Chapter 6

After I asked that question, Ye Cangfeng, who had been on the brink of losing his temper, actually forced his anger down.

I grew frantic. “Brother, hurry up and say they’re bullying you! Say it!”

“Nothing of the sort,” he said calmly. “They’re only joking with me.”

But the young gentlemen weren’t having that.

“Little sister, can’t you tell? We are bullying your brother Cangfeng!”

“Have you spent too long shut up in the inner quarters, Cangfeng? Since when did you become such a coward—”

I was already looking around for a suitable weapon.

Amid the teasing, Ye Cangfeng closed his eyes briefly, then silently mouthed two words at them.

“Run. Now.”

“What’s that, Cangfeng? Speak up!”

“You’re not secretly swearing at us, are you?”

At the wine shop next door, a woman came to prop up a curtain. The pole slipped from her hands and landed squarely on a passerby’s headcloth.

“An accident, good sir,” she said coyly. “Please don’t be angry.”

Seeing such a seductive woman, Master Ximen was just about to reply.

My eyes lit up. I darted out like lightning and picked up the pole.

Master Ximen exclaimed in amazement, “The long-lost Flash Step!”

I gripped the pole and turned around.

Ye Cangfeng let out a long, desolate sigh. “Gentlemen, I advise you to flee for your lives!”

It happened in a flash.

A cold gleam came first. Then the pole struck like a dragon.

I launched the chief minister’s son three meters into the air, sending him crashing into the restaurant’s upper floor.

People in the street cried, “Heavens! Young Master Shen can fly!”

Before long, the other young gentlemen were airborne too.

“Heavens! Young Master Chu can fly as well!”

“Heavens! Everyone can fly!”

Some kind soul shut the restaurant doors.

The slaughter began.

The gentleman who had openly admitted to bullying Ye Cangfeng got the worst of it. I kept tossing him into the air, smashing him into the ground, then tossing him up again.

Only when he lay sprawled like a puddle of mud did I finally leave him, turning with a wild laugh to find the next one.

Just then, the chief minister’s son was furtively trying to climb out of an upstairs window.

Me: A fleeting glimpse.

I dragged him back in a headlock, whipped the pole across his face, and went right back to beating and dancing.

Once I got going, I lost all restraint, all awareness, all concern for my own life!

Even Ye Cangfeng, scrambling up to stop the fight, caught a blow from my pole.

Master Ximen and the beautiful woman stood to one side, watching with solemn attention.

“That pole is forged from black iron,” the woman said. “It weighs fourteen jin and eight liang, yet this young lady swings it as though it weighs nothing!”

Master Ximen said, “A rational question: if the battlefield were the open street instead of this cramped restaurant, could Young Master Shen have escaped alive?”

“Hard to say. Didn’t you notice she attacked their legs first? Every one of these gentlemen has a leg injury. They couldn’t get far.”

At last the war ended. Apart from Ye Cangfeng, the most useless of the lot, bodies littered the floor.

One other fellow was hiding his head under a table with his backside sticking out high enough to balance a bottle of vinegar on it.

Another displayed his lightness skills by clinging desperately to the wall, too frightened to come down.

That was when their parents finally arrived.