At three quarters past midnight, the moon hung bright with a few stars scattered across the sky.
Looking at the bright moon hanging high in the sky, Du Chengfeng was choked with emotion.
He vowed that he had truly adjusted his schedule this time. To ensure a good night's sleep, he had even added some training during the day—yet, as he expected, his exhausted body fell asleep immediately after hitting the pillow post-bath.
However, even with all his preparations, he couldn't prevent someone from knocking on his door.
"Who is it?"
Du Chengfeng was immediately enraged by being woken up in the middle of the night.
He knew his courtyard well. Even if someone like Carpenter Li, whom he was familiar with, came, there would be no need to knock on the door. In other words, it must be some outsider disturbing his peaceful sleep.
What Du Chengfeng didn't expect was that the person showing up at his door might not even possess full civil capacity.
"Why are you here again?"
Seeing Yang Sanlang in front of him, Du Chengfeng couldn't suppress his anger.
Perhaps it would be better to just kill him with one slash, considering this lunatic had disturbed him more than a few times. Though that heavy broadsword was inconvenient to wield, he still had seventeen knives on him.
Those thugs' weapons might have been crude, but they were quite suitable for dealing with Yang Sanlang.
However, just as Du Chengfeng was about to draw his knife and end Yang Sanlang, the latter suddenly knelt with a thud.
"I was wrong before. Do as you will, kill or maim!"
While saying this, Yang Sanlang kowtowed several times with loud thuds before Du Chengfeng.
"It's all my fault alone; it has nothing to do with the Yang family of Jizhou. So even if you take my life, I pray you leave the Yang family's ancestral sword!"
"Ah, this..."
Du Chengfeng found himself speechless.
They say that one should not hit someone smiling at you. When Yang Sanlang was being unruly before, he still had the mind to kill the other. But now, with this formal apology and kneeling, he found it hard to just stab him outright.
Yet, despite this, he wasn't the type to be bound by moral coercion. Expecting him to give away his most important weapon just based on a few words was treating him like a lunatic himself.
"The sword isn't going back to you. Go home. If you don't, I'll call your family over."
"... Is that how little you think of me?"
Hearing Du Chengfeng's words, which openly treated him like an ignorant child, a trace of indignation appeared on Yang Sanlang's face.
However, facing a flustered Yang Sanlang, Du Chengfeng simply nodded.
"Yes, indeed."
"You..."
Even though Yang Sanlang had prepared himself for humiliation, he couldn't help clenching his fists instinctively.
Before Yang Sanlang could retort, two slaps had already hit his face.
"What's wrong with looking down on you? How many things have you done that are respectable?"
As he said this, Du Chengfeng grabbed Yang Sanlang by the collar.
"Keep talking about ancestors—if you care so much about them, why don't you act like them and carve a legacy with your own blade?"
"I, I, but..."
Blurred by the two slaps, Yang Sanlang couldn't find his words.
Use a blade? Easy to say. Their ancestral sword from the Yang family was already in someone else's hands; where could he find such a blade?
"Still looking! Still looking!"
Seeing Yang Sanlang still trying to peek into the house, Du Chengfeng slapped him twice more.
"That's my sword! What are you looking at? Besides, it's just a pig-slaying knife—can't you find one yourself?"
After those two slaps, Du Chengfeng flung Yang Sanlang into the darkness.
"Learn properly from your ancestors! Worthless thing!"
Watching Yang Sanlang scramble to his feet and leave desolately, Du Chengfeng breathed a long sigh of relief.
Fortunately, after dealing with the swordsman Cui Yuan previously, he had gotten more adept at handling these lunatics. Facing someone not in their right mind head-on could be nauseating, so instead of dealing with a corpse in the middle of the night, it was better to let them dwell in their mental turmoil, leaving them to tire themselves out instead.
"It's still early, might as well catch some more sleep."
With this in mind, Du Chengfeng closed the courtyard door and returned inside to continue sleeping.
While Du Chengfeng could fall asleep, Yang Sanlang couldn't.
Four slaps burned painfully on his cheeks. Yet more than this physical pain was the torment of his earlier experience.
He had clearly tried his best, tried to emulate his clan uncle Yang Xuan, to be a mature man. He was willing to steal, rob, cheat, even bow down to apologize and risk his life just as his uncle had, thinking that this might work, thinking he might do something for the Yang family of Jizhou.
But reality proved he could do nothing.
The vagrant's words lingered, perhaps he truly was a worthless coward. He couldn't win the blade back by force, nor could he plead for it back. This wasn't something that bowing and scraping could solve. The so-called dignity was meaningless.
His garments were damp with watermarks.
The downpour was just like Yang Sanlang's streaming tears.
Stumbling through the rain, Yang Sanlang lost all sense of direction. All he knew was he could never return to Dock Fortress again. Because of one misjudgment, he had shamed the Yang family, even losing the ancestral sword to outsiders. How could he return?
"Might as well find a place and end it."
In utter despair, Yang Sanlang was ready to end it all.
And just then, he noticed an old, crooked tree by the roadside.
A crooked tree, its trunk bent, with a beam extending from the main trunk, just right for hanging a rope—so Yang Sanlang untied his belt to use as a noose and hung himself.
But though he was hung up, at the brink of death, one would instinctively struggle, unrelated to courage, purely a physiological response of the human body.
And so, with a "crack", Yang Sanlang, along with a split piece of the tree trunk, hit the ground.
Lying in the soft mud, Yang Sanlang's regret grew further. Just like when he was fighting with a spear before, when it was time to sacrifice himself, to die like a man, he couldn't overcome his instinctive reaction. He couldn't even manage to die!
"I, ah, ah ah ah..."
Yang Sanlang tried to let out an anguished howl to the sky, but his parched throat could no longer make a sound.
To think of Yang Sanlang, once considered a hero, had fallen to such a state. Was it truly as that vagrant said? Was he really that worthless?
"Ah ah ah ah..."
Kneeling on the ground, Yang Sanlang clawed at the muddy earth, as if that might secure him some slim hope.
And with that desperate grasp, he did catch something.
"... Hmm?"
Feeling the texture in his hand, Yang Sanlang instinctively stood up.
An old curved blade was pulled from the mud by him.
"Why don't you learn from your ancestors and carve a path with your own knife?"
The words of that vagrant echoed in Yang Sanlang's ear.
Staring at the curved blade being washed by the rain, Yang Sanlang could be certain.
The ancestors of the Yang family of Jizhou were still protecting their descendants.