“Master Zhang, you look terrible,” the neighbor said timidly. “Covered in wounds, and barely any clothes on you. You must’ve been through a lot.”

  “I have,” he replied with a faint smile. “A lot happened. I need to go.”

  “Y-yes, of course. I’ll tell the children everything. I’m sure they’ll be so happy. Come back soon.”

  “Thank you again. Please keep an eye on them. I won’t forget this debt,” he said.

  “Oh, no, Brother Zhang! My family is glad to help,” Hong Shu bowed modestly, skillfully hiding her delighted smile. A practitioner’s promise was never empty words, and she was already anticipating future benefits.

  Returning to his old home, Zhang Ming threw the beggars’ belongings out into the street and burned everything they had used in the yard. Baskets, mats, sacks, everything went into the fire. When he was done, he thoroughly washed the floor, the walls, the doorframes, and the small table, the only piece of furniture in the house. Once, Zhang Ming had planned to buy a grand estate and hire servants. But now, this fragile hut in a poor district of the city was the only place he could return to and the only place where someone waited for him.

  The girls need a home, even if it’s just this, Zhang Ming thought, surveying the nearly empty room. They’ll know right away that I was here.

  While cleaning, he checked the old hiding place beneath the floor. Besides the money he had left behind, there were no less than two taels of silver, a small fortune by slum standards. Where the little ones had gotten so many coins, he could only guess. He didn’t take a single one and hid them back again, but his pride took a heavy blow. He had struggled desperately to earn money and failed, while the little ones had built a modest fortune in his absence.

  “They suffered enough for fortune to finally smile on them,” he muttered, scratching the back of his head. “Still… it’s shameful. A useless father, no better than the old one. I can’t even buy anything. Tch. I came back poorer than when I left.”

  His gaze fell on an unremarkable bundle wrapped in cloth. With a nostalgic smile, he pulled the old scroll from the hiding place. Time-worn paper wrapped around a crude wooden rod, it looked like cheap junk, hiding a great secret within. It had been a long time since Zhang Ming last held it. He unrolled the scroll and looked over the clumsy drawings and inscriptions.

  “I still remember how Minzhu laughed at these,” he smiled. “Then she tried to draw something similar in the dirt… but couldn’t. She got so upset…”

  Rolling the paper back up, Zhang Ming pressed the scroll to his forehead, as if trying to return to that carefree time when he was a porter and hadn’t yet begun turning into a bloodthirsty monster. Suddenly, his inner energy rebelled. It surged and boiled, rushing into the scroll in a torrent, while the scroll greedily absorbed it, like parched earth drinking water.

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  “What the hell?!” Zhang Ming tried to fling the dangerous thing away, but it wouldn’t budge.

  After draining nearly all of his internal Qi, the scroll began to glow. Zhang Ming’s mind flooded with new knowledge and additions to the techniques, like he had once read only the first volume, and now someone had shared the second. Gasping for breath, he collapsed onto the floor. Images flashed before his eyes: people performing sequences of movements and strikes, or simply gazing at the horizon after meditation. To his own surprise, Zhang Ming understood the essence and purpose behind each action.

  With a dull clatter, the scroll slipped from his hands and rolled across the floor until it struck the wall. Zhang Ming followed it with his gaze and noticed that it had changed. The paper had lightened, the dark stains and streaks were gone, and the cracks in the wooden core had vanished, as if it had suddenly grown decades younger. The scroll still looked old, but no longer so wretched.

  “Guess it’s worth more now,” Zhang Ming thought for some reason.

  The sudden loss of so much internal energy left him weak, but only briefly. Within minutes, Zhang Ming sat cross-legged on the floor. He picked up the renewed scroll, examined it carefully from all sides, unrolled it, and ran his palm over the rough surface. Strangely, not only its appearance had changed, the drawings themselves were different.

  “How is this possible?” he muttered. “Even for a magical artifact, this is too much. Damn it… no one must ever learn about this.”

  Fearing to leave such a valuable scroll behind for beggars to find, Zhang Ming took it with him but left the two taels of silver untouched. Earning money was within his power; finding another scroll like this was not. After carefully sealing the hiding place, he left the house, locked the door tightly, and headed back toward the ship. By then, the beggars had regained consciousness and fled with their belongings. Only dark stains of blood remained on the ground. The street returned to its former state.

  Lost in thought, Zhang Ming turned toward the city gates instead of the port. He walked along the familiar road where he had once run with Xue and Minzhu. Around him lay harvested fields, dark where grain had once waved in the wind. Morning passed, the sun climbed high into the sky, then slowly tilted toward sunset. In the distance appeared a small riverside clearing with a tent and a shelter for firewood.

  “No one,” Zhang Ming murmured. “Everything’s cleaned up. Firewood’s stacked, no mess… though one support beam is broken. Someone tidied this place up?”

  He sat by the riverbank for a long time, staring at the water, heavy thoughts weighing on him. No one held him back anymore. No one threatened him. He could leave now, forget the Earth Dragon Gang entirely. But if he did, he would never be able to look his daughters in the eyes. They would remind him of the girls imprisoned on that cursed mountain.

  “I hope Xue and Minzhu are safe,” Zhang Ming’s heart tore in two. “I want to rush out and search for them right now. But I can’t. Forgive me. Wait just a little longer. You’re strong, maybe even stronger than I am…”

  He returned to the port beneath the stars, the moon occasionally breaking through the clouds to light the road. His walk through the city and the beating of four vagrants had not gone unnoticed by his body, his wounds flared up again, pain gnawing at him. Pale as a sheet, Zhang Ming climbed aboard the ship, limped to the berth, collapsed onto his bedding, and fell into a deep sleep. Despite the mysterious technique from the scroll, sword wounds healed far more slowly than bruises.

  Before the ship departed the port, he climbed onto the deck once more and stared at the city for a long time, until the outlines of its buildings vanished into the misty haze. With a heavy heart, he left Baohe behind.