Faraway Wanderers

Chapter 21. Poisonous Scorpion

Out from the corner walked a gaunt man with an easily forgettable face that served no indication of his age. No one had any idea of how long he had been there, having unable to detect his presence at all.

The man in red frowned. He had no idea why, but when he looked at this plain man with nothing striking about him, there was a shuddering feeling that crawled up his spine and raised the hair at the back of his neck. He couldn’t help but change his posture the closer the other man got, unblinking eyes never leaving him.

He asked again, cautiously. “Who are you?”

On instinct, Zhou Zishu was about to told him “Just a nobody” like he did to Gu Xiang; but when he looked down and saw the bruise on Zhang Chengling’s neck, he thought, I’ve played pretend in the palace for over half of my life, why do I have to be polite to these amateurs?

The vagabond’s uncouth behaviors in him had been repressed for way too long. He cast a cursory glance at the men, including the man in red – who had all became tenser – and laughed. “What makes you think I have to answer you?”

The man’s eyes twitched, hands retracted under his sleeves. Apart from his birthmark whose color seemed to have become a darker shade of red, were anyone to see his hands at that moment, they would discover a layer of black smoke appearing over the skin.

The men standing beside him involuntarily spread out. After signaling each other with their eyes, they formed a circle around Zhou Zishu and Zhang Chengling.

Zhou Zishu paid no attention to them, bending down to pull at Zhang Chengling’s collar and picking him up from the ground. “Stand up, kid, don’t lower your head like that.”

Zhang Chengling stared at him blankly, still confused since Zhou Zishu was wearing an additional layer of disguise.

The man in red was patient still. “We just want to ask the child something, my friend, don’t-”

Stick your nose in other people’s business was what he was about to continue with but was unable to, because Zhou Zishu had already set about with electric speed. He gripped the neck of the one who lured Zhang Chengling here in the exact same way the man in red did to the young boy.

The man spluttered, frightened; his martial art skills were not at all incompetent, but this malnourished-looking man moved in a way that was almost ghostlike, and his most vulnerable body part was at the man’s mercy before he even had a chance to evade.

Even a new martial art practitioner would know that the neck and chest were the most vulnerable parts on the body and had to be looked out for with utmost vigilance; those are the places that one would protect unconsciously. A person who dared aim for another’s neck was either very unseasoned or very confident in their ability.

Zhou Zishu’s lips curled without a single hint of real mirth. “Am I your grandpa?”

The man in his grip was initially startled, then enraged; he started to yell without taking his current situation into account. “You…”

But that was all he could utter as Zhou Zishu strengthened his hold and turned his vulgar words into hoarse cries. During the panic, he lifted his arm to hit Zhou Zishu’s chest, but it was dislocated before he could see the man made a move. There was only a wretched distorting scream heard between them.