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“So, Young Master,” Jianjun Ji said as he moved his spear in quite the familiar way, “Is this something you do every day, then?”

As had become his norm, Jun was practicing his spear and essentially going through his daily exercises during the morning. It was mid-morning now, and he could hear the justle and movement from inside his compound as his servants and his women did whatever is it that they did when they weren’t gawking at him. Without him being there to see them, he could only speculate, but going through his exercises took longer when he had chatty spectators.

“It’s something of a habit,” Jun admitted, as he thought about which sequence to go through today. One that dealt with swordsmen again? Or, perhaps…

Did he dare go against two opponents?

No, no, no, better to concentrate on something simple while he tried to get the breathing “right”; it was still bugging him. He’d review the swordsmen lines.

“I must say,” his newest bodyguard Captain said as he also went through the paces of the Yan spear, “I am impressed, Young Master.”

Jun knew why he was here. After the guffaw yesterday, the man needed to make some sort of attempt at recovering Face if not Jun’s good opinion of him. And so here he was, actually imitating and following through Jun’s movements, making it seem as if Jun were leading their practice.

Jun hadn’t asked for that, of course, but the man had found Jun training and asked if he could greet the rise of the sun going through the paces with a Yan son.

Despite everything, Jun knew that he was going to have to live with the man in his service so he figured, heh, why not? Thus far, his judgment and luck were questionable, but his attempt to get into his good books wasn’t objectionable.

“Why is that?” Jun allowed him the opportunity to kiss ass as he imagined the swordsman in front of him being like the bandit leader he fought; someone risking everything to close the distance with him. But, hmm, wearing armor this time around.

The obvious and most lethal lines of attack didn’t change; the throat and the face could not be impervious lest it impede the man’s own mobility, so he had to assume that those would be lines of attack the man would be actively defending.

But just in case, he flickered the spear through the cradle of his left hand and aimed at the face anyway.

Just because Jun knew that the man should defend that line of attack didn’t mean the man, in the rush, remembered. So it was at the very least good to remind him.

“I thought you were going to go through all the forms in order and in kind,” Jianjun said, “You know, like it’s usually done?”

“But this Young Master already knows the Yan spear,” Jun frowned, “What he doesn’t have is good judgment, perhaps even good timing but definitely not full familiarisation as it applies to combat.”

What Jianjun was speaking of was essentially how everyone learned the Yan martial arts, and every other kind of martial art now that Jun thought about it. Repetition of set forms from beginning to end until you could do them all flawlessly. Sprinkle in some practical demonstrations of the moves and, boom, you had a martial artist.

But even with sparring, being a good martial artist and being a good fighter were widely overlapping things that weren’t quite the same thing. No, not even in this world.

“The Young Master wishes to be good at combat?” Jianjun was surprised as he asked.

Ah shit, the expectations he could get from his family if this were ever to get back to them.

“Are you perhaps implying that this Young Master isn’t already good at combat?” Jun deflected, hoping that they all thought that this was his ego talking and not actual ambition. Personally, Jun thought that if he was going to practice this thing, he might as well make it useful.

“I misspoke,” Jiangjun apologized, “Still, since there is a purpose deeper than just ingraining the Yan technique to this, may this Jianjung ask what it is?”

“We are fighting an armored swordsman,” Jun grunted as he assumed that his stab would be blocked. As with the bandit chief, the danger was always in getting to close range and having to contend with a vastly decreased repertoire of moves and tactics, “See how the torso doesn’t offer vital areas anymore?”

“I…guess?” Jianjung squinted in front of him, trying to imagine it.

“Assuming that they are armored like this Young Master’s retinue, we change targets-” Jun said as he shot his spear at the imaginary swordsman’s knee as soon he retrieved his first thrust, “And work around it.”

“Even if his hands are armored, a good strike can still break fingers,” Jun took a step back as he swung, not thrusted, his spear into Bird Falls, with the weapon held above his head. He was assuming that his opponent would be close enough for his bladed point to land on the hands holding the sword,

“And if that fails?” Jun asked as he assumed he was parried somehow, by batting his spear to his left for the sake of argument, “We fall back and try again.”

Jun imagined he was taking the force of the blow, letting his spear twirled about him and letting the motion help him twist into a step back, with his spear still being cradled with his left hand and being pushed with his right. But with his footing switched.

Coiled Snake.

“Eventually, he’ll catch up to us,” Jun admitted, “If he is persistent enough and if he is good enough. But, hmm, let’s try and see what that looks like, why don’t we?”

So he thrusted with both hands from this position, fully leaning into the blow and completely committing to it. He didn’t aim for one of his joints or limbs this time, rather, he aimed for the armored chest. This blow wasn’t supposed to kill, it was supposed to arrest the momentum of his foe and allow him time to make space again.

Assuming the swordsman, again, were able to anticipate this, well-

Jun stopped as he felt one of his hands being sliced.

Right, a dead end as expected. This pathway was, thus, a gamble.

… although maybe he could start speculating on how he could fight with a sliced hand to salvage it?

“So…what do we do now?” Jianjung asked, his spear still elongated from Coiled Snake.

“We think about it,” Jun went back a few steps: what was it that he could have done better except, perhaps, just do a different move?

Could he have aimed a different place other than the torso? Maybe the thighs offered less opportunity for counterplay? Maybe he had to get better with his aim so that he could correctly aim for the hands with that last thrust?

But perhaps, if he even were just breathing properly…

Jun groaned.

He forgot to concentrate on his breathing. No wonder none of his moves feel right!

“What do you know about breathing?” Jun found himself asking the Captain of his bodyguard.

“As in normal breathing, martial breathing or Cultivator breathing?” Jianjun asked.

“Forget it,” Jun shook his head. It wasn’t really a good topic to talk about with people assigned to him by his family. Especially if Jun had somehow stumbled upon that last thing.

“Um,” somebody he didn’t know said, and Jun was immediately turning around, his spear in a ready Pouncing Stance.

A man in traveling clothes raised his hands in peace.

“I have a delivery for the Young Master of the Yan!” the master quickly explained himself, “We aren’t familiar with noble etiquette, so we weren’t sure if it would have insulted him to knock on his door! We hoped you fine gentlemen would help us with that!”

“....Captain Jianjun,” Jun slowly said as the head of his bodyguard frowned.

“Where are the men that are supposed to be patrolling the area?”

---

As it turned out, four new members of the guard had come along with Jianjun. It made sense; seeing as Jun was down four guards from the traitors that participated in the ambush outside the city.

They hadn’t presented themselves to Jun, as etiquette didn’t require it, but perhaps he was going to have to insist that they do so in the future now.

“Young Master, Guard Captain!” the four new members of his retinue had been playing dice from their beds when Jun and Jianjun came into the barracks, “How may we serve?”

Given that the barracks had to house about a dozen people, it was a wooden building with a couple of rooms to house the guards, as well as a couple of facilities to house their arms, armor, and rations. It was connected to the warehouse and the stables while being 50 feet from Jun’s mansion. The ground between the two complexes was churned earth that was, even now, holding the 5 cart order of seeds that Jun had ordered.

Now, when Jun was in his mansion, there was no need for all his guards to be on duty all the time. Point in fact, only a few of them needed to be on duty at any time. Of his 13 guards, only about 4 needed to be out on the road atop their horses, plodding through the residence and the roads leading to Jun’s home to make sure he was aware of the surroundings.

The rest were left alone, hopefully so that they could concentrate on working out, servicing their equipment, or even just resting. But, yes, time for self-indulgence figured into that too.

Jun knew his guards and so he knew that they used most of their free time FOR fun. That meant going to the nearby villages to visit their inns or their brothels. They weren’t that far. From time to time, “official” duties would have them go there to get goods for the mansion, but they still got to relax there.

Otherwise? The only true duty they were called upon was patrolling, which only required 4 men. During the night, that number went down to 2, and they didn’t even need to be patrolling, just making sure no one approached the house unchallenged.

Now, a caravan was not exactly hard to spot, and so Jun should have been informed of it by one of his guards. Not find out about it by being chanced upon by the delivery people.

Jun didn’t care. Or, rather Jun didn’t want to care. But he had girls to take care of now, and so he had to at least make sure this was an accident.

“Did you know that you are supposed to be patrolling?” Jianjung asked, slapping down threaded bamboo split sticks that had a schedule written in it.

“....we did not,” the new men admitted.

“Why don’t you know?” Jianjung asked.

“Nobody told us,” one of them said, “They just up and left.”

“Yeah!” one of the others agreed, “They just told us that we couldn’t come and left us here!”

“...I have a thought, Young Master,” his newest Guard Captain said after hearing that.

“Oh?” Jun allowed.

“It doesn’t sound as though blame doesn’t fall solely on these men,” he opined.

“T-that’s right, Guard Captain!” one of the men spoke.

“Indeed, it sounds like we have all the men to blame,” Jiangjun wisely nodded. The new guys started to nod before they realized that there was something wrong with it.

A few hours later, all his men were in front of him.

They were stripped down to their waist and they had picks, sickles and shovels in their hands as they upended the expanses of grass leading to the hills off in the distance.

It hadn’t taken long to summon all of the guards from their dens, where they were told they would be helping plant all the Yellow String Weed that Jun had bought. They tried to protest, of course, but they were informed that the poor new guards had been done such a disservice by their poor communication skills that a whole caravan had been able to penetrate all the way to Jun’s house unimpeded and unchallenged.

And since it would be unfair to the new guards to bear all the blame, well, they would all have to answer.

Now, while Jun didn’t know if this was excessive, he would be lying if he said that there wasn’t something satisfactory about this.

“We’ll have all these flowers planted within the week,” Jianjun promised Jun. He was also down to his pants, and was toiling away with his men.

Truth be told, nobody knew how to treat the weeds or how to correctly work them. So they were treated them like a food crop, and toiling the ground so that they would have minimal competition from any other plant.

Now, none of the men had experience farming, but Jun’s house servants did, and so a few of the women were out here, showing the men how it was done.

One of them, a thirty-year-old old something married mother, was actually bending on the ground, showing a surprisingly plumb behind.

“Hey, love, were that I was your skirt and not the Guard Captain,” Jianjun called out to the married woman, “then I could go wherever you go!”

The woman actually went straight and made to cover her ass. But the look she shot Jianjun wasn’t annoyed. No, it was flushed and she giggled as she went back to uprooting the grass.

Her ass was still as visible as it had been before Jianjun made his comment.

True to his word, his new Guard Captain had wasted no time in playing his charm with the servant women and, well, they weren’t to Jun’s taste but he wouldn’t condemn the man for his. A lot of impropriety was going on, but none of it was forced so Jun couldn’t care less.

Given that Jianjun hadn’t excused himself from planting the seeds as he was making the men, well, Jun had to conclude that, perhaps, the main flaw his new Guard Captain had was just being unlucky. Many men were led around by their libido but, aside from setting his eyes on Jun’s women the first day he got here, it hadn’t affected his performance much.

Oh, he wasn’t as good as Lou Tang had been at fulfilling his tasks. But then, Lou Tang practically threw himself at his job. He was just…very Lou Tang about it.

“She’s held out for a few days,” Jianjun conspirationally whispered to Jun, “But I am sure I only need a week more to get her to start sneaking into the barracks.”

“What of her virtue?” Jun raised an eyebrow.

“Fuck it,” Jianjun shrugged.

“What of her husband?” Jun asked again, eyeing the woman as she moved along and one of the guards moved in to take over for her.

“I’ll make his wife happy,” Jianjun said, “What does that make me, if not a virtuous man?”

“Truly, an example for all other men,” Jun chuckled, “But a week, really?”

His new Guard Captain started walking backward towards where the servant had been. He was grinning at Jun as he said, “Such disbelief Young master. Allow this Jianjun to prove his claim.”

Then he swung his hand, his middle finger sticking out, towards where the servant had been.

And where the guard was now.

“What the FUCK!” the guard screamed as Jianjun’s hand connected with his ass, the Captain’s finger sinking into the fabric of the man’s pants. It went inside his buttcheeks and, whatever the Captain’s flaws, his aim was evidently very good.

The guard, one of the new men, jumped out of Jinajun’s hand and finger, and roared as he turned around to see who had violated him.

Only to meet Jianjun’s shocked face.

“Captain?” the man said, audibly betrayed.

“So, it only takes you one week to bed your targets?” Jun couldn’t help himself, “That’s what you said, right?”

The man’s betrayal turned to fear, and all the guards looked at Jianjun with trepidation as the man, admirably, managed to keep his composure.

“It was but a jest,” Jianjung managed to say with a straight face.

But the men didn’t believe him.

By the time the misunderstandings were allegedly cleared, the sun had already started to go down.

Jun was sitting down at his table, with Xia and Fu at his side. Dinner was a “simple” fair of duck and chicken, with some supposedly fancy sauce and rice, when one of his servants excused herself to present him a message.

The messenger was from a village about two days away from the mansion, and they were calling upon the Yan family to fulfill one of their duties as feudal protectors. A Spirit Beast was, and he was quoting here, “ruining the land” and so their messenger had supposedly traveled day and night to beg a response.

Normally, these sorts of requests would have simply been sent to the main Yan compound to be processed by the Yan bureaucracy. And, yes, Jun got them from time to time in his second life, because peasants didn’t know any better. He usually just sent them along to their ultimate destination.

But this message wasn’t just a request of the Yan family for help.

It was, specifically, a request for Jun Yan to help.

Which was, well, something that had never happened in his second life.