Chapter 414: Extra 9.

Yan Cijin’s fingers loosened from Bai Li’s arm. But the air around the two women became still, and the nearest people instinctively moved aside. It was not a display of power. It was the quiet moment before a storm reaches the shore.

Duan Kuo noticed them. He looked at Bai Li first, perhaps because her height and handsome features caught his attention. Then he looked at Yan Cijin, and his expression shifted into the kind of smirk used by men who had spent too much time mistaking beauty for weakness.

"You two should mind your own business," he said. "The market is under the protection of the Iron Sand Lodge."

Bai Li glanced at the fallen fruit. "Pick it up."

Duan Kuo stared at her. "What did you say?"

"You knocked it over. Pick it up."

His companions laughed. The sound was nervous in places, but Duan Kuo heard only the part that pleased him. He took a step toward Bai Li and rested one hand on his sword.

"Do you know who I am?"

"No," Bai Li replied. "I have not asked."

"You should."

"Why?"

The question landed more heavily than an insult. Duan Kuo’s expression tightened. He was accustomed to people who feared his title, or at least pretended to fear it in the hope of avoiding a fight. Bai Li did not appear to care whether he had a title at all.

Yan Cijin looked down at the fruit scattered across the stones. "This is a market. People come here to sell what they have worked to make or grow. If you want to call yourself a protector, perhaps you should begin by protecting them."

Duan Kuo turned toward her. "And who are you to lecture me?"

Yan Cijin looked at him with a calmness that should have made him stop. "Someone asking you to behave like a decent person."

He laughed, but the sound came out strained. "You think you can speak to me that way because you’re pretty? This is no place for a pair of sheltered women to play at being heroes. Get out of my sight before you regret it."

Bai Li looked at the hand resting on his sword. "Put it away."

Duan Kuo drew the weapon.

He did not even manage to lift it fully.

Bai Li released a thread of sword intent. No flash of light crossed the square, and she did not move her hand toward her own weapon. The man’s sword simply slipped from his grasp and struck the stone pavement. Its edge had been severed cleanly from the rest of the blade, leaving the broken metal to ring against the ground.

The market went silent.

Duan Kuo stared down at the weapon. His fingers remained curled around the hilt, but there was nothing useful attached to it anymore. He looked up at Bai Li, and the color began to drain from his face.

Yan Cijin crouched to pick up one of the fallen hawthorn berries. She brushed away a speck of dirt and placed it in the vendor’s basket before looking back at the armed men.

"Would you like to reconsider your behavior?" she asked.

One of Duan Kuo’s companions finally noticed the small insignia concealed beneath Bai Li’s cloak. He went pale and grabbed the leader’s sleeve. The emblem was the mark of Mount Hua, simple but unmistakable to anyone who had traveled through the jianghu. The companion whispered something into Duan Kuo’s ear.

Duan Kuo’s mouth opened, then closed. He looked at Bai Li again, this time with something close to terror in his eyes. He had heard stories about the two Matriarchs. Everyone in the martial world had. Stories said that Bai Li could break a formation with a single cut, that Yan Cijin could stop a hundred attacks with a turn of her wrist, and that together they had reached a realm beyond the comprehension of ordinary sect masters. He had assumed that such legends were exaggerated. He had never expected to meet them while demanding money from a fruit vendor.

The two most powerful women in the jianghu had come to Qingxi.

And he had drawn his sword at one of them.

For several seconds, nobody in the market seemed sure what to do next. Duan Kuo still held the broken hilt of his sword. His men stood behind him, their hands hovering near their weapons but no longer eager to draw them. The vendor was crouched beside his scattered fruit, looking from the broken blade to Bai Li as if he were afraid that he might wake up and discover that the whole scene had been a dream. The child who had accepted Yan Cijin’s skewer a little earlier had taken shelter beside her mother, although she was peering around the older woman’s sleeve to see what happened.

Bai Li waited.

She was not the kind of person who filled silence merely because other people found it uncomfortable. A person could speak a great deal and say nothing useful. A quiet moment often revealed more. Duan Kuo’s gaze moved from his sword to the faces around the square. He saw fear, anger, and the first hints of relief. The merchants had been paying the Iron Sand Lodge for weeks. The group had called it protection, but it had offered them nothing except the chance to keep their own money if they obeyed. Now the leader had met someone who could end his intimidation without even drawing a weapon, and the truth of his position was suddenly hard to ignore.

He swallowed. "Matriarch Bai. Matriarch Yan. I did not recognize you."

"That is obvious," Bai Li said. 𝘧𝓇ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝘣𝓃ℴ

Yan Cijin gave her wife a quick sideways glance, and Bai Li’s expression remained perfectly calm. It was not that she enjoyed humiliating him. She simply did not see a reason to pretend that ignorance had made his actions less wrong.

Duan Kuo bowed too deeply, almost stumbling as he did. "This is a misunderstanding.

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TO BE CONTINUED.