The air in the noodle shop exploded with violent motion. Twenty thugs lunged forward like a pack of starving wolves. Heavy iron pipes, crowbars, and lead-weighted bats whistled through the steam, aimed straight at Lin Mo’s head.
Right behind them surged a hulking mercenary in a sleeveless flak jacket. His arms were covered in dark green tiger tattoos. His biceps bulged like iron knots. In his massive hands was a three-foot titanium broadsword, humming with the dark, buzzing Qi of a Rank 2 Peak martial expert.
“Die, rich brat!” the mercenary roared, stepping off the tiles with enough force to crack the ceramic floor. “Nobody insults the Murong Clan and walks out alive!”
Lin Mo didn’t move an inch. He lifted his ceramic soup spoon, blew on the surface of the broth, and took another leisurely sip.
“Remember, Miss Chu,” Lin Mo said, his tone entirely conversational as the twenty weapons whistled toward his table. “Your Chief Martial Enforcer benefits package kicks in the second that rolling pin leaves the counter.”
Chu Lingxiao’s dark eyes lit up with sudden, brilliant starlight. The gloomy shadows of the old noodle shop seemed to vanish in an instant.
“Does the unlimited taro milk tea you promised come with double boba pearls?” she asked, her voice eager as a child on holiday.
“Triple pearls,” Lin Mo replied, completely deadpan. “With brown sugar jelly and extra sweet cream. Whatever flavor you want. Oolong, roasted barley, jasmine green, or sweet taro.”
Chu Lingxiao’s lips curved into a bright smile. “A very fair contract, Chairman Lin. Mount Qingcheng only had bitter spring water. I have wanted to try sweet taro for a long time.”
She picked up Uncle Luo’s pine wood rolling pin from the prep table. The rolling pin was twelve inches long, worn smooth by decades of dumpling dough. There was a faint dusting of white flour on its handle.
She took a single step forward.
Her cloth shoe touched the floor tiles without making a sound. Yet the moment her sole met the floor, the entire world seemed to slow to a crawl.
A pale, moon-white crescent of light bloomed around the wooden pin. It was not loud. It made no thunderous roar. It was a soft, pure whisper, like a late autumn breeze rustling through dry mountain bamboo.
Peak Rank 3 Sword Intent.
Shiver.
The crescent shimmered through the cramped air of the noodle shop. It passed through the twenty swinging iron pipes. It passed through the heavy titanium broadsword. It flickered through the leather jackets of the thugs and brushed against Scarface Biao’s belt.
Not a single chair was knocked over.
Not a single grain of chopped scallion floating in Lin Mo’s soup bowl was displaced. Even the steam rising from the cauldrons continued to drift upward in peaceful, lazy spirals.
Then came the sound.
Clang! Clatter! Clang-clang-clang!
Twenty solid steel pipes and iron crowbars snapped simultaneously in two. The heavy metal pieces dropped onto the floor tiles, clattering like handfuls of discarded iron coins.
Every single cut was as flat and mirror-smooth as polished glass.
The tattooed mercenary stood frozen in mid-strike. His arms were still raised in an overhead chop. But the three-foot titanium broadsword in his hands was gone.
Only a bare eight-inch hilt remained between his white-knuckled fingers. The heavy titanium blade had been sheared off cleanly at the crossguard. The blade thudded into the floorboards between his boots, slicing three inches into the solid concrete foundation like a hot knife through soft lard.
The mercenary looked down at his empty hilt.
His eyes bugged out of his head. His jaw went completely slack. His Rank 2 Peak Internal Qi collapsed inside his chest like a punctured tire.
“My... my titanium blade...” the mercenary stammered, his knees shaking uncontrollably. “Forged from aerospace alloy... sliced by a rolling pin?”
Before anyone could scream, a sharp snip echoed from the doorway.
Scarface Biao stood rigid as a stone statue. His lead-weighted bat was sliced in half, the top lead plug rolling harmlessly across the tiles.
He slowly looked down at his stomach.
The razor-sharp gust of sword wind had clipped his heavy leather belt right through the brass buckle. The cut was so clean that the brass gave off a faint mirror reflection in the light.
His belt snapped open. His baggy leather trousers slid instantly down his thighs, pooling around his work boots in a heap.
Scarface Biao stood there in his faded red underwear with yellow cartoon ducks printed on the fabric.
A dark, warm stain spread rapidly across the cotton front. A loud puddle splashed against the floor tiles beneath his shaking feet.
The feared enforcer of the Murong Syndicate had wet himself in pure, unadulterated terror.
“A... a sword grandmaster...” Scarface Biao whimpered, his voice pitching up into a dog whistle. “Mount Qingcheng... the rumor was true... You’re the Sword Demon who melted the golden censer...”
Lin Mo took another bite of noodles, thoroughly enjoying the show.
“Tie Niu,” Lin Mo said, gesturing with his chopsticks.
“Boss!” Tie Niu stepped forward, his eyes wide with profound martial awe.
As a Rank 2 Peak martial artist who had fought for years to break his own meridian bottleneck into Rank 3, Tie Niu knew exactly what he had just witnessed. Slicing twenty steel pipes and titanium alloy with a wooden kitchen utensil without damaging a single noodle bowl was the absolute pinnacle of sword control.
“Collect the scrap metal,” Lin Mo said. “Master Zhou at the shipyard can melt down the titanium for hull rivets. We don’t waste good materials in Tianhai.”
“Right away, Boss!” Tie Niu grinned.
He cracked his knuckles and walked toward the twenty petrified thugs. The thugs dropped their broken handles and immediately dropped to their knees, pressing their foreheads against the cold tiles in desperate surrender.
“Mercy, Sword Fairy! Mercy!” they wailed in unison.
Tie Niu pulled heavy zip-ties from his tactical vest. With swift, practiced movements, he bound the wrists of all twenty thugs behind their backs. He picked up the heavy titanium blade from the floor and wrapped it in a burlap sack. Then he marched the thugs out into the rainy alley one by one, lining them up against the damp brick wall like delinquent schoolboys.
Uncle Luo stepped out from behind the stockpots, leaning heavily on his wooden crutch. He picked up one of the severed iron pipes. He ran his calloused thumb over the edge. The metal was cool to the touch and completely frictionless.
“Not even a metal-cutting lathe could produce a seam this smooth,” Uncle Luo murmured in awe.
He looked at the pine rolling pin resting on the prep counter. It didn’t have a single scratch. The wood looked as fresh as if it had just come from the carpenter’s plane.
“Girl...” Uncle Luo choked out, rubbing his eyes with both hands. “You were washing dishes for fifteen yuan an hour with that kind of skill? If you opened a knife-sharpening booth, you’d be a provincial tycoon in three days!”
Chu Lingxiao blushed, looking down at her cloth shoes. “My master said true sword cultivation is for protecting the innocent, not for showing off in street markets.”
Su Wan stepped forward with a crisp, elegant stride. She reached into her leather briefcase and pulled out a heavy black-and-gold identification badge. The badge bore the golden mountain emblem of Taichu Group and the words Chief Martial Enforcer: Chu Lingxiao.
“Miss Chu,” Su Wan said with a respectful smile, presenting the badge with both hands. “Welcome to Taichu Group. Your corporate insurance covers private dental, annual physicals at Dr. Gu’s medical center, and fifty million yuan in annual base salary.”
Chu Lingxiao took the heavy metal badge. Her fingertips brushed against the polished gold lettering.
“Fifty million...” she whispered, feeling like she was walking through a dream.
Lin Mo picked up the portable POS terminal from the table.
“A contract isn’t official until the signing bonus clears,” Lin Mo said, tapping the black-gold card against the screen. “Fifty million upfront. Go buy yourself some decent robes, some comfortable boots, and all the milk tea in the province.”
Beep!
The terminal let out a bright, ringing chime:
[TRANSACTION APPROVED! AMOUNT: ¥50,000,000 RMB.]
[PURPOSE: EXECUTIVE SIGNING BONUS & CHIEF MARTIAL ENFORCER RETAINER.]
[RECIPIENT: CHU LINGXIAO (97/100) & CLEAR-BROOK VILLAGE ORPHANAGE MATRON GRANNY HE (91/100) VIA AUTOMATIC DEPENDENT ALLOTMENT.]
[MORAL INTEGRITY: 97/100 (TIER-0 SAINT BENEFICIARY).]
In the next heartbeat, Lin Mo’s consciousness was bathed in glorious, warm sunlight:
[DING! 100X BENEVOLENCE REFUND TRIGGERED.]
[SPENT: ¥50,000,000 RMB -> REFUNDED: +¥5,000,000,000 RMB (¥5.00 BILLION)!]
[FUNDS DEPOSITED INTO PERSONAL LIQUID VAULT.]
[CURRENT VAULT BALANCE: ¥475,300,000,000 RMB (¥475.30 BILLION)!]
[GOOD PEOPLE NETWORK: 11,308 -> 11,309 VERIFIED BENEFICIARIES (+1 NEW DEPENDENT MATRON REGISTERED).]
Chu Lingxiao’s phone vibrated in her apron pocket.
She pulled out the beat-up device. The cracked screen glowed with the bank notification: Account ending in 4102 has received ¥50,000,000.00 RMB. Current Balance: ¥60,000,000.00 RMB.
Sixty million yuan.
Just two hours ago, she was worrying whether she would have enough money to buy a steamed bun for breakfast after paying for the broken ceramic bowls. Now, she had enough wealth to buy an entire mountain valley.
Uncle Luo bustled into the back pantry. He returned with a large clay jar sealed with red wax paper and two dried sausages.
“Chairman Lin, Miss Chu, please take this,” Uncle Luo said earnestly, pressing the jar into Su Wan’s hands. “These are my shop’s secret pickled radishes and cured mountain ham. It’s the only thing of value I have left in this kitchen. Eat them when you drink tea.”
Lin Mo smiled faintly. “Pickled radishes go well with wonton soup. We will take them with pleasure, Uncle Luo.”
Chu Lingxiao stared at her phone screen for a long time. Her chest rose and fell in uneven breaths.
Slowly, she reached deep into the left sleeve of her patched cyan robe.
Her fingers fumbled inside the frayed cotton lining. She pulled out a small, tattered cloth pouch. The pouch was made from a scrap of faded red cotton, tied together with a frayed piece of hemp twine.
With great care, she untied the knot and tipped the pouch into her open palm.
Three metal coins slid out.
Two scratched one-yuan coins, and a single copper fifty-fen piece.
Total: three yuan and fifty fen.
“For three weeks, I saved this,” Chu Lingxiao whispered. Her voice was so quiet that only Lin Mo, sitting right in front of her, could hear.
She looked down at the three dirty coins with immense gentleness.
“Yesterday, when I was carrying cabbage down the avenue, I saw a little girl in pigtails holding an elderly lady’s hand outside the market. She was laughing so happily, looking at a jar of lotus-honey plum candies in a shop window.”
Chu Lingxiao’s eyes grew misty again.
“The plum candies cost three yuan a jar,” she murmured softly. “I wanted to buy them for her, but I was fifty fen short. So I washed an extra hour of pots tonight to earn the final coin. I was going to buy the candy tomorrow morning and leave it on her doorstep.”
Lin Mo looked at the three coins resting in her calloused, soap-chapped palm.
A little girl in pigtails. An elderly lady.
That was Little Guo’er and Grandma Chen, who had visited the morning produce market near the hotel yesterday.
This girl was a peerless Rank 3 Sword Grandmaster. She had lived under freezing highway bridges for ninety days to pay off a village debt. Yet she had scrubbed greasy cauldrons for an extra hour just to buy plum candy for a strange child.
Lin Mo felt a quiet warmth tighten inside his chest.
“Miss Chu,” Lin Mo said, his voice softer than usual.
Chu Lingxiao looked up at him, clutching her three coins.
“Keep those three coins,” Lin Mo said, standing up and buttoning his coat. “Little Guo’er loves plum candy. Come back to Taichu Sanctuary Tower with us tonight, and you can hand them to her yourself.”
Chu Lingxiao looked down at the three yuan and fifty fen in her palm. It was the entire personal savings of a Peak Rank 3 Sword Fairy who had just received a fifty-million-yuan signing bonus, and she clutched the tiny cloth pouch tightly against her heart.