Chapter Ninety-One: Sword Against Cannon

Kou Li and Jiang Yazi burst out of the martial hall first, with seventeen disciples and two instructors hard on their heels. These were the hall’s last remaining seeds. As they ran, Kou Li’s ears twitched without cease, constantly shifting his bearings; thanks entirely to his command of the terrain, the group had yet to run into any enemy.

“Eighth Senior Brother, are we really going to Broad City? I heard the local farmers have a new leader lately. What if they report us to the authorities—” Zhao the instructor asked uneasily.

“No,” Kou Li said, shaking his head. If the Crocodile Boy wanted his own seat to stay secure, he had to help him. Besides, Summer City lay a full thousand miles away from here, and only by taking the waterways could they shorten the distance as much as possible.

A thunderous blast suddenly exploded beside his ear. Kou Li, having sharpened his hearing to its utmost, slapped both hands over his ears at once, instantly going dizzy and sightless, as though dozens of gongs were being pounded right next to his head.

At the same moment, more than thirty feet away, the rotten mud on the ground suddenly surged upward like a wave. The earth trembled like an earthquake. A steel sphere the size of a human head bounced up from the ground, smashed through three trees in succession, and only then came to a halt.

Every scalp in the crowd went numb.

A shot like that, if it landed in a mass of people, could tear open a bloody path without effort.

“A cannon!”

In the dynasty of this world, firearms and artillery were roughly on par with the late Ming and early Qing eras, at the level of the great red barbarians’ cannons and the mighty general’s cannon—capable of killing at two or three miles, with almost nothing able to stop them.

To deal with a single martial hall, they had actually hauled out cannons.

More crucially, the roar of the artillery would throw off Kou Li’s cheating-like hearing. Once that was blunted, the surrounding soldiers, and even the men from the underworld who had taken a bounty, would swarm in like flies to carrion.

And if they closed in, death was certain.

“They’ve brought out three cannons. I’m going to destroy them. You all head to Wolfhead Hollow first!” Kou Li said tersely.

“Don’t worry, Old Eight. Leave the rest to me,” Jiang Yazi said with obvious excitement. The fellow seemed born not to know what fear or worry were.

Kou Li’s figure gradually disappeared from view. Once his ears were gone from the group, a squad of blade-wielders and a squad of archers were upon them in short order.

“Leave this to me!”

Jiang Yazi sprang forward like a wild monkey from the mountains, using both hands and feet, bounding and leaping as he charged. He moved so fast that all one could see was a streak of monkey-like shadow.

Two of the disciples tried to help, but the instructors held them back and warned, “Eighth Senior Brother doesn’t need your hands.”

“But—” In their minds, this senior brother, second youngest of the lot, had no steadiness at all. Every day he was off roaming the hills and playing around; he hardly looked like someone who had suffered and trained hard in boxing.

“Master Lin said it before: if his heart ever settles, he’ll be the next Senior Brother Mo,” Zhao the instructor paused. “Even if it never settles, he’s still a master of the perfected monkey form!”

Monkey footwork was the most agile of all, because in motion it drew upon the hands, shoulders, arms, hips, thighs, and knees all at once. With the waist and step bending and flashing in a single breath, the soldiers’ eyes blurred, and he had already rushed right up to them.

“Break our Burning Body Hall, and I’ll tear you apart!”

Before the two soldiers could even react, it felt as though something had climbed onto them. Their scalps flared with pain, their vision blacked out, and it seemed as if two claws had hooked into their eyeballs. With a soft wet sound, a pair of eyes were plucked straight out.

The other soldiers were shocked. They hurried to close in with their long blades, only for the opponent to duck his head and hunch his back, hiding himself in a single instant. His whole body was shielded from view, and the blades and spears could not strike him without hitting their own men. The soldiers he had latched onto screamed and flailed wildly, crashing straight into the crowd.

Taking advantage of the chaos, Jiang Yazi leaped and darted wherever the press was thickest. He struck upward and clawed downward, jabbing straight for the eyes; his middle finger drove into the hollows behind the ears, his hands pinched at the throat and windpipe, clawed and tore at the Heavenly Prominence point and the Lianquan point, and locked down the sinews on both sides of the neck. After every grab came a hawk-like shoulder roll, and with a “monkey climbs the pole” motion he landed on the next man.

He clawed at the collarbones, the armpits, the ribs, the chest and abdomen, the groin—nothing was off limits. It was precisely the kind of method described as: light leaps forward and back are called nimble; extending and contracting with round, lively speed; bodies broken, blood spilled, again and again; wherever the fingers reach, scars remain.

Nearly twenty soldiers were practically entangled by him alone. By the time the martial hall party rushed past, many had already fallen, and the screams had risen into a single uproar.

The only inheritor of the monkey fist from the Burning Body Hall—the wild monkey, Jiang Yazi.

……

At the very same time, Kou Li had already approached the edge where the cannon stood. Through the gaps in the trees, he could see the soldiers compressing inward along the perimeter like a tightening net.

Most of these soldiers wore cloth or paper armor, and only a third had iron armor. It was not that the court lacked the money for more; rather, Guangdong was damp and rainy, and iron rusted and decayed with ease. Besides, the coastal troops mostly fought pirates and sea battles, relying chiefly on weapons and firelocks, so heavy iron armor was somewhat inconvenient.

But the blades, spears, crossbows, and arrows in their hands were unquestionably the newest and finest models.

The court had not yet fully quelled the maritime disasters for many years, and the coastal forces were all seasoned veterans and capable officers, far from rotten through.

Not only had Kou Li seen them, they had seen him as well. At the blast of a military horn, arrows flew toward him like a rainstorm.

Kou Li drove power through the soles of his feet, blending explosive force with the frames of tiger pounce and dragon roll. His figure darted among the trees like a phantom, shifting, gliding, spiraling, and turning with eerie speed. After swallowing the Emerald Jade Fruit, this was the first time he had unleashed his full strength. He was so fast that even he was somewhat startled.

Often within a single breath, with just two steps, his body could spring five or six yards. People said that a true master drew strength like opening a bow and released it like firing an arrow, but he felt that his footwork had already reached that level. With only the edge of his vision, he could even dimly catch the speed of the arrows.

Perhaps this was the role of a great boxer at the Four Extremities level on the battlefield: as a superweapon of ancient war, able to cut down generals, seize banners, seize rebels, and seize their leader. Its effect was beyond anything some fierce champion or great commander could match.

Most of the arrows were easily avoided; the few that remained were slapped away with the back of his blade. Within ten breaths, three volleys had been loosed in uneven succession, and Kou Li had already rushed to within ten feet of the ancient cannon.

The cannon had been dragged up from a ravine on a crude iron cart. It was black all over, the barrel thick as an elephant’s leg and twice as long as Kou Li was tall. Metallic sheen glimmered in the sunlight. For the first time in this era, Kou Li felt the ferocity and terror of gunpowder weapons—so overwhelming that one shot seemed as though nothing in heaven or earth could stand against it.

Kou Li drew a deep breath. Dragon movement and tiger transformation exploded outward from him in a surge of boundless spirit, allowing him to sense every inch of muscle, bone, flesh, and skin in his body with perfect clarity. The breathing method drove the latent potential of this flesh and blood frame to its limit.

Every bone in his body crackled and creaked. His frame seemed to rise by an inch. Blue veins stood out on the surface of his skin, especially on the hand gripping the hilt: it had turned as dark as ink, the bones and flesh fierce and contorted, the fingertips flushed with crimson and purple as blood surged through them, while a faint mist rose from his palm.

This was not because Kou Li’s pores could not seal in the moisture within his body. Rather, it was a strange phenomenon caused by the humid sea air of the coastal forest, where vapor met heat and was steamed up by the temperature of his palm.

Kou Li stepped forward, driving the top of his foot fully into the mud. Within a radius of fifteen feet, the ground shook with a deafening crash, as though a giant had stamped down. The three soldiers operating the cannon were jolted straight onto the ground.

“Boom!!”

“Boom!!!”

On the third step, two great sinews in Kou Li’s forearms bulged out, and five strange sounds rang out within his body at once.

Like the detonation of buried thunder.

Like the roar of a whirling tide.

Like the sound of a demon tearing a person apart.

Like the earth splitting open to swallow all things.

Like a divine beast overturning rivers and seas.

Those five sounds merged together, and the blade itself actually let out a cry of pain and savage exhilaration. No one had ever been able to drive it to such a degree. Behind Kou Li, the illusion of a pufferfish child transformed into a fish demon with a face full of fangs and sharp teeth.

A change in the outer extremities, power like a deluge crushing mountains, a momentum like wolves swallowed and tigers devoured.

The blade light cut straight through to the end. The blade itself burned red-hot like an iron bar, sending up thin smoke. At the same moment, the hollow iron barrel, weighing eight thousand catties and representing the strongest weapon of this age, was split cleanly in two in an instant. Molten iron still dripped from the severed mouth of the barrel.

With a single stroke, he could cut through metal and sever iron.

As the several-thousand-catty cannon barrel crashed heavily to the ground with a deafening clang, it was as though reason itself had been struck down. Many of the surrounding soldiers gaped like toads. Not to mention cutting it in half—just melting iron like this, to melt such a thick iron tube, would still take days and nights. Was the thing before them human or ghost?

And while those soldiers were still stunned, Kou Li had already taken the chance to slip back into the woods. The soldiers had brought three cannons, and he had only destroyed one.

There were still two left.