Chapter 48: The Gentleman Competes Not, Save in Defence

　　There stood Liu Chengyuan, composed and untroubled, his breath steady, his gaze unshaken. With the unhurried grace of a man brushing away flies on a summer afternoon, he flicked his pliant staff with a few deft turns. One by one, more than twenty feathered arrows fell about him like petals shaken from a blossom, drifting harmlessly to the ground.　　Then came a startled cry—”Aiyo!”—as Liu, without so much as turning his head, caught the final arrow in his left hand. With a fluid motion, he let it fly. The missile struck one of the Salt Sect disciples square on the shoulder, burying itself a fair inch or more into the flesh.　　The Salt Sect disciples, alarmed by what they had just witnessed, wasted no time. In one swift motion, three of them drew their bows and loosed their arrows—thwack, thwack, thwack—the shafts slicing through the air in perfect unison.　　But Liu Chengyuan was already in motion. He moved like a gust of wind darting through reeds, weaving and slipping between the projectiles with uncanny agility. Before the archers could so much as draw breath, he was upon them.　　In one smooth arc, his right hand swung the staff upward. With a subtle flick of the wrist, the weapon flattened parallel to the ground. Then, with a sharp blow from the heel of his left palm to his right wrist, the staff snapped outward with a sudden, audible snap. The lead disciple had scarcely begun to draw back when the rod struck true, landing squarely upon the Neiguan point of his inner forearm. He gave a sharp cry—the limb rendered momentarily useless by the precise, deliberate strike.　　With a deft twist of the wrist, Liu Chengyuan swept his staff sideways, lifting it in a reverse arc to parry the incoming fists and feet of the other two disciples. The moment the weapon retracted, his right elbow shot forward like a piston, catching the disciple to his right square across the brow. At the same instant, his left palm—imbued with a measured touch of inner force—struck the leftmost disciple’s shoulder with a technique known, somewhat poetically, as Uphold the Golden Mean.　　In the span of a breath, the three men of the Salt Sect found themselves thoroughly outmatched, thrown into disarray, their every strike deftly turned aside as if they were but children flailing in the dark. Their leader, aghast at the ease with which his comrades had been disarmed, stepped forward in alarm. With a sharp cry, he assumed a stance known as The Lion Pounces Upon the Hare, and moved to strike.　　Liu Chengyuan, however, gave him not so