Book 1 Chapter 20

Zhongyang Gyoza has been a perennial favorite

It's been a month since the uproar.

Outside of the Sichuan province, Ganghoe is located at the foot of Sichuan Amishan,

The Middle Kingdom, which was the dominant power among the Ten Representative States, had a mysterious

It was rumored to have been attacked by a group of thugs and broken.

The veracity of the rumor that the Zhongyang Marker was completely broken was never determined. The guests' markings were all intact, not a scratch on them, and for some reason there were no casualties, even among the markers, although the number of people leaving their rooms, their homes, and their country increased. It is true that we were attacked by unidentified assailants, but the marks entrusted to us were all safe, and there were no casualties.

Rather, the rumors were dancing in the wrong direction. The story was that the marking station had been attacked by unknown assailants, but that all the markers of the Zhongyang Marking Station had bravely defended it, risking their lives to do so, and that the mysterious invaders had been driven back without success. The truth was inverted, discolored, and then re-colored, and through a gross process of adaptation, spread throughout the Great Lake.

But no one knew that behind that truth was the holy sacrifice of most of the wealth that Zhang Wuyang, the head of the state, had amassed with unspeakable effort and without tears, and the existence of a man named Bi Ryuyeon, who had taken a large part of that wealth in the name of compensation. The deepest secrets of such dishonor must never be revealed to others, so all the marksmen of the Zhongyang Mark Bureau kept their mouths zipped shut and remained silent. Their jobs and lives were important.

As a result, the rumor that if you entrusted your goods to the Zhongyang Bureau, it would protect them no matter what, even if the Zhongyang Bureau itself suffered damage or was threatened with annihilation, the number of merchants and martial factions willing to entrust their goods to the Zhongyang Bureau doubled. There was even a laughable phenomenon of people lining up outside the bureau to deposit their marks, and the Zhongyang Marks Bureau enjoyed a boom that surpassed its previous heyday. Thus, the scale of the business became even larger than before.

The condition of Bi Ryuyeon and his apprentice, Tang San, who had no interest in the story of the Zhongyang Marking Station but had a very deep connection to it, and who could be said to be the cause of the incident, had improved greatly and was on the verge of a full recovery. The rest of the troupe had been putting the finishing touches on their month-long work and intuitively knew it was time to leave. But there was one big problem, and it was causing Bi Ryuyeon a lot of headaches right now.

"Oops, no money.

Money, it's always been a problem. It was in the past, it is in the present, and it will probably be in the future. After all, it's not something that can be taken lightly, as it touches people's lives.

"What can I do, what can I do… what can I do!

She rolled twice to the left. It was the floor of the room, so there was no dirt. The floor in the training center was of course wooden, and there was no rug. But it didn't make her feel uncomfortable because they used high-quality paulownia planks with a fine grain.

'Money, money. Done!

Again, she rolled right twice. She pulled at her hair and rolled on the floor of her room, drowning in the quagmire of her troubles. The longer she agonized, the more the number of hairs leaving her body increased. If this continued, she would have fewer and fewer hairs, and in the worst case scenario, the hairs that had been uprooted would not show any signs of regeneration. In that case, it was not impossible that she would become bald, which was the worst case scenario. The number of hairs that were being forcibly removed from her head was large. However, no matter how hard she tried, she could not find a solution. Apparently, the increase in thinking power was not proportional to the number of hairs being pulled out. After experiencing a tearful confirmation of the veracity of her findings through a human experiment, she stopped the hair pulling and began to look for other solutions to the problem.

If you want to fly the kids back to the Planetarium, you'll need to pay for the trip. So far, so good. The problem was, I didn't have the money. She'd already spent all of her budget, and there wasn't a penny, nickel, or dime left. Of course, this doesn't include the money that went into his own pocket. It was her philosophy that the money that went into her pocket became her own, regardless of its origins, examples, and history.

The letter from my grandfather, who had died of unexplained causes in the valley, had instructed me to enclose the money I would need to teach the children for three months, and if I ran out of money while teaching them, to ask for additional funds from the silver coin of the Heavenly Academy. But now I couldn't do that, because I had already paid a large sum of money for the homecoming two months ago. Since I was scheduled to stay for three months, I couldn't get any more support after the three months were up, so I made the last payment before the deadline. Of course, the money went straight into Bi Ryuyeon's pocket.

It was a journey that would have taken a month on horseback. Walking on two feet would naturally take more time, and more time meant more expenses. But horses were too expensive to buy, so he had to find a cheaper way to use his feet, his natural means of transportation.

However, no matter how hard you work on your telescope [巨視器 : a device for seeing far away], even if you use divine laws and techniques, it will be difficult to shorten the journey beyond the limit. In any case, the expenses for 16 people traveling for more than a month would have been a small amount of money. That doesn't mean you can't send it. …….

So now she was wrapping her head around the problem. She rolled and rolled and rolled her head until her ears were smoking, but she couldn't come up with a useful way to solve the problem that was innovative, progressive, and would facilitate the resolution of the situation.

'Free, free, free, free. If not, at least a minimal fee……. How can I send them without spending a dime? And that's 16 people. What can we do?

I felt like I was going to die, because I was rolling all the balls I hadn't rolled.

"Don't you have any good ideas? Travel, homecoming, 16 people, free, expense, Tianmu Academy, Fayang Ho, Nanchang, martial artist, martial arts…….'

Listing off the fragments of her thoughts like an incantation, Bi Ryuyeon was interrupted by a sudden flash in her mind.

"Power?" ……. That's it, that's it, that's it, that's it, that's it, that's it, that's it, that's it, that's it, that's it, that's it, that's it, that's it, that's it. Hahaha.

Like a shooting star, like a flash of lightning, a thought flashed through her mind. A flash of inspiration came to him, a quick way to solve all the problems that had been bothering him. Finally, he was ready to send his students on their way. Now that he had the idea, all that remained was to put it into practice.

"Tomorrow I'll have to go to town again.

Bi Ryuyeon looked at the stars in the night sky, which were about to become meteors, and tried to organize the things she needed to do tomorrow. A flash of light in the sky was falling to the ground in a tail. It was a meteor.

After wracking her brains, she came up with a brilliant and useful solution to the problem: the Zhongyang Stamp Office. What does this mean? Is she now determined to become a permanent and perpetual enemy of the Zhongyang Bureau? The idea of taking advantage of Zhongyang Bureau was definitely not to go back in with his disciples and forcibly take their traveling expenses. Bi Ryuyeon, what he was thinking about was traveling.

The destination of his 16 disciples is the Payang Lake side of Nanchang, where the Tianmu Academy is located. Because of the enormous presence of the Heavenly Martial Hall, it had become the center of the White Sword Forest. Thanks to this, Nanchang was on the path to further prosperity. It was a fact of life that the larger a city became, the more supplies and goods it required. When a city is called the center of the Bai Dao Forest, it's no wonder that so many people flock to it in search of profit. Thus, at any given time, there was a steady stream of marks and inquiries for the bustling and active city of Namchang. It was in this city that a vast amount of goods were traded in and out of the country.

Nowadays, the Zhongyang Marks Bureau was somehow getting more work than before, but the number of marks to work with was significantly lower than the number of marks coming in, and they were running out of manpower. On top of that, there were a lot of half-wit markers who had broken bones due to that unpleasant incident a month ago, so they couldn't even use them properly. Even if they were to recruit new marksmen, it would be very difficult to find good marksmen with high martial arts skills.

Scattered throughout the understaffed marks bureau were signs pointing to Namchang. It was this aspect that caught her attention, and she knocked on the door of the Zhongyang Bureau of Marks once again. Of course, from the perspective of the Zhongyang Bureau of Marks, this was not a pleasant task.

It was the end of autumn, a pleasant afternoon that was neither too cold nor too hot, and two marksmen stood guard at the main gate of the Marked Kingdom. The gate, which had been damaged by someone's kicking a month ago, was now fully repaired, save for a dent in the center of the door. With their backs to the door, Zhang Pal and Yi San now stood guard over the country. Today was the day that they were to form their own guard.

Seeing Bi Ryuyeon's shadow in the distance, walking toward the marking station, the regular markers Zhang Pal and Yi Sam tried to fulfill their duties as guards.

"What happened……. Cock!"

Two of the marksmen suddenly stopped breathing, clutching their chests like victims of a heart attack. Their gaunt, withered complexions gave them the appearance of critically ill patients, where everything was wrong with their bodies.

"Ah, how are you? It's been a while. Is there a sovereign inside? Tell him I need to see him."

"……."

"Why but, are you sick?"

"kerbillion… kack… kack… kack……."

Coughing heavily, as if his breathing had returned to him after a long hiatus, he ran back into the countryside, his long arms flailing about like a colt on fire. He cursed his fate for having won today's guard duty out of many, many days. The remaining ordinary marksman, Isam, shook his legs and barely managed to speak.

"An, in, take, take… sleep, wait… wait, wait… soon, soon… contact……."

I stuttered as I tried to tease my tongue out of my reddened face. A large amount of cold sweat trickled down my blue cheeks.

"Are you sick?"

Bi Ryuyeon asked with a pitying look, and Yi Sam, who was even more frightened by his expression, could only tremble with an even paler face.

Zhang Wuyang had never experienced anything like this in her life, except for that day a month ago. A month ago, Zhang Wuyang's door to the state office, where he usually worked, was shattered and torn open, and a messenger rushed in, kicking it with such force that it shattered. How dare a mere envoy barge into the head of state's office unannounced, kicking down the door and running in? He wouldn't even open his own home in such a rude manner. Besides, right now Zhang Wuyang was wrestling with a mountain of papers in front of him, preparing for a large-scale display that would take place in two days, a display that had no precedent in the history of the Zhongyang Marks.

His nerves were strained to the breaking point. The march to Nanchang in two days' time was to be the largest in the history of the Zhongyang Marks Bureau, both in terms of the amount of money involved, the value of the goods entrusted, and the number of marks mobilized. While he was agonizing over the matter, one of the fearless marksmen, in an act of unspeakable insolence, kicked in the paulownia door of his office.

Sovereign Zhang Wuyang's mood was now so uncomfortable that it seemed like the only thing left to do was to explode. Anyone who knew the current mood of the country, and his own state of mind, wouldn't do something like this, even if it was for the sake of the item on his neck. Besides, the one who had just rushed in was a common marksman, Zhang Fal, whom he knew well. He was shrewd and quick, and he could take care of himself…….

"How rude, how dare you!"

"Gu, sovereign… Gu, we're in trouble!"

The sight of Zhang Pai using his stiff tongue to mock him was unpleasant. The beads of sweat running down his bleached forehead and his soaking wet back were a good indication of how he was feeling right now. If he hadn't been in such a bad mood, he would have expressed his concern by saying, "Are you all right, let's go see the doctor, maybe you should take a few days off.

"What's the fuss, what's the big deal?"

"Master Noh has come to visit again."

"What, bang!"

The force of the two hands shattered the pile in front of Zhang Wuyang. The piles of papers on top of it were blown away in the aftermath, filling the air in the room. It would take a considerable amount of time to sort them out and organize them in order.

Since that day, there has only been one person in the Zhongyang Bureau who has been referred to by the title "Master Noh." We were going to call him the monster old man, or the monster scab old man, or whatever, but we were afraid that if we got within earshot of the monster scab old man, he might have another seizure and come running in, so we gave up on the monster old man and went with the more modest "Master Noh".

"Ding ding ding."

The paper announcing the state of emergency echoed loudly in the station.

"Urrrr……."

Fully armed marksmen leapt from the stage, their gleaming white spears and white swords glinting in the sunlight. It was a dazzling sight.

"I don't care how happy you are that I'm here, it's a bit much for a welcome. You don't have to do this."

Scratching the back of her head, Bi Ryuyeon said with a hint of embarrassment. Zhang Wuyang, the head of state, who had jumped out like a bull before the emergency bell could be rung, was the first to bow.

"Master Lu, what has brought you back to our kingdom like this?"

Zhang Wuyang could definitely feel the tremor in her voice. She definitely didn't want to relive the nightmare of a month ago again, and her heart grew heavier and heavier as she thought about it.

"Uh, what happened to your shoes? Did you take them off and sell them? Uh, it's not just you, is it? It's him, it's him, it's him……. No, he did too. Did you trade in all your country's shoes? It's a shame. How few people have proper shoes. I never heard of the country being so poor that they had to sell shoes to feed themselves."

"Yes?"

Zhang Wuyang immediately blushed as he looked down at his feet at Bi Ryuyeon's sudden and puzzling words, who was staring at him with a puzzled expression. She was barefoot. She had rushed out in such a hurry that she had forgotten to put on her shoes. Zhang Wuyang's face turned even redder as he looked at the lower half of his body, and now it looked like an active volcano about to erupt. This was because there were many barefoot people in the crowd who, like Zhang Wuyang, had run out without shoes. Blushing with embarrassment, Zhang Wuyang lowered her head and said, "I'm sorry. Her clenched hands were faintly trembling.

"You inspiration, what the hell are you up to this time, what have you gotten yourself into!

The thought of this eager word remained in his head and mouth only as a thought. It was not spoken out loud so that it could take effect. There was only one world, one life, and one chance to live in the world, and it was worth saving. Zhang Wuyang coughed a couple of times, then straightened her complexion. She couldn't continue to look so ugly.

"Hey, what's going on with……."

"Oh, I hear you've been short-handed at your China House lately. I've been hearing a lot of talk about it lately. I hear you're having a hard time keeping up."

"Who the hell are you talking about and do you even know it?

Zhang Wuyang held back the curse words with infinite patience. The powerless could only swallow their resentment inwardly. With an awkward smile, Zhang Wuyang politely replied.

"Yes, our business has suddenly gotten so big that we've been short-handed lately, and it's all thanks to Master Noh that our business has gotten so big."

"So, the rumors were true. That's great, that's great, that's great. So, I'm here to help you, to extend a helping hand, a saving hand. A hand of salvation, if you will."

"I don't really understand what you're talking about as a small person, and I can only hope to learn from Master Lu."

He was very polite and respectful. But despite his honesty, my stomach suddenly ached as if I had been punched in the stomach a month earlier.

"In other words, I'll lend you a hand. How's that for a good story? It's not a good story, martial arts. You say you're a prostitute? I'll gladly give you sixteen of my students, one for each of the two sexes. Don't say no. It's all a matter of mutual convenience. They're good. You've been there. You know it. ……. So I'll give them the benefit of the doubt. So, what do you say? Well, yes! I knew you'd say yes. Then we'll do it, it's decided."

'I didn't say anything, but…….'

She played the drums, played the harp, and played everything by herself. Zhang Wuyang hadn't said a word all this time. He hadn't been able to afford to. In front of him, the monster old man was rambling on by himself. How could he have the strength, how could he have the guts, how could he say, "I object.

Still, she had no choice. Moreover, even for Zhang Wuyang, these conditions were not so bad. How anxious she had been when the monster old man suddenly showed up unannounced, and how worried she had been that someone somewhere had heard about the marker of marking that would be leaving in two days and had come to ask for it. She felt like she wouldn't be able to escape the indigestion and stomach pills for a while. I resolved that if this day passed safely, I would immediately send someone to fetch Councilor Huang of the Huang family.

Mr. Huang was a famous legislator who was rumored to be the best in Sichuan because of his secret Huang Family Stomach Medicine and his skill in governing. What if that monster old man asks for it? Give it to him, what can a powerless man say?

But then, of course, the country goes bankrupt. Three generations of karma would be closed. However, with the help of the Heaven and Earth Gods, fate averted the worst, and the person who seemed to be a calamity god suddenly turned into a fortune god, no matter what his change of heart was, and actually helped him. People with skills that he had seen with his own eyes and experienced with his own body a month ago. Now, Zhang Wuyang was in desperate need of a first-class master.

"If you can do that, it's more than I can bear. Who am I to argue? I will never forget this favor from Master Lu."

Zhang Wuyang politely bent his waist at a right angle. He was pleased, to say the least.

"That's the least I can do, but when does my ticket to Nanchang leave?"

"Yes, my flight is scheduled to depart two days from now, in the morning at myoshi (8am)."

"Really? I'll see you then. When you get to Namchang safely, give the boys a few bucks for the ride. They can use it to buy themselves a drink or something. They'll have pocket money, and we can help each other out."

It was a paraphrase that emphasized the word "pennies". Anyone who hears this will never be able to literally give a few pennies. Even if they were afraid of reprisals, they would only be able to give a shiny, shiny thing to ease their minds.

"Yes, there is, don't worry about it."

"Hit him hard. He'll get his money's worth. I count them. They're my students."

As she waved her hand and headed out of the country, Bi Ryuyeon's new model suddenly stopped. He suddenly spun around, turned around, and added a word out of nowhere.

"Oh, and they're disposable one-way tickets, so don't worry, I'll make sure you get to Namchang. But we'll have to part ways in Nanchang, so make sure you come alone. Goodbye……."

"That, that, ah, that, Master Noh, Master Noh!"

Leaving the dumbfounded Zhang Wuyang behind, Bi Ryuyeon disappeared into thin air without another word. Behind him, the marksmen of the Zhongyang Marking Bureau stood barefoot, spears and swords in hand, basking in the hot afternoon sun. Counting themselves lucky that the storm had passed them by unharmed…….