"Huang Haobing! What do you think you're doing!?" Seeing the pack of children come charging over, Ye Lingjing was the first to plant herself in front of little Jiaming. The fat boy leading them was Huang Haobing, whose father, Huang Bingxiang, was the provincial party secretary — arguably the biggest official in the whole Huang family, and so he was always one of the ringleaders when it came to bullying people.
"Hmph. Ye Lingjing, it's him I want, not you. Get out of the way!"
Truth was, the little fatty was a bit afraid of Ye Lingjing too. They were all the same age; Huang Haobing also attended third grade at Red Star Elementary, just not in the same class as Jiaming and Lingjing.
At school Lingjing not only had the best grades, she was captain of the Young Pioneers brigade; she was fierce in a fight and just as fierce about telling on people — and the fiercest thing of all was that she could beat someone up and then go tell on them, and the teachers always believed her.
But with this many people watching him now, he could hardly lose face before the fight had even started.
"Hmph. You're always bullying him. I won't let you bully him!"
"Hmph. School's out on break now, so you can't go running to the teachers to tattle. Ye Lingjing, don't go thinking I'm scared of you!"
"Hmph. I'm not scared of you either!"
As she spoke, Lingjing dropped into a martial-arts stance. The little fatty immediately backed up two steps. Trading hmphs did no real damage, but if it actually came to blows, not one of them was confident he could beat this girl.
The TV adaptation of The Legend of the Condor Heroes was all the rage just then, and everyone held a certain awe for the martial arts of legend; remembering that Lingjing's family ran a martial arts school, and looking at the stance she had just struck, every one of them felt a twinge of fear, terrified that she might take on ten at once and flatten them all in one go.
Having backed off like that, the little fatty felt thoroughly humiliated once he came to his senses. He glanced at the little foot soldiers around him and only then recovered himself. Puffing out his chest, he said, "Don't get cocky — there's a whole crowd of us here!" But he didn't dare puff it out too far, afraid of stepping into her attack range and catching a punch for his trouble.
"So what if there's a crowd of you!" Lingjing shot back without giving an inch. Then she added, "If you've got the guts, fight me one-on-one. A boy bullying a girl and he still has to hide behind numbers — shame on you!"
"Hmph. I'm not scared of you at all." People say children don't understand things like face, but the truth is that children are, in some ways, the most desperate of all to keep face. Still, the little fatty felt a bit hollow after saying it, and his eyes rolled. "Besides, why would I need to do it myself? Chen Ming, you fight her for me. My opponent is Gu Jiaming — Jiaming, don't you try to run!"
If Huang Bingxiang could have seen his son's quick wit at this moment, he would surely have been deeply gratified, sighing that there was someone to carry on after him; this trick of grafting one branch onto another showed an instinct for officialdom that cut clear to the bone. That Chen Ming was the biggest of these children.
He had come along with his father, who was delivering gifts; his father had told him to go play with the provincial party secretary's son and build a bit of a connection, and so he had come. He had no idea how to build a connection, but he didn't dare disobey Huang Haobing either, so now he stepped forward timidly.
Seeing how sly the little fatty was being, little Lingjing was not about to fall for it. She said loudly, "Shame on you, Huang Haobing! You come out and fight me yourself."
"Why would I fight you? It's Jiaming I want to fight!"
"If you want to fight Jiaming, then you have to fight me!"
"No way. Why can't I have someone stand in for me, when you get to stand in for Jiaming?" The little fatty stubbornly refused to step into the fray.
"I always stand in for Jiaming, because you're always bullying him!"
"What's it to you if we bully him?" The little fatty put his hands on his hips, and a brilliant line popped right out of his mouth. "Are you his wife or something? Oooh! Ye Lingjing is Gu Jiaming's wife! Shame on you, you've got no shame..."
Everyone surely understands that at that age, for a ten-year-old girl, this was absolutely the most devastating word of slander in existence. The moment Huang Haobing shouted it, the boys behind him took up the cry. All at once a mist came over the little girl's eyes, and she looked about to burst into tears. Jiaming was standing behind her and naturally couldn't see any of it; he simply watched with relish, as though at a comedy show. Kids' world sure is entertaining...
He was just thinking this when he heard little Lingjing cry out, her voice thick with tears: "You're all bullying me!" And right after that weak little line, she whipped up a kick and sent the boy named Chen Ming, who happened to be blocking her way, sprawling to the ground.
Seeing the martial arts master suddenly go off, the children instinctively scattered and ran — but they had only gone two steps when they looked back and saw that the little girl had already pinned Chen Ming to the ground and was crying while she pounded on him for all she was worth, lashing out blindly at anything and everything.
The one doing the hitting was crying, and the one being hit was crying too. The pack of children stood to one side, and the little fatty was clearly still trying to decide whether to go crying to the adults or save a life first. Jiaming watched from the sidelines, ready to grab Lingjing and bolt the moment the whole bunch piled in; with the legs the two of them had trained up, this lot could run until they all dropped dead of heart attacks and still never catch them.
That was the plan, and sure enough, a moment later Huang Haobing gritted his teeth. "Everybody get them!" The pack of children rushed in. Jiaming yanked Lingjing up. "Run!" But Lingjing wouldn't have it; still crying, she kept flailing and swiping wildly in every direction.
This body had only trained for a little over two months, but with some simple qigong to help it along, Jiaming's strength was no less than Lingjing's, trained since childhood though she was. After a few good tugs he finally got her moving — but they had hardly gone two steps when a chorus of wailing rose up behind them. They turned to look, and there was a little girl in a bright red padded cotton jacket, a branch in her hand, charging into the crowd and swinging away at the children her own age.
"That's for bullying girls! That's for bullying girls..."
Jiaming and Lingjing stopped in their tracks. The girl was rather pretty, but there was genuine killing intent in the way she fought. The branch was not so big, but not so small either; striking through their thick padded jackets it drew no blood, yet just holding a club gave her the upper hand in sheer presence, and in no time several children were knocked down in the snow — Huang Haobing among them, bawling his eyes out.
"Nobody runs! Whoever runs gets it first!"
She knocked a few down to start with, and when the rest tried to run, she let out a shout and everyone froze on the spot, staring at the girl in fear. She threw down the branch and pointed at the children on the ground. "Say it — are you ever going to bully girls again!?"
The children could only cry. Then the girl picked the branch back up. "No crying! Say it!"
"Never again..." Scared out of their tears, the children shook their heads for all they were worth. The girl jabbed the branch at a few more children standing nearby, and there came another chorus of "never again." Jiaming just stood there, highly amused — and then suddenly the branch swung around to point at him. "You too!"
"Ah, me?" Lingjing and Jiaming said in unison, only then realizing that the girl of course meant Jiaming. Lingjing's tears turned to laughter. "No, no, it's not like that." Jiaming had already raised his hand with a grin. "I wouldn't dare either, heh... I never have dared..."
"Hmph. That's more like it!" The girl tossed the branch aside and turned on Jiaming. "A boy, and you need a girl to protect you? What a loser!" Her words dripped with disgust. Lingjing hurried to speak up for him: "No, it's not like that — Jiaming's just never known how to fight." Jiaming put on a look of bottomless shame.
The girl plainly did not accept Lingjing's defense, though she didn't make any further trouble of it either. She simply turned to the pack of children. "If I ever hear of you bullying girls again, I'll beat you to death!" There was a small, self-contained authority in the sweep of her glance. "My name is Liu Huaisha! You'd all better watch out!"
The moment the name Liu Huaisha came out, every child's face showed fear. Jiaming had a quiet realization: So it's this kid. Liu Huaisha attended Second Elementary, not far from Red Star Elementary, and was a year above them.
These children had long since heard the rumors that she was a terror in a fight, so fearsome that even middle schoolers were afraid of her.
Jiaming naturally knew more: Jianghai had three underworld gangs at the time, and the boss of the Sand Bamboo Gang was a man named Liu Zheng — and this Liu Huaisha was his daughter, raised from childhood as his successor. No wonder those last two kicks he had watched her throw carried a hint of Jeet Kune Do.
Having successfully planted a shadow in those children's hearts, Liu Huaisha jogged a few steps over. Jiaming thought she was coming to scold him again for not being much of a boy, but she only smiled and spoke to Lingjing. "Hi, I'm Liu Huaisha. What's your name?"
"Uh, I'm Ye Lingjing." As the very model of a good student, Lingjing of course knew all about the model bad student from the neighboring school, and her opinion of the girl shifted on the spot. Seeing the other girl enthusiastically put out her hand, Lingjing extended hers rather hesitantly, as reluctantly as if ceding territory and paying reparations. But children's likes and dislikes never last; after a few words, Lingjing had shed some of her reserve, and the two were chatting happily away.
"Lingjing, do you really know martial arts?"
"Of course. I know Wing Chun, Tai Chi, Long Fist, Tiger Subduing, judo..."
"Whoa, really? Then teach me, okay? I only know Jeet Kune Do. I want to take you as my master!"
"No, no, don't! My family runs a martial arts school — you can just go learn there. But you have to teach me Jeet Kune Do, okay? I hear it's really something..."
The two of them chirped and chattered away, while Jiaming, standing off to one side, sighed inwardly. The jianghu's troubles start here...