New Mission: Endless Slaughter

The Life and Death Talisman was incredibly useful, capable of controlling a person with ease. Xia Yu knew the system would never give him something useless without reason. After loading it, he tried making one without using it on anyone and found that it consumed very little Internal Energy. With the Nine Yang Divine Skill's inexhaustible nature, he recovered it instantly.

Xia Yu vaguely remembered that the Life and Death Talisman seemed to require a special kind of Internal Energy to make. But then again, the system could do anything, right? He got some more water and played around, turning it into ice in an instant. He felt like an ice machine.

Sure enough, the system issued a new mission the next day:

After a period of tempering, you have acquired a basic grasp of certain combat techniques;

Now that you possess several divine skills, you no longer need to bother with petty scuffles. Go take control of a few

thugs to provide intelligence, and find some gangs with strength in numbers to experience more intense

combat and cultivate the killing aura of an expert. Go, Pikachu!

Within 90 days, stop fifteen gang weapons or drug deals within New York City. You must

kill everyone on both sides of each deal. The points awarded for each will vary according to the number of people and the amount of money involved.

Mission completion reward: 5,000 points and one system lottery draw. Failure penalty: 5,000 points.

Sure enough, the skill had a use once he'd been given it. Fifteen gang deals in all—it looked like he couldn't just wander around Brooklyn. He would have to plant a few thugs in every district to gather intelligence.

In an apartment near Chinatown in lower Manhattan, two white men lay on the floor, convulsing and clawing at their bodies. Their faces were so distorted they were barely recognizable as human. A person in strange black armor sat on the sofa beside them, his eyes cold beneath his mask as he watched the two men on the floor. He lazily snapped the fingers of his right hand.

Strangely enough, at the snap of his fingers, the two men on the floor quickly stopped scratching. But the aftereffects of their immense agony had only just begun to fade, and their bodies still convulsed in waves.

Over the past few days, Xia Yu had traveled through neighborhoods large and small across New York City, bringing dozens of street-level gang members under his control. Only today had he remembered that he ought to station someone right outside his own home, so he would at least have a warning if anything happened.

"Have you made up your minds?" Xia Yu's voice was utterly cold.

John Abuz felt like he'd been cursed with rotten luck lately. He and one of his men had been at home, bothering no one and happily smoking marijuana, when some inexplicable guy had barged in out of nowhere and told John to work for him and provide him with information from then on. Of course he couldn't agree. He was one of the biggest figures in the surrounding neighborhoods, damn it!

Then, somehow, two pieces of ice had appeared in the guy's hand. Yes, he was absolutely sure he'd seen them right: two pieces of ice. John Abuz swore he could even see the cold mist rising from them. Then the guy flicked his hand, and the ice went into John's body. Was this a movie? What followed was hellish torment, endless pain and itching that tortured him from body to soul. This was no human; he was a devil, definitely a devil.

"Hm?" Hearing no answer, Xia Yu voiced a question.

John Abuz jolted. He glanced at his underling beside him, who was already delirious, and struggled to say, "We agree. Whatever you say, we agree. Please don't do that to us again." He was genuinely terrified.

"Very good. As long as you satisfy me, the thing inside your body definitely won't act up. But if you disobey me, no matter where you are..." As Xia Yu spoke, he pointed at John Abuz's underling beside him.

"Bang!" A fist-sized hole blew straight through the delirious man's chest where his heart was, spraying blood all over the floor. John Abuz's mouth fell open in shock. Then he dropped to his knees and declared his submission to Xia Yu, trembling all over. Xia Yu gave a noncommittal nod, left his contact information, and drifted away.

Yes, he drifted away. Just as he had when he arrived, he used qinggong to float straight down from the sixth-floor window. John Abuz didn't see it; he hadn't dared raise his head at all. Only a very, very long time after Xia Yu had left did he slump onto the floor, staring at the corpse beside him, unable to speak for a long time.

This was no longer Xia Yu's first time killing. The new mission required him to kill, so he had deliberately started killing people while using the Life and Death Talisman to bring others under his control. It was partly to get used to it and partly to kill the chicken to warn the monkey. At first he had struggled to suppress his nausea; now he could kill without batting an eye. Repeated killing had brought enormous changes to Xia Yu's mindset, as well as his appearance and bearing.

As the number of people under his control grew, Xia Yu finally received intelligence about his first major deal.

Inside an abandoned factory in the suburbs of New York, with no one around and the lights dim, the vicious-looking parties to the deal were all armed with guns. Each side had brought a suitcase. It was a standard drug deal, with around twenty people split between the two sides. They hadn't even had time to exchange opening remarks.

Several swishes rang out, and immediately afterward, fist-sized holes suddenly burst open over the hearts of three people on each side, as though someone had planted small bombs inside them. Blood and flesh sprayed across the floor. These drug dealers were vicious criminals; every one of them had blood on his hands. Even so, they were stunned by the sight. Before they could react, swish, swish, swish—another six fell.

Only then did the drug dealers react, drawing their guns and searching for a target. This showed the difference between real gangsters and petty thugs: once they reacted, not one of them screamed or shouted, and all drew their guns quickly to respond. But it was already too late. Every light suddenly went out.

Everyone was plunged into darkness. Dressed in black armor and wearing a black mask, Xia Yu used Lingbo Weibu to move silently behind a drug dealer like a ghost. One punch, just one punch to the back over his heart, and the Internal Energy of the Nine Yang Divine Skill easily shattered the dealer's heart meridian.

With a thud, the corpse hit the floor. The drug dealers could bear it no longer. Some began calling their companions' names, while others felt their way toward the exit, only to be knocked down by Xia Yu's fists after a few steps.

The darkness was so complete that a hand held in front of one's face was invisible, but to Xia Yu it was no different from having the lights on. One, two, three—more and more drug dealers began to fall. At last, someone couldn't take the pressure and began screaming and firing wildly in every direction. With such an overwhelming difference in strength, they might not have been able to kill Xia Yu even in a direct confrontation. Firing blindly like this was even more useless; it only gave away their positions faster.

Before long, twenty-one corpses lay scattered across the factory floor. Xia Yu took the cash brought for the deal and left the drugs for the police to handle. Reeking of killing intent and blood, he left the scene.

When the police finally arrived the next day, they all drew sharp breaths at the sight. Of the twenty-one corpses, twelve had died with their hearts blown apart, eight had no visible wounds, and one had died from a gunshot wound, accidentally killed during the wild shooting. It looked very much like one gang had robbed another, but why had they left the drugs behind? Thoroughly baffled, the New York police could only tell the media it was a gang feud.

Yet there seemed to have been a few too many gang feuds that month. In the space of one month, Xia Yu had gone into action six times and killed more than a hundred people with his own hands. His methods had grown increasingly brutal. He hardly used the Life and Death Talisman anymore, instead landing blow after blow and beating people to death with his fists and feet. The killing aura about his brow grew heavier and heavier. Now, when he went to eat at the hot pot restaurant, the young cashier hardly dared look at him.