Han, with a frightening look, asked him whether he was questioning him. Weighing the possibility of another pounding, the boy got straight up and said that they should go. He did not know where they were going. He was finally learning.
In another part of the Namgung clan city, people were going about their day when a man stopped beside a beggar and put a coin in his bowl. After thanking him, the beggar asked the man to talk.
He was in fact one of their own men, and he was reporting that their leader, Jin Wigong, was not in the Namgung clan.
The beggar was silent for a second. Then he looked up and asked whether that was everything. The disguised man said yes, but added that a strange man had appeared around the same time.
The leader immediately asked who it was. It was the son of the Yu clan lord, who had just come to live with the Namgung. The man asked whether it was necessary to involve the captain.
After thinking a little, the beggar looked up and saw the pair passing by. He decided not to call the captain. He would investigate this himself. Immediately one of his men set off after Han and the boy, and the chase began.
The beggar got up and thanked him again for the coin. But the real order was to proceed with the plan.
Somebody else was watching too. Two men were after him because he had been earning money on their turf without paying for it. In short, one of them was angry and wanted to beat him.
Some way off, the nephew was complaining that all the books were full of sad stories and miserable people. So why carry so many of them?
Han said he needed the experience, and that nobody had ever got sick from it. He had grown up in a rich family too. The boy could not argue with that.
Now Han did his Peking Opera reading and laughed out loud, which confused the boy. But after a while he really got into it.
Han explained that happiness works to overcome sadness, and that it prevents anger from taking hold. If his nephew's heart settled once, he would be able to see more clearly, and to understand his enemies better. The boy said he would remember it. Then he asked what he was supposed to do about all those gloomy books.
Only then did the fake beggar group cut in.
By now they had chosen their targets. The order was simple. Follow quietly, and only observe. Their leader said that he would personally track Yu Han, and that everyone else had to be careful, and that until they left Hefei there should be no notice of them at all.
Then somebody suddenly shouted at the homeless man.
Han and his nephew turned around at once to see what was happening. The same man from earlier was accusing the beggar of moving about without paying his taxes. That instantly wrecked their plan.
When the beggar asked him who he was, the men laughed at him for being so bold. Their leader introduced himself as Wangthu, of the Hefei gambling houses.
Acting frightened, the beggar begged for mercy. But Wangthu ordered his men to beat him.
The fake beggar leader knew that he could not let it come out who he really was. Otherwise the whole plan would fall apart. Yu Han was standing right there. He wondered whether he should simply take the beating.
Seeing it, the nephew asked whether he should intervene.
Yu Han said the boy did not understand, because he had grown up sheltered. The world is not a fairy tale, and you cannot interfere in everything. Street fights between the Beggar Sect and the vagabonds were happening all the time. This man was a gambler, an enemy of the Beggar Sect, and that was common enough among martial artists. There was no real fight here, so there was another reason to stay out of it.
He turned around and kept walking, while the villain quietly signalled that the pair had gone and he could move in.
Then a purple aura burst out of the beggar as the order was given for them all to stop. The vagabond leader did not understand what had happened to him when he was blown away.
One of them called for the boy, but by then they had already beaten the villain and were surrounded. Their leader gave the order for everyone to stay back.
After getting up, the man ordered his gang to seize the beggar. But under that crushing aura nobody could even move properly.
The beggar walked over to his attacker and asked whether he understood what he had just done. This was a rare chance. Perhaps they would never get another one, and failure was not allowed. So the vagabond boy was going to pay the price. He took him by the head and did exactly what was expected.
After that he said there was a river nearby, and ordered his men to dispose of the rest and erase every trace. They agreed immediately.
That night several members of the vagabond clan went missing, all for beating a homeless man.
Someone was hiding in the bushes a little distance away. He was one of Wangthu's men, and he had just learned that these people were not ordinary vagabonds at all. And that beggar was not from the Beggar Sect either.
He said, as he ran away crying, that this had to be reported to the Beggar Sect.
Back at the Namgung pavilion, the family patriarch was furious. He was demanding to know why she still had not come. He had invited his granddaughter to come and be married. She had refused, simply because she did not want to. Worse than that, she had gone off to the battlefield to fight the unorthodox sects, and had made sure that her letter would only reach him after she had already left.
That enraged the patriarch even more. He came bursting in, complaining about the way these young people are being raised, because she clearly was not coming back.
He decided that he would send Han to her instead. Pleased with the idea, he went to find him.
Then he suddenly heard a loud swerving sound. He thought at once that intruders had got in, and jumped the wall to check.
What he found surprised him. Han was swinging a sword at his novice, while the boy attacked nonstop, cursing and crying as he did it. Then a golden aura woke up along his sword. The old man felt as though he were looking at a controlled flame.
He noticed the strike landing. He ordered them to stop first.
The young man stopped immediately, and Han got angry quickly. He said that this time the boy could have taken his head off. Hearing Han talk like that impressed the old man.
Meanwhile Han asked him what he was doing there.
The old man said, as he came down from the roof, that the training had caught his interest. Han said he could see that. The old man wondered whether this was still his own house.
He asked whether Han was teaching swordsmanship already. But Han refused it and said that they were only training.
That amazed the young patriarch. Why was he lying?
The old man pointed out that the boy had used a technique that was not the clan's own. Han said that he had created it himself.
The young man started at that. He asked, uncle, what did that mean?
Then Han revealed that it was the Sword of Seven Emotions. A technique that builds itself on human feelings.
The old man studied the idea with interest, and realised that a new era was entering this clan, which had been built on speed and variation.
When Han asked why he had come, the old man said that he had to go to the Murim Alliance. But before he could explain, a man interrupted them: someone had come from the Hefei Beggar Sect, and something terrible seemed to have happened.
The old man told the young patriarch he would speak with him later, while Han decided that he would go and see it for himself. Left behind, the boy thought that the two of them were really alike.
Since he had nothing better to do, Han went to take a little walk through the city.
As he went, some people were watching him. One of them quietly asked his leader what they should do. The man disguised as a beggar thought that perhaps they would never get a chance like this again, so he gave everyone the order to follow him. His man agreed, and planned to grab him as soon as he reached a quieter spot.
The city was crowded, and Han was happy that he could finally look around in peace. Before, it used to be painful, because the people of Anping recognised him everywhere. Yet he remembered those smiling faces, and the gifts. The old fatty was wondering how everyone was, and he knew that if he had to go back to Anping prefecture, and if the peace there was going to hold in a time like this, he would have to act before the chaos spread.