“The Zhang family won’t fracture that easily,” Mao Wenxiong said, shaking his head. “The only reason Zhang Manman can make this kind of noise is that she’s the Dragon Head’s daughter. She’s borrowed Zhang Hongqing’s prestige to pull these outer disciples together. If Zhang Hongqing withdraws his tolerance, she loses everything overnight. She’s pushed too far today — one word from him strips her of it all.” He settled back. “Watch and see. From the Zhang family’s perspective, this is just a handful of juniors making a scene. It won’t go anywhere. Call it an interesting footnote.”
“That Su Jie does have sothing to him,” Mao Xin said, his eyes moving across the hall. “I’d like to asure myself against him. Word is his attainnt now rivals Zhang Hongqing’s — that he’s reached Divine Enlightennt.”
“Looking at his bearing and face, I can’t read anything conclusive,” Mao Wenxiong said. “But he’s a piece Zhang Manman has placed on the board, and there may be interesting things to watch shortly.” He studied the room with evident interest. “You should insert yourself at an appropriate mont — see how Zhang Hongqing responds. He was apparently injured in that encounter with the Panda Mask. We don’t know yet how fully he’s recovered.”
“I already have a plan,” Mao Xin said, with a quiet smile. “Don’t worry, Father.”
*****
In the hall, Zhang Manman’s words had left the family elders and Zhang Hongyuan with expressions that were difficult to describe.
Zhang Hongqing had said nothing. He sat in the Dragon Head’s seat, his face giving away nothing at all.
Zhang Kaitai surveyed the situation and made a calculation: if Zhang Manman was allowed to continue, the ss would beco increasingly difficult to contain — and the assembled guests would be watching the Zhang family embarrass itself. The most appropriate person to end this was him.
He moved quickly, crossing the floor in a few strides to reach his sister. He extended his hand to seize her — to physically remove her from the space, which would collapse the leaderless outer disciples’ montum and end the disruption cleanly.
Zhang Manman was formidable, but not at his level. His training resources had always exceeded hers by a significant margin. He had grown up inside the Honey Badger Training Camp, essentially — what hadn’t he encountered?
He privately considered his conditioning superior even to Feng Hengyi’s. Feng Hengyi’s father, after all, was not Zhang Hongqing.
Zhang Manman saw him coming and imdiately stepped back from the table, positioning herself.
“Little sister,” Zhang Kaitai said, his tone carrying an easy smile, “you’ve caused enough trouble for one day. Stop making a scene — there won’t be any good outco for you here. Father always indulged you too much growing up. We all let you have your way. Now you don’t know where the limits are.”
The warmth in his voice was entirely disconnected from what his hands were doing. He struck without pause — a complex seizing technique aid simultaneously at her shoulder, arm, throat, and several other critical points, designed to end the encounter in a single application.
The technique had the quality of traditional martial arts: sothing like an ape snatching a bird, or a hawk taking a fox, or a great fish engulfing a shrimp. Five fingers spread wide, closing in overlapping arcs from multiple angles, covering every direction of escape from top to bottom. His footwork was equally relentless — close-adhering, like a suction cup attached to his opponent, cutting off any retreating space.
Zhang Manman recognized it imdiately: the Zhang family’s inherited seizing art, the Iron Claw Steel Hook Eighteen Hands — assembled by Zhang Hongqing from military close-combat techniques across multiple countries, refined through countless repetitions into a linked system where each grip locked a different joint. She knew it well. She simply wasn’t fast enough. In the first exchange, she was already losing ground.
Thud!
As Zhang Kaitai’s hands ca down and Zhang Manman ran out of room to move, sothing appeared between them.
A figure, inserted without warning.
Zhang Kaitai’s steel-hook grip closed on this person’s arm. His instinct fired imdiately — a twisting rotation designed to snap the arm at the joint.
The arm didn’t move.
It was like closing your hands around an iron post.
He released with a shout and stepped back.
Su Jie was standing in front of him.
“I’m Zhang Manman’s friend,” Su Jie said, looking at Zhang Kaitai with an easy expression. “Anyone who wants to get to her goes through first.”
“Is that right.” Zhang Kaitai’s eyes went sharp. “You’re Larry’s bodyguard. You’re inserting yourself into Zhang family business? I’m her brother. Who exactly are you?”
“I’m her friend. Also her bodyguard — I protect both Mr. Larry and her.” Su Jie’s expression settled into sothing neutral. “As it happens, you ntioned earlier that I was unqualified and that you wanted to test yourself against . Here’s your opportunity. I’ll give you a free hand — use whatever you like. A weapon, a thrown weapon, a firearm if you want, any thod at all. I’ll go empty-handed. If you win, the bodyguard position with Mr. Larry is yours. If you lose, there’s no point in taking a Honey Badger Security board seat — step aside and let Zhang Manman have it. What do you say?”
Su Jie had stayed silent during the earlier verbal provocation because there had been no point engaging with it then. Now, with the family assembly as the stage and every Zhang family mber watching, the mont was exactly right. He had not only issued the challenge publicly but had specified that Zhang Kaitai could use weapons while he would use nothing.
If Zhang Kaitai backed down now, his credibility would not recover. Any claim to a Honey Badger Security board seat would beco difficult to take seriously.
Everyone in this hall was a practitioner. Even the children understood what the gap between ard and unard ant in real terms. An ordinary person with a knife in their hand made a professional fighter genuinely cautious — because fighters trained empty-handed, not in weapon defense. A specialist with a blade was sothing else entirely.
Soone like Shen Dao — trained with a combat knife to elite military standard — would, on a ring stage, be no match for Liu Long in open combat. But give him a blade against an empty-handed Liu Long, and he could kill two or three of him.
Su Jie offering his bare hands against whatever weapon Zhang Kaitai chose was not a concession. It was an insult delivered in the form of a sporting gesture — the kind that said: I consider you the equivalent of a child taking his first steps.
Hiss.
Inside Zhang Kaitai, killing intent erupted. He had not liked Su Jie from the first mont, and the enmity had only deepened. Right now he wanted to put Su Jie in the ground. He was composed enough not to let any of that reach his face. He slowed his speech deliberately.
“Fine. I accept. Though weapons have no eyes — if you’re hurt, don’t bla .”
“Hurt is hurt — nothing serious. Even if I died, it wouldn’t be your fault.” As he said it, Su Jie glanced at Zhang Hongqing. The Dragon Head was watching him. Those eyes were deep, unreadable.
Whatever was going on behind them, Su Jie understood the structural logic: if Zhang Hongqing prevented his son from taking the field, it read as weakness — damaging to the Zhang family’s standing in front of their guests, and costly in the business relationships that depended on that standing. And if Zhang Hongqing himself stepped in personally, Su Jie wasn’t afraid of that either. A match with a practitioner of that caliber was exactly the kind of sharpening stone he wanted. It had been a confrontation with Feng Hengyi at the edge of death that had unlocked his breakthrough to the Realm of the Living Dead in the first place.
He knew, however, that Zhang Hongqing would not enter personally. A man of his position didn’t compete on the floor of his own family assembly.
And underneath the calculation, Su Jie realized sothing about himself: he genuinely wanted to fight Zhang Hongqing. He had been in the Realm of the Living Dead for half a year now. The accumulated force had been growing dense, particularly over the last two weeks with Larry’s resources pushing his developnt further. He thought his odds against Zhang Hongqing were poor. But that was precisely why the encounter would be valuable. He was young. The potential for growth was enormous.
*****
“Kaitai.” Zhang Hongqing spoke.
Zhang Kaitai crossed to him imdiately. He kept his voice low. “Father, I know Su Jie is formidable, and I know he’s trying to provoke . But I’ll use that against him — take up the weapon and disable him with it. It’s his own arrogance, thinking he can handle blades empty-handed. Whether that’s genuine ability or delusion, we’re about to find out.”
“His foundation is the Hoe Strike of Xin Yi Ba — the upward-raise, downward-chop, press-forward pattern, one strike and one uncovering, chasing wind and catching moon.” Zhang Hongqing spoke as though he had already mapped Su Jie’s entire fighting system. “He’s also developed the Thirteen Protectors Iron Body work — comprehensive coverage. His level exceeds yours by a aningful margin. But against your weapons with empty hands, his odds are not as strong as you’d expect. For you, this is a useful test.”
He paused.
“Don’t attach to winning or losing. Don’t treat this contest as a humiliation. What matters is surviving and learning. If you can’t move past the attachnt to your pride, your developnt will stall. You need a genuine opponent to push you toward the next threshold — use this one. Fight without reservation.”
“Understood.” A cold edge moved across Zhang Kaitai’s face.
Underneath it, there was sothing that resembled sha — a feeling he had not expected and didn’t fully welco. He had grown up looking down at his generation from a height. No one his age had co close. Now a person younger than him was looking down at him from further up, and offering him a weapon as though it were a handicap for a child. So part of him wanted to throw the weapon aside and fight bare-handed out of sheer refusal. But he hesitated. He trusted his father’s assessnt. And in that first contact — when his grip had t Su Jie’s arm — he had already felt it. This was not soft.
*****
“Father,” Mao Xin said, frowning, “Su Jie is actually going empty-handed against Zhang Kaitai’s blades. Has he genuinely reached Divine Enlightennt?”
“The Realm of the Living Dead — our family’s data on it is limited,” Mao Wenxiong said. “I don’t have a complete picture. But I don’t believe empty hands can overco blades, regardless of ntal state. Zhang Kaitai’s Night Hawk combat knife technique is said to have reached a level of true mastery — forged through actual killing. You’ve crossed hands with him. What was your assessnt?”
“Impossible to track,” Mao Xin said. “Those two Night Hawk blades are ten tis more dangerous than his empty-handed fighting. I don’t see how Su Jie wins this — even if the Realm of the Living Dead is everything they say it is.”
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