After the woman helped the man up, she plopped herself down on the ground and began to wail.
Lian Li was certain that the child’s skill at “dry-howling” had likely been learned from his mother.
“Aiya—someone is using their martial arts to bully people! Someone is hitting a child! Is there no justice left in this world?”
Lian Li simply couldn’t take it anymore. “It’s a good thing we have martial arts, otherwise your man would have beaten us to death just now. You have the nerve to scream? You two big rascals only know how to give birth but not how to raise a child. You’ve raised a little rascal who goes around with lackeys stealing things at such a young age. What will happen when he grows up? He’ll probably end up as a bandit on some mountain!”
It was unclear which of Lian Li’s words hit a nerve, but the woman’s wailing stopped abruptly, and the man’s eyes flickered.
Even stranger was that many of the surrounding townspeople also turned their gazes toward the little tyrant, their brows furrowing one after another.
Finally, a sturdy man stepped forward and said, “Wu Qiang, you really need to discipline your child. This time he stole candied hawthorns from Old Liu’s kid, but I’ve seen him demanding things from stalls several times before.”
Once one townsman spoke up, several other strong men stepped forward to speak as well, their sentiments echoing the first.
They told Wu Qiang to discipline the child properly, noting that they had seen the boy stealing many times—not just from other children, but also loitering at stalls to demand goods.
Seeing more and more people speaking out against them, the little tyrant’s parents looked humiliated. They threw a couple of harsh parting words at Lian Li and Yun Huizhou: “You two are disaster-prone wretches sooner or later! We are being magnanimous and won’t settle scores with you this time. My son is going to have a great future.”
After saying this, the two of them led the little tyrant away.
Yun Huizhou glanced at their retreating backs before turning to look at Lian Li.
His gaze slid down, landing on Lian Li’s left hand hanging at his side.
Reaching out, he grasped Lian Li’s left wrist and lifted it to his chest. With his other hand, he pushed Lian Li’s sleeve up slightly, then lowered his eyes to look at the back of Lian Li’s hand.
On that fair, smooth hand, four fingernail marks had appeared, and the imprints were already beginning to turn a purplish-blue.
Against his already somewhat unhealthily pale skin, the color made the hand look even more pitiful, as if he had suffered some form of abuse.
“How did you get injured just by dealing with a child?” Yun Huizhou asked.
Lian Li felt a bit embarrassed and tried to pull his hand back, saying, “I saw he was just a kid, so I wasn’t that guarded.”
Yun Huizhou nodded, his expression blank.
Lian Li stared at him for a moment but couldn’t read anything from his face.
“You need extra training,” Yun Huizhou said coldly.
Lian Li curled his lip. “Fine, fine, fine. I get it.”
After this interruption, Lian Li was no longer in the mood to wander the streets. He led his horse back and prepared to find an inn with Yun Huizhou.
After checking into the inn, Yun Huizhou brought all their belongings to Lian Li’s room and said, “Watch the things. I’m going out for a while.”
Lian Li took the items and placed them on the bed, covering them with a quilt. Seeing Yun Huizhou holding his blade and preparing to head out, Lian Li suddenly grabbed him, thinking of the family of three they had met today. “There’s no need. There’s really no need.”
Yun Huizhou looked puzzled. “What are you talking about? What is there no need for?”
Lian Li pointed at the blade in Yun Huizhou’s hand and mimicked the motion of drawing a sword. “Even though the Imperial Court doesn’t manage things much these days, we can’t use our martial arts to violate the law too much.”
He looked left and right, then lowered his voice significantly. “The Martial Arts Alliance probably wouldn’t allow it, right?”
Yun Huizhou understood his meaning. This kid saw him bring all the important items to his room and head out with his blade, and connecting it to the incident with the little tyrant’s family, he was worried he was going out to kill those three people.
However, while he understood, he was also rendered quite speechless.
He pinched Lian Li’s face, nudged him aside, and teased him on purpose: “Move.”
As he spoke, he even brandished the blade in his hand.
Then he saw the boy’s eyes instantly go wide and round, looking at him in disbelief.
Then, as if having made a grand resolution, Lian Li lunged forward and hugged him. His arms gripped tightly, and his legs wrapped around, circling Yun Huizhou’s waist.
Yun Huizhou hadn’t expected Lian Li to do this at all. His first instinct was to use internal energy to shake him off, but he feared injuring him. He grabbed Lian Li’s waist to push him away, but he didn’t dare use too much force for fear of pushing him straight onto the floor.
While he was wondering how to get the boy down, he heard Lian Li speaking earnestly in his ear: “Yun Huizhou, don’t be impulsive! Don’t go astray! Of course, I’m not trying to persuade you to be a ‘Holy Mother.’ We should strike when we need to strike, and kill when we need to kill.”
“But we can’t just kill a whole family over a tiny conflict. How would that be any different from a demonic cultivator?”
“Didn’t you already give that man a kick? It must have been heavy. With your tricky strength, that guy will probably be in pain for days without any visible marks, and he might even end up with a chronic ailment. He tried to hit my head with that spiked club, and you kicked him into a permanent injury—that’s enough. Besides, I could have dodged it anyway, but your kick made me feel much better.”
“Killing the whole family is unnecessary. It’s really unnecessary. Let’s not do this. I’ve only just entered the Jianghu; I don’t want to only be able to see you on a wanted list in the future.”
“I also don’t want to end up on a wanted list with you less than three months after entering the Jianghu, being chased all over the world by the Martial Arts Alliance.”
“Think about it. My martial arts are still so trash. Even if I’m on the wanted list with you, wouldn’t you just be carrying a burden? At the very least, wait until my martial arts are high enough that we can help each other before you get impulsive and reckless.”
“But, what I’m saying is, even though some people are dumbasses and make you feel like their existence is a waste of air, we still can’t treat human life as nothing. A person has to have a bottom line. We need to have a sense of proportion.”
Listening to the beginning, Yun Huizhou thought Lian Li was making quite a bit of sense. But the more he heard, the more speechless he became, and he even found it a bit funny.
Did this kid mean that if he really committed a crime in the future, he intended to be his accomplice and be wanted together?
He even considered that his own martial arts were too low and he might be a burden, so he was advising him to wait until his martial arts were better before doing whatever he wanted.
To be honest, if anyone else heard what Lian Li said at the end, they would probably think he lacked a sense of right and wrong.
But Yun Huizhou knew that this kid’s heart was truly “white.” The point of this long ramble was simply to persuade him not to go around killing entire families over a petty verbal dispute.
Yun Huizhou just stood there, listening to Lian Li cling to him and chatter away.
