Little Brat, Go Back and Drink Your Milk!

Chen Fan strode toward the fighter registration office, which reeked of rust, sweat, and cheap disinfectant.

His small, slender figure looked utterly out of place among the groups of muscular, fierce-looking men around him, like a kitten that had wandered into a den of giant beasts.

The gazes cast his way held a mixture of mockery, curiosity, and even a hint of undisguised greed.

Inside the registration office, a man with a vicious scar across his face and murky eyes had a cigarette dangling from his mouth as he impatiently stuffed a stack of bloodstained Federation currency into a drawer.

When he saw Chen Fan at the door, he frowned and waved him away roughly.

"Get lost, brat. This isn't a playground!"

Chen Fan's expression remained calm, as though he hadn't heard the malice in the man's voice. He simply walked up and spoke in a steady tone utterly at odds with his age.

"I'm here to register."

The scarred man froze, and the cigarette dangling from his mouth nearly fell to the floor.

He stared blankly for a full three seconds, then burst into a piercing fit of laughter that seemed capable of lifting the roof.

"Hahahaha! Register? You little runt, do you know what kind of place this is? That's the funniest joke I've heard all year! Haha..."

Chen Fan ignored his mockery.

He silently picked up a life-and-death waiver from the greasy table, its edges marked with dark red bloodstains, and turned to the signature line.

Then, with his small, youthful hand, he wrote his name stroke by stroke.

Chen Fan.

His handwriting was neat, each stroke pressing through the paper.

The scarred man's laughter stopped abruptly.

In the space of a single second, his expression shifted from utter mockery to startled doubt, finally settling into a numb pity, as though he were looking at a dead man.

He silently took a cold alloy tag from the drawer and tossed it onto the table.

Clang.

Three digits were engraved on the tag: 137.

Meanwhile, on the arena's top floor, in an exclusive VIP room whose luxurious furnishings made it seem a world apart from the dirty chaos below.

A middle-aged man who exuded the aura of a ruthless overlord, and whom his subordinates called Brother Bao with awe, personally bent down to pull out a seat for the gray-clad man by the sofa.

"Mr. Gu, your visit does me, Zhang Bao, a tremendous honor."

Brother Bao personally poured Gu Ci a glass of amber-colored aged liquor, its aroma filling the room.

Gu Ci didn't so much as glance at it.

His deathly still eyes seemed to pierce the thick, one-way reinforced glass, locking with unerring precision onto the tiny figure amid the surging crowd below, the one who had just received his tag.

Brother Bao followed Gu Ci's gaze, his heart full of doubt and bewilderment.

At last, unable to hold back, he spoke cautiously, a hint of inquiry in his voice. "Mr. Gu, that young gentleman... letting him come to a place like this, isn't it a little too..."

He weighed his words, but ultimately said it.

"...too risky? What if this uncut jade is broken here..."

Gu Ci finally withdrew his gaze.

He slowly raised his glass but did not drink. In a voice as hoarse as wind blowing through a graveyard, he said slowly:

"Uncut jade must be honed to an edge with blood."

"A genius unstained by blood is merely a flower in a greenhouse, shattered at a touch."

Brother Bao was shaken to his core.

He, Zhang Bao, had fought his way through this underworld for decades. He was accustomed to life and death, and had seen countless so-called geniuses, praised to the skies, beaten into piles of pulp here.

At that moment, the confusion in Brother Bao's eyes gave way entirely to awe and shock.

The VIP room fell into absolute silence.

Below, a burst of crackling static suddenly sounded from the arena's enormous loudspeaker. Immediately afterward, a voice so frenzied it distorted roared across the venue like an exploding thunderclap!

"Ladies! Gentlemen! Madmen!"

"The feast of blood and bone continues!"

"Next up! Let's give our wildest cheers to welcome a new challenger—number 137!"

"And his opponent... the heavy hitter who's already claimed seven consecutive victories, leaving no bones behind wherever he goes, the man known as the Bone Crusher—A Nuo!!!"

As the announcement ended, a roar like a mountain collapsing and a tsunami surging erupted across the arena!

Under the gazes of countless spectators, whose astonishment and confusion gave way to uproarious laughter, Chen Fan's slight figure calmly stepped onto the steel passage leading to the octagonal iron cage, stained dark red with blood.

And across from him.

A terrifying giant of a man, over two meters tall, with muscles knotted like rock and Qi and Blood fluctuations approaching 90 calories, was walking down the other passage with a vicious grin.

As he walked, he cracked the knuckles of his fists, each as big as a cooking pot. His bell-like eyes were filled with the cruelty and morbid excitement of slaughtering a child.

The piercing clang of a bronze bell had barely sounded before it was completely drowned out by a tidal wave of laughter and jeers.

The entire underground space seemed like a boiling cauldron of oil. Countless spectators waved their betting slips frantically, shouting the Bone Crusher's name until their voices grew hoarse, while the air filled with a feverish thirst for blood.

Countless obscenities and vicious curses intertwined, forming an almost tangible wave of malice.

"Bone Crusher! Bone Crusher! Crush him!"

"A Nuo! Twist his pathetic little head off and kick it around like a ball!"

"Hahaha, whose lost kid is this? Hurry home to your mommy and drink your milk!"

"I bet a hundred he can't even take one punch! Has he already pissed his pants in fright?"

Inside the octagonal iron cage, A Nuo grinned viciously as he flexed his cooking-pot-sized fists, his knuckles bursting out in a series of teeth-grating cracks.

He looked down at Chen Fan, who was about as tall as his thigh, like a giant bear looking down at an ant that dared challenge it, and let out a beastlike roar in an utterly savage tone.

"You little bastard, get on your knees and kowtow to me three times right now, and I might consider just breaking your limbs and sparing your worthless life!"

That cruel declaration was like a ladle of cold water splashed into boiling oil, instantly setting the entire arena off!

The spectators broke into even more piercing laughter. Countless obscenities mingled with cries demanding a brutal slaughter, forming an almost tangible wave of malice that slammed into the slight figure at the center of the cage.

Yet Chen Fan seemed to be in another world.

He stood there calmly, all the clamor outside unable to stir the slightest ripple in his bright eyes.

He didn't even look at A Nuo.

The vicious grin on A Nuo's face instantly froze, then twisted into a savage expression of utter fury.

He felt that this ant, unaware of its own mortality, had viciously trampled his dignity underfoot, grinding it down again and again!

"You're courting death!"

A Nuo let out a deafening roar and wasted no more words.

He drove off the ground, his rocklike muscles tensing in an instant. His massive body became a heavy truck careening out of control as he charged furiously at Chen Fan!

The impure Qi and Blood within him, nearly ninety calories' worth, erupted with a boom. A heavy punch carrying the force of his entire body and a vicious wind that tore through the air headed straight for Chen Fan's skull!