# Chapter 83: Can I Reap First Place?
"Until Lin Zhenglun shows his face, not a single member of your Lin family may step out through this gate or cross this line. Whoever does will be taken as having challenged me! And I will cripple that person!"
Jiang Wang held his sword athwart before the Lin clan lands, his countenance cold and stern, with not the slightest trace of jest about him.
Lin Zhengli was stunned — not from fear, but from sheer surprise, and he even felt something of the absurd in it.
A mere three men, daring to seal the gates of the Lin family.
Where did this brat find such courage? On what did he stake such confidence!
Lin Zhengli was bracing to strike when a voice rang out before him.
The voice's owner was still far away, but its sound trembled straight into the ear.
"Jiang, is it? A bold tongue you have! Do you think I cannot kill a man?"
It was the Lin family's current strongest combatant — the voice of Lin Zhengren!
Even a man of such deep composure and profound scheming as he could not keep the anger from his voice at this moment.
Truly, in broad daylight did the clown leap and dance. Did every stray cat and cur think it might come and run amok on Lin territory?
Upon Jiang Wang's back rode a long, rectangular wooden box. From Fenglin City all the way to Wangjiang City, he had carried it the whole journey.
At the sound of Lin Zhengren's voice, he was neither startled nor afraid.
He simply took down the long box, opened it, and drew forth the antique, unadorned longspear within.
The Ember-Spending Spear made for no extravagant spectacle — its spearhead's chill gleam drawn tight and hushed, its haft not even entirely smooth, still bearing the marks of those thirty years of burning in a kitchen hearth.
Yet now it was the most celebrated weapon in all of Qinghe Commandery.
Jiang Wang inverted the Ember-Spending Spear and thrust it into the ground beside his feet, sinking it several inches deep.
"Senior Disciple Zhu has said that I am merely a Wandering-Meridian-Realm cultivator — that my coming to Wangjiang City has its reasons. Any Wandering-Meridian-Realm cultivator in Wangjiang City may come out and fight me to his heart's content, and even if he kills me, Zhu Weiwo will not interfere. But should any cultivator above the Wandering-Meridian Realm make a move, striking down from on high, then no matter who that person is — once he enters the National Dao Academy, Zhu Weiwo will be waiting for you, Lin Zhengren, in particular. He will strike you every time he sees you!"
These words, filled to bursting with Dao essence from Jiang Wang, resounded throughout the Lin clan lands.
And Lin Zhengren's voice did not ring out again. Nor did he make the least move to show himself.
As if that earlier angry rebuke had merely been a shared delusion among the crowd.
It is enough that the Ember-Spending Spear rests here — it stands in for Zhu Weiwo.
Before the spear pressed Wangjiang City, Zhu Weiwo would not have wielded such deterring power. But now, his mere name sufficed to hold a region in check.
For every breath the silence lingered, the Lin family's face swelled one shade redder.
And so the silence was soon broken. An old man with a head of pure-white hair, leaning on a wooden staff, walked slowly out with the support of a servant.
"In that case, Zhengli, go out and test him." The old man's voice was soft, but it bore a killing calm: "Let us see whether he truly is unmatched within the whole Wandering-Meridian Realm!"
"As you say, Grandfather." Lin Zhengli bowed with full courtesy to the old master, flung back a long sleeve, and strode boldly through the memorial archway!
Sword-light leapt like lightning!
Jiang Wang had already ridden his sword upon him.
Waves surged and rolled as Lin Zhengli twisted in midair. He was no reckless, brainless fool, of course — he had already curled his seals before ever stepping past the archway.
His opening move was the Dao art that had made a name at the Three-City Dao Debate — the triple surge — casting himself upon the field of unassailable safety.
But Jiang Wang, still in the air, could turn about out of nowhere. This was the powerful payoff that cultivating the Four Spirit Body-Tempering Art had brought him thus far — a command of the air far beyond cultivators of his own grade.
His sword-point aimed for the throat!
Lin Zhengli's face did not change. He curled his seals even as he calmly drove the triple surge into its second fold.
Jiang Wang could not match Li Jianqiu in executing three midair turns without a single point of leverage, but neither did he need to. As he fell toward the earth, his longsword shifted slightly, and a Golden Light Arrow shot forth from the blade, streaking toward Lin Zhengli as the man shifted his position.
It was the Dao art inherent to the standard-issue ritual longsword in his hand — a perfect fit as his third strike!
Lin Zhengli rode the surge once more, completing the final transformation of the triple surge. At the same time, his seals-crafted Dao art stood complete, and he was just about to strike his opponent when suddenly his face went deathly pale — and he hurled that devastating wave of rage against the space directly before him!
To convert an offensive Dao art into a defensive one, his reaction could not be called slow.
But before that surging, galloping purple qi, the raging wave his Dao art had mustered was so utterly unequal to the task!
Purple qi comes from the East — the princes beheld to the West!
Jiang Wang had barely touched down on the tips of his feet when he unleashed his current strongest killing stroke. His whole being drove the roaring purple qi onward, shredding the waves in an instant.
The bright, gleaming sword-tip came to rest against Lin Zhengli's brow.
Drip... drop!
It was the sound of a water droplet slipping down the blade and landing upon the tip of Lin Zhengli's nose.
And he did not dare move so much as a hair.
Since the Three-City Dao Debate, he had known countless bursts of bitter grievance. Grievance that Jiang Wang had reaped the easy benefit, snatching away the year-one champion's name that ought to have been his. And grievance at his own carelessness — had it not been for his carelessness, how could he have lost to that mountain savage? He would not even have been wounded!
But the wood had been made into boats, and the matter was done. No amount of grievance could change anything.
At least Jiang Wang had come to Wangjiang City, giving him a chance to prove himself.
In truth, the moment the three of them entered Wangjiang City, he had received word. The widow Lin Zhenglun had married truly had taken her own life — though of course not wholly without his involvement. When he traced the letter the woman had sent off before her death and found it had reached Jiang Wang's hands, he finally understood the connection between Jiang Wang and that widow.
Every Dao Academy disciple was a future pillar of the Zhuang Kingdom; none of them was the sort to swallow his grievances in silence.
And the means by which he had wrested away Lin Zhenglun's business had not been honorable. Part of it was the dowry that woman had brought — the acquisition had come with documentation to satisfy the laws of Zhuang, to be sure, but it would not bear the scrutiny of a careful mind.
So he had immediately had Lin Zhenglun take refuge within the clan lands. As long as the gate was guarded and Jiang Wang kept out, a great matter could be shrunk to a small one, and a small one to nothing at all.
He had believed everything was in the palm of his hand.
But Jiang Wang was so audacious as to bar the gate with a single sword — that was the first thing he had never foreseen.
And what he had foreseen even less was that he, fighting with all his strength, should be utterly defeated!
He had not proven his own strength; he had only become a footnote to another's.
At this moment, he suddenly recalled what his elder brother Lin Zhengren had told him at the Three-City Dao Debate — "If you do not hold absolute certainty of victory, do not hand your enemy the chance to see you made whole."
"Go back." Jiang Wang's hand upon the sword did not tremble in the least.
He had not truly crippled Lin Zhengli as his words had promised. The deterrence borrowed from Zhu Weiwo's name, too, had its limits. In no case could Zhu Weiwo kill Lin Zhengren for no cause at all — at most, as he had said, he would strike him every time he saw him, making it impossible for Lin Zhengren to stay on at the National Dao Academy.
Such a consequence was enough to earn a tolerance beyond the ordinary from Lin Zhengren — but crippling Lin Zhengli lay utterly beyond that tolerance.
Lin Zhengli stared at the gleaming sword-tip and backed away slowly, retreating all the way behind the memorial archway.
Only then did he realize his entire spine was soaked through with cold sweat.
"You may summon any Wandering-Meridian-Realm cultivator you like from all of Wangjiang City. I shall meet them all, one sword, alone. Should I be so unlucky as to fall in battle, that is my own fault earned. And the two sworn brothers who came with me today will gather my corpse."
Jiang Wang stood with his sword lowered, and said to Old Master Lin: "And I have but one entirely reasonable demand. The birth-mother of my little sister died in Wangjiang City, and I require that someone step forward to accept the responsibility."
"She took her own life," Lin Zhengli said, steeling himself.
"Very well." Jiang Wang looked straight past the archway at the swelling, ever-thickening throng of Lin clansmen.
He gave a cold smile, and his sword sang long.
"Then let us see this very day, here in the confines of Wangjiang City, whether I, within the Wandering-Meridian Realm, am worthy of reaping the first place!"