Republic of China era: A hundred-year-old still practicing martial arts? Is that right?

At the entrance of Qingyuan County.

The soldiers of the governor's mansion stopped Lin Ji and his two companions. Their gaze swept over Lin Ji's face, taking in his aged features, before looking up at the portrait on the wall.

"picture!"

"It does look like it."

"Hey buddy, your eyesight's really not good," another soldier beside him tugged at him and pointed at Lin Ji.

"The old man in the painting stands there holding a gun, exuding a murderous aura. He has absolutely nothing to do with this old man leaning on a wooden stick. What are you doing here?"

The soldier behind Lin Ji waved impatiently:

"Go, go, go, don't block the way."

Su Wanning smiled slightly, lowered her head, and slipped through the city gate.

After walking quite a distance, she turned to look at Lin Ji, who was still leaning on his cane: "Grandpa Lin, are we going into town like this?"

Lin Ji, leaning on his cane, looked old and frail, his voice hoarse and aged: "Then what else?"

……

Qingyuan County was more bustling than I had imagined.

But it was more oppressive than I had imagined.

At a roadside tea stall, a few people sat, heads bowed, whispering amongst themselves.

"Have you heard? The martial arts ban has been issued, and all the martial arts schools in the city were shut down yesterday."

"It's good that it's shut down. Martial arts practitioners are always causing trouble... Lin Ji from Jiangcheng has killed so many foreigners. He's had his fun, but what about the ordinary people? Sigh..."

"What's so good about it! Commander Zhou just spoke up for the martial arts school and offended the foreigners, and guess what happened? Yesterday, the provincial capital called, specifically demanding that he be brought to justice!"

"Commander Zhou? He's a good official in our Qingyuan County! Last year when we had a famine, he withstood the pressure from the provincial capital and opened the granaries to distribute grain, which saved the people of the whole county."

"Sigh, good deeds don't always get rewarded!"

"Shh! Keep your voice down."

Lin Ji and his companions walked forward with their heads down. As they passed the tea stalls, the diners lowered their voices and cast scrutinizing glances at them.

Upon seeing Li Shuwen, who was wearing a huge straw hat and carrying two weapons covered with black cloth on his back, no one dared to say anything more.

Until Lin Ji and the others had gone far away,

Only then did the bold tea drinker's voice ring out again from behind:

"Have you heard? This morning, a group of foreigners came to the city and stayed at the post station. There were more than a dozen of them, and they were all carrying new-style guns. I heard that those guns are really weird; they can fire a whole magazine of bullets with just a flick of a finger."

"My goodness, this guy is serious."

In the corner of the food stall.

Lin Ji and his two companions paused in their tracks.

Li Shuwen raised his eyes, which were covered by a straw hat, and glanced sideways at Lin Ji:

"Want to interfere?"

Lin Ji shook his head.

"No, I've never seen this new type of firearm before. I might encounter it again next time. It would be good to test its power and learn something about it."

"That's true. Let's settle in first and check things out tonight."

Li Shuwen's voice also carried curiosity about the foreigners' new weapons, and he seemed to have never seen these things before.

After autumn arrives, it gets dark very quickly.

The group had just settled down when it became completely dark outside.

Su Wanning carried two bowls of hot soup and pushed them in front of Lin Ji and Li Shuwen. After hesitating for a long time, she asked softly:

"Grandpa Lin, are you really going to do what he heard on the street during the day?"

Lin Ji took the soup bowl, blew on it to cool it down, took a sip, and said, "Let's go take a look."

"But aren't you still wanted by the authorities? We don't know anything about these people. What if something goes wrong? I promised Sister Shen that I would take good care of you." Su Wanning said nervously and carefully, conveying Shen Jinluan's entrustment.

Lin Ji glanced at Li Shuwen beside him and smiled gently, "Isn't it because we still have your brother Li to help us?"

……

That night.

Hai hour (9-11 PM).

The quiet county town suddenly erupted in chaos.

The sound of horses' hooves!

The sound of leather boots!

The sound of a bolt being pulled back!

It tore the entire Qingyuan County apart.

In her sleep, Su Wanning vaguely heard sounds outside the window.

"Arrest Zhou Bingkun, the rebel leader! All bystanders, get out of the way!"

Su Wanning peered through the crack in the window at the end of the street.

An elderly man leaning on a cane was slowly walking towards the direction from which the sound came, against the flow of people who were scattering in all directions.

……

In front of the Governor's Mansion.

The firelight was bright.

Zhou Bingkun was held up by two foreigners and pressed down on the stone steps in front of the governor's mansion.

His Zhongshan suit was torn at the corner, and there was blood at the corner of his mouth, yet he still held his neck stiffly:

"I, Zhou Bingkun, receive a salary from the People's Republic of China and uphold its principles; what crime have I committed!"

"What crime have you committed?"

A foreigner carrying a short-barreled rifle kicked him in the side of the face with his leather boot.

The foreigner stroked the gun, which gleamed in the firelight. The gun had an odd shape and a long, semi-circular magazine hanging on its side.

He spoke in a stiff tone, enunciating each word clearly:

"To slander the British Empire and to harbor rebels and insurgents—aren't these crimes?"

"Pooh!"

Zhou Bingkun spat a mouthful of phlegm onto the ground, his face full of disdain.

The foreigner's face immediately turned ashen, and with a "click," he pressed his short-barreled rifle against Zhou Bingkun's temple.

Zhou Bingkun tensed up instantly.

"Hahaha!" The foreigner threw his head back and laughed wildly, then drew his pistol and pulled the trigger at the big tree in front of the governor's mansion.

"Da da da..."

The brass eggshell fell to the ground in the firelight, making a crisp sound.

A total of seventy-one bullets broke the tree, which was almost too big for one person to hug, in half.

Colin, the foreigner, gave another contemptuous smile, then turned to his subordinates and shouted:

"take away!"

"Let's see if you can take this person with you today."

At the end of the long street.

An old voice drifted over slowly.

Everyone looked in the direction of the sound.

An old man with a cane stood at the boundary between the firelight and the darkness, his body hunched over, as if a gust of wind could blow him over.

Colin paused for a moment, then chuckled:

"Old man, you think you can take me on?"

No one answered.

His answer was a long spear that appeared out of nowhere.

The landscape patterns on the gun barrel flowed under the moonlight and firelight, and the tip of the gun exuded a chilling aura.

The hunched old man vanished instantly at the alley entrance.

The figure thrusting the spear was a robust man with a straight back like a pine tree.

"Shoot! Shoot him dead!"

Colin's expression changed, and he roared sharply.

"Da da da da..."

A dozen or so lights suddenly lit up in the darkness.

Bullets rained down like a torrential downpour, shattering the cobblestone ground into fragments, sending dust and smoke billowing into the sky.

The surrounding people gasped in alarm and screamed as they scrambled to hide in the surrounding street corners.

But the next second, everyone's eyes widened in surprise.

Amidst the smoke and dust, gunshots loomed like a curtain, impenetrable even to water.

"Ding ding ding..."

A series of crisp sounds rang out as bullets landed on the gun barrel, scattering sparks everywhere.

The barrage of bullets was miraculously stopped outside the gunfire!

Behind the gunfire.

The moment Lin Ji opened the True Understanding of Martial Arts, his pupils suddenly contracted:

"This is... an exoskeleton?"

All I saw was...

Beneath the uniforms of those armed soldiers.

Layers of bone-like armor were tightly attached to the muscles all over the body.

With every move, he could display the strength of the mid-stage of Dark Force without expending any effort.

What surprised Lin Ji even more was that they fired a full 120 shots before someone finally stopped.

"Change formation!" Colin shouted again, unfazed.