Black Fist

Cold. Hard.

A ladleful of cold water splashed over him. Su Ti jolted and quickly woke from his stupor.

"You're the weakest one in this batch."

A deep male voice spoke.

Su Ti braced one hand against the floor and tried to get up, but his numb body failed him twice in a row. This only made the man with the deep voice more displeased.

"Did you use too much sedative when you grabbed him, or is this kid just too weak? Looking like this, how is he supposed to get in the ring?"

Sedative? Ring?

He was just a deadbeat programmer at a state-owned enterprise. When had he ever had anything to do with either of those things?

Filled with intense confusion, Su Ti forced himself to his feet. Only then did he finally manage to prop himself up and see his surroundings clearly.

It was a room resembling a locker room, reeking of sweat. A young man with his hands tied and mouth gagged huddled in the corner, making muffled whimpering sounds, his eyes filled with terror.

A tall man in a black suit stood before him, wearing a black mask patterned with designs. He looked at Su Ti on the floor as if he were merchandise.

What shocked and horrified Su Ti the most, however, were the hands he had used to brace himself against the ground.

They were fair and slender, like they had never done manual labor. That was not the important part. The important part was that the half of his pinky finger he had lost in an accident as a child was now completely intact!

An unfamiliar environment, an unknown man, and... an unfamiliar body.

Kidnapping? Transmigration?

Faced with so many unbelievable things, Su Ti finally asked the first question since waking up. He stared in shock as he asked.

"Who are you? Where am I?"

The masked man did not answer. Instead, he glanced at his watch. Its hands were already nearing twelve.

Seeing the time, he snapped his fingers. Outside the locker room, two men in black suits wearing similarly masked faces, though without any patterns, immediately pushed open the door and entered.

After entering, they looked questioningly at the man in the patterned mask.

"Boss, it's almost time. Which of these two goes up first?"

"The one deeper inside. He woke up first, so there should be a first come, first served order."

"No problem, Boss."

The other two men in black suits gave sinister grins. They walked past Su Ti and headed inward, grabbed the young man who began struggling frantically upon hearing this, lifted his arms and legs respectively, and carried him out of the room like a pig.

As he was taken away, Su Ti met the young man's eyes. They were filled with terror as he looked at Su Ti, whimpering through his gag as if begging for help.

The sight made Su Ti's already furrowed brow crease even deeper.

However, he said nothing. The situation was clearly wrong. This was not the time to play the hero, so he could only silently watch the young man being taken away.

After the young man was taken away, the black-suited man in the patterned mask checked his watch again and said blandly.

"You're next. Prepare yourself. That kind of trash won't last long, so you probably still have ten minutes."

With that, the man in the patterned mask walked out and shut the locker room door. The sound of it being locked came from outside.

Almost the instant the door was locked, a massive flood of memories suddenly surged into Su Ti's mind.

The torrent was enormous, crazily pouring into his head without caring whether he could process it.

He did not know how much time passed. When he finally came back to himself, he was drenched in sweat and pale-faced.

After roughly absorbing the flood of memories, he finally learned one fact.

He had transmigrated.

He had gone from being an old hand at a state-owned enterprise who did nothing all day, muddled through work, played games after work, had no plans to buy a car or house, much less marry or have children, and intended to die alone, to a world that appeared to be a parallel Earth.

This world's technological and civilizational development was roughly the same as Earth in his previous life. His current identity was a first-year history student at Mingguang University in Mingguang City, Nanjiang Province, Xiya Country.

The owner of this body was also named Su Ti. He was nineteen years old, from an ordinary family, had ordinary grades, attended an ordinary local second-tier university, looked ordinary, and was an ordinary honest, law-abiding person.

During summer vacation, this Su Ti had wanted to earn some pocket money, so he found a summer job delivering food. To earn more, he worked the night shift. When one delivery was about to be late, he took a shortcut known for frequent murders, and then...

He was stopped by two people in black masks, who covered his nose and mouth with a cloth soaked in sedative. He completely lost consciousness.

Perhaps from excessive fright, or perhaps from too much sedative, the original owner died suddenly and never woke up again.

That was how Su Ti had come to transmigrate and take his place.

At this point, Su Ti finally sorted out the chain of events.

He had transmigrated, only to find that the host body he had transmigrated into had been kidnapped!

And the reason they had kidnapped him was not to demand ransom from his family. His family was ordinary; both his parents were teachers at local middle schools and did not have much money altogether.

If it was not for ransom, then why had they kidnapped him?

Su Ti took a breath and slowly leaned his weak body against the locker room wall.

This locker room had been temporarily built from welded iron sheets. It was extremely crude, so naturally, it had poor soundproofing.

He pressed his ear against the wall and faintly heard slight screams and a boiling tide of excited voices from the other side.

"Beat him to death! Beat him to death!"

"Black Bear, beat him to death! I bet he won't last one minute!"

"He's almost done! He's almost done! One minute, one minute! Yeah!"

Amid the violent cheering and the muffled sounds of flesh colliding, the "fight" on the other side seemed to have reached its conclusion.

Su Ti's heart began pounding violently. With so much information, he already understood what was happening beyond the wall.

It was the underground black-fist murder case that had recently become notorious in Mingguang City!

The matter was very simple. Over the past month, multiple people had gone missing in Mingguang City. Before long, the missing people became corpses that appeared in various hidden locations on the city outskirts.

Every corpse had died from barehanded combat, covered in traces of being beaten to death by professional fighters.

According to investigations by the relevant authorities, these missing people who had mysteriously died were likely connected to the rampant underground black-fist matches in Mingguang City.

So-called black-fist matches were violent and bloody events that used illegal underground fighting as a gimmick for gambling.

Such competitions belonged to the dark side of the underworld and were not uncommon in Xiya Country. Besides Mingguang City, many other provinces and cities had similar underground matches. Su Ti had heard a little about them before.

But unlike other underground black-fist matches, the organizers of the Mingguang City matches were deliberately kidnapping ordinary people and forcing them into black-fist events with extraordinarily high death rates.

As for their purpose in doing so, the authorities had yet to determine it.

But now, from the uproar of voices beyond the wall, Su Ti had guessed the organizers' purpose.

Underground black-fist fighting was a bloody event of the underworld, an illicit industry with enormous profits.

Most people who came to watch such matches had serious morbid curiosities. They craved violence, blood, and even killing.

The ordinary people kidnapped and forced to compete were probably sacrifices meant to satisfy those people's dark desires.

"Ladies and gentlemen, let us take a brief break to clean the ring. Today's third dessert will be served shortly!"

The host's voice boomed through a microphone from beyond the wall. Su Ti could hear it clearly even without pressing his ear to the wall.

Hearing that, Su Ti's face turned pale. Even an idiot would know that the third dessert meant him!

But he had only just received the original owner's memories and figured out the situation. He had not had time to do anything at all!

Su Ti hurriedly scrambled up from the floor. After resting for a while, the numbness had faded from his body. He turned the locker room upside down, searching for a way out.

Fighting head-on? Getting into the ring and fighting his way to survival had never even crossed his mind!

"When I was young and hot-blooded, I trained in mixed martial arts for a few months. Later, I quit because there was nowhere to show off. So many years have passed—how could I possibly remember those few moves now?!"

Su Ti gritted his teeth. Even if he remembered, it would be useless. How could his amateur fighting skills compare to professional underground black-fist fighters?

He had never dealt with underground black-fist fighting, but he knew it was genuine killing martial arts, created specifically to kill!

With the original owner's skinny arms and legs at nineteen, would he not end up like that young man from before—beaten to death in the ring within minutes, then become another corpse floating down the river outside Mingguang City?!

So he had only one thought.

Run!

He had only just transmigrated. He did not want to die in this black-fist arena.

So if he wanted to live, he had to escape!

But Su Ti searched every inch of the locker room and found nothing but several filthy towels. There were no windows anywhere. Other than the locked door, there was no other exit at all.

Breaking out by force was even less realistic. Though this was an iron-sheet room, it looked more like a converted shipping container. The walls were hard, welded shut and reinforced. Without suitable tools, there was absolutely no way to escape.

His phone had long since been confiscated. He wore only a tank top and thin pants, with no means of contacting the outside world whatsoever.

After all that effort, Su Ti slumped heavily against the wall, his face ashen.

Though he had roughly known his efforts were futile, that the organizers would never leave a loophole for ordinary people like them to escape through, the realization that there was no way to heaven and no door to earth still filled Su Ti with despair.

Fear filled his heart, and his body began trembling from terror. The shaking grew increasingly intense, his legs turning weak as he nearly collapsed to the floor.

He was not some underworld special forces soldier, nor was he an assassin. Before transmigrating, he had merely been a nine-to-five programmer sitting in an office, drifting through life and waiting to die.

He was used to facing a computer, typing on a keyboard, playing games, watching videos, and voicing his opinions online, but he was not good at fighting people to the death in an octagon!

Fear crashed over him like a tide, nearly crushing his will. He truly did not want to die.

But when he remembered the young man who had been carried out and thrown into the ring because of fear and despair, Su Ti had no choice but to force himself to gather his courage.

He had nowhere left to retreat. Even if he collapsed on the floor, even if he begged for mercy, people like these would never let him go.

Be carried into the ring like a pig waiting to be slaughtered and killed without dignity, or fight openly and die with a little more dignity—those were the only two choices left to Su Ti.

At that thought, an inexplicable fury rose from Su Ti's heart, and strength returned to his body with that anger.

"Fuck it. If I'm dying, I'll splash you with my blood!"

The next second, Su Ti sprang up like a coiled spring, his expression turning fierce. He ripped the filthy towels apart and used techniques he had learned at a fighting club in his memories to wrap his fists.

With no way back, some people would feel fear and beg for mercy, like the young man from before. That was why he had been tied up, gagged, and forcibly carried into the ring.

But some people would tear away their usual disguises, reveal a savagery no one had ever seen, and completely unleash their beastly nature.

Su Ti was the latter.

The lazy expression cultivated through over twenty years of comfortable living vanished completely within seconds. As he wrapped his fists, a vicious gleam flashed in his eyes, like a beast driven into a corner and ready to fight to the death.

And just as his aura changed completely.

Ding. Crimson Martial Arts Modifier activated.