It didn't take long to become a riot.
Basically, the moment I finished saying, "Challenge you," two ready family retainers rushed at me with iron pipes one after the other.
Judging from the way that they wielded the iron pole, I discerned that they were door guards from Nanjing, so they weren't related to Gold and Silver Sect.
"Mere door guards are trying to act tough in front of This One?!"
I vaguely remember that Zhong Ning was called a perverted demon, who was most skilled with a spear.
'Fuck! Damn pervert's martial arts style is perverted, too. Of all things he could like, he likes spears. General Manager Bai sent him to the castration room to cut his spear off, precisely because he played with his spear too much in his lifetime.'
I snatched an iron pole from one of them and used it as a long spear. Then I gently… and carefully… swung it left and right. The tip of the pole vibrated, creating multiple after images I struck. I sent the two guards were sent flying sideways. I thought I put too much force into my strikes from the way they flew off, but then I saw that they had just passed out, which told me that I used just the right amount of strength.
'That's how much force I need to use.'
They didn't seem to be afraid of me. I coldly snorted, "This one loves pretty girls most. What are the lot of you damn bastards here for?"
With a manoeuvre technique, I threw one out. I touched a maid on her face. Before she could shriek, I gave her shoulder a push to spin her around and gave her a resounding spank on her butt cheek that. The maid went totally red in the face, but she was so frightened that she couldn't utter a word.
I laughed in a strange tone, "Wow, you can stand even that?"
A family retainer lost it. He exclaimed, "How dare you?! How dare you cause trouble at Gold and Silver Sect?! You must be sick of living!!"
This family retainer wielded a broadsword. He began his offensive against me with consecutive attacks. He was definitely from Gold and Silver Sect.
'I wonder how many more of them there are at this abode.'
His swings were akin to a snowflake, but I didn't care. I casually intercepted his sabre using my iron pole. When the tip of my pole clashed with his sabre, he reacted as though I smashed it with a large hammer that weighed a tonne. As a result of my technique, his broadsword flew out of his hand. I used a straight thrust attack a second time. He dropped to the ground and stopped moving.
I shot an intimidating look at the remaining family retainers. They then rushed at me together, which led to a big fight.
I, Zhong Ning, took on a group of elites alone with a single iron pole. I basically knocked several out cold just by swinging a circle then after a few more flicks, nobody was left standing.
I then enunciated the compulsory line in these sorts of situations, "Gold and Silver Sect is shabby."
I then walked around in the abode wherever I pleased.
"Useless trash. You think you can stand This One's divine spear?!"
'Jeez, it's all this Zhong Ning guy's fault that my lines are getting more and more evil. I can't believe that I keep yelling out that I'm going to use my spear, long spear and its variants. Now, merely mentioning spear in a legitimate sentence sounds disgusting, too.'
This estate is very large. I can't see everything now. There was no shortage of stairs. The place flaunted all the unique characteristics of Jiangnan. Wherever I went, I'd used the same tactic of pinching maids' butt cheeks, thereby infuriating people before knocking attackers in each area out.
Afterwards, I even began to feel that using an iron pole was too much of a hassle, so I used broad beans, instead. Yes, you read that right; I used broad beans.
I grabbed a bag of broad beans that had just been fried. They smelt nice and were crunchy. I flicked beans at family retainers that charged toward me. A thin black silhouette flashed pass. He got rocked, and then dropped to the ground and stopped moving.
Gold and Silver Sect doesn't have weak subordinates, which was what I thought. A mere door guard was able to take one broad bean flick from me. I thought that I'd cause a cascade of severe injuries, but he was merely immobilised. They were insignificant to me, but their foundation was solid.
I threw broad beans at their meridians while chewing on some. I took out another batch in the same manner.
At the end, I finally managed to provoke Jin Wangsun, who was hiding indoors, into coming out.
When he came out and saw his servants scattered all over the ground, he was abnormally enraged. He immediately took out a sabre used in executions that was named "King Kong." He glared at me with an infuriated gaze and shouted, "Insolent pervert! For as long as I am here, you shall not exist in Jiangnan. Take this!"
It's said that Sabre King of Jiangnan, Jin Wangsun, has more than ten different sabres, with each sabre being used in conjunction with different styles and mental cultivation, which therefore, made them fearsome in different ways. He has a gold and silver sabre. Besides being worth a load of money, it was most suited to swift attacks.
As for this King Kong Sabre of his, it's supposed to be a sabre that focuses on brute force, which is why the style that's used in conjunction with it consists of slashes and an emphasis on toughness and power. This style reminds me of Five Tigers Gate Destroying Sabre, Tiger Forehead Splitter Swordplay and other similar straightforward power techniques.
'Can one use so many techniques with a single sabre?'
'Jin Wangsun has never learnt those styles, though. According to what his father said, Jin Wangsun's sabre skills may be decent, but Gold and Silver Sect doesn't possess any sabre styles worth learning. So, where did he learn his sabre skills from?'
I didn't concern myself any further. I moulded energy with one hand and raised the pole up horizontally. His sabre clashed with my iron pole. The friction generated sparks!
Jin Wangsun was delighted to see me take up a defensive position, so he immediately attacked with a barrage of powerful moves with the intent of taking my life.
'His moves looked familiar to me. No, I'm not saying that I'm so highly educated on martial arts that I can tell, but that I seem to have fought with the owner of the style. It resembles the sabre style that Tang Ye used!'
'Doesn't this sabre style come from the Valley of Yearning's Bai Clan? They don't teach their style to outsiders! It's strictly taught to their disciples! How are you and Tang Ye able to use it?! What sort of trade did you make?!'
I continued to calmly fight with him. I switched the position of my pole between horizontal, vertical, raised it and lowered it to intercept his attacks, consequently, emitting a chain sequence of sounds of metal and iron colliding. All of Jin Wangsun's attacks were intercepted by my divine spear no matter how fast or vicious his attacks were!
After exchanging over twenty blows with me, he became extremely dispirited. First, it was illogical for his King Kong Sabre, which is a rare sharp weapon, to be snapped by my iron pole. Next, I hadn't counterattacked once yet, which left him even more bewildered as to why I came here.
My goal today was to see how skilled he truly was and where his true skills lie.
I observed his sabre style and couldn't resist the urge to say, "I heard that the ancestors of Gold and Silver Sect have been searching for martial arts manuals around since their time with the aim of collecting many manuals to form their own clan. Subsequently, they devised a godly style…" I wore a belittling smirk, "So you people haven't given up on trying to imitate Daluo's Five Divine Styles Manual?"
Jin Wangsun shuddered. He fumed, "Wh-Wh-What nonsense is this?!"
"Hmph, you claim This One is speaking nonsense? This One is not blind. Brat, your clan's deeds are truly embarrassing."
I've said it before. My martial brothers all have their specialties. Other than me, the five disciples of Mount Daluo's third generation have all mastered different styles. Our sect has already researched styles that have reached the apex of martial arts. If you were to categorise said styles, they would consist of: palm styles, qinggong, hard styles, finger styles and swordplay.
Those five martial arts styles are my grandmaster's specialty. They call him Hero Shenzhou, a man with prowess beyond the boundary of humans. He had become invincible at an early age and lived over a hundred, which practically makes him a demi-god. In his later years, he modified his lifetime worth of skills and recorded them in Daluo's Five Divine Styles Manual.
While it's said that it consists of five styles, the truth is, the contents are vast, profound and complex beyond what words can do justice. Divine Palm Manual, alone, dives deep into the key components of palm styles across the lands, pointing out their pros and cons. The manual also includes our Mount Daluo's supreme styles, Moon Weaving Palms and Empty Palms.
There are over thirty totally different palm styles that are all unique in their own rights. Mastering Empty Palms alone would allow one to defeat countless people; hence, it's honoured as one of the five most formidable palm styles in the world. A martial arts practitioner would have to bury his head in it, as mastering it would take decades.
As for qinggong, there's Shadow Zipping Manual, a manoeuvre style that allows one to move so fast they are perceived as a passing light, such that opponents have no means of guarding against it.
For hard styles, there's Golden God Manual. It's nicknamed Daluo's Unshakable Golden God. Not even metal can hurt its user. At current, Fourth Brother is its master.
For finger styles, there's Brutal Murder Manual. For swordplay, there's Ultimate Sword Manual. These two you can ignore for now.
Other than our Grandmaster, nobody else in Mount Daluo has mastered all five styles. Not even my Shifu, the patriarch of Mount Daluo. He's only managed to master Divine Palm Manual, Shadow Zipping Manual and Ultimate Sword Manual.
It's not that he lacks talent, but that he doesn't have enough time.
I heard that my Shifu was still just a mischievous brat when he met my Grandmaster. Afterwards, he trained for nearly thirty years before he was allowed to descend the mountain. He learnt those three styles in those thirty or so years.
Because my Shifu was locked up on that lonely and empty mountain for almost thirty years, he felt so suffocated that he wanted to hang himself. That's why the first thing he did when he descended the mountain was visit brothels. Visit after visit and several decades had passed before he knew it…
For the record, he hasn't finished visiting them.
So as you can see, there comes a lot of pressure with learning that unlucky style.
If it took my Shifu thirty years with his talent, others might as well stick to dreaming of it.
I'm not particularly surprised by that, though, since it was created by my Grandmaster.
Given my Grandmaster's talent, cultivation and experience, he, too, required a hundred years to create that supreme art. Therefore, regardless of who tries to learn it, they'd have to spend a tremendous amount of time.
Consequently, mastering Daluo Five Divine Styles Manual is an incredibly life-consuming endeavour.
Thus, my Shifu came up with the idea of having my fellow disciples master one style each, instead, to prevent us from wasting our lifespan. His method allowed us to effectively use our prime time for training to master a style most suited to us.
Back in the day, the manual wasn't called Daluo Five Divine Styles Manual, for the reason that it was just completed and Grandmaster hadn't given it a name. It wasn't until Grandmaster heard of Shifu's idea that he revealed a faint smile and wrote down on a blank sheet of paper the five words, Daluo Five Divine Styles Manual.
Back then, I couldn't comprehend the reason for the name no matter how I racked my brains.
I thought, "Does this name have anything to do with the styles we're supposed to learn?"
But I figured it out later on.
'You guessed it! The implied intent lay in the meaning of the ambiguity of the word Divine. The words for divine can be read as retarded.'
'Once my fellow disciples finished one divine style, they'd becoming Daluo's Five Living Retards!!'
'Yep! The reason my Grandmaster named it that was to make a fucking joke that's funny by virtue of not being funny at all!!'
Glossary
*Toughness and power - Toughness refers to the rigid nature of the techniques and tendency to trade, such as trading blow for blow or blocking attacks head on (e.g. checking a kick, instead of sweeping it or directly countering). Power refers to attacks, which emphasise generating maximum force.
**Divine VS Retard - Okay, this is different and I had to insert information into the text, so that you didn't miss out on the joke. The divine characters in Daluo's Five Divine Styles Manual is 神经, which means nerves, but can also mean retardation.
It doesn't actually mean 'divine', so don't actually use it that way. In the original text, they aren't read as one word, but actually, two words, which are split up as 神（divine）and 经（manual）. The word 'styles' is merely there to adapt it to English.
In the joke, however, it's read as one word; hence, it's usage of the 'retardation' definition.
So, when reading it as the play on words intended here, instead of reading it as
大罗（Daluo's）
五（five）
神（divine）
insert 'Styles'
经（manual）
It's read
大罗（Daluo's）
五（five）
神经（retards）.
***Cold Joke - This isn't in the English text, as I rewrote it to avoid confusion, but a cold joke is a Chinese term which refers to a joke that's funny by virtue of not being funny at all.
l