Chinese martial arts: From being shot and killed by the armed police during a mountain search to bec

The abbess huddled in a corner of the room.

She clutched a wooden fish tightly in both hands, her knuckles white from gripping it. From the moment the gunshot rang out, she had been hiding in this corner, too afraid to move.

Hearing the door being kicked open, she shuddered violently. Looking up, she saw that the person standing in the doorway was not one of Mo Laohu's men, but a strange man dressed in a gray cloth shirt, with a few specks of blood on his face and blood dripping from between his fingers.

The abbess understood everything at once.

"Good...good man..."

Her voice trembled violently, and her teeth chattered.

Chen Hongwu walked over, grabbed her by the back of her collar with one hand, and lifted her up.

"sit."

He lifted the abbess onto a chair, took the oil lamp from the table, and placed it in front of her. He pinched the wick with his fingers and lifted it up, lengthening it to make the flame brighter, then stepped back and sat down opposite her.

Chen Hongwu didn't waste any words: "Yesterday, Mo Laohu sent someone to say he was assassinated and couldn't come. Why did he come today?"

The abbess swallowed hard, her lips trembling before she could finally speak: "That...that's their usual tactic. Before they come, they always send someone to say they're not coming...it's a feint. In reality, they usually do come. Over time, I've figured out their routine, so I'm always prepared, whether they come or not."

Chen Hongwu nodded slightly; it was pretty much what he had guessed.

"Hero!" The nun suddenly knelt on the ground, her forehead pounding against the floor tiles, crying as she did so. "I truly knew nothing about what happened tonight! We're just an ordinary nunnery. It was Mo Laohu who took a fancy to those two young nuns and insisted on forcibly taking them. He had guns and soldiers; how dare we resist? Please, hero, spare our lives! Please, hero, spare our lives!"

He kowtowed more than a dozen times, and blood was already flowing from his forehead, leaving dark red marks on the floor tiles.

She kept begging for mercy, her voice becoming increasingly incoherent, her face covered in snot and tears.

After kowtowing for an unknown amount of time, the abbess suddenly realized that there was no sound in front of her.

She carefully raised her head, her eyes peering through the stray gray hairs falling across her forehead.

There was no one at the entrance.

Moonlight shone on the threshold, and the night breeze blew in from the courtyard, causing the oil lamp's flame to flicker and cast a swaying shadow on the wall.

The abbess knelt on the ground, holding the wooden fish, and let out a suppressed sob.

-

As dawn broke, Chen Hongwu entered Guangzhou.

As soon as the city gate opened, the soldiers guarding the city leaned against the gate archway, yawning, their guns askew on their shoulders.

Before the news of Mo Laohu's death reached the city, all was peaceful.

The bloodstains on Chen Hongwu's face had been washed away with mountain stream water. His gray cloth jacket was torn in several places by bullets, revealing his lean and muscular body. He looked like a dockworker or a martial arts master. He blended into the crowd and entered the city. The soldiers guarding the city didn't even give him a second glance.

The shops on both sides of Yonghan Road had just opened. The shop assistants were watering and sweeping the ground at the entrance. The wonton stalls were steaming hot. The windows on the second floor of the teahouse were open. The radio was playing the Cantonese opera "The Princess Changping". A fat shopkeeper leaned against the window and hummed a couple of lines. He sang the line "Falling flowers fill the sky and obscure the moonlight" off-key.

Chen Hongwu stopped at a breakfast stall on Yonghan Road, bought two sesame seed cakes, and ate them as he walked.

Turning onto Huifu Road, passing through two alleys, and climbing over a low wall, we finally stopped in front of a wooden door at the end of a narrow alley.

On his second visit, Chen Hongwu was already quite familiar with the route.

He didn't knock; he simply climbed over the wall and entered the yard.

The moment he landed, his brows furrowed.

The yard was littered with scraps of paper and several torn booklets. The clothesline was broken, and the clothes were covered in footprints.

The door to the main room was wide open, the lock had been pried open, and the lock head was crooked to one side.

He walked into the main room and looked around.

The table was overturned, all the drawers were pulled out and placed face down on the floor, and their contents were scattered all over the floor.

The wardrobe door in the corner was wide open, the clothes were rummaged through and in disarray, and the hidden compartment at the bottom of the wardrobe had been pried open, with everything inside gone.

The New Year pictures on the wall were torn down and thrown on the ground, revealing an empty hole in the wall behind them.

"Were we exposed?"

Chen Hongwu frowned.

No wonder Mo Laohu was able to set up machine guns at Ciyun Temple last night, waiting for him to take the bait, as if his every move was under the other party's control.

He didn't linger in the courtyard. He turned around, climbed over the wall, and walked back the way he came.

He crossed Huifu Road and turned into a narrow alley. The alley was lined with the back walls of old houses, with piles of junk and garbage at the base of the walls, and clotheslines strung haphazardly overhead, making the alley dimly lit.

When we were halfway down the alley, there was a sudden movement from a pile of tattered quilts in the corner.

A hand emerged from the tattered quilt, its fingers black and thin, its fingernails filled with grime.

Then came a face, covered in grime, with hair as messy as a bird's nest. Two eyes peered through the gaps in the tangled hair at Chen Hongwu, and the lips moved a few times, emitting a hoarse sound.

"Master Chen?"

Chen Hongwu stopped in his tracks.

"Mr. Chen... is that you?"

The beggar crawled halfway out of the tattered quilt, tilting his head back, a glimmer of light flashing in his cloudy eyes.

Chen Hongwu frowned slightly, but before he could speak, the beggar had already scrambled out of the tattered quilt and lunged at Chen Hongwu with his arms outstretched.

"Master Chen, you're not dead! Thank goodness you're alive! Otherwise, I wouldn't know how to explain this to my superiors!"

The man reeked of foul odors, his breath reeked of sourness, his eyes were bloodshot, and his face was covered in snot and tears, looking like a wronged old woman.

Chen Hongwu stumbled, his body veering half a step to the left.

The Baguazhang (Eight Trigrams Palm) swinging step involves turning the toes outward, turning the heels inward, keeping the waist and hips still, and moving the whole body two feet horizontally, cleanly and neatly.

The beggar missed his target and stumbled two steps before nearly falling to the ground.

"Stand firm," Chen Hongwu said.

The beggar steadied himself, wiped his face with his tattered sleeve, leaving a light-colored mark on his face from the cuff.

He sniffed hard, swallowed hard, and finally managed to calm himself down a bit.

"What's going on?" Chen Hongwu asked.

He recognized the man; he was the missing Guangdong Army spy.

"Master Chen, I almost didn't see you again!" The beggar lowered his voice, which was still trembling. "The day after you left me, the Guangxi Clique soldiers came knocking on my door."

Chen Hongwu remained silent, waiting for him to continue.

"I was lucky to be alive. I happened to be out scouting the area that day and wasn't home." The beggar wiped the snot off his face again, his eyes still red. "When I got back, I saw four plainclothes officers guarding the door from afar, their waists bulging, clearly carrying weapons. I didn't dare go back and turned around and disappeared into the alley."

He swallowed hard, his Adam's apple bobbing up and down, and then said, "Later, I hid and inquired everywhere before I found out what had happened. My superior, Old Liu, Liu Yutang, had betrayed me."

When the beggar uttered the word "betrayal," his jaw clenched so tightly it made a grinding sound.

"That bastard surnamed Liu betrayed us, and he sold out our entire operation. We uprooted it from top to bottom; not a single one escaped!"