The Little Demonic Cultivator in the Courtyard: Borrowing 100,000 Japanese Pirates to Heal

Overall, like other places in Beijing, the courtyard houses have less of a gloomy feeling.

Everyone became much more active.

He Daqing went back to work at the steel rolling mill.

He walks out each day with a more upright posture than the day before, not because his wages have increased, but because the pot in the kitchen can now cook dry rice.

Liu no longer cooked the porridge until you could see your reflection in it. Sometimes she would add a handful of coarse salt to the pot, and the stir-fried cabbage leaves would have a salty taste. Sha Zhu would eat them with smacking noises.

Jia Dongxu's face has gained some weight, though it's not obvious. If you look closely, his cheekbones aren't as prominent anymore.

Jia Zhangshi regained some of her spirits, occasionally taking a few steps in the yard and exchanging a few words with an older woman. Her voice had also recovered somewhat, though she no longer swore.

Yi Zhonghai was still busy. He left home before dawn and returned after dark every day. The corner of his short jacket with the word "pipe" on it was blown up by the wind, like a pair of dusty wings.

The people in the courtyard would avoid him when he returned, but he didn't care. He would close the door as soon as he entered and wouldn't turn on the lights.

An old woman left him some food, which he ate in the dark. Then he lay down on the kang (a heated brick bed), turned over a few times, and started snoring. The next day, he went out again before dawn.

Xu Jiande occasionally watched his neighbors busy themselves in the courtyard, but he couldn't calm down.

The demonic energy within him has been quite stable lately, no longer causing trouble or urging him to kill.

This sense of stability made him uncomfortable.

He was used to those days when he would climb over the wall at night, fill his body with demonic energy, and slaughter Japanese devils in the alley.

Although those days were dangerous, I lived with clarity every moment, with a clear purpose, clear methods, and a clear understanding of the enemy.

The Japanese soldiers are still in the city, but they're all hiding.

The night patrols have stopped, as if they're afraid something will happen if they stand on the street any longer.

When Sasaki Maki's car drove out of the military police station, it was escorted by two motorcycles in front and behind, and the curtains on the car windows were drawn tightly, leaving not even a crack.

The situation in Beijing has stabilized for the time being. At least on the surface.

Xu Jiande knew that this stability was fragile. It was like a thin layer of ice, with boiling water underneath. If he stepped on it again, the ice would shatter.

He was about to leave, but before he did, he had to make sure his disciple's house was properly secured.

As for leaving, it means leaving Beijing.

This idea didn't just pop into my head suddenly.

After that battle at the logistics base, he vaguely sensed that the city of Beijing was no longer a place for him.

He needed a larger battlefield, more Japanese soldiers, and a stronger sense of bloodlust and resentment.

His demonic skills have reached the peak of the third level of Qi Refining, and he may encounter the threshold of the fourth level at any time.

Even if all the Japanese soldiers and traitors were killed in Beijing, there would still only be a few thousand people.

Moreover, they were separated, making them difficult to kill.

After killing them all, where will he go? Wait for the Japanese to send troops in from outside the city? It's better to go out and find them.

He is going to Jingzhou.

That's hell on earth.

As expected, the Japanese devils killed people there for a full month, killing almost everyone in the city. The survivors either hid in cellars and dared not come out, or were captured by the Japanese devils to do hard labor. If they disobeyed, they would be stabbed to death in the street with bayonets.

Young women fared even worse; those who fell into the hands of the Japanese were almost all unable to survive.

As Xu Jiande thought this way, he became more and more certain that he had to go to Jingzhou.

Jingzhou was the capital of the Kuomintang government, and it is now also the largest slaughterhouse for the Japanese in East China.

There, the lives of hundreds of thousands of civilians hung by a thread, and countless Japanese troops were stationed. That was the place he should be going.

He possesses demonic powers, resentment, the Nine Forms of the Demonic Blade, and the Bloodthirsty Roar. It would be a waste to leave these things in Beijing to deal with a few patrol teams.

In the evening, Xu Jiande and Bai Ling sat at the table for dinner.

Bai Ling steamed a pot of mixed flour cornbread and ate it with pickled radish. The cornbread was fresh out of the steamer, hot and steaming, and you could see white steam coming out of the air holes when you took a bite.

Xu Jiande ate very slowly, breaking a cornbread into four pieces and putting them into his mouth one by one, unlike his usual habit of finishing a whole cornbread in a few bites.

Bai Ling noticed it.

"Is the cornbread not to your liking today?" She picked up a piece of pickled radish and put it into Xu Jiande's bowl.

"No. You did a good job," Xu Jiande said.

"I see you eating like you're counting," Bai Ling said with a slight smile.

Xu Jiande smiled, stuffed the last piece of cornbread into his mouth, chewed it a few times and swallowed it, then put down his chopsticks and looked at Bai Ling.

"I want to go to Kyungju," he said.

Bai Ling paused for a moment, and the piece of pickled radish she was holding fell back into the plate, splashing a little dark red sauce.

"To Jingzhou?" she asked, her voice not loud, but Xu Jiande could hear the surprise in her voice.

"Yes," Xu Jiande said, "Beijing is already like this. The Japanese are hiding in their camps and won't come out. Jingzhou is where the real battlefield is now."

Bai Ling didn't speak immediately.

She picked up the piece of pickled radish that had fallen back onto the plate, put it in her mouth, and chewed it slowly, as if using that time to organize her thoughts.

"When are you leaving?" she asked.

Surprisingly, no one stopped them.

Clearly, as a member of a major party, Bai Ling's thoughts were different from those of ordinary people, and knowing that Xu Jiande was a true martial arts master, she did not try to dissuade him.

Xu Jiande looked at Bai Ling and said, "It's not decided yet. It'll be in the next few days."

Bai Ling nodded.

She looked down at the half-eaten cornbread in the bowl, gently brushed away the crumbs around the edge with her finger, and said after a long while, "I knew you were leaving. I found out after the massacre in Jingzhou."

Xu Jiande didn't reply. He picked up the bowl, put the last few pieces of pickled radish into his mouth, and chewed them loudly, as if he were the only one eating in the room.

Bai Ling looked up at him.

"You once said that your kung fu is about achieving clarity of mind. Now that you're stuck here, your mind is definitely not clear," she said.

"That's not entirely true." Xu Jiande put down his bowl, wiped his mouth, and said, "Many people are dying in Jingzhou now, and we should naturally fight to defend our country."

"I know," Bai Ling said. "I can't stop you, and I don't want to. In fact, I want to go too."

After she finished speaking, the room was quiet for a moment. The kettle on the stove hissed, and thin white steam rose from its spout.

Bai Ling cleared away the dishes and took them to the kitchen to wash. Xu Jiande sat at the table, watching her busy figure.

He wanted to say something, but after opening his mouth, he felt that anything he said would be superfluous.

Bai Ling came out of the kitchen, wiped her hands with a rag, walked up to Xu Jiande, and looked down at him.

"I won't stop you from going to Jingzhou. But there's one thing: you have to heal your injuries before you leave. Do you have a few more cuts on your back? I saw them when you changed your clothes yesterday."

Xu Jiande paused for a moment, then nodded.

"OK."

Bai Ling didn't say anything more.

She sat down on the edge of the bed and began mending the knee of an old pair of trousers by the light of an oil lamp.

The lamplight flickered across her face, casting her eyes and brows in shifting light.