Chapter 65: Li Bi

For Li Po, who had set a fire and then sneaked back to the stables to keep a low profile, the turmoil in the Mayi officialdom was of little significance—it could only be considered a minor vent for his frustrations.

Having gained five strings of coins yet lost his house, all things considered, this transaction was quite a substantial loss.

Five strings of coins weren't even enough to treat someone to a meal of roast mutton.

After committing a misdeed, Li Po would always lie low for a while, acting rather like a serial killer in his modus operandi.

By mid-March, Li Chun had shot up in height until he was almost as tall as Li Po. Because he was well-fed, warmly clothed, and practiced his skills unremittingly, he already possessed a considerable amount of strength.

Now not only could he ride a warhorse alone and gallop around for a few laps, but he had also begun practicing with the sabre.

Once they reached this stage, the things Li Po taught were no longer quite as astonishing compared to empty-handed combat and martial arts basics.

When it came to handling a sabre, a fellow like Yuan Lang, who had been fondling sabre hilts since childhood, was far superior to Li Po.

Li Po felt no embarrassment about this; not only did he humbly seek guidance, but he also had Li Chun address Yuan Lang as an elder brother. This greatly satisfied Yuan Lang's vanity, and he naturally spared no effort in his teaching.

As one spring rain after another passed, the weather finally began to grow warm.

The Third Young Mistress, Li Bi, returned once more to the commandery headquarters, though by this time she had been promoted to the post of Military Bureau Adjutant of Mayi.

In truth, this also revealed the predicament of Li Jing: the number of people he could trust and who possessed genuine talent was far too small, leaving him with no choice but to push his daughter to the forefront.

Of course, although women holding official posts were rare in this era, they were by no means non-existent.

Women capable of influencing the great trends of the realm emerged in endless succession. For instance, Princess Yicheng of the Great Sui, who had once been sent on a peace-making marriage to the Tujue and was now residing in the northern desert, was a peerless heroine who yielded to none.

For a certain period, state affairs of the Tujue were never resolved without passing through the hands of the princess, which clearly demonstrated her standing within the Tujue royal court.

In the armies of the Great Sui, the figures of women were also a common sight. The daughters of Guanzhong aristocratic clans frequently practiced archery and horsemanship, possessed fierce and unyielding temperaments, and vied for supremacy with their brothers in countless instances.

The Third Young Mistress of Li Jing's household was an outstanding exemplar among them.

In the fourth year of Daye, she had once led five hundred cavalrymen into Yunzhong, pursued a fleeing rebel general of Mayi named Ximishi for a hundred li, defeated him by the banks of the Great River, and returned after severing Ximishi's head.

For this military merit, she was promoted to General of Subduing Bandits.

In the late autumn of the sixth year of Daye, she was again ordered by her father to lead men north in disguise, secretly observing the movements of the Tujue, and did not return until spring.

To journey back and forth for thousands of li, crossing the vast deserts the entire way while braving wind and snow—the hardships involved were truly beyond description to outsiders.

It could be said that she was a true heroine among women, and one of the most powerful arms with which Li Jing governed Mayi.

Her promotion to Mayi Military Bureau Adjutant was due not only to the fact that Li Jing had no one else available and thus strongly recommended her, but also because her own military achievements, talent, and valor were indispensable.

As for Li Jing's ability to instruct disciples, it went without saying; many subsequent events would prove that sitting under Li Jing's tutelage was a veritable cradle for famous generals.

What he was doing now with his daughter was merely a preliminary flexing of his muscles.

However, these matters still had little to do with Li Po.

Yet after the Third Young Mistress returned, she visited the stables a few times. Aside from inquiring after the old man's health with warm concern, she showed a great deal of interest in the martial arts and hand-to-hand combat techniques taught by Li Po.

Still, as a humble groom, it was not easy for Li Po to have any significant interaction with Li Bi.

Instead, she sought out Yuan Lang. As expected, after a bout of sparring, she suffered a few blows and nearly sprained her arm.

Although he hadn't witnessed the live sparring session between the two, Li Po knew that fellow Yuan Lang certainly lacked restraint and had made the Third Young Mistress suffer quite a bit.

Yet Yuan Lang did not gloat for long before he met with a very severe retaliation.

The young woman, holding a petty grudge, went to see the old man. Whatever she said, the enraged old man promptly gave Yuan Lang a brutal beating. Afterward, however, the young girl stayed right by the side of the bruised and battered Yuan Lang, tending to him affectionately. Like an elder sister, she applied healing ointment to Yuan Lang's wounds while whispering endless words of comfort, leaving that foolish boy Yuan Lang moved to tears of gratitude.

Watching this from the sidelines, Li Po felt a chill in his heart, thinking to himself that the women of this era were far more terrifying than modern fashionable women.

After that, the young girl rarely came over—perhaps because of pressing official duties, or perhaps, as she herself claimed, because she had lost interest in these martial arts skills.

According to the words she left behind for Yuan Lang, these were merely trivial arts. Ordinary people might use them for self-defense or cause trouble, but soldiers must never practice them.

Because soldiers were mostly violent by nature, once they possessed such skills, any angry clash in a hand-to-hand fight would inevitably result in accidentally injuring others.

Furthermore, when facing the enemy on the battlefield, no matter how sharp one's bare fists and feet were, they could never be sharper than sabres and axes, making them useless.

Immersing oneself in them only wasted time, and most practitioners simply ended up as entertainment for banquets of the nobility... Truly, these were techniques for women's self-defense, and men ought not to practice them...

Whether she was angry about being beaten or simply expressing her genuine thoughts, her critique was certainly unflattering. Furthermore, it was well-argued and sounded quite reasonable.

Afterward, Yuan Lang came to find Li Po, muttering to himself for a long time. Li Po knew that this lad had been suppressed so thoroughly under the old man's knees that he possessed not a shred of temper, which had fostered in him the flaw of being easily swayed.

In his mind, the Third Young Mistress Li Bi held an extraordinary status; a single word from her basically carried as much weight as ten or a hundred words from Li Po, causing the lad to waver somewhat.

Such a tendency had to be suppressed. All the good days in the stables depended on this fellow; if he stopped learning, the status Li Po had fought for in the stables would be in imminent peril.

"Do you think practicing martial arts is really just for harming people's lives? You're wrong... A person, you see, is just like a sabre; they must be constantly whetted and polished to maintain their sharpness. And practicing these bare-handed skills is precisely about forging the physique and tempering the willpower."

"Practice the fists first, then practice the sabre—naturally, you will achieve twice the result with half the effort. Understand? You don't understand? Then let me tell you, the things we practice, when studied more deeply, are all about rhythm. Do you understand what rhythm is?"

"Just like dance and music, there has to be a beat, and you have to step right on the notes for it to be pleasing to the eye. If you miss the beats, it's too hideous to behold. Therefore, in combat, regardless of whether you use fists, feet, sabres, or spears, there must be a beat. What we are practicing right now is precisely this: in the split second between life and death, if you can remain a fraction calmer than others, hit the beat a fraction more accurately, be a fraction more agile than others, and have your breath last a fraction longer than others, then you will win."

With this nonsense, mixing reason with utter fabrication, he finally made Yuan Lang slap his thigh and say with a beaming smile, "I knew it! How could something so formidable be useless? Big Brother, you didn't see how I beat Third Sister..."

There it was. This fellow was truly someone who forgot the pain as soon as the wound healed. What use was there in reasoning with him?

Life returned to peace once more. A few days later, Cheng Zhijie came looking for him, his face filled with rage as he informed Li Po that Li Po's house had been burned to the ground.

He also mentioned hearing that the Merit Adjutant Li Zongfang had instigated the arson, and the two families locked in a dispute over the property had engaged in several more brawls.

Obviously, these were all old news. It wasn't that Cheng Zhijie had intentionally withheld anything, but rather that his sources of information were limited and the commandery headquarters was quite insulated; by the time he caught wind of the rumors, things had long since passed.