Gan Qing looked down to glance at her phone. In just a short while, there were over twenty unread messages, all from Zhong But Not Qi. Even though the messages were all purely text only, from the words and punctuation used she could tell that the person sending the messages was hysterically trying to stop her from taking a misstep.

First he emphasised strongly on logic and rationality; then, he appealed gently to emotion and sentiment. He started by talking about looking at the big picture from society’s perspective and went all the way to talking about an individual’s choice, then from public policy doctrine to anti-violence rhetoric. One look and she could tell that it was definitely not that child Liu Zhongqi on the other side of the account.

He can really talk, Gan Qing thought.

In the harshness of late autumn, Yu Lanchuan ran until he was sweating all over. All the messages he sent out got as much response as stones thrown into the ocean. Finally, the “typing…” line popped out on the screen.

Yu Lanchuan’s breath hitched. He stared at the screen, every second seeming to stretch infinitely long.

She was replying! What was she going to say?

“This is none of your business”?

“I’ve already gotten rid of those people”?

Or… was there any chance that she had been persuaded by his words?

A few seconds later, Gan Qing’s message was finally sent. She had sent a crass-looking WeChat meme: I bow down to the power of your nagging.

Yu Lanchuan, “...”

Was there something wrong with her!

Gan Qing put away her phone, picked up a pebble, then raised her hand and flicked it towards the glass window next to her.

In unison, the three women and one man in the suite all jumped out of their skin in fright. The middle-aged woman dashed over to the window. “Who's there!”

The little courtyard of the guest house that was filled with junk was devoid of humans. A palm-sized leaf from a parasol tree spun as it floated down with a soft rustle. Before the four of them could investigate, someone fell straight down from where they had been leaning against the wall, hitting the ground with a heavy thump.

“Shixiong!”

The man who had fled from No. 110 Courtyard was tied up like a rice dumpling, his glasses shattered until only the frame was left, his left arm and right leg bent at unnatural angles. The scariest thing was, there was a familiar red line on his neck.

His head was lowered and he was not moving. They couldn't tell whether he was alive or dead.

“Who! Who is it!”

“If I may ask,” Gan Qing spoke up and asked very politely, “what is the meaning of the ‘Wan Mu Chun’ written on this wooden tablet?”

The middle-aged woman looked up abruptly and sucked in a harsh breath. There were a few of them there but they had not realised that there was someone else in this courtyard until that person spoke up on her own and walked out of the shadow of the little building. As though to mock them, Gan Qing was also wearing a long hooded coat. The hood hung low, covering almost half her face. She was even wearing a face mask exactly like them.

Just one person… and a woman at that?

There was an old adage for traveling through the jianghu: The weaker a person looked, the more they should not be provoked. The world did not have so many lucky idiots; when the wrong person appeared at the wrong place, there was definitely something going on.

Gan Qing strolled over and stood still at the window. She threw the item in her hand onto the ground—it was the wooden memorial table, broken into two halves.

In unison, the three women and one man looked in the direction of the noise. “Our founder’s memorial tablet! You’re looking for death!”

The middle-aged woman reached out to stop her companion. “Friend, you don’t look like a cop. Which group are you from?”

Gan Qing took out a very long strip of cloth from her pocket which looked rather like the hand wraps used in Muay Thai. She smiled and carefully wound the cloth strip around her right hand, fixing those few fingers that were like withered sticks in place and protecting them. “Me? I’m just a curious passerby.”

“Wan Mu Chun is our sect,” the middle-aged woman said coldly. “In the generations before us, there had been one of the Five Supremes. The path we walk is a bright and open one, what we do is help the weak and defeat the strong. Friend, since you don’t know anything, why did you break our founder’s memorial tablet and even injure our shixiong?”

“Is that so?” Gan Qing’s voice had a hint of a smile but her eyes did not curve. “Just now, I saw the police chasing him and thought he was a wanted criminal.”

The man in the room shouted, “Who cares about the police!”

The middle-aged woman waved her hand. “Young lady, there is so much injustice in the world. There are some things that the police don’t want to handle and some things that they can’t handle. The things that they don’t handle, we will execute justice on behalf of Heaven. Yet, they say we are breaking the rules and laws. How is that logical?”

“I thought that anyone who still dares to say the words ‘Execute justice on behalf of Heaven’ in this day and age have all gone to work on making artificial rain,” Gan Qing said. “Aiding and abetting murder also counts?”

“We are killing a scumbag,” one of the other women in the room cut in agitatedly. “We are saving her!”

Gan Qing arched a brow.

“Since you know what we do, then we won’t beat around the bush,” the middle-aged woman said. “How many men out there beat their wife like they are sandbags, while outsiders think of it as resolving a family conflict and even urge them to forgive rather than to divorce? In the news, the men who beat their wives to death are sentenced to a few years in prison. But for the women who couldn't bear the torment anymore and got rid of those brutes, what kind of sentence do they get? Maybe you’re strong and have never suffered this kind of torment, but you’re also a woman. When you see and hear this kind of thing, don’t you put yourself in the other person’s shoes and feel even a bit of sympathy? Even without us, she will still go on this road one day. At that time, she might not be able to defeat this human scum and get hurt in return. Even if she is lucky and succeeds, if no one helps her take care of the aftermath, she would spend the rest of her life sitting behind bars!”

“Oh, then how do you guys plan to ‘execute justice on behalf of Heaven'?” Gan Qing asked. “First help her take care of the man’s corpse, then let her use her position as his wife to apply for leave and resign from his job. Transfer the assets as soon as possible, transform them into cash—you're a one-stop service provider. But a full-grown person disappearing is not something that can be covered up for long. She is a murderer at the end of her rope and she doesn’t have the ability to live independently at all. In the future, she can only join you guys and depend on your protection. Her family has a house and a car, they can afford to send their child to a bilingual kindergarten, they can afford to rent a school district residence in the middle of the city—their assets should be quite significant, am I right?”

“Lies and slander!”

“The cost is one packet of drug powder and a few days’ of room rental while the profit can be up to ten million. What a good deal.” Gan Qing smiled. She stretched out her leg and kicked the wooden tablet. “The name ‘Wan Mu Chun’ has been disgraced by you geniuses. I know a little about the origins of these three words, why don’t I share with you guys?”

“Wan Mu Chun—at the very beginning, it was known as Wan Chun Hall. They started during the Southern Song dynasty. At the start, their business was in murdering people and they took on any kind of dirty jobs. At a point of time, their name was notorious. Later on, after a few changes of dynasties, this sect slowly declined and the disciples scattered to the four winds. Only the ancient killing techniques were passed down. At the end of the Qing dynasty, there was this one person who reformed Wan Chun Hall’s ancient killing techniques and arranged them into a systematic and unique skill set called Paoding Jieniu and started a sect called Wan Mu Chun. To learn his skills is to not indulge in ferocity, to not fight fiercely, to not compare skills with others, to not be a chivalrous hero, and to take a life the moment the blade is out, efficient and ruthless.” The woman's slightly raspy voice said each word clearly and unhurriedly, like a patient museum guide. Then, for some unknown reason, the autumn wind sweeping across seemed to become noticeably colder, carrying with it the damp smell rising from the ground. “Because they were too vicious, in the later years, there was internal conflict among the disciples and they started killing each other. After going through great sorrow and rage, this old senior took action to cleanse the sect himself and set up a rule—in every generation, Wan Mu Chun can only take in one disciple.”

“What were you guys saying just now? This is your founder’s memorial tablet? But I see that your sect is flourishing and it really doesn’t look like there has been a few generations of single disciples.” After saying that, Gan Qing held her phone behind her back and pressed send. “Don’t tell me… you’re calling the wrong person daddy?”

Yu Lanchuan had rushed to where Snow House was located when his phone buzzed. The WeChat friend “Big Swindler” had sent her location!

In the little courtyard of the guest house, a chill ran down the middle-aged woman’s back. “Who on earth are you?”

“A passerby,” Gan Qing replied. “Exposing fakes on the way.”

Her words were still hanging in the air when the middle-aged woman suddenly made a move. She closed the window abruptly!

Practically at the same time, Gan Qing’s left hand moved forward. From her hand, something metallic slipped through the crack of the closing window, striking accurately on the woman’s wrist like a viper. The middle-aged woman shrieked and the window opened inward with a violent snap.

Gan Qing leaped up. In the room, the man lifted a wooden chair and hurled it at her.

Gan Qing seemed to laugh softly. She already had one foot on the windowsill; now, her entire body flipped forward with preternatural agility. She soared into the air, narrowly letting the chair smash past her. Kicking against the leg of the chair, she leaped up and disappeared.

The sound of the window shattering startled the people in the guest house. The dozing janitors who doubled as customer service personnel poked their heads out in a fluster. “What happened, what happened? Ahhh! Why is there a dead person in the courtyard!”

The middle-aged woman made a snap decision. “Quick, go!”

“What about Shixiong?”

“We don’t have time to bother with him, we’ll wait for a chance. Quick!”

The other two women and the man in the room grabbed their bags in unison, pulling out various lethal weapons—everything from electric truncheons to machetes—and charged towards the front door.

The door suddenly opened. Fingers wrapped in a cloth strip rested on the door frame.

The middle-aged woman said, “Careful, she has a hidden weapon in her hand!”

The electric truncheon and the machete swung towards Gan Qing’s head in unison. She seemed to blur into a shadow, slipping through the cracks of the pincer attack without even a single hair coming to harm. The woman holding the electric truncheon felt a pricking on her scalp and the truncheon in her hand snapped uncontrollably towards her companion standing beside her. Before she could let go and cut off the electric flow, it hit squarely on her machete-wielding companion’s wrist.

Gan Qing said, “If I want to get rid of you guys…”

The machete wielder took 100,000 volts without warning and fell down unconscious. The woman holding the electric truncheon had accidentally injured her own companion and hadn’t yet regained her wits when there was a sudden pain in her elbow. The electric truncheon immediately fell out of her hand; Gan Qing’s hand swept past and grabbed it. Swinging an expandable baton, the man in the room charged at her. Gan Qing didn’t seem to quite understand how to use the electric truncheon. Pressed for time, she used it as an ordinary weapon to block. With the electricity flow cut off, the outer shell very quickly cracked. She let out a “tsk” and shoved the electric truncheon forcefully towards the man’s chest.

The man wielding the expandable baton subconsciously dodged backwards. She contracted her stomach, her center of gravity shifting to the back. Then, with a kick, she flew to the man’s side. A buzzing sound went off beside his ear; the earth spun around him and then he was lying on the ground.

Gan Qing said, “...just my fingers are enough. Do I even need a hidden weapon?”

Right then, the wind whistled lethally by her ear. Gan Qing suddenly slid half a step to the back. A small metal bolt brushed past her, slicing open her sleeve. She turned back and saw that the middle-aged woman whose wrist she had injured had a small crossbow fitted to her arm, and was aiming right at her from a few steps away.

Gan Qing gasped in amazement. “I say, how did you guys pass the security checks?”

All the people in the guest house had been startled. Someone shouted in the courtyard, “Murder! Quick, call the police!”

“What kind of people do you have staying at this lousy place? Is this a pyramid scheme!”

The middle-aged woman’s forehead was covered in cold sweat. From a close distance, the crossbow hummed as it fired at Gan Qing. The illegal guest house was cramped and there was also furniture in the way on one side so Gan Qing could only dodge to the other side. At the same time, the woman who had lost hold of her electric truncheon just now caught her breath and picked up her companion’s machete. She swung at Gan Qing’s back, right at the spot where Gan Qing was dodging to!

On top of that, the crossbow was even capable of firing multiple shots. The metal bolts closed in on Gan Qing, strong and forceful. The woman was not even afraid of harming her own companion!

Gan Qing stepped to the side, letting the machete swing past. She raised her hand and grabbed the wielder’s wrist and neck, pulling her down viciously. The woman heard her bones break with a snap and even had a misperception that her neck was broken. She fell forward uncontrollably. Subconsciously and out of habit, Gan Qing made use of the woman’s fall to push her towards the incoming crossbow bolt, a lethal move…

Right at that moment, a wooden pole burst in from outside the window, hitting squarely on the middle-aged woman’s arm. The crossbow slipped loose. Gan Qing’s pupils contracted slightly; her wrist that was bound with a cloth strip suddenly pressed down on the person in her hands. The crossbow bolt brushed past the machete-wielding woman’s cheekbone, barely a few centimeters away from her left eye, and pierced Gan Qing’s coat.

Yu Lanchuan jumped in through the shattered window. He sent the crossbow on the ground flying with a kick and in a few efficient seconds, he restrained the middle-aged woman who tried to retrieve it. He looked up at Gan Qing and was nearly shocked out of his mind by the bolt hanging above her stomach. “Gan Qing!”

Gan Qing loosened her grip and dropped the woman who had fainted from shock onto the ground. She pulled out the bolt hanging on her coat. Luckily, she was thin and her clothes loose. The crossbow bolt had only pierced through her clothes, ripping open a hole on the thin imitation leather belt.

“Ai, that was close,” she muttered. “They nearly took my pants off.”

Yu Lanchuan, “...”

Gan Qing was not the least bit surprised to see Yu Lanchuan. She smiled at him. “Little Master Yu has quite a good sense of direction. I thought you would need to search for a while more.”

Yu Lanchuan came back to himself and took a deep breath. “Are you mad! If you know where their den is, why didn’t you call the police? Who do you think you are? Spiderman?”

Spiderman had just been arrested!

Gan Qing shrank back. “I…”

She was just about to speak when police sirens sounded from outside the guest house. The police were here quicker than expected.

“...I knew you would bring back-up.” Gan Qing sighed and winked at Yu Lanchuan. “Little Master Yu, since you’re here already, why don’t you help out to the end?”

“What-”

“I don’t want to talk to the police. Just say that you took care of everything. Don’t worry, I knew what I was doing and no one’s dead. That one in the courtyard is still breathing.” In the space of a few words, Gan Qing had already leaped out the window. Clinging to the window frame, she climbed up to the second floor of the guest house. In a flash, she disappeared from the roof. “Tomorrow, I’ll get my pay and treat you to a meal!”

Shoved into the role of “the hero standing up for justice,” Yu Lanchuan looked at the mess the suite was in, his face expressionless.

Bullshit! Yu Yan knew him since primary school. He would never fight if the other party had more than two people!