Volume One: Scroll of New Rain Chapter Twenty: Rain Falls, Heaven and Earth Unfold

“Hey, idiot, where do you think you’re going?”

A lackey reached out and shoved Ye Mingke hard on the shoulder.

There was a dull thud.

Ye Mingke, who had been walking forward at a measured pace, only swayed slightly, but the one who pushed him staggered backward several steps instead.

“Idiot, you looking for a fight?”

The gang across from him suddenly erupted.

A ragtag group of teenage boys spread out, cursing and closing in from all sides, but none dared charge in, intimidated by Ye Mingke’s reputation as a strange beast who’d carried firewood since he was small as though he carried mountains.

“How fake. Clearly you’re the ones itching to fight—why not just admit it?”

Ye Mingke rolled his eyes beneath the black cloth covering his eyes, feeling irritated as he continued forward.

He felt another hand pushing at his shoulder. Just as he tensed, that hand suddenly switched tactics, seizing his momentum to yank him forward.

“Martial technique.”

As the force shifted, that phrase flashed through Ye Mingke’s mind. Though his balance was thrown, he didn’t panic; instead, he lowered his stance and dove forward with the motion.

There was a crash.

“Ow!”

The boy blocking his way tried to sidestep at the last second, but Ye Mingke’s charge was too fast and forceful. The boy barely avoided the brunt of it but was still sent flying—not just stumbling back, but knocked clear off his feet.

Ye Mingke might be kind, perhaps stubborn, but he was never so kind as to be stubbornly meek.

“Everyone, together!” The boys egged each other on, surging forward with shouts.

Ye Mingke kept walking, feeling fists coming at him from every direction. No matter how clever their moves, he just took a few punches, then, relying on his sense of where the blows had landed, retaliated.

Heavy blows. Swift blows.

As long as it’s heavy, as long as it’s fast—no matter how you react, if you’re not quick or strong enough, you can’t take my punch!

That was the beastlike instinct Ye Mingke was born with.

Painful cries and the dull thumps of fists striking flesh rang out in a messy chorus. Anyone hit by Ye Mingke’s fists either dropped immediately or retreated from the fight, clutching their wounds.

Another blow landed on his shoulder. This time, as soon as the fist brushed his shirt, Ye Mingke’s intuition screamed danger—he sharply hunched his shoulder, dodging back.

A stinging pain flared where the punch grazed him, even though it hadn’t landed squarely. What a heavy punch.

With a crash, as Ye Mingke retreated, he took two more blows but slammed straight into another boy, sending both of them flying.

They tumbled through the air. Mid-fall, Ye Mingke shoved the other aside and used the force to roll toward the spot where he’d just taken those punches.

He spun twice in the air and landed, hands and feet pressing hard into the ground, hurtling forward like a stone thrown with all one’s might, aiming straight for the two who had punched him.

“Shit,” the first boy gasped.

From the sound of his voice, Ye Mingke estimated his height, adjusted his punch a bit lower and angled it just so.

The first boy took a fist to the shoulder and went down.

Ye Mingke was holding back, not wanting to cause trouble—he’d had enough of that already.

The ability to pivot mid-air, to change his strike at the last second, this superb bodily control was another result of his over two years spent hacking and carving wood in pursuit of that boring yet perverse challenge.

“Damn—” The second boy didn’t get to finish his curse. Ye Mingke had already shifted behind him, driving his elbow hard into the boy’s back.

He could clearly feel the boy collapse beneath his arm.

Only one left—the one with the heavy punches: Li Yin.

Ye Mingke didn’t pause. His footsteps crashed against the ground as he changed direction once more, like an arrow loosed from a bow, streaking toward the spot etched into his memory.

A thunderclap cracked overhead.

At that moment, a suppressed thunder finally boomed from the sky.

Ye Mingke, surging forward, suddenly slammed his feet down, coming to a dead halt. In the next instant, his vision was seared crimson. He forced himself to stop his forward motion, instincts taking over as he dropped to the ground and rolled backward at breakneck speed.

A wall of blazing flame suddenly erupted between Ye Mingke and Li Yin, surging forward with terrifying speed.

Was that...fire?

Was that...a Daoist art?

No. What was it?

Why did it feel so familiar?

Ye Mingke dropped to one knee, half-kneeling, his long hair—once tied back—now wild and half-covering his face from his evasive dive.

His brows knitted tightly, eyes behind the black cloth fixed unmovingly ahead.

What was it?

He paid no mind to Li Yin’s manic, deranged laughter—“Come on, come at me, aren’t you so tough? Why?”

He didn’t hear the panicked shouts from the fallen boys behind him—“Boss, we’re still here!” “Run!”

He didn’t even spare a thought for the fire wall inching closer and closer. He simply stared ahead through the black cloth, transfixed.

What was that? Never had so many of them appeared at once, never so thick. He wanted to see! He wanted to see it again!

He had chased after it for two years.

He had seen it once, on a stormy night two years ago when he’d made his way home alone, eyes closed as he ran the rugged, obstacle-ridden path. That night, with eyes shut, he had “seen” a wondrous world, one that shifted with his breath and heartbeat.

The world had always been the same, but that night it transformed—because for the first time, he had seen those things, those strange spirits that twisted and changed with his breathing, his pulse, even his emotions.

But after that night, no matter how hard he tried, he never saw them as clearly again.

Yet, with the appearance of the fire wall, he felt them once more—more numerous and denser than ever, swirling and gathering rapidly with the flames.

But still, he could not see them. He wanted to see! Just once more!

The blazing fire wall drew dangerously close. He could feel the searing heat licking his face, singeing his windblown hair.

Even Li Yin, who controlled the fire wall, felt a twinge of fear at Ye Mingke’s unflinching stance—fear of what might happen next.

Yet Ye Mingke just stared ahead, unmoving.

Still, he could not see.

He slowly raised his head to the sky. Just then, a cold raindrop fell from the distant heavens, landing on his burning brow.

His fevered heart gave a shudder. Beneath the black cloth, his eyes closed.

Raindrops pattered down, more and more, falling from the sky.

In the instant his eyes closed, he finally “saw.”

That omnipresent force, filling sky and earth, was responding to him, twining and nestling around him.

Through it, he saw the world anew.

The world before him should have been a blazing red, for most of those forces were red, gathering into thick pillars of energy, streaming continuously into the fire wall before him.

Fire wall?

He snapped out of his trance and launched himself backward, dodging the fiery blast. But as soon as he put some distance, he surged forward again.

Rain, pent up for so long, now poured from the sky. The curtain of rain was heavy, but bizarrely, the fire wall burned on undiminished.

Ye Mingke charged forward through the rain, clenching his fists, striking with all his might. Each punch burst through the rain, scattering water everywhere.

“Break! Break!”

It wasn’t just his fists he threw out, but his determination as well.

To everyone else, he seemed to be punching at empty rain. But only he, behind the black cloth, could see that his fists were slamming into those pillars of energy sustaining the fire wall—or rather, it was his will battering them.

He commanded them.

“Break! Break!”

In the vision seen only by him, those pillars snapped one by one. The rain that couldn’t quench the fire wall elsewhere now shattered it in an instant.

He charged forward again, leaping over the ruined fire wall, and saw, through the pouring rain, the stunned figure frozen in place. He threw his fist.

With a thud, that figure was sent flying, crashing into the rain-soaked ground.

Ye Mingke paused, glancing coldly at his opponent.

Still irritating, he thought, but never mind—he was in a good mood today.

Without breaking stride, he continued on his way home. Though his punch had been heavy, he’d still aimed for the shoulder.

After all, when the fire wall nearly burned him, this coward had desperately tried to stop it. Even though he failed and almost roasted him, at least he wasn’t crazy enough to kill—there was still hope for him.

So Ye Mingke thought.

He had barely gone a few steps when the little tyrant’s tearful, garbled voice rang out behind him.

“Why? How could this happen? Why you?”

Forget it. He took back what he’d thought—there might be no hope after all.

He stopped, turned, and looked at the fool floundering in the rain.

“Li Yin, you’re the first person I’ve met at school to master Daoist arts.”

“You really are powerful. And I guess in your eyes I must seem awfully strange, but being strong is one thing—why bother with my strangeness?”

“I—I—” The fool stammered in the rain for a long while.

“Alright, alright, I know you like Qiao Qiao, but Qiao Qiao doesn’t care about you!”

Ye Mingke rolled his eyes in the downpour.

The fool froze.

“But what’s the point of hitting me?”

Ye Mingke spoke earnestly, with heartfelt patience.

“This sort of thing only makes the girl you like even angrier—hasn’t anyone told you the story of Big White? Guys like you always end up driving themselves to ruin. There’s never been an exception!”

“Yeah...in every story I’ve heard, it always ends that way.”

“So—so what should I do?”

“Sigh, remember this: if you want to chase a girl, you need to listen to every single one of Big White’s romance stories at least three times, ponder them well, take notes where you need to, and ask questions if you don’t understand. Don’t ask me—ask Big White.”

“I’m really busy, you know. Sigh, fighting with you guys wasted several precious minutes.”

The perpetually busy Ye Mingke let out a long sigh and strode away. He’d wasted more words than usual, simply because he was busy and didn’t want to fight again next time.

As Big White always said, never underestimate the perseverance of a lovesick adolescent—these grudges could drag on for years, and that was a terrifying thought.

Wouldn’t it be better to focus on cultivation? Who needs romance, anyway!

Ye Mingke sighed once more, sounding older than his years.

It was strange—Qiao Qiao, that silly girl, even she had someone who liked her now!

In his memory, Qiao Qiao had always been a little kid. When did she suddenly grow up and attract admirers?