“Chao, senior brother, what’s wrong with you two? Your faces look so ugly. I just prepared two extra meals, you two, no need to look at me like that.” Xiao Gong scratched the back of his head and said with some embarrassment.
We couldn’t tell Xiaogong about the bas*ment, so we had to give a snort and pass it off.
Seeing that we were just joking, Komya relaxed too.
I said, “Xiao Gong, you’re really something, how many people are eating and you can handle it? What about in case someone eats more today and less tomorrow?”
“There are rules here. Before I came to study at Qianmen, I worked as a helper chef, specialising in running red and white wedding events with the master. We were contracted to do a banquet, and we had to report to the master family how many dishes we wanted and how much money we had to spend. That’s when I learnt my skills. My master was especially good at calculating this, how many people would eat how many dishes, that is, putting enough leftovers, and not wasting them, and people wouldn’t get enough to eat, so one way or another, the price of the dishes we quoted was always the best value for money, and people were willing to invite us there.”
I opened the food box, which had both meat and vegetables, and it looked delicious.
I asked casually, “So how did you come to the Thousand Gates afterwards?”
Xiao Gong let out a long sigh, “Hey, there’s nothing I can do. Our Gong family is also a Jianghu family, but it is a small family, and there is not a single martial arts student in the family. I heard that there is a Jianghu covenant to keep the big families in check, but even if the big families don’t fight or kill us, they still have ways to torment us, so I really had no choice but to pay my respects to my master and join the Qianmen. Many of the small families in the Jianghu River will let their children join the gangs in the Jianghu River, and if they don’t join the gangs, they can only join the big families.”
Yue Man Gong never said anything, it seemed to be thinking about something.
I said, “By the way Xiao Gong, last night, the night of the fire, you looked carefully at everyone’s face, did you know them all?”
“Well, I know them all, why do you ask?”
Xiao Gong was not stupid, and when I asked him, he became suspicious.
I said, “Did you think there was something strange about these people the other day?”
“Nothing strange.” Komya became wary.
Moon Fullbow said, “If you have anything to say, tell Zhang Chao, he’s one of us.”
Xiao Gong heard his senior brother say that before he let out a long sigh and said, “It’s not particularly strange, I doubt if I’m the one with the cup in my hand. There were two people who obviously weren’t supposed to be there that night, but were, but it happened to match up with the dining list, so I didn’t think much of it.”
“Who?” Moon Fullbow asked.
“Chen Haoran, and Wang Kang. They weren’t supposed to be at the pavilion that day, they are two foreign apprentices, and classes are no longer in session at this time of year, they won’t be at the pavilion until after the 15th day of the first month, so they both shouldn’t have been there. But I wonder if it could be because Master knew that there were difficulties in the door, so he asked them both to come over to help as well?”
Yue Man Gong explained to me, “We have inner and outer disciples in the Thousand Fists School, inner disciples are the disciples of the Thousand Doors, who are journeymen, and outer disciples are the disciples taken in the Thousand Fists School’s hobby classes, so it’s unlikely that Master would let the outer disciples come to help even if he was in flames.”
Xiao Gong tensed up, “Then what’s going on with these two?”
I whispered, “Xiaogong, come here.”
Komiya came a little closer to me and I told him to stick his face out again, he didn’t know what was going on and I poured a little water into the palm of my hand and wiped it on his face.
“What are you doing?” Komiya shouted.
His face didn’t change though, and it looked like the man was Komiya.
Moon Manbow said, “These two, they may have been replaced, or these two may have had problems from the very beginning.”
Komiya asked nervously, “What then?”
“It doesn’t matter, these two wouldn’t somehow blend into the Thousand Gates, there must be a reason.” Moon Manabu said.
I said, “That’s right, the people who were supposed to be brought in by Guan Yunyu were all arrested by the police that day, but who stayed and set the fire later?”
Xiao Gong said excitedly, “It was these two people!”
I said, “That’s right, it was definitely these two people.”
“We must catch these two arsonists! Senior, let’s go now, I know where they both live, it’s recorded in the cadet registration!”
Yue Man Gong said helplessly, “Could it be that those two arsonists will continue to borrow the identities of these two now? They must have taken off their human skin masks and escaped. Even if we go to catch these two, if they are stand-ins, they will still have an alibi.”
Komiya was half-exasperated and said reluctantly, “Then what should we do? Are we just going to let them go? Just let this matter go?!”
I said, “No, we can’t just let it go!”
Even if there was surveillance or evidence to prove that these two people had set the fire, if they were wearing human skin masks, then these two people would have an alibi in person.
It’s not like we can prove the masks to the police, it’s hard to get people to accept that the masks have such a high degree of simulation, and this technology is entirely in the hands of the Yun family, and there’s no way the Yun family can be a “technical advisor” to us.
It would be impossible to get the police to arrest them without evidence.
But Moon said, “We won’t just let it go, it’s a jianghu matter, there’s no need for the government to intervene, nor can the government.”
Saying this, he rose long and hard.
“Where are you going?” I asked.
Moon Full Bow said, “You don’t need to ask, what happens in the jianghu, the jianghu people go to level.”
“Elder brother!”
Xiao Gong chased after him, but Yue Man Gong had already left.
However, Xiaogong and I were not worried, there was no need to worry about the safety of Yue Man Gong, the only thing worth worrying about was the two people who were targeted by Yue Man Gong.
In a large restaurant in Ningcheng, in a private room, the crowd was already seven or eight percent drunk, and the hosts were all red-faced.
“I’m telling you guys, say, say …… cut, that bullsh*t Thousand Sect, I’ll burn, burn, burn, burn his ass to the ground.”
The man who spoke, very thin looking, with a scar on his neck, this man was a foreign disciple of the Yunya sect.
The inner and outer apprentices of the Yunya Sect were different from the Thousand Doors, only members of the Yunya family could be inner apprentices of the Yunya Sect and could learn the last of the Yunya Sect’s disguise techniques, while the outer apprentices were various apprentices recruited from the jianghu, the Yunya Sect would not recruit people from outside the jianghu as apprentices.
The other outer disciple he hooked up with was called Lu Yong, who was also so drunk that his tongue got big and he stammered, “Yes, yes, brothers, you don’t know, hey hey hey hey, the Thousand Gate is burnt as red as a monkey’s butt by us. Hahahaha, this Thousand Sect, ah, I’ve been looking at them with displeasure for a long time.”
“Just, just, you say, such a, lowly sect, holy sh*t, making it more imposing than the martial, martial, martial proper, sh*t, a fire would be best.”
“I don’t know if you, you guys have noticed, Hu Xingren, is no different from an ordinary old man. The legend in the jianghu, I’m afraid it’s true.”
“What legend, that there are no more capable fighters in the Thousand Sect? That Moon Full Bow of the Thousand Doors is so powerful, how can anyone else be that bad? It can’t be.”
“Cut, don’t you understand? In learning martial arts, nine points are predestined and one point depends on hard work. If you are not gifted, you will not be able to learn the secrets of martial arts even if I put them in front of you. If you really have this talent, even if you learn the simplest kung fu, you can beat a hundred, you, look at the two sons of the Yue family, which one is not a martial arts wizard that comes along once in a hundred years.”
“Hey, you, don’t mention this Yue Man Gong, the mere mention of him scares me, me.”
“Cut it out, cowardly, scare the hell out of you. Yue, what is there to be afraid of in Yue Man Gong, a thousand gates of gold and jade, by the 15th day of the first month, hmmm ……”
At the mention of the 15th day of the first month, the gang all revealed unkind smiles.
“Yes, this month …… full bow, what is there to fear, he can still find us? He, he has no idea that the fire was set by us, even if he thought of it, he can’t find us people ah.”
“Hahahaha, yes, yes, yes, he will only find the head of his thousand boxing school’s foreign disciples.”
As soon as the group said this, they let out a loud laugh, and some excited ones raised their glasses, inviting each other to drink, laughing and drinking again.
A timid one, who was still sober and had a good capacity for alcohol, asked, “What do you think will happen if Moon Man Bow really comes after us? I’ve heard that this man’s kung fu is unbelievably good and he kills without blinking an eye.”
“Hey! You, look at your guts, he’s looking for us here, dare he do anything to us? My Yunya Sect is also a big Jianghu sect, without proof, if he dares to touch us, the Jianghu Covenant can get them killed.”
“Right, with the Jianghu covenant in place, so what if we burn him, it would be for nothing. Hahahahaha!”
Suddenly, the crowd’s laughter came to an abrupt halt and their hands holding the wine cups were raised in mid-air and did not move.
Yun Guihai pushed open the door, looked at the dumbfounded group and asked, “What’s wrong with you all?”
“So it’s the Dangjia who has returned, scared us to death.”
Yun Guihai asked, “Of course it’s me, who do you think it is? Why are you so drunk, don’t forget you have to rush back to Jiangzhou tonight.”
“Hahahaha, we thought it was that goon Moon Full Bow.”
The man’s voice froze as soon as his words left his mouth, his wine glass snapped to the ground, and at some point, a bloody hole as thick as his thumb was added to his throat.