Chapter 238 — You're the Eldest Miss?

Wang Kejin had guessed rightly. After he fled, Wang Yanqiu did not halt but pressed her advantage, swinging the dagger at his chest.

Wang Kejin hurriedly bent backward, his whole upper body going horizontal, yet his legs were not idle either; swiftly he kicked at the arm that held Wang Yanqiu's dagger.

Wang Kejin regretted it somewhat: had he attacked with his legs rather than his hand, he would not have been stabbed by Wang Yanqiu! The shoes he wore were thick and hard, giving a kick considerable lethality, and just as a dagger would find it hard to pierce through them.

Wang Yanqiu's thrust had been a feint from the start; she had not expected that one strike to kill Wang Kejin, and so after it missed she swiftly drew her arm back, and Wang Kejin's kick met only empty air.

Seeing his kick miss, Wang Kejin planted both hands behind him on the ground, bent his legs slightly, and with a powerful push and spring launched his whole body into the air, kicking toward Wang Yanqiu.

This time Wang Kejin had learned his lesson: before Wang Yanqiu could steady herself, he lashed out with this flying kick. In truth, this flying kick shared a certain ingenious kinship with Yang Ce's Yang Family Flying Kick, only it was not quite so polished as Yang Juehuan's.

Both sent the legs off the ground, but Wang Kejin could deliver only one kick; he could not, like Yang Ce, follow one kick with a second. Yang Ce's move was purely something he had bungled together while brawling with street thugs, and it ran wholly counter to proper martial arts.

Proper martial arts could never leave a practitioner with no way out after a technique. When Yang Ce delivered the Yang Family Flying Kick, he ended flat on his backside on the ground; the upshot being that if the kick landed, well and good, but if it missed, he would be the one getting kicked.

Wang Kejin, plainly, could not afford to make such a common-sense blunder.

So he kicked only once. This made him steady, but it also robbed the kick of much of its power; so long as his opponent dodged it, the kick was wasted, and he could not, like Yang Ce, add a second after the enemy evaded.

Such a thing caught an opponent off guard; who would have thought that after dodging one kick, Yang Ce could still send a second through the air? And so Yang Ce had used this Yang Family Flying Kick to accomplish no small number of great things at critical moments.

Wang Kejin's flying kick was not so formidable as Yang Juehuan's, but it still caught Wang Yanqiu unawares! Indeed, few could arch the body backward as Wang Kejin did, using the hands as a pivot to spring up and kick; it demanded great arm strength and explosive power, and Wang Yanqiu plainly could not manage it.

Everyone leaves a brief opening after delivering or withdrawing a technique; it was only that many made the process so fast that no one could see the opening at all. This was the saying: in all the martial arts under heaven, nothing is unbreakable but speed.

Wang Yanqiu, plainly, could not manage that, and so at the very instant Wang Kejin's boot was about to land on her chest, the flying needles in Yang Ce's hand were already poised to fly.

But then a most uncanny scene unfolded: Wang Yanqiu flashed aside with such speed, her whole body, which had been before Wang Kejin, gliding to his back in a posture and gait beyond all belief, and the dagger in her hand came to rest against his neck.

An expression of disbelief came over Wang Kejin's face, and even Yang Ce's eyes went wide; he had not thought Wang Yanqiu capable of such a move!

"Butterfly Dance Subtle Steps?" Wang Kejin blurted out instinctively. He was utterly astonished; he had never imagined that while on a mission he would see the supreme technique of the Butterfly Family, the very art he most longed to learn!

This was the Butterfly Family's secret lore, taught only to blood kin of the family and to the most outstanding disciple of each generation! If Wang Kejin's mission this time went without mishap, he would be taken as a disciple under the Tombstone, and would then be able to learn this wondrous, incomparable Butterfly Dance Subtle Steps!

It was the highest and hardest art of the Butterfly Family to master, of use both in assassination and in flight, and so of the greatest utility. Legend held that it had been adapted from the peerless martial art of the rivers and lakes, the Lingbo Subtle Steps.

That such an exquisite technique should appear on the body of his target—how could Wang Kejin not be stunned?

In her heart, Wang Yanqiu too kept silently counting her blessings. She had been exposed to this Butterfly Dance Subtle Steps since childhood, but it was fiendishly hard to master; after training for a time with little progress, she had given it up.

Nor had Wang Yanqiu's father forced her to keep at it. His thinking was that Wang Yanqiu would one day marry the King of Killers, and with that connection, even if she had no martial skill at all, the killers beneath her would not dare disobey her orders. Who would dare rebel against the wife of the King of Killers? Would that not be courting death?

So Wang Yanqiu had never mastered the Butterfly Dance Subtle Steps. Otherwise, when she had tested herself against Yang Ce, she would not have been bullied so miserably; even if she could not beat him, with the Subtle Steps in hand, could she not at least have run away?

And this was precisely what astonished Yang Ce: since Wang Yanqiu possessed such formidable skill, why had she not used it when they had sparred?

Wang Yanqiu was exulting inwardly. In her desperation she had, without meaning to, brought out this Butterfly Dance Subtle Steps—a stroke of pure luck! She had often seen on television how some martial master, in a moment of crisis, broke through his own limits and grasped some technique; little had she thought such a thing would happen to her!

But Wang Yanqiu had scarcely begun to gloat when Wang Kejin's words struck her like a bucket of cold water dumped over her head! Wang Kejin actually knew the name of her technique!

You see, this was the secret manual of the Butterfly Family, passed down to none outside the clan. Apart from those within the Butterfly Family who knew of it and had seen the technique, no outsider could possibly have come into contact with it!

Yet Wang Kejin, merely from watching Wang Yanqiu take those few steps, could call out the name of the Butterfly Dance Subtle Steps. He must be someone thoroughly versed in this art!

"Who are you? How do you know that?" Wang Yanqiu demanded, pressing the dagger against Wang Kejin a little harder. This concerned the family's highest secret; though she was at odds with her father, she knew well what mattered more, and a matter of such consequence to the family could not be treated lightly.

"Who am I?" Wang Kejin was slightly taken aback; he had not expected Wang Yanqiu to ask him that! If she had not spoken first, that was precisely the question he had wanted to put to her: Who are you? How do you come to know the Butterfly Dance Subtle Steps?

But since Wang Yanqiu had already asked, Wang Kejin could hardly ask it now. At this moment his heart, too, was filled with bewilderment: how had Wang Yanqiu learned this supreme art of the Butterfly Family?

And what was more, this person was a Huaxia native, and in Huaxia... wait... Wang Kejin suddenly thought of something!

It must be... it must surely be so! Cold sweat burst out from Wang Kejin's forehead with a whoosh as a possibility occurred to him—and it seemed to be the only possibility!

Wang Kejin cautiously and tremblingly turned his head, studied Wang Yanqiu closely, and grew all the more certain in his heart: "You... you are the eldest young lady?"