After Yuwen Tong and Ling Zhang took their seats, the courtiers followed suit, and then the first match officially commenced. Yuwen Yue was sitting on Yuwen Tong’s lap, her curious eyes raking the sea of spectators down below, some of whom were watching the fight, and some of whom were curiously straining their necks to get a better view of the imperial family on the ramparts, but unfortunately for them, the ramparts were too high and too far away for them to see the people on there clearly. Still, it didn’t dampen their enthusiasm at all. Great cheers were bursting forth in succession, making the atmosphere uncommonly lively. Yuwen Yue was startled somewhat but was unable to restrain her curiosity. Her father’s embrace gave her such a sense of security that she craned beyond the parapet for a glimpse of the arena.
“Sit back, Crescent,” cautioned Ling Zhang as he saw that almost her whole upper body was beyond the parapet.
“It’s okay. I’m holding her waist. I won’t let her fall off,” said Yuwen Tong, quite composed. He was confident that even if his daughter fell off, he would be able to get her back in the twinkling of an eye.
Ling Zhang had a disapproving look on his face. Yuwen Yue sensed his displeasure, obediently sat back into Yuwen Tong’s embrace, then tentatively twisted her head aside to look at him with the intention to check whether or not he was still unhappy, a very innocent expression on her face.
Ling Zhang, “…”
Yuwen Tong’s heart slightly ached for his daughter, but he didn’t dare blame his “big sweetheart”, so he had no choice but to coax his “little sweetheart”, “It’s okay. Daddy’s not mad. Look, the kung fu competition started.”
Having checked that there was no sign of displeasure on Ling Zhang’s face, Yuwen Yue happily turned her head back to look at the crowds at the foot of the ramparts. Watching the two men scrapping around in the arena, she laughed heartily. She was not scared of the fighting, because she had been seeing guards sparring in the palace on a frequent basis for as long as she could remember.
“Uncle Jin!” Suddenly, Yuwen Yue’s sharp eyes alighted on a familiar figure and she called out to that person, pointing in that direction, pleasantly surprised.
It was Yuwen Jin. Probably having sensed Yuwen Yue’s gaze on him, he looked up in her direction, and, at the sight of her gazing at him with a mixture of delight and surprise on her face, gave a smile and waved at her.
Yuwen Yue’s spirits soared and she clamored to go down there to see her Uncle Jin. “Father, let’s go down to meet Uncle Jin.”
Naturally, it was inconvenient for Yuwen Tong to leave. “Uncle Jin is busy. We shouldn’t disturb him.”
Yuwen Yue was unconvinced and was just about to say something else when a stern cough was heard. “Ahem!”
Yuwen Yue was taken aback, recognized her daddy’s voice and immediately sat back meekly, looking at the crowd down below with her big, particularly innocent eyes, as though it weren’t her who had just clamored to go down to meet Yuwen Jin.
Ling Zhang looked at her back with a severe face. After a while, his piercing eyes flashed at Yuwen Tong. Their little daughter wouldn’t have dared behave this way if Yuwen Tong hadn’t been pampering her.
Yuwen Tong blamelessly looked back at him, believing that there was nothing wrong with his parenting skills, that their daughter was fine. She just wanted to see her uncle.
Ling Zhang coldly snorted, feeling it necessary to have a “good long” talk with him.
Yuwen Tong stroked his nose. It struck him that this time around he was indeed rather hard done by.
…
The competition was intense. The capital was a large city heaving with talented people, and all the 100 qualifiers were no mean fighters. During the past five years, aspirational talents had been flooding into the capital city. In order for the emperor to be impressed, every contestant strained every sinew to win, so each fight was fiercer than the last.
Yuwen Jin was a former Number One Warrior (the one finishing first in the Imperial Martial Arts Examination in feudal China) and the Assistant Commander of the Western City Garrison Battalion, so naturally he was the last one to fight. A lot of people wanted to challenge him. In fact, almost every one of those who had qualified for the next round wanted to challenge him. Yuwen Jin felt faintly under pressure because of this, but what really stressed him out was the prospect of putting on an act when it was his turn. He raised his head and looked in the direction of Yuwen Tong. As his second cousin calmly looked back at him, he hastened to withdraw his eyes. Yuwen Tong would sure as hell kick his ass if he botched it, so he must not screw it up!
Even Ling Zhang who was on the ramparts sensed Yuwen Jin’s nervous tension, and he even observed Yuwen Jin secretly clench his fists to pump himself up. The sight of it rendered Ling Zhang speechless. All he needed to do was put on an act. Why did he look more tense than a soldier going to war for the first time?
As time ticked on, the intensity of the fighting in the arena grew, and the last round was near. Beneath his second cousin’s gaze, he impassively psyched himself up and managed to maintain a poker face when entering the arena.
At the sight of him making his appearance, the spectators quieted down for a brief moment and then greater cheers burst forth.
“Commander Yuwen! Commander Yuwen!”
Some people started chanting his name, each chant louder than the last. Clearly Yuwen Jin had a high profile in this city.
Yuwen Jin’s opponent was the champion of this kung fu contest, a tall thickset man with a large hammer in each of his hands. Anybody could tell how formidable his strength was from the hammers he was holding so relaxedly as though they were wooden. Yuwen Jin, who had seen this man fight in several rounds, had some acquaintance with his fighting style and naturally didn’t dare take him lightly, but at the same time he was rather baffled as to where his second cousin had sought out this man.
“You may make your move now.”
“After you, Commander Yuwen.”
Both of them were polite.
The tough hombre struck first, making a lunge for Yuwen Jin, brandishing his iron hammers and generating howling vortex airflow which swept towards Yuwen Jin with great ferocity. Knowing that his strength couldn’t hold a candle to his adversary’s, Yuwen Jin, instead of trying to parry the blow, nimbly maneuvered through the seemingly seamless sheet of rapid blurs of hammer movement, throwing a palm strike at the man with both hands.
The man was astounded as he observed that Yuwen Jin actually snaked his way through the whirl of attacks from his hammers, but the next moment he perceived Yuwen Jin’s strike and with that he let out a roar and abruptly changed his direction, sidestepping the blow. His iron hammers, though seemingly a burden to him, turned out to be the key to his agile bodily movement when he swung them. Thus, the two contestants exchanged a blow but neither of them hit their targets.
Ling Zhang on the ramparts was watching with relish. Owing to his great kung fu prowess, the fight between Yuwen Jin and the beefy man was no more thrilling than a scrap between two children for him. After all, in his eyes, the two men’s each and every move seemed as if it were made in slow motion. Were he either of the two in the arena, he would be able to deal his opponent at least a hundred blows in an instant, every one of which was enough to incapacitate the opponent. Still, this was only because they had limited internal energy at their disposal. They both had quick reactions, and their strategies were ingenious. Yuwen Jin had been given quite some harsh special training in the Shadow Battalion, so both his bodily movement and his mindset bore some similarity to those of the members of that department, with a high degree of flexibility and unpredictability being the key feature, while the burly man, whom Ling Zhang had thought was all strength and no speed, turned out to be quite swift as well. His skill in using hammers as his weapons was consummate, which struck Ling Zhang as quite interesting, but…he was faintly worried that these two guys might become too intent on the fighting and forget their missions. Although there would be another way to get the job done if this plan failed, it would add to the trouble, and Ling Zhang was not inclined to be put to any more bother.
In the arena at the foot of the ramparts, Yuwen Jin and the brawny man fought to a stalemate. The latter’s attacks were savage but also swift, and the former was nimble and sly and all his moves were lethal. It could be said that the sturdy man would have some time ago been incapacitated and brought to the ground were he not strong enough. All spectators held their breaths in spite of themselves, watching unblinkingly, no longer letting out thunderous cheers, more tense than the two contestants in the arena were.
The fight between Yuwen Jin and the thickset man was getting increasingly fierce. As time ticked on, anger seemed to build up inside the two of them and begin to cloud their awareness of the fact that this was just a competition. Both of them had suffered visible wounds, and the ferocity and unexpectedness of their attacks was rising, all spectators sweating from nervousness. As the fighting was becoming more and more intense and the two contestants seemed to be losing their sense of perspective, even the spectators perceived something out of the ordinary and the unusual tension in the air. Some of them were so worried that they started muttering that maybe the fight should be stopped, that one of the contestants might end up dead if the fight continued. After all, this was just a kung fu competition, and the rule was that the fight should stop when one contestant admitted defeat or was incapacitated, not that they had to duel to the death. Moreover, Yuwen Jin was the emperor’s second cousin. If he died in the arena, the emperor would surely be heartbroken.
As things stood, it was only a matter of time before one of the two contestants lost control of himself.
At this moment, the beefy man abruptly swung his hammer at Yuwen Jin with the force of thunderbolt, the momentum so terrifying as though he wanted to smash Yuwen Jin to death.
“AAARGH!” The crowd screeched in horror.
“STOP!” bawled the referee in the arena, breaking out in a cold sweat.
However, after fighting at full throttle for such a long time, Yuwen Jin seemed to have become hell-bent on facing his opponent down with sheer might regardless of the price he might have to pay. Instead of backing off, he actually raised his palms and launched a frontal attack, intending to fight back head-on.
Everybody had their heart in their mouth. Some people involuntarily started shouting.
“Outrageous!” a cold voice stormed and with that all spectators saw a figure leap down from the ramparts, which moved so fast it was blurred, and which instantaneously interposed itself between the two contestants in the arena before any of the spectators knew it.
“YOUR MAJESTY!” cried a sharp-eyed courtier on the ramparts involuntarily in alarm as he saw clearly that it was Yuwen Tong who leaped down, his voice cracking.
Yuwen Tong landed between the two contestants and flung out his hands, one towards the thickset man’s large hammer, the other Yuwen Jin’s palms.
BANG!
With a bang, two figures were sent flying rapidly backwards in opposite directions. Fortunately for them, the arena was flanked by crowds of contestants, who, at the sight of the two of them being thrown off, carefully caught them. Those who broke Yuwen Jin’s fall sank to the ground because of Yuwen Jin’s body weight and the impact but suffered no injury, while those who cushioned the brawny man’s fall were rather unlucky, for the man’s hammers landed on them, almost killing them.
The crowds on the two sides of the arena were thrown into confusion. In the arena, Yuwen Tong withdrew his hands and, after his eyes flintily traveled from Yuwen Jin to the burly man, said, “How am I supposed to trust either of you to make positive contribution to the future of this country or to the imperial court if you two couldn’t even control yourselves in a kung fu competition? I hereby declare this man has just lost his championship. The title shall be given to the runner-up. Yuwen Jin the Assistant Commander of the Western City Garrison Battalion is suspended from duty and is to stay at home introspecting until further notice!”
Everybody present got on their knees. Sensing the emperor’s anger, nobody dared utter a word.
Yuwen Tong gave another cold snort and then instructed, “Ready the carriages. We’re going back to the palace!”
As he finished speaking, Yuwen Tong walked out of the arena, heading for the palace gates. The guards on duty in the gateway hurriedly opened the gates to let the emperor through.
On the ramparts, Ling Zhang hastened to lead the courtiers down the stairs and then walked up to Yuwen Tong. “Your Majesty,” he said.
“Um”, grunted Yuwen Tong, flicking a glance at the palace gates instead of saying anything.
The courtiers were baffled as to what the emperor meant, all their faces etched with uncertainty. Ling Zhang, who seemed to catch on, immediately had the guards shut the gates.
No sooner had they closed the gates than Yuwen Tong held out his hand to Ling Zhang, who appeared astonished briefly and then quickly took it. With that, Yuwen Tong suddenly bent from the waist as though falling to the ground.
“Your Majesty!”
“What happened to you, Your Majesty?!”
The courtiers, scared out of their wits, hastily gathered around Yuwen Tong.
“Relax. I’m okay. I just sprained my waist,” said Yuwen Tong, gritting his teeth against the pain.
S–Sprained his waist? All of them were sent into some kind of stupefaction. It was a few moments before someone came to himself and immediately yelled, “Send for a court physician! Hurry!”
“Come here. Let’s help His Majesty into the carriage and escort him back to the palace!”
