Naked photos were taken, and the story hit the newspapers! The fifth son sleeping with the third son's woman—the Ma family lost face big time, humiliated before the entirety of Puluo Province!"
Li Banfeng was baffled. "Who brought the reporters? Your Third Brother couldn't be that stupid, could he? He got cuckolded, and he dared to broadcast it to the world?"
"It certainly wasn't him," Ma the Fifth laughed with a sigh. "It might have been my Fourth Brother, or perhaps my Eldest Sister.
"Old Three schemed against me, but someone behind the scenes schemed against Old Three. I was driven out of the family, and Old Three was locked up by my father. Before long, that mastermind will be able to take Old Three's place as the Ma family's heir."
Li Banfeng asked, "Who's going to be the heir?"
"I don't know yet," Ma the Fifth shook his head. "They're hidden deep. I don't even know if I'll live long enough to see who it is."
It was evident that Ma the Fifth's physical condition was terrible.
Li Banfeng asked, "Because the scandal made the papers, the Ma family expelled you without a penny?"
At this, Ma the Fifth sighed repeatedly. "It wasn't entirely empty-handed. When I left home, the family let me take three hundred silver dollars.
"Brother Li, I'm not boasting: with those three hundred silver dollars, I could have rebuilt an estate for myself.
"Yet less than two hours after walking out the front doors, I was robbed. All three hundred silver dollars were taken, cleaned out completely, and they even stripped me of my coat.
"I had managed to conceal a jade pendant, pawned it for five silver dollars, and came to Lanyang Village to make a living. In the span of half a month, I earned a hundred and twenty silver dollars. Guess what happened next?"
Li Banfeng took a sip of liquor. "You were robbed again?"
Ma the Fifth nodded. "Spot on. Just ten days ago, every last one of those hundred and twenty silver dollars was stolen. Unable to pay rent, I was evicted and ended up sleeping in a shack.
"Near the newland, I scavenged some scrap and sold it, scraping together about a hundred Huan Country notes. Just as I was looking for a place to stay, I was robbed again the day before yesterday. They didn't even leave me enough to buy a meal. That's why I ended up digging through garbage for food."
Li Banfeng frowned. "Who did this, then? Who is hellbent on driving you to a dead end?"
"Who else could it be?" Ma the Fifth gave a wry laugh. "It has to be someone in my family."
This made no sense.
Ma the Fifth had already been expelled from the family and no longer posed a threat to anyone. What good would it do them to hound him to death like this?
Something else seemed fishy here, but Ma the Fifth had been battered so mercilessly that he couldn't think it all through for the moment.
Ma the Fifth took a large gulp of liquor, looked at Li Banfeng, and said, "Brother Li, if you hadn't given me this bite to eat, I might have starved to death last night. I really don't know how I can ever repay such kindness..."
Li Banfeng nodded. "My kindness is something you definitely must repay. Finish eating first, then write an IOU, and we'll discuss the repayment."
Ma the Fifth shook his head with a bitter smile. "This isn't something food alone can solve. I haven't cultivated for ten days; my life is already on its last thread.
"Brother Li, I don't have many days left, and I just want to do as much as I can to help you. But I want to ask you about someone. There's a man named Li Banfeng. Do you know him?"
Chapter 99