Chapter Thirty-Nine: The Ancestral Home

Hammer and Cleaver!

Enzo followed behind Lin Qi and his two companions, stepping into Lin Qi’s ancestral home. For three whole years, Enzo’s curiosity about Lin Qi had never abated. What sort of family could possibly raise someone as extraordinary as Lin Qi?

He couldn’t help but recall their first meeting three years ago—when Enzo was threatened by the Round Table Knights. Four members had cornered him, trying to force him to join, and though Enzo knew their leader Black Horsehaus was deeply connected, he had no desire to antagonize them. Outmatched, he was battered and wounded in over a dozen places.

Just as Enzo was about to succumb, Lin Qi appeared with several burly, fierce-looking men. They smashed the four swordsmen over the head with bricks freshly torn from a back alley wall, then knocked them unconscious with iron-wrapped oak clubs. Finally, they struck the men’s wrists and elbows, inflicting hidden injuries. From that day forth, those four could never wield a sword again. Though they managed ordinary tasks, the moment they tried to fight, the damage to their wrists and elbows ensured their swordplay would be erratic. Graduates of the Army Academy, unable to wield a blade, were doomed to be useless in the military.

Lin Qi’s decisiveness, ferocity, and mercilessness left an indelible mark on Enzo’s memory.

Now, at last, he had come to Lin Qi’s home. He was eager to see what kind of family and parents could nurture someone like Lin Qi—a fifteen-year-old who had founded the Iron Fist Brotherhood in Briley University City, grown it into a powerful student gang with over three hundred peripheral enforcers. Was this something an ordinary person could achieve?

How could a typical, law-abiding family ever produce a child capable of such feats?

Lin Qi’s ancestral residence radiated a sense of profound solidity and depth. Before the main house lay a vast courtyard, nearly fifty acres in size. If Enzo’s eyes did not deceive him, the ground was paved with thick slabs of black volcanic steelstone, forged from solidified lava rich in metals.

Black volcanic steelstone—lava rock with more than seventy percent metal content—is exceptionally hard and highly resistant to all magic except lightning spells. Extracting it is perilous; even the bravest workers, risking their lives, could only quarry two or three cubic meters in a year.

Massive, tough slabs of this stone, each a meter square, paved the courtyard. The blocks were joined by intricate mortises, forming a seamless surface. What astounded Enzo even more was the metallic shimmer in the gaps between the stones, evidence that molten metal had been poured between them for extra strength.

The cost of the courtyard alone was staggering, but the surrounding walls were even more terrifying.

To the untrained eye, these walls seemed ordinary—just mountain walls three meters taller than usual. Yet to Enzo, a top student of the Army Academy, the walls, shrouded in thick vines, were nothing less than miniature fortifications. Their breadth could accommodate four people walking abreast. Arrow slits, lookout holes, battlements for defense—all manner of military features dotted the walls, though the dense vines rendered these lethal defenses almost harmless in appearance.

The wall’s material matched the courtyard: black volcanic steelstone, sealed with molten metal, a single unbreakable mass. Unless the Empire’s main field army brought heavy siege engines, no force short of ten thousand men could breach these defenses.

Recalling the unusual depth of snow at the wall’s base outside, Enzo realized there must be a moat encircling the property, and likely no less than five meters wide.

Inside, two rows of auxiliary buildings for servants stood far apart, built of the same black stone as the walls and courtyard. They leaned and jutted, as if the builders had deliberately stacked them unevenly. These angular, fortress-like structures—nearly a hundred meters long—would serve as formidable bastions should intruders ever storm the grounds. Their narrow windows, barred with steel as thick as a child’s arm, were clearly designed as firing ports for archers and crossbowmen.

Enzo was speechless: near the two auxiliary wings were stables, granaries, a small mill, and all manner of facilities befitting a great family—each built of black volcanic steelstone and constructed to military specifications.

Within the courtyard, another wall encircled the main keep. At its heart stood Lin Qi’s family stronghold: a central tower nearly a hundred meters tall, surrounded by a dozen “decorative” spires that could easily become arrow towers in wartime.

The main keep was immense; from the outside, its six stories could house two or three thousand people. Should unrest arise, it could shelter the same number for a protracted defense.

And protracted defense it would be: around the keep, Enzo counted no less than twenty-four deep wells. His fingers tingled—a standard army fortress, according to Imperial regulations, required only three wells for water supply. Lin Qi’s ancestors, it seemed, had prepared for every contingency, drilling eight times the standard number.

Enzo glanced at Lin Qi, who was chattering away to Hammer and Cleaver about the adventures of the past three years. The two brutes listened with almost “innocent” smiles, their faces radiating “affection” and “concern.”

Such violent men, displaying such tenderness and care? Enzo felt his scalp tingle anew.

As they drew closer to the main keep, more people appeared: hulking men with arms thicker than ordinary men’s thighs, their faces twisted and scarred, even the elderly who tended the horses were marked with countless knife wounds. Their expressions were ferocious and hideous.

Even the maidservants, emerging from the cowshed with milk pails and wearing only short sleeves in the dead of winter, exposed muscular arms knotted with sinew. Judging by their calluses, they were no strangers to swordplay.

Enzo suddenly understood: only a family like this could produce someone as extraordinary as Lin Qi.