That pair of eyes!
Jiang Ya tries to stop Fang Yuan from walking out to the noise in the main hall, warning that Gu Yue Man Shi is one of the few people to escape alive from a clash with Bai Ning Bing and should not be underestimated, but Fang Yuan brushes the warning off with a laugh and walks out toward the commotion anyway. ch. 108
In the main hall, Man Shi stands with one foot on a stool and one on a table amid shattered wine pots, having spilled most of the liquor onto the floor, and demands five hundred primeval stones in compensation from the bowing shopkeeper for wine he calls undrinkable, ordering everyone present not to leave while surrounding Gu Masters gossip that Fang Yuan is the newly rich orphaned clansman other rivals resent. When Man Shi spots Fang Yuan he offers, with theatrical magnanimity, to forgive the debt if Fang Yuan bows and apologizes publicly, a choice the listening Gu Masters recognize as a trap either way: apologize and invite endless bullying, or refuse and be branded disrespectful toward a senior. ch. 108
Fang Yuan answers with neither words nor a bow, firing a Moonglow Gu moonblade that splits the square table under Man Shi in two; Man Shi barely manages to trigger a Monolith Gu, turning his skin to grey rock, before the blade opens a diagonal wound across his chest. A second moonblade shatters the rock plating on his raised arms and knocks him backward hard enough to collapse the table beneath his now rock-heavy body, and once he is down a third moonblade catches the gap in his defense and deepens the chest wound, while onlookers openly wonder whether Fang Yuan means to kill him and risk arrest by the punishment hall for attacking a clansman without a word of warning. ch. 108
Fang Yuan grinds a boot into the wound and tells the bleeding Man Shi flatly that he will not kill him but could as easily cripple an arm or a leg and end his career, all while a charged moonblade sits ready in his hand, unreleased. The stare that goes with the threat pulls up a memory Man Shi has carried for two years, of a white-clothed Bai Ning Bing trampling him the same way in a bamboo forest before sparing him with a mocking invitation to train up and fight again, an escape that once made him briefly famous; recognizing that same indifferent, pitying look in his own village now drains what fighting spirit he has left. ch. 108
Once Fang Yuan lets him up, Man Shi flees the tavern in obvious relief, leaving the crowd stunned into silence. Jiang Ya, who had run out at the noise only to find Man Shi already beaten, watches with his earlier jealousy replaced by the understanding that Fang Yuan is simply not the same kind of person he is. ch. 108
