Wang Chun had been born into dire poverty. To ensure the older children in the household had enough to eat, his parents sold him off when he was the youngest.
He understood their reasoning, so he bore no hatred.
After passing through the hands of several human traffickers, Wang Chun was sold far from his homeland into a wealthy estate.
For the next half-month, he and a dozen or so children of similar age were locked away together, living on fine food and comfortable lodging.
Anyone who assumed this family was practicing charity would have been laughably naive...
Wang Chun and these children had been purchased to serve as funerary sacrifices.
The only reason they had been pampered for half a month was that the family was waiting for the master of the house to draw his final breath. Once the mourning rites concluded, the children would be forced into fine burial clothes and strangled to death. Mercury would be pumped into their veins as a preservative, their faces painted with cosmetic powder until they resembled white porcelain dolls, and finally, they would be laid into the burial chamber alongside the corpse.
Leaving aside what an utterly monstrous outrage against basic human decency this was, such an act was an indisputable violation of the laws of Da Ming. Even imperial kin and nobility never dared engage in such business openly, yet there were always those who quietly sought out traffickers to arrange it.
Wang Chun had run right into one of these heartless, wealthy households.
Fortunately, fate had not marked him for death just yet...
On the day he was dragged off to the burial, he was lucky enough not to be fully strangled. He merely lost his breath and fell unconscious. Later, the servants tasked with pumping mercury into the children grew sloppy under time constraints and lazily skipped several of them. In this manner, Wang Chun was carried into the tomb while hanging onto his last thread of life.
Two days later, he crawled out through a tunnel secretly left behind by the tomb builders. From then on, he wandered the streets as a little beggar, until at nine years old, he caught the eye of a Beggars' Sect elder and was taken in as an apprentice.
This year, Wang Chun was nineteen, with the seniority of a four-pocket disciple in the Beggars' Sect, and his martial arts were among the finest of his generation within the sect.
The world knew that the Beggars' Sect possessed the Eighteen Dragon Subduing Palms and the Dog Beating Staff Technique, but both were ultimate sect-guarding arts that only the chief was permitted to learn. At Wang Chun's rank, he naturally knew neither. There was also the renowned Dog Beating Formation, but that was a technique for gang brawls, impossible for a single man to display.
So what did he know? Not very much, in truth... A foundation of internal energy from the Lotus Melody, paired with the two most fundamental Beggars' Sect styles: the Lotus Palm and the Iron Broom Kick. Nothing more.
Still, anyone invited to the Youth Heroes Assembly was certainly no common mediocrity.
As the saying went, techniques are rigid, but people are adaptable. Even the most basic martial arts, pushed to their utmost limit, could unleash tremendous power.
And Wang Chun was a man who had honed the Lotus Palm and Iron Broom Kick to absolute perfection.
Moreover, disciples of the Beggars' Sect spent their years roaming the streets, giving them far more opportunities to draw their blades to aid the wronged. Wang Chun was thus a young hero with quite a few tangible achievements in the jianghu. Even if his martial arts were not extraordinarily high, as an outstanding figure among the younger generation of the world's foremost sect, he was thoroughly qualified to receive an invitation.
Regrettably, his luck in the tournament draw was rather poor...
In his very first match, Wang Chun drew Lei Buji, leaving him virtually no opportunity to show off his abilities.
Although Lei Buji's internal force was far below that of his father, Lei Buwei, when it came to technique, his Lei Family Fist already carried half of his father's mastery. No matter how refined one's basic styles were, against martial arts created by an unrivaled master at the pinnacle of his prowess, it was all futile.
Upon the challenge arena, the two exchanged formal fist-and-palm salutes, assumed their stances, and charged forward almost simultaneously.
With just a single passing clash, the first exchange was done—and the expression on Wang Chun's face instantly shifted.
The moment fist met palm, Wang Chun felt the incoming edge of Lei Buji's strike land as light as drifting willow catkins, yet the follow-through surged heavy as a towering mountain.
Wang Chun had never encountered such a shift. He hurriedly bent one knee and swept his arm to shed the momentum, but the crushing follow-through did not diminish in the slightest, clinging to him like a shadow.
Seeing this, Wang Chun gritted his teeth and shifted form, swinging his body to the side as he unleashed palm and kick in tandem.
Yet Lei Buji's counter was far swifter, waiting for him well in advance. Before Wang Chun could turn halfway, Lei Buji threw two crisp punches with a sharp *thwack-thwack*, sending Wang Chun sprawling on his back. With his blood and qi churning in his chest, Wang Chun found himself unable to rise for the moment.
Lei Buji was an honest fellow. The tournament rules did not forbid pressing the attack against a fallen opponent, yet seeing the man go down, he simply stood in place without moving.
After waiting a moment, Wang Chun turned over and sat cross-legged, offering a wry smile. "I yield."
Wang Chun was a sensible man. He knew his opponent had already held back. Facing an expert separated by such an immense gulf, continuing to fight would only make a fool of himself.
Hearing this, Lei Buji gave a genial grin and responded, "A good match."
At that moment, the Justice Sect arbiter stepped back onto the stage to announce the outcome.
And so, the very first clash of this year's martial exam was decided within three moves. As Wang and Lei walked down from the stage, the gaze virtually everyone cast toward Lei Buji had changed...
The crowd below was abuzz with discussion. Who on earth was this young hero who looked thirty years old?
It was only natural that they did not know, for Lei Buji had been recommended to Shen Youran by Sun Yixie, and Shen Youran had barely squeezed him onto the roster under his personal authority just a few days before the assembly began.
In truth, even Shen Youran had no idea where Lei Buji came from. The main reason was that when Brother Sun recommended Lei Buji to him, he had just presented the Reversing Heaven and Earth Formula. At that time, Shen Youran was exchanging warm words of brotherhood with Sun and Huang. Feeling embarrassed to refuse their request right after accepting such a generous gift, he had agreed.
That was also why, when the announcer introduced Lei Buji before the fight, besides his name, everything else—his master, his sect, his home region, his moniker—was entirely blank.
Now, having witnessed Lei Buji's opening display, the situation was completely different.
As the saying went, fear not being unknowledgeable about goods, fear only comparison. Wang Chun's martial arts were by no means weak. Among the young participants gathered here, his combat ability was at least in the upper-middle tier. Many martial seniors below the stage would not have felt confident dropping him within three moves without using internal energy to overwhelm him, yet Lei Buji had accomplished it with utter ease.
Furthermore, any discerning eye could tell Lei Buji's boxing was a superior martial art. The flow of his strikes appeared unadorned, but it handled immense weight with effortless grace and carried endless variations. Every fraction and inch of movement had been forged through thousands of refinements.
To describe it using a concept coined by the famous metaphysical martial artist Keisuke Itagaki—this boxing possessed an extraordinarily high degree of "purity."
"Brother Sun, Brother Huang, I won! Haha!" After stepping off the stage, Lei Buji trotted cheerfully toward his two older brothers.
As for Sun and Huang, they were currently sprawled on two recliner chairs they had secretly filched from the storehouse. These two chairs happened to sit on an elevated stone terrace slightly higher than the surrounding area. The site where the arena had been erected was originally an open drill ground used by the Justice Sect for training, featuring several uneven rises. Sun and Huang had wandered all over the Justice Sect over the past few days, so they knew every inch of the grounds like the back of their hands. As a result, the two rascals were watching the matches sprawled out as if seated in a VIP viewing box.
Nor was that the peak of their insolence. What was even more blatant was that each of them held a spicy, braised pork hock in their hands, gnawing away. God only knew where they had bought such a greasy breakfast so early in the morning.
"Not bad, not bad, solid skill!" Sun Yixie was not particularly surprised. Over the past few days, Lei Buji had already told him and Huang Donglai who his father was, so both of them knew exactly how formidable Lei Buji truly was.
"Buji, I've got high hopes for you too," Huang Donglai chimed in from the side. "Based on my professional judgment, purely in terms of martial arts, no one here is your match. You're guaranteed to take first place this year."
"Motherfucker, Huang, do you have a heart? You're even jinxing your own brother?" Sun Yixie could not resist roasting him upon hearing that.
"Piss off!" Huang Donglai retorted purely out of instinct. "Jinx your sister! I'm a professional commentator, all right?"
Lei Buji had no idea what jargon like "jinxing" meant, but having grown accustomed to the way his two big brothers talked over recent days, he paid it no mind.
As for the surrounding bystanders eavesdropping on their conversation, they were even more bewildered... Aside from the members of the Justice Sect, many people actually believed Sun Yixie and Huang Donglai were on terrible terms, cursing at each other every time they opened their mouths, their language utterly crude, dragging each other's female relatives into it at the drop of a hat.
"The second match begins now!"
Over on the stage, the two young heroes slated for the second bout had taken their positions and readied themselves to fight. After all, the martial exam had to conclude within a single day. With only one arena and no time limit on individual matches, the bouts had to proceed in rapid succession without pause.
Compared to Lei Buji's opening match, the second bout was considerably more entertaining to watch on the surface. Because the two combatants were evenly matched, they traded strikes back and forth with great vigor. As for their actual skill, however... to put it bluntly, it was two bumbling roosters pecking at each other.
Such an unremarkable contest warrants no elaborate retelling.
To make a long story short, after several bouts at the bottom of the bracket concluded, the martial exam entered the second round. In this round, Lei Buji faced a young hero armed with a spear. Empty-handed, Lei Buji once again handled his opponent within three moves, advancing once more.
And so it continued, right until the final bout of the second round. At long last, it was Sun Yixie's turn to take the stage...
Chapter 44