14: Chapter 14 So, I'm already this strong.
A low, adobe house, with glaring white funeral cloth hanging on the door.
Before even entering, one could hear the sound of sobbing suppressed to the extreme inside.
It was not a wail, but a mournful cry of a life half-drained after the tears had run dry.
Jiang Hanzhou stopped his footsteps outside the door.
Through a gap in the worn window paper, he saw Li Tietou's elderly mother slumped beside the stove, her eyes staring blankly into the void.
Li Tietou's wife, married for less than a year, cradled a swaddled infant in her arms. The child seemed sick and was crying softly, while the woman rocked it mechanically, no tears on her face, only a deathly, ash-gray numbness.
Beneath that numbness lay a colossal sorrow, enough to swallow all light, the likes of which Jiang Hanzhou had never seen in his two lifetimes.
She did not look at the child, her eyes fixed outside the door, towards the river, as if still waiting for the person who would never return, carrying a fishing net, grinning and shouting, "Wife, I'm home!"
Jiang Hanzhou suddenly felt his breathing become difficult.
The few pale words of comfort he had prepared could not be uttered, not even a single word.
He silently placed the few taels of broken silver and two packs of blood-nourishing medicinal herbs he carried on the broken wooden stump by the door, then turned and left.
He walked very slowly.
Every step felt like treading into the icy river water.
It was not anger, nor hatred.
It was something heavier, blocking his chest, stuffing his throat.
He went to the Water Dock's archive room, using the excuse of verifying the origin of medicinal herbs, to browse the recent river defense maps and water condition reports.
He went to the pier, sat on the familiar reef, watching the River Patrol Squad's speedboats patrolling back and forth, watching new Fishermen being recruited, carrying similar confusion and hope, taking away their own tattered fishing nets.
Their faces gradually overlapped with the faces of Li Tietou, Wang Er, and Shi Dunzi's cousin.
"Fishermen, we can just recruit more."
In the evening, a rainstorm was approaching, dark clouds hanging low, pressing down on the river surface until it was pitch black.
Jiang Hanzhou returned to his single room as a pharmacist. He did not light a lamp, sitting quietly in the thickening darkness.
In his mind, the panel quietly emerged:
γ host: Jiang Hanzhou γ
γ fate: Late Bloomer (Third Rank) γ
γ Cultivation Technique: Tidal Breathing Technique (Perfection), Layered Wave Bone Tempering Strength (Minor Achievement) γ
γ Martial Arts: Tidal Shadow Thousand Hands (Minor Achievement), Layered Wave Palm (Major Achievement), Breath Concealment Method (Perfection)... γ
What the Third Rank fate brought was not just an increase in Cultivate speed, but also a kind of insight.
Into himself, and into others.
These days, he had observed intentionally or unintentionally.
Observing the River Patrol Squad's Boss Hong, observing the guard commander who occasionally came to the Medicinal Cuisine Hall, and even, during one inspection of the Medicinal Cuisine Hall by Water Dock Master Dock Master, he stood with his head bowed from afar, but with his peripheral vision, he clearly saw this Viscera Burning Realm Martial Artist who shook the Three Rivers Estuary.
Dock Master's aura was vigorous, his gait possessing the posture of a dragon and tiger, making one dare not look directly at him.
But as Jiang Hanzhou watched, a thought gradually rose in his heart that even he found astonishing:
His Qi flow had an imperceptible stagnation when it intersected at the third major acupoint and the seventh Meridian...
When his gaze swept past the left eaves, his neck would subconsciously shift half a fraction; that was a habit left by an old injury...
When he stood with his hands behind his back, his right heel was slightly floating, his center of gravity actually entirely on his left foot...
If... if I wanted to kill him.
The moment he turned around, using the 'Reverse Flow Thorn' from 'Tidal Shadow Thousand Hands', striking from bottom to top, attacking three inches below his old injury on his right rib, where his blood and Qi gathered, with a triple Layered Wave force to break his protective blood and Qi, then using the 'Fish Dragon Transformation' movement technique to close in, and a horizontal slash with the water-dividing thorn across his throat...
Probably, it would only take three breaths.
This thought was as cold as water, yet as clear as a mirror.
Jiang Hanzhou slowly raised his hand, looking at it in the last daylight from outside the window.
His palm was broad and thick, his knuckles distinct, covered in a thin layer of calluses due to long-term martial arts training and labor.
Under the skin, his blood and Qi surged like an undercurrent in a great river; beneath the calm lay a power that even he had not fully measured.
He suddenly understood.
He had always known that he was progressing quickly, that his fate was extraordinary, and that he was stronger than the average Fisherman, or even most River Patrol Squad members.
But he had never truly measured himself on the same level as those high-and-mighty "big shots."
Until this moment.
Until that coldness named "worthless," and that ash-gray sorrow from the door gap, completely shattered the lukewarm desire for peace deep in his heart.
So, I am already this strong.
So, those people, those rules, those schemes that I feared while swallowing my anger and compromising for safetyβwhen I already had the ability to break them, I was still habitually bowing my head.
Outside the window, a clap of thunder exploded, the pale lightning instantly illuminating his calm-as-water face.
And it also illuminated a spark of light gradually igniting deep in his eyes.
The rainstorm finally poured down.
Jiang Hanzhou stood up, took off his gray cloth robe from the Medicinal Cuisine Hall, and put on a set of deep black, tight-fitting water gear.
This was something he had custom-made by a craftsman under the name of "researching underwater medicinal herbs" while using his pharmacist identity; it was tough and form-fitting.
He took out that blood-drinking water-dividing thorn from a secret compartment under the bed frame and slowly wiped it with a soft cloth.
The pitch-black thorn body could not reflect a person's shadow, only emitting a cold, eerie light.
He also took out an oilcloth bag containing the remaining gold leaves. He kept a few pieces, wrapped the rest back up, and shoved it back into its original place.
Then, he walked to the window and pushed it open a crack.
The rainstorm poured down like a deluge, clattering against the tiles, and the whole world seemed to be left with only this violent sound of rain.
The pier's lights blurred into hazy orbs in the rain curtain, and the River Patrol Squad's boats had also returned to port.
The timing was right.
Thirty miles upstream from "Black Fish Shoal," there was a dangerous place called "Dragon Tooth Ravine," where the cliffs on both sides were like they had been cut by knives and axes, the current was rapid with many hidden whirlpools, easy to defend and difficult to attack.
According to the information he had pieced together and his intuition, the temporary lair of Over-River Dragon's gang was very likely in some natural cave or platform on those cliffs.
The Patrol Inspection Division and the Water Dock were not unaware; they just felt that the cost of a direct assault was too high and not worth it.
They could discuss their own business.
I would do my own killing.
Jiang Hanzhou gently closed the window and blew out the lamp that hadn't even been lit.
His figure merged into the darkness of the room, and when he reappeared, he was already like an inconspicuous shadow, silently sliding out of the back window and plunging into the pouring rain.
The pier was empty.
He found an ownerless old sampan, untied the mooring rope, and his figure floated into the boat as lightly as a falling leaf.
The wooden oar entered the water, silent and traceless, the small boat seemingly pushed by the rain itself, going against the raging river current, tearing through the rain curtain, and sailing toward the pitch-black upstream.
The sound of wind and rain covered everything.
The rain hit his face and body, icy and bone-chilling, yet it made the blood and Qi in his body more active, more scalding hot.
More than an hour later, in the darkness, a thicker shadow, towering like the fangs of a giant beast, appeared on the left bank of the river.
Dragon Tooth Ravine.
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