"Old Bei En is going to be in real trouble this time!"
"Embezzlement? Smiling Wei Er would embezzle money? I remember that guy treats honor as his life."
"What do you know? Embezzlement is just an excuse. He actually got dragged into the internal struggle of the Ke Lian En family."
"So he followed the wrong person?"
"No. He followed the right person—he just didn't realize that, in that person's eyes, he wasn't nearly as important as he thought."
"What do you mean?"
"Idiot. He was used as a bargaining chip!"
Among the crowd pouring out of the tavern to watch the excitement were many merchants who traveled between cities. Their information networks were far more extensive than those of ordinary people, and their hushed conversations revealed the recent shifts of power in Honghu City.
Lin De's already-mutated hearing allowed him to clearly catch every word they said, letting him understand why things had reached this point—and, in turn, decide what he should do next.
In fact, even without Old Bei En's instructions, Lin De had already planned to go all out. He needed the noble standing before him—Sir Ke Luo · Ke Lian En—to make his name known among the noble circles of Honghu City.
With that thought, Lin De nodded to Old Bei En to show that he understood. Without sparing Sir Ke Luo another glance, he walked to the open ground in front of the tavern and said calmly,
"Come."
Lin De's demeanor and actions completely exceeded everyone's expectations. They had assumed he would show anger and indignation, or at least anxiety and fear.
After all, as an innocent person dragged into the internal struggle of the Ke Lian En family, inexplicably targeted and even forced into an extremely unfair duel, it was only natural to show some intense emotional reaction.
Yet Lin De remained abnormally calm. Facing a fully armed opponent, he treated him as casually as an ordinary passerby, not putting him in his eyes at all. This made everyone involuntarily recall the various rumors about Lin De that had been circulating recently.
At this moment, the soldier chosen by Sir Ke Luo also grew serious. Lin De's calm expression brought him overwhelming pressure, the kind one felt when facing some terrifying existence. It made him recall the rumors of Lin De devouring the Spirit of the Mountain Bear.
However, just like Lin De standing before him, he no longer had any retreat left. He could only brace himself and advance.
Thus, as impatience flashed across Sir Ke Luo's face, the soldier took a deep breath, tightened his grip on the sword, and charged at Lin De without any warning. Following his usual habit, he slashed diagonally, aiming straight for Lin De's shoulder and neck.
Seeing the blade coming, Lin De did not panic in the slightest. He took a step forward as if out for a stroll, his body tilting slightly to the side, effortlessly dodging the slashing sword. Then he suddenly surged forward and crashed straight into the soldier.
The soldier had no chance to resist and was knocked flat to the ground. Before he could even react, a foot came down on his neck. After a burst of intense pain, everything went dark.
Silence fell over the surroundings.
No one quite understood what had just happened. They had only seen Lin De take two steps, the soldier fall, and then Lin De crush the man's neck with a single stomp, ending the fight.
Seeing his man killed, Sir Ke Luo could no longer maintain his composed expression. His face darkened as he gestured to another soldier beside him, ordering him to replace the fallen one and continue the fight.
That soldier wore a bitter expression. He knew his strength was about the same as his companion's. Since the first had been dealt with so easily, he had no chance of winning either. Yet he had no way to escape and could only charge forward.
The result was exactly the same.
Lin De dispatched him just as easily—so easily it was like casually snapping a blade of grass by the roadside.
At once, murmurs spread through the crowd. Lin De's displayed combat power was excessively strong. Among the mercenaries hired by nearby caravans, there were certainly those who could deal with such soldiers—but none who could do so with such ease. Even more frightening was that after killing two men, Lin De still looked completely calm, as if human life carried no weight at all.
"It's the Spirit of the Mountain Bear—he has the Spirit of the Mountain Bear!"
Many from Bai Village were present in the crowd. They were familiar with Lin De's former temperament and behavior, and what he showed now was vastly different from the Lin De they remembered. This only strengthened their belief in the miraculous rumors surrounding him.
Lin De himself was completely unaffected by the stares and discussions around him. He bent down, picked up the longswords of the two fallen soldiers, casually swung them a few times to get used to the weight, then looked at the noble before him and said,
"Have the rest come at me together."
Sir Ke Luo's face instantly turned ugly. He felt utterly humiliated. Earlier, after seeing Lin De's strength, he had even considered recruiting him. But now, all he wanted was to eliminate Lin De and erase this disgrace.
"You four—go together!" Sir Ke Luo shouted at the remaining soldiers.
Although it was Lin De who had proposed fighting them all at once, Sir Ke Luo's order still drew contempt from the onlookers. Subtle but clearly audible boos rose from the crowd, leaving Sir Ke Luo burning with embarrassment and growing hatred toward Lin De.
After receiving the order, the four soldiers did not rush forward immediately. They exchanged glances, each took down the round wooden shield strapped to his back, and together formed the most common shield-wall formation, advancing toward Lin De in coordination.
Seeing four soldiers use such a formation against a single man, the crowd grew even more disdainful. The previously restrained boos were unleashed in full, filling the open ground with jeers and curses. Even villagers from Bai Village who didn't get along well with Lin De spoke up in his defense.
Yet when Lin De saw the formation, he showed no sign of panic at all. He remained as calm as before, unchanged.
This time, however, instead of passively countering, he chose to attack first.
He charged straight toward the gap between the shields of the two soldiers in the center, clearly intending to break their formation through impact.
This was a method knights often used against multi-person defensive formations—but it had a crucial prerequisite: the knight had to be wearing heavy armor, both to increase the force of the charge and to protect against surrounding attacks, ensuring he wouldn't be injured even if the charge failed.
Lin De, however, was wearing only a thin short shirt. No matter how one looked at it, such a charge seemed suicidal.
The two soldiers facing him thought the same. They pressed their arms tight against their shields, preparing to withstand the impact. Even if they couldn't stop Lin De, they at least intended to slow him down so the soldiers on both sides could join in the attack.
The other two soldiers seemed to anticipate this as well, raising their longswords and preparing to slash toward the area just in front of the shields.
Then, something that left everyone stunned happened.
Just as Lin De reached them, about to crash into the shields, his forward momentum vanished in an utterly unnatural way. The next instant, like a masterful dancer, his feet traced the steps of a waltz. His body spun gracefully, circling past the front of the shield wall, and before the four could even react, he was already behind them.
As Lin De's body rotated, the twin swords in his hands did not remain idle. Following the arc of his spin, they slashed with perfect precision toward the backs of all four necks.
The rotational force of his spinning body, combined with the strength of his arms, was more than the soldiers' necks could endure. Three heads were severed cleanly and sent flying by the residual force of the blades. The remaining head hung by a strip of flesh, dangling grotesquely from the wound.
Blood erupted from the necks like fountains, spraying across the ground and staining Lin De's clothes red.
The boos aimed at Sir Ke Luo and the soldiers vanished instantly. An eerie silence fell over the area as everyone stared at Lin De in shock, the only sound being the hiss of spurting blood.
"Bear Hunter!"
"Bear Hunter!"
…
No one knew who shouted Lin De's nickname first, but the silence shattered at once. Cheers in various accents rose and fell in waves. Even the people of Bai Village shouted excitedly, as if they themselves had fought the battle.
The fight had been extremely brief—only a few seconds, ending almost in the blink of an eye. Yet for those present, it was without question the most spectacular battle they had ever witnessed. In their memories, there was no one who had ever dispatched four opponents so swiftly and so beautifully.
"Don't come any closer!"
At this moment, Sir Ke Luo no longer cared about noble decorum. The instant blood-soaked Lin De turned his gaze toward him, he panicked and stumbled backward. Without saying a word, he frantically untied the reins from the hitching post, mounted his horse, and charged out of the crowd, disappearing down the road at the edge of the village.
Although the onlookers looked down on Sir Ke Luo for fleeing without even retrieving his subordinates' bodies, none of them said much. No matter how disgraceful he was, he was still a member of the Ke Lian En family—and one with a title at that. No matter how far the Ke Lian En family had declined, they were still the lords of Honghu City, not people commoners could afford to provoke. A few mocking words were already their limit.
"Disperse, all of you—disperse!" Old Bei En showed no joy at Lin De's performance. His expression remained grim. After shouting at the crowd a couple of times, he turned and ordered his men inside the tavern, "Get Cross-Eye over here to clean up the bodies. Strip off their weapons and leather armor and store them properly. The Ke Lian En family should send someone to retrieve them."
After that, he signaled Lin De to hand over the weapons to the tavern staff, then led him toward the tavern's back courtyard.
Even though Lin De had left and Old Bei En had told everyone to disperse, the onlookers were still buzzing with excitement. Some of the bolder caravan mercenaries even gathered around the corpses, examining the wounds and mimicking Lin De's sword techniques, seeing if they themselves could pull them off.
More people, however, were discussing whether the Ke Lian En family would hold Lin De responsible for this, perhaps even sending people to capture and execute him.
As the crowd speculated about Lin De's future troubles, Old Bei En was talking about the same matter with him in the open space of the back courtyard.
"How did you do it?" Old Bei En asked impatiently as soon as they arrived.
Lin De looked confused. "Do what?"
Old Bei En awkwardly reenacted the move Lin De had used to execute the four soldiers. When Lin De performed it, it looked like a dance. When Old Bei En did it, he looked like a wobbling wine barrel—comically ridiculous.
Lin De wanted to laugh, but managed to hold it in."You told me to go all out."
"Yes, I did tell you to go all out," Old Bei En nodded, then gave a bitter smile. "But I never imagined your 'all out' would be this powerful—and this ruthless. The Ke Lian En guards may not rank highly among the lords' troops of He Wan Di, but they're still the regular army of Honghu City. To think you'd wipe out six of them so easily… It seems I underestimated you before. If I'd known your true strength, I wouldn't have gone to Wei Er at all. I would've gone straight to Lord Fo Ti Mo instead. Things wouldn't have ended up like this."
Lin De asked, puzzled, "Old Dad, what exactly is going on in Honghu City? Why did a noble suddenly come looking for trouble with me today?"
Old Bei En sighed and said apologetically, "Sigh… you got dragged into this because of me. I didn't expect the Ke Lian En family's internal conflict to flare up again—let alone right after I went to see Wei Er."
Then he told Lin De everything he knew.
Long ago, the Ke Lian En family had already split into two factions over which side to support.
One faction believed that since the Ti Li Er family were the Dukes of Highgarden, the supreme rulers of He Wan Di, and the Wardens of the South, the Ke Lian En family should naturally stand with the Ti Li Er family.
The other faction argued that the Ti Li Er family was distantly related to the Ke Lian En family, with no record of marriage alliances between them. Supporting the Ti Li Er family would bring the Ke Lian En family little benefit.
On the contrary, the Fo Luo Lun family of Brightwater Keep had very close ties with the Ke Lian En family, with multiple intermarriages over generations. Their bloodlines were intertwined, and the two families had frequent economic and political interactions. Moreover, the Fo Luo Lun family's strength was not much weaker than that of the Ti Li Er family. Standing with the Fo Luo Lun family would be far more beneficial to the Ke Lian En family's development.
This internal split had not grown too intense at the time, because the Fo Luo Lun and Ti Li Er families suddenly reconciled, bringing the dispute to an abrupt halt.
However, the rift within the Ke Lian En family did not fade away. Instead, it grew more severe, until it finally erupted completely in recent times.
The outcome of this eruption was both expected and surprising. The members of the Ke Lian En family who supported the Ti Li Er side were utterly defeated. Control of the family had fallen entirely into the hands of those aligned with the Fo Luo Lun family—and Sir Ke Luo was one of them.
(End of Chapter)