People from the Martial Alliance? What are they doing here...?
As a famous organization in the jianghu, members of the Martial Alliance always hung a wooden token at their waist, carved with the character for “Martial” on the front and the initial of their name on the back.
This was their most recognizable feature.
The two men walked in without showing the slightest restraint, heading straight to the counter and slamming a piece of paper heavily onto it.
The loud bang startled everyone inside the inn.
“Shopkeeper, see if the two people on this paper are staying in your inn.”
He narrowed his eyes into slits and glanced at the two men, devoid of expression, not giving the paper on the counter so much as a single look.
This cold attitude instantly displeased them. How dared a mere inn shopkeeper treat them so slightingly!
“Gentlemen...”
A voice from the side cut off their rising anger. A burly man held his wine cup, his eyes fixed intently on the piece of paper.
On the paper were two slender figures, drawn vividly and lifelike, except their faces were left completely blank.
Trying to identify someone based solely on two slender figures was undoubtedly difficult, but he had been sizing up Ning Qingzhu and Qiu Zhiya ever since they entered the inn.
The moment he saw the figures on the paper, the man was certain it was the two of them!
“I know where the two people on that paper are.”
“Oh?” The two exchanged a glance, both seeing the surprise in each other's eyes.
“Where are they?!”
The man raised his hand and pointed at the ceiling, instantly making things clear to them.
The people they were searching for were actually staying right in this very inn! It truly was searching far and wide to no avail, only to find it without any effort at all!
The slightly taller man showed a look of joy. Resting his right hand on his scabbard, he was about to head upstairs.
“Wait,” the other man called out to stop him. He paused and looked at his companion in confusion.
Unlike the joyful expression on his face, the other man looked solemn. “Don't forget, when Uncle Liu reported it, he said it was taken, not stolen.”
“That means the target was strong enough to fight with Uncle Liu and successfully take that sword away.”
“Ask yourself, could the two of us achieve such a feat?”
His body stiffened, and the joy on his face gradually faded. The eagerness for quick credit vanished completely as he finally realized the gravity of the situation.
“Sigh.”
The man let out a quiet sigh. An opportunity was indeed rare, but one needed to be alive to claim it.
“Let's go. We'll head back and report their location first.”
He nodded somewhat reluctantly. He knew full well which was more important: credit or his life.
No longer as arrogant as when they arrived, the two left in silence.
What they didn't know was that one of the doors upstairs was slightly ajar...
Drowsy, Ning Qingzhu felt someone shaking her. She opened her eyes with difficulty, and a familiar face came into view.
“Sister... Sister Qiu?”
Qiu Zhiya had somehow come to her side, looking down at her with a solemn expression.
“It looks like we won't be sleeping tonight. Our location has been exposed,” Qiu Zhiya said in a deep, serious voice.
Ning Qingzhu, having just been shaken awake, was still a bit dazed and didn't register it immediately. It took her a few seconds to realize what it meant.
Her location was exposed?
Her heart skipped a beat, and all remaining sleepiness vanished in an instant.
Qiu Zhiya briefly explained what she had just heard, telling her to quickly pack her things so they could leave under the cover of night.
She nodded hurriedly, feeling an unprecedented sense of tension in her heart.
By the time she finished packing, Old Chen was already waiting at the door. Seeing her come out, the group hurried downstairs.
The patrons in the inn had vaguely sensed something amiss and had long since departed. At this moment, only the Shopkeeper remained, sitting behind the counter on the first floor.
He remained expressionless, unbothered by whatever was happening.
Qiu Zhiya stepped forward and set the room token on the counter, looking as if she wanted to say something...
“Room fee is one liang of broken silver.”
However, the Shopkeeper spoke first, his harsh, raspy voice sounding uncomfortably like someone who had spent too much time in a desert.
Seeing this, Qiu Zhiya took out ten liang of silver, placed it on the counter, parted her thin lips slightly, and whispered an apology.
The Shopkeeper still didn't raise his eyes to look at her. He only heard the hurried footsteps fading into the distance until the entire inn fell back into silence once more.
Whenever this happened, he always recalled a certain question.
If he had stayed back then, would things have been different...?
...
“Are you truly leaving?”
The woman before him asked, her eyes rimmed with red. Though her voice was calm, a faint choke could be heard.
The man nodded, turning his head away as much as possible so he wouldn't look at her.
He was afraid he would soften his heart.
At seventeen, having just mastered martial arts, everyone said he could catch tigers on the mountains and dragons in the sea. At that time, he was sharp, fearless, and brimming with youthful vigor.
Yet he always felt this place was too small to hold him.
When people who had left the village returned with stories of the outside world, he listened while lying on the haystack beneath the tree, utterly captivated.
When the crowd dispersed, he stood up and walked over to that person, who looked at him in confusion.
And he asked only one question:
“I heard there's a far-off place out there called the jianghu?”
...
In the end, he left.
He went to that jianghu, and for the first time, he realized how vast the world truly was.
He drank with friends by the lakeside, fought for justice, wandered to the ends of the earth alone, and occasionally punished evil to uphold good, gradually carving out a name for himself in the jianghu.
Yet as time passed, the image of that young woman's red-rimmed eyes grew clearer and clearer in his memory.
Having been in the jianghu for too long, he had forgotten what home felt like.
The longing in his heart became an obsession. Guided by his memories, he returned to the village where he had grown up; after more than a decade, it hadn't changed much.
Passersby looked at him in surprise, seeming to study his face, before finally letting out an exclamation.
“Little Yun?! You're back!”
He looked at the nearly fifty-year-old man in front of him, who overlapped with an uncle in his memory, making him feel dazed for a moment.
“Uncle Li,” he called softly, memories surfacing of how Uncle Li used to share a piece of bread with him when he was a child. Back then, Uncle Li was strong and robust, a completely different person from now.
Hearing this name, Uncle Li's surprise grew even greater, but that joy was fleeting, replaced by a soft, quiet sigh.
“It's good that you're back, good that you're back. I thought you'd forgotten the way home after being away for all these years.”
Home.
Those two words made his heart tremble, making the loneliness accumulated over years of wandering the jianghu feel as if it had finally found a resting place.
He relaxed completely, then asked the question in his heart: “Uncle Li, how is Little Xia doing?”
Uncle Li stiffened, but he didn't answer. He simply looked at him with a complex expression, remaining silent for a long time.
This reaction made his relaxed body tense up again, an uneasy foreboding creeping into his heart.
“Uncle Li?” he pressed, his tone tinged with urgency.
He needed to hear him say with his own mouth that Little Xia was doing well. Uncle Li's silence made him increasingly uneasy, as if something terrible was about to happen.
“Sigh...” Uncle Li didn't answer his question directly, letting out another sigh. “Come with me.”
With an uneasy heart, he followed behind Uncle Li.
Walking along the path familiar in his memory, every step was filled with traces of her and him—carvings on stones, little stick figures drawn on the ground.
At the end of the path stood a tree with lush, dense foliage.
That winter, they had taken shelter from the rain beneath this tree. He had held her and told her it wasn't cold, though that day had actually been freezing.
Uncle Li turned a corner and stopped. They had arrived.
He looked up, his expression instantly freezing. Before him was a thatched hut overgrown with weeds; the roof had collapsed, and the walls were on the verge of falling apart.
This was Little Xia's home, a place he had visited countless times.
Yet now it felt extraordinarily unfamiliar—so unfamiliar that it bore no resemblance to his memory.
“Little Xia passed away from illness two years ago. I didn't think you would actually come back.”
“She... was waiting for you all along.”
Rumble!
A sudden thunderclap exploded in the sky, thick clouds covering the sun as the sky darkened abruptly.
A fine drizzle began to fall, dispelling the summer heat and bringing a chill.
Rain fell on his face, sliding down his cheeks.
After so many years, he had forgotten how cold the winter rain was back then.
But now, he only knew one thing.
This rain was even colder.
...
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