Outside the rockery of White Horse Manor, Xu Buling knocked out several guards, then led Zhu Manzhi at a quick pace into the stone passage that led underground.
The passage was wide, torches set along both sides. The gate ahead stood open, and even from a distance they could see the cage at the center of the underground palace.
Looking ahead, Zhu Manzhi happened to catch the moment the tiger bit a man to death. She paled, her pretty face drained of all color, and very nearly screamed out loud.
A court constable for only half a year, Zhu Manzhi was nonetheless uncommonly upright—otherwise she would never have gone off alone to investigate Fuman Tavern, or refused to back down even before the commander of the Imperial Guard.
In her heart, Great Yue's laws were strict and clear and the court cared for the common folk. There were a few rotten grains in the rice, true, but most were men like Heir Xu, who could tell right from wrong.
Never in her wildest dreams had Zhu Manzhi imagined that right beneath the Son of Heaven's walls, people would do something as sickening as feeding men to a tiger.
"Stop—!"
Gathering her skirts, Zhu Manzhi ran forward to put a stop to it, but a tiger does not understand human speech, and there was no stopping it.
Xu Buling raised his eyes, took in the scene, and his face darkened. He stamped his boot hard against the ground, leaped nearly a full zhang, and with a flick of his arm unslung the long saber from his back.
The black cloth wrapping fell away, revealing a blade dark as ink.
The blade was like a black tide, the edge like a thread of silver.
Dragging the saber two-handed, Xu Buling scored a white line across the flagstones; amid an earsplitting skrrk— a furious bellow rang out:
"You dead beast!"
Masked and dressed in tight black, Xu Buling crossed the distance to the cage in three great strides, sprang up onto the rail, used the top edge as a foothold to launch himself high, and dropped into the cage, saber gripped in both hands, hacking down with the force of a mountain splitter.
The yellow-striped tiger's instincts screamed danger and stopped it in its tracks. A low growl rose in its throat, and as its scarlet pupils turned toward the source of the sound, the blade was already in front of its eyes.
Skrrk—
Fast as black lightning, the edge carved a half-moon through the air and slashed diagonally across the yellow-striped tiger's neck; blood sprayed, and the blade bit three cun into the ground.
The force was so great that the black fighting clothes split open along his arms and back, baring the hard, ridged muscle beneath.
The starving tiger had no time even to react before its head left its body and thudded to the ground; the huge carcass pitched forward, blood gushing from the stump and dyeing the sandy soil red in an instant.
One slash, one tiger!
"Whoa—!"
Uproar erupted through the underground palace. The countless rich merchants and gentry who had been about to leave all burst into cheers.
Outside the cage, Zhang Chao and Zhu Manlong both rose to their feet.
The Li family's stewards and enforcers, seeing someone had ruined the great show in the cage, were stunned for a moment, then roared in fury:
"What colossal nerve!"
"Who the hell are you...?"
Xu Buling's chest heaved. The rage in his eyes could not be reined in, and he swept the crowd around him with a cold stare.
Sancai, drenched in tiger blood, was nearly out of his wits. He sat on the ground scrabbling backward on hands and feet; a few steps on, realizing the tiger had been killed, he looked at Xu Buling as though at a savior and crawled toward him on his knees:
"Hero! Hero, save me!"
Xu Buling turned his head slightly, his gaze going cold.
Sancai's cries for help cut off short; his pupils shrank in indescribable terror.
For this pair of human eyes was more frightening than the beast-mad, starving tiger of a moment ago!
Skrrk—
The blade rose and fell.
Before Sancai could even open his mouth to beg, the edge swept past before his eyes.
His head flew high, a column of blood spurted, and the headless body toppled to the ground.
The uproar died on the instant. Zhu Manlong and the others looked baffled—beyond belief, even.
Zhu Manzhi's big eyes were wide, her small red mouth opening and closing; she too stood frozen where she was.
He charged over with everything he had to save the man—so why cut him down with one slash the moment he's saved? What was the point of all that?
Xu Buling's act was no pointless fuss, of course. Hefting the blood-dripping four-chi saber, he swept his eyes around the arena, his voice cold:
"A pack of vermin! You take your fun from watching other people suffer—and you call yourselves human?"
One of the Li family stewards, burning with fury, shouted through the bars:
"These men owed silver, they all signed a life-and-death waiver..."
Skrrk—
Before the steward could finish, Xu Buling's boot tip flicked a saber up off the ground; the blade hurtled out with a whine through the air and nailed the steward who had spoken to the wall behind him.
The whole hall erupted.
To those present, the men in the cage were dead men anyway; killing them meant nothing. If a skilled hand came out of nowhere to stir up trouble, it was no more than a matter of paying compensation afterward—the spectators had just had a fine show and might even put in a good word. But killing a member of the Li family was not the sort of thing that could be settled quietly.
Zhu Manlong and Zhang Chao stood up and shouted together in fury:
"You dare!"
Saber in hand, Xu Buling walked toward the edge of the cage, paying Zhu Manlong and the rest no mind at all:
"The state has its laws, a house has its rules! If these men deserve to die, it's for the court to kill them—and if the court can't, then I will! What do you think you are, daring to kill in the court's place this way?!"
"What an arrogant brat!"
"Daring to make trouble at White Horse Manor!"
The guards and stewards around them were beside themselves. A steward unchained the cage, and seven or eight saber-armed guards charged in.
Zhu Manzhi panicked. Without thinking she slipped through the gap into the cage, and before anyone could react she was in front of Xu Buling, pulling the Wolf Guard token from her robe and calling out loud and clear:
"How dare you! I'm with the Wolf Guard—do you know who he is..."
Halfway through her words, Xu Buling pulled Zhu Manzhi, in her padded jacket and skirt, behind him, holding the long saber one-handed, his eyes contemptuous:
"You few? Against me?"
Zhu Manzhi blinked. Seeing that Xu Buling did not want his identity revealed, she said no more.
Her wrist held fast, hidden behind Xu Buling, Zhu Manzhi—shorter than he was—looked up at that back, saber in hand and squared off against a crowd of enemies. For some reason her heart gave a hard thump...
The seven or eight enforcers who had rushed in caught sight of the Wolf Guard token and hesitated.
Zhu Manlong, who had been invited to keep order at the venue, also entered the cage. Beside him Zhang Chao, face twisted with rage, made to step forward and strike first, and Zhu Manlong hurriedly raised a hand to bar him:
"Master Zhang, calm yourself."
Zhu Manlong knew how Zhang Chao's only son had been beaten to death by the Wolf Guard for causing a disturbance in the street; Zhang Chao had a blood feud with them and could only swallow the loss in silence, so now that a chance to vent his hatred had come, of course he wanted to strike.
But at the Li family's White Horse Manor, an ordinary jianghu man who stuck his nose in could simply be killed, and afterward they need only slap him with a charge of trespassing.
The Wolf Guard answered directly to the reigning emperor; their office was to watch over the princes and the powers of the jianghu, and the Li family of the Marquis of Loyalty and Valor fell within their purview.
If the Wolf Guard had been sent to investigate White Horse Manor, then butchering them would be impossible to smooth over—everything depended on how their host chose to arrange matters.
Someone had gone to report the disturbance the instant it broke out, and by the time Zhang Chao and the others charged into the cage, Li Tianyu was already striding over in a fury; hearing the steward's breathless account, he barked:
"They're jianghu scum posing as Wolf Guard—kill them all!"