Chapter 110 - 106: If They Come, Let Them Taste How Hard Your Master’s Fists Are

Chapter 110: Chapter 106: If They Come, Let Them Taste How Hard Your Master’s Fists Are

Chen Sha descended the mountain. He brought only his two disciples with him and no one else.

Dao Yi Mountain was located in the Northern Territory of the Celestial Ridge, right at the border between Zhao Country and Jin Country. Heading south led to Zhao Country, while heading north led to Jin Country.

At the foot of Dao Yi Mountain flowed the Canglang River. The river’s waterway cut straight through several large provinces within Zhao Country. Because it flowed downstream, anyone descending Dao Yi Mountain to travel to Zhao Country would take the water route.

On the way to the ferry port, Lin Qingqing asked, "Master, are you really the number one in the world?"

Her small face was flushed red. She carried a massive backpack with the Immortal Sword she had renamed ’Peach Blossoms’ strapped to it. The heavy load made her petite figure look rather bulky, much like a child carrying an oversized schoolbag. "Also, where are we going now that we’ve left the mountain?"

Whenever she thought of the words her master had said before they departed, she couldn’t help but feel a surge of excitement. By descending the mountain this time, he was asking the world how many people could withstand his fist. This commanding Momentum of looking down upon the world was the exact reason she had wanted to become a disciple at Dao Yi Mountain.

Walking ahead of them, Chen Sha only answered her second question. "We will take a stroll through the Zhao Country Capital first. We’ll decide what to do next after that."

Before that, they had to board a ferry.

The waters of the Canglang River surged violently. The ferry port was packed with dense crowds of merchants and traders from the surrounding counties and towns. At this moment, these ordinary commoners noticed three young people in Daoist Robes approaching from a distance. None of them were very old, making them look like siblings.

However, the leading young Daoist possessed an incredibly outstanding temperament. Even his simple, loose-fitting Daoist Robe could not conceal his Immortal bearing. As they watched Chen Sha approach, many of the commoners silently cast reverent gazes toward him.

Lin Qingqing said, "Master, they seem to respect you a lot."

Chen Sha smiled in response. "Most of the people within a radius of several hundred miles are believers of the Daoist School. It’s completely natural for them to feel a sense of goodwill toward us since we are wearing Daoist Robes."

Lin Qingqing nodded, understanding his point after a moment of thought.

This was the foot of Dao Yi Mountain, after all. The many commoners who relied on this land had an innate reverence for the Daoist School and its Daoists. Martial Artists knew that the Dao Yi Sect was a Major Sect in the world. In the eyes of the ordinary commoners, the people on Dao Yi Mountain were a group of Immortals. They could go there to pray for blessings, wealth, and peace. This was the most innocent and sincere religious faith these commoners held.

She giggled. "If they knew that the Immortal Sect Leader they can’t even catch a glimpse of when offering incense on the mountain was actually you, they’d probably swarm all over us."

Then again, she herself also treated Chen Sha as an Immortal. That clone-manifestation Skill... in this day and age, only her Immortal-like master could pull it off.

"Don’t joke around. Our Dao Yi Sect is just an ordinary Martial Arts Sect," Chen Sha said. "The commoners treat the Daoists on the mountain as Immortals who save people from suffering and disasters, but we cannot view ourselves as such. There are simply too many things we cannot do. Thinking too highly of ourselves will only drag us into another kind of quagmire. The people of the world go to Dao Yi Mountain to burn incense for peace of mind. We can only give them that peace of mind, and nothing else."

Lin Qingqing nodded obediently. "Mhm, I know."

As the sky gradually darkened, the three of them finally boarded the ferry boat.

The boatman shouted at the top of his lungs, "Those who have taken this ferry before don’t need to listen, but if this is your first time, pay attention! Our boat will travel on the river for three days. During this time, we will pass through two provinces and seven counties, stopping at ten ferry ports along the way. I will announce our arrival in advance at each port. If you need to disembark, do it quickly, because we won’t stop for long at certain ports!"

Chen Sha and his two disciples sat inside the cabin, listening to the boat boss’s voice from the deck. He turned his gaze to Qii Zhengyi. "When the two of you descended the mountain to gain experience last time, you took this exact ferry, didn’t you?"

Hearing his master’s question, Qii Zhengyi immediately adopted a serious expression. "Answering Master, yes. After Junior Sister, her older brother, Young Master Lin, and I descended the mountain last time, we took this very boat. However, we disembarked at the first ferry port."

Chen Sha asked, "Then which ferry port should we disembark at if we are going to the Zhao Country Capital?"

Speaking of which, this was actually the first time Chen Sha, the Dao Yi Sect Leader, had traveled far from the mountain. Ever since his father, Chen Canxuan, brought him back to Dao Yi Mountain at the age of one, he had almost never left a hundred-mile radius of the mountain, even now in his twenties. The farthest he had ever gone was in his teens, when Uncle Song Yu took him to a certain county town thirty miles away.

Therefore, he had absolutely no experience navigating the world below the mountain. In fact, he hadn’t traveled nearly as far or as widely as his two disciples. This was one of the reasons why Chen Sha had brought them along—aside from keeping them close to educate them, they could conveniently serve as his guides.

Hearing Chen Sha’s question, Qii Zhengyi silently calculated in his head before answering. "If we’re going to the Zhao Country Capital, we can’t ride until the last ferry port—that heads in the direction of Dasan Pass. We need to disembark at the ninth port, which is Chunzhou. From there, we switch to land travel, and we’ll reach the Capital City in about ten days."

"Chunzhou, huh..." Chen Sha nodded slowly. Truthfully, he was somewhat looking forward to the different sights and experiences of the world below the mountain.

Unexpectedly, Lin Qingqing’s face grew slightly tense when she heard they would be getting off at Chunzhou. "Master, disembarking at Chunzhou might bring you some trouble. How about we get off at the eighth ferry port instead?"

Chen Sha raised an eyebrow. "Oh? What kind of trouble?"

Lin Qingqing looked at Qii Zhengyi sheepishly. "Senior Brother Qii, have you forgotten? During the year we spent off the mountain, we offended a Martial Arts Sect in Chunzhou..."

Qii Zhengyi had been confused at first, but upon Lin Qingqing’s reminder, his expression turned awkward. He couldn’t help but say, "I’m sorry, Master, I completely forgot about that. Junior Sister and I did offend the Monks of White Cloud Temple in Chunzhou, and they chased us down for a long time. If Uncle Song Yu hadn’t been following us back then, we..."

Lin Qingqing muttered softly, "We almost got caught and forcefully ordained. Senior Brother would have become a Monk, and I would have become a nun."

Qii Zhengyi added in a low voice, "I forgot about that. Luckily, Junior Sister reminded me. We should listen to her and get off one ferry port early. Mostly, we’re just afraid those Monks will recognize us and cause unnecessary trouble for you, Master."

He wasn’t worried that his master wouldn’t be able to defeat them. As his master had said when leaving the mountain, how many people in this world could withstand his fist nowadays? Qii Zhengyi was merely worried that Chen Sha’s mood would be ruined by those people.

Chen Sha silently recalled the past and instantly knew what the two were referring to. "I see. I remember you two couldn’t stand the sight of the White Cloud Temple’s Monks forcefully collecting rent from the poor tenant farmers at the foot of their mountain. You righteously intervened, taught their leading Monk a lesson, and ended up being chased all over Chunzhou. In the end, you still couldn’t swallow your anger. If I recall correctly, didn’t Qing’Er sneak back to their mountain gate overnight and carve the four words ’Fake Buddha, Fake Monks’ on their plaque? They chased you all the way out of Chunzhou before finally giving up."

The two widened their eyes in shock.

Lin Qingqing, in particular, hadn’t expected her master to know such fine details. When she went alone overnight to leave that inscription for those stinky Monks at White Cloud Temple, only Uncle Song Yu had followed her. Even Senior Brother Qii hadn’t known about it, yet Chen Sha knew it with crystal clarity.

She said sheepishly, "It was my fault for being reckless, but it’s only because those stinky Monks were bullying people too much! The Buddha Statues in their temple are clearly plated in gold leaf, and they gorge themselves sleek and fat, yet they still viciously force the tenants who rent their farmland to pay rent. They even injured someone! What kind of merciful and compassionate Monks are they? They’re clearly just a bunch of snobs blinded by greed. That’s why I couldn’t stand back and watch."

Chen Sha said slowly, "The White Cloud Temple you encountered isn’t simply a Buddhist Sect’s temple or a Holy Land for studying scriptures. More than that, it is a Martial Arts Sect. As long as it is a Sect, it requires its own methods of generating revenue to feed hundreds or even thousands of members..."

Sects and religions could coexist within a single faction. Dao Yi Mountain was the same.

The difference was that Dao Yi Mountain relied on the Incense Money willingly given by the commoners who came up the mountain to burn incense, as well as the hard work of people like Zhang Liting and Wei Dashan, who traveled down the mountain to secure substantial funds for the Sect. White Cloud Temple, on the other hand, operated much more blatantly. They directly bought land and houses at the foot of their mountain, acquired estates, and kept a large number of tenant farmers to plant and harvest crops for them.

This was actually one of the most common revenue-generating methods in today’s world. In other words, they were just like the landlords in Chen Sha’s memories. However, White Cloud Temple wasn’t merely a group of wealthy local tyrants in a regular town; they were an extremely famous Buddhist Sect and Martial Arts Sect in the Jianghu.

Lin Qingqing couldn’t help but ask nervously, "So, do you think I was wrong?"

Chen Sha shook his head, however. "How could you be wrong? I sent you two down the mountain to gain experience precisely because I wanted to see the different choices you would make when facing various situations. Since you have now become my disciple, isn’t that proof enough that I have no objections to the things you did off the mountain?"

Qii Zhengyi looked up and asked, "Then, Master, are we still getting off at the Chunzhou Ferry?"

Chen Sha chuckled. "Why wouldn’t we?"

He slowly took a sip of his tea and uttered a single phrase, "Deliver one hard punch now to prevent a hundred punches later."

He had descended the mountain to make everyone in the Jianghu realize one thing: after more than two years, Dao Yi Mountain—the number one Sect in the world—had returned.

"We will disembark at the Chunzhou Ferry. I want to see if White Cloud Temple dares to come looking for you two. If they don’t, we will proceed to the Capital City as planned. But if they do dare to show up, I’ll let them taste the hardness of your master’s fist."

Hearing this, the two became visibly excited, their faces flushing red.

They finally felt the touching sensation of having someone back them up. Thinking back to the year they spent off the mountain, they had been through so much—chased, driven away, running and fleeing for their lives...

They couldn’t defeat some of the more formidable characters, yet they didn’t dare reveal their connection to Dao Yi Mountain. After all, they hadn’t officially been disciples of Dao Yi Mountain at that time.

But now, they were finally the disciples of the man sitting right in front of them!

They finally had a master who would stand up for them and shield them from everything.

Three days later.

The ferry successfully arrived at the Chunzhou Ferry.