Chapter 107: A Guard Testing the Formation

“Young Master, breakfast is…”

Since Ling Zhang had bidden him to get the breakfast ready as soon as possible, Xia Feng walked into the room in haste to report. On entering the room, he saw his young master abruptly pushed Lord Yuwen away. Xia Feng widened his eyes, wondering what he had just seen, ‘What were they doing? Was it what I think it is?’

“You may serve,” Ling Zhang quickly wiped his lips and said as calmly as he could, his back to Xia Feng.

Xia Feng was still in an astonished trance, barely able to believe what might have just happened.

Not having heard Xia Feng moving, Yuwen Tong cast a penetrating stare at him.

On contact with this kind of gaze, Xia Feng abruptly shuddered and collected himself. Lowering his head, he answered, “Yes, Young Master.”

‘That must be a hallucination. It must be. How was it possible that Young Master and Lord Yuwen were hugging? I must be imagining things,’ Xia Feng thought.

Keeping telling himself that he had been hallucinating, Xia Feng bade servants outside to bring the meal boxes into the room and place them on the table.

While the servants were serving breakfast, Xia Feng couldn’t help stealthily sizing up Ling Zhang and Yuwen Tong.

On the sight of Ling Zhang’s slightly swollen lips and the blushes on his cheeks, Xia Feng was transfixed with shock as if he had just been struck by lightning. All those words that he had said to himself stood feeble in the face of reality…

“Xia Feng.” Ling Zhang called Xia Feng in a cold voice as he saw Xia Feng staring at him emptily.

Xia Feng abruptly snapped out of trance. As his eyes met Ling Zhang’s cold ones, he hurriedly lowered his head. “I was being disrespectful and I deserve to be punished, Young Master.”

“Make sure it doesn’t happen again. You may leave. None of you is needed here,” Ling Zhang replied blandly.

“Yes, Young Master!” Xia Feng and those servants left the room immediately. After walking outside, Xia Feng heaved a deep sigh of relief and then fell into a light trance again.

‘So Young Master has been in that kind of relationship with Lord Yuwen?’

After Xia Feng and those servants left, the room went deadly quiet. Ling Zhang immediately glared at Yuwen Tong and reprimanded, “Obviously you heard Xia Feng coming in just now. Why didn’t you let go of me right away?”

Yuwen Tong raised his eyebrows. “What’s wrong with letting him see it? He’ll find out about our relationship sooner or later.”

Ling Zhang stood speechless.

‘I just agreed to go to the capital city. My engagement to him merely stands temporarily! I never gave him my word that I would marry him! Yet this guy is acting like we’re a couple-to-be,’ Ling Zhang thought angrily.

“Our engagement stands but only temporarily. I never promised I would marry you.”

Yuwen Tong merely flicked a glance at him. “Do you want to go back on your word in front of a Marshal or are you afraid to take responsibility for me?”

Ling Zhang’s eyes rounded. ‘He sounded as if I’m forsaking him after having dallied with him.’

“Finish your breakfast,” said Yuwen Tong as he down a bowl of congee before Ling Zhang. “After that, we’ll go and check how your security guards are doing with their training. We can have one of my bodyguards test them.”

Ling Zhang stood speechless.

He took up the bowl, having no intention to utter another word.

Yuwen Tong’s eyes softly swept across his cheeks and then his lips before he withdrew his gaze, recollecting the pleasant feeling of that kiss a moment ago, a deep look in his eyes.

Neither of them made any further remarks during the breakfast. Ling Zhang finished first. He put down his bowl, wiped his lips, gargled and intended to stand up and leave.

“Wait,” said Yuwen Tong. He hadn’t finished breakfast yet.

The corners of Ling Zhang’s mouth twitched. Believing that he would be a fool to listen to Yuwen Tong and wait for him, Ling Zhang unhesitatingly rose to his feet and walked straight out of the room.

Yuwen Tong put down his bowl, looked at Ling Zhang’s receding figure and chuckled, “What a little hedgehog.”

Then he rose from his seat and followed in Ling Zhang’s wake.

When they arrived at the guards’ yard, all security guards were startled as they caught sight of Yuwen Tong. ‘Is it this Lord Yuwen who’s going to spar with us again today? Didn’t Young Master say that it would be a bodyguard?’ they wondered.

Wang Dashan, who had already been informed of Yuwen Tong’s true identity, involuntarily straightened himself on Yuwen Tong’s arrival, excitement gleaming in his eyes.

Apart from anything else, this man in front of him was the Supreme Commander of armed forces, a legendary war hero. It was in his nature to revere the strong. Though Wang Dashan was a security guard of Ling family, whose first duty was to Ling family, his admiration for Yuwen Tong and his duty were not mutually exclusive.

“Today I’ll have my guard spar with you,” Yuwen Tong said. As soon as he finished his sentence, a guard in black descended from mid-air and landed on the drill field.

All security guards gave a gasp of relief. ‘Fortunately, it is not Lord Yuwen who’s going to test our formation.’

While they refused to admit defeat and were confident that one day they would be able to trap Lord Yuwen, clearly that day hadn’t arrived yet. They were bound to suffer a quick and disastrous defeat if the opponent was Lord Yuwen, and none of them was willing to find out how it felt to suffer a quick and disastrous defeat.

The guard in black’s eyes swept across the twelve people. “Bring it on.”

Those security guards exchanged glances, thinking, ‘Fuck! We’re indeed no match for Lord Yuwen, but by no means will we fail to trap this guard. This kind of underestimate is beyond the pale!’

“Brothers, form up!”

All security guards yelled “Aye!” and with that the twelve of them formed into Trap-and-Kill Formation, encircling the guard in black at the center ring upon ring.

“Begin,” said Yuwen Tong.

On hearing the order, the guard in black immediately launched an assault.

Those security guards were instantly on full alert. After their fight with Yuwen Tong on that day, they had been specially training their reflexes during the past two days. As a result, instead of being flustered, they stood more able than the last time when dealing with the sudden and violent attack of the guard in black, and the teamwork among them had also improved.

“Not bad. They sort of made progress,” Yuwen Tong standing beside Ling Zhang said in a low voice.

Naturally, Ling Zhang had also noticed the betterment of the skills of those security guards, feeling gratified.

“Did you see that? Liu Yi’s counterattack is the quickest and also the steadiest. The way he reacts is more unhurried than that of others, which means that he’s not using his full strength,” added Yuwen Tong.

After hearing Yuwen Tong’s remarks, Ling Zhang naturally began to pay more attention to Liu Yi. Ever since Yuwen Tong told him that Liu Yi was keeping something behind on that day, he had been observing Liu Yi all along. There had also been some occasions when he had Liu Yi stay out of an assignment. He knew Liu Yi would come wary, but he was deliberately doing this to sound him out. He meant to send a message to Liu Yi that he had noticed something, and he wanted to find out how Liu Yi would react.

He believed that Liu Yi was by no means sent here by Jia family or Zhang Chong, but he had no intention to risk being fooled.

But Liu Yi’s reaction had greatly surprised him. He had been acting calmly all along, without any unusual response to his alienation and wariness.

When he had no assignments for Liu Yi, Liu Yi would put all his efforts into performing his duties as a security guard. He had also been doing formation training with others and occasionally offered advice to them.

Ling Zhang stood uncertain to what was on Liu Yi’s mind.

At this time, he stared squarely at Liu Yi in the knowledge that Liu Yi would surely notice, but there had still been no particular reaction of Liu Yi so far. He was not flustered, and neither did he make any attempts to conceal his strength or anything like that. He was just doing what he had been training to do.

“He’s pretty good at retaining his composure,” said Yuwen Tong.

“You said that he didn’t seem like a spy. Then to what end do you think he came here?” Ling Zhang couldn’t help asking Yuwen Tong.

As Yuwen Tong, who had been waiting for Ling Zhang to speak to him, heard the question, a faint smile crossed the bottom of his eyes and with that he replied, “I’m not Mr. Know-all, so of course I have to do some research before I can give you an answer.”

Ling Zhang curled his lip. He had thought that Yuwen Tong had already found out about this.

Yuwen Tong cast him an amused look. “Have I always been so almighty and omniscient in your eyes?”

The corners of Ling Zhang’s mouth twitched. “Don’t overthink it.”

Even if it were true, he wouldn’t admit it.

As regards Liu Yi, he would find an opportunity to directly talk with him. Intuitively, he knew that Liu Yi meant no harm, so he chose to have a frank talk with him and find out what kind of reply Liu Yi would make. As for the investigation in Yanzhou, Xia Feng had already been there to investigate that matter. Ling Zhang believed that Xia Feng definitely had spared no effort to figure out the truth, but without any luck, he hadn’t found anything, which had served as a proof that with his current manpower, he wouldn’t be able to achieve anything in the investigation, so he had decided not to waste any more time on it.

If Liu Yi refused to tell the truth, he would have no alternative but to ask him to leave.

Though he had an intuition that Liu Yi was currently no threat to him, there was no guarantee that he wouldn’t become one in the future.

On the drill field, the guard in black and the twelve security guards had already exchanged dozens of blows. Since security guards had only mastered the first array, their strategy for dealing with the opponent was not flexible enough. While this guard of Yuwen Tong’s had been through numerous trials and tribulations and was extremely experienced. There had been many occasions when the guard in black caught those security guards unawares and nearly broke out of the encirclement, which had struck terror into their hearts several times. As a result, all of them sharpened their vigilance and concentrated all their attention on the moves of the guard.

After watching for a while, Ling Zhang perceived something. “The guard never performed his lightness skills, but he never mobilized his full strength to attack either.”

“Yeah. I told him not to finish this test too quick. It is meant to be another form of training.” Yuwen Tong gave an honest answer.

Ling Zhang was like this: …lol, completely speechless.

‘So for all this time, my security guards believe that they successfully restrained the guard when actually he is merely sparring with them?’ he wondered.

“This won’t take long,” said Yuwen Tong.

Unsurprisingly, after some time, the guard in black launched an all-out assault. Soon, he downed the weakest one of the twelve men and broke the formation apart.

But this time, the situation was different from that of the last time that Yuwen Tong had tested the formation. On that day, after Yuwen Tong defeated a security guard, the other eleven were unable to maintain the formation.

And Yuwen Tong even sneered at them on that occasion. But this time, maybe it was because they had learned their lesson, after one of them was downed, the others quickly managed to form up and besieged the guard in black again, which was rather surprising.

The guard in black was also somewhat surprised, and the look in his eyes slightly changed when he gazed at those security guards. Previously, he had merely been trying to fulfil the task assigned to him, but now he was taking these men much more seriously, showing them more respect as well.

Eventually, when there were only seven men in the formation, the guard downed them all with one blow and broke out of the encirclement. This time, all security guards were lying on the ground, too tired to make a single movement.

“Good. This time you did very well. You outshined yourselves by a considerable margin. I think you’re ready to start learning the second array,” observed Ling Zhang.

Since his security guards had been striving so hard, he believed he should give them more goals to strive for.

As expected, on hearing his remark, all security guards cheered. “Great! Thank you, Young Master!”

“You may take a day off if you feel tired,” offered Ling Zhang.

“That won’t be necessary, Young Master. We can resume training after a short rest.”

“Yeah, Young Master. Don’t worry about us. We have enough strength to continue training.”

Maybe because they had managed to restrain the guard in black for a rather long time, they seemed to have regained some confidence. All of them stated categorically that they were not tired, that they were willing to continue training.

‘It’s a good thing that they have this kind of drive.’ Ling Zhang was only too anxious to let them continue training, so of course he wouldn’t force them to rest.

“Well, then. But do it in moderation. Don’t push yourselves too hard.”

“Yes, Young Master.”

The guard in black walked up to Ling Zhang and Yuwen Tong. “Childe Ling, Your Lordship, this is indeed an ingenious formation.”