"Did you kill someone last night?"
When Li Hongtu suddenly appeared by the pool and looked at Yan Liqiang with unprecedented seriousness, Yan Liqiang, who had just been under the waterfall and shaking the Dragon Back Steel Spear for less than two minutes, could not help but stop.
Yan Liqiang looked at Li Hongtu in confusion, wondering if Li Hongtu was joking with him. "No, Master, how could I have killed anyone last night? I haven't fought with anyone for a long time!"
"When was the last time you killed someone?"
"We are on our way to escort Lord Sun to the Imperial Capital, right? What happened?"
"Strange, this shouldn't be the case..." Li Hongtu frowned and looked at Yan Liqiang with a look of suspicion, "I just heard the sound of you shaking your gun in the room, and it was obviously different from yesterday. The sound of your shaking gun today had an extra killing aura. If you had never killed anyone with your gun, you wouldn't have made such a sound. And you killed more than one person with your gun. If it was just one person, there would be no way to refine this killing aura in your gun..."
Yan Liqiang's heart trembled, and he swallowed his saliva, "Master, I was practicing in the Deer Garden yesterday and didn't go out. How could I go out and kill someone? Master, this, are you mistaken..."
What Yan Liqiang said was both true and false. In reality, he certainly did not kill anyone, but in the Tiandao Divine Realm, he did kill many people, and he did so with his spear skills.
"How could I be wrong?" Li Hongtu stared at Yan Liqiang. "Tell me, are your mouths that have eaten meat the same as your mouths that have not eaten meat when they are opened?"
"Is this... any different?"
"Of course there is. No matter how much you wipe your mouth after eating meat, there will always be oil in your mouth. Even if there is no oil in your mouth, the meat can be found in your stomach. Where would the oil come from if you have never eaten meat? You can't find it even if you cut open your stomach. It's like killing people with spearmanship. Before you kill someone, practicing spearmanship is one feeling. After killing someone with spearmanship, practicing spearmanship is another feeling. The strength of your gun, posture, the distance between your fingers, the rhythm of the shaking, and your spirit will all have subtle changes. You can hear these changes by listening to the shaking sound of the big gun. This is the murderous spirit in the spearmanship. Others may not be able to feel it, but don't try to hide it from me. Tell me the truth. Did you leave the Deer Park secretly after dark last night to kill people outside?"
Li Hongtu's words almost made Yan Liqiang kneel down.
Yan Liqiang asked himself if he could tell any difference between the buzzing sound of his shaking spear and that of the previous few days, but he also knew that because he had indeed killed people with spear skills in the Tiandao Divine Realm in the past few days and had some insights after the battle, so today when he was practicing shaking the spear, the strength with which he held the spear, his posture, the measure between his fingers, the rhythm of the shaking, and his will were slightly different from his usual practice. Yan Liqiang just felt that this was more convenient, but he didn't expect that such a small change would be heard by Li Hongtu in an instant. Damn it, this was really terrifying.
"Master, I swear to God, I was in Deer Park all day yesterday and didn't go out at all. If you don't believe me, you can go and ask around to see where people were killed by spearmanship around the Imperial Capital last night. By the way, Master, now that you mentioned that, I remembered that for some reason last night, I had a dream. In my dream, I became a soldier on the battlefield, holding a ash-wood spear. I was surrounded and fought hard with the enemy. In my dream, I killed many people with spearmanship. The dream was very vivid. I still remembered it clearly when I woke up this morning, as if I had experienced it myself. I don't know if it was the influence of this dream..."
"Ah, can I have such a dream?" Li Hongtu stared at Yan Liqiang in amazement. After a while, he lowered his head, with a look of deep thought on his face. He twisted his beard with his hands and muttered to himself, "This... Speaking of it... It seems... It seems that this is possible... But this is too unbelievable..." After thinking about it, Li Hongtu raised his head again and asked with some doubt, "Have you ever had such strange dreams before?"
"Often!" Yan Liqiang nodded seriously, his face looking like a witness in court swearing an oath on the Bible. "I often have dreams of fighting and killing. Every dream is very clear, just like a personal experience. Even after waking up, I can't forget it. By the way, I once had a strange dream, and it turned out to be an incident. Almost everyone in my hometown knows that I can have strange dreams..."
Yan Liqiang quietly diverted the topic to one side without leaving any trace. As expected, when Li Hongtu heard what Yan Liqiang said, he suddenly became curious and asked, "What kind of strange dream did you have?"
"I met an old man in my dream. The old man taught me a method to treat drowning people. Unexpectedly, the method was really effective. I used it to save people!" Yan Liqiang recounted the story of saving people in Pingxi County. This matter was a cliché to Yan Liqiang. There was no novelty in it. He had told so many lies that even Yan Liqiang himself almost believed it. But for Li Hongtu, the first time he heard these words from Yan Liqiang, he felt both fresh and shocked.
After listening to this, Li Hongtu looked at Yan Liqiang with strange eyes. After a while, he put his hands behind his back and said seriously, "In the future... if you have such strange dreams in the future, it's best not to tell others. Remember?"
Yan Liqiang breathed a sigh of relief. He had finally gotten through this stage. "Remember this, Master!"
"Okay, you continue to practice..."
"Um… "
Just as Li Hongtu turned around and Yan Liqiang picked up the spear and prepared to start shaking it again, a voice suddenly floated into the ears of the two men.
"Li Hongtu, Li Hongtu, I was wondering why you didn't come to my place to make trouble for a while. It turns out that you have accepted such a talented disciple..." As this voice appeared, Yan Liqiang felt a flash before his eyes. On the top of a pine tree that was so big that two people could hug it by the pond, there was suddenly an old man. The old man had a head full of neatly-knit silver hair, and was wearing a clean white satin robe. His face had a rosy and delicate luster like that of a baby. He stood on a piece of thin pine needles that only birds could land on with his two feet, and swayed gently, like a fairy.
"Mr. Ji, what are you doing here? Get out of here!" Seeing the old man coming, Li Hongtu's face suddenly became nervous for some reason, and he glanced at Yan Liqiang.
The surname Ji? Could this person be the other person on the two bronze plaques that Eunuch Liu gave me...
"Mr. Li, don't worry, I'm not here to look for you!" The old man surnamed Ji ignored Li Hongtu and turned to look at Yan Liqiang, sizing him up from head to toe. "Did the man surnamed Liu give you two bronze medals? There is a word Ji on the other bronze medal..."
There was no way to hide this thing, so Yan Liqiang nodded.
"Well, from today on, you are my apprentice. You can call me master from now on, and I can teach you peerless archery!" The old man surnamed Ji nodded, and without waiting for Yan Liqiang's consent, he announced his relationship with Yan Liqiang.
“Mr. Ji, you competed with me for Xiaoying back then, and now you’re competing with me for my apprentice. I… I… I’m going to fight you…” Li Hongtu was furious. He roared and rushed towards the old man surnamed Ji.
Li Hongtu's speed was so fast that Yan Liqiang could only see a shadow of him rushing over.
With a loud "bang...", without seeing how Li Hongtu made a move, the big pine tree that two people could hug exploded instantly. Everything from the trunk to the countless pine needles turned into debris and flew everywhere. Even the ground where the trunk of the pine tree was located was splattered with mud. The trunk of the pine tree was all blown out of the ground...
Amidst the flying debris, a white figure slowly rose up like a cloud, and then shouted in the air, "Xiaoying obviously likes me...", and then stabbed Li Hongtu with a palm...
With a loud "boom...", as if a loud thunder sounded out of nowhere, the surrounding trees were all blown to pieces by the violent energy. Even the water in the pool where Yan Liqiang was located began to vibrate in this roar.
In the blink of an eye, the two exchanged several moves in front of Yan Liqiang. When the two exchanged moves, Yan Liqiang even had an illusion. For some reason, the two people were obviously moving very fast, so fast that people could not catch their movements at all, but somehow, it gave people a feeling of being very slow. This contradictory feeling made people feel dizzy and want to vomit just by watching, just like motion sickness...
The trees and rocks beside the two men, at this moment, seemed to have entered a silent crusher, and in the interval between the two men's fight, they turned into debris and flying ashes...
"You two, do you have to wait until I die before you stop fighting?" A long sigh came from farther away. The two old men who were fighting stopped at the same time when they heard the sigh. After looking at each other, they called out "Xiaoying" at the same time. Then, two figures flashed and they chased towards the place where the voice came from. In the blink of an eye, they disappeared from Yan Liqiang's sight.
Yan Liqiang stood blankly on the stone in the pool, looking at the mess around him, thinking he was dreaming...
Yan Liqiang stood on the stone and thought for a while, but finally gave up the idea of chasing after him and picked up the dragon-spine steel spear again, and continued to shake it...
(End of this chapter)