Hunter

"Damn it! You bunch of bastards!"

Old Jack roared hoarsely. Lying prone on the floor, heedless of the blood streaming down his face, he reached into a hidden compartment at the edge of the carpet with his right hand and grabbed a Hand Crossbow glowing with a faint bloody light. Three dull twangs sounded, and two of the burly men who had rushed into the room screamed miserably and staggered backward.

One of the men had been struck in the throat. After the bolt entered his throat, it exploded, blasting away half his neck. This man was merely an ordinary human; he did not possess Yin Xuejiao's inhuman regenerative ability. With half his neck blown apart, he was dead beyond doubt on the spot.

The other man had taken one bolt between the brows and another through the heart. Half his head exploded, and a transparent hole was blasted through his chest. He too died instantly. His corpse staggered out and crushed two tavern tables outside.

The first burly man to charge into the room let out an enraged howl. A dim gleam flashed across the massive crossbow in his hands, whose bow arms were more than a meter long, and a black shadow shot forth. Old Jack immediately shrieked in agony. A bolt as thick as a thumb and nearly a meter long, densely covered in sharp barbs, pierced Old Jack's shoulder, sending him flying and pinning his bamboo-pole-thin body firmly to the wall.

The burly man tossed aside the emptied heavy crossbow and reached Old Jack in two or three strides. With his left hand, he drew a Serpent Dagger and viciously drove it into Old Jack's other shoulder. The dagger was incomparably sharp and sank deep into the wall as well.

A heavy punch crashed into Old Jack's lower abdomen. The man thrust his face close to Old Jack's and bellowed at the top of his lungs, "Damn vampire! Where's your money? Tell me, where's your money?"

Old Jack's throat rattled. He wore a strange grin, then opened his mouth and sprayed a mouthful of filthy blood over the man's face.

Another five or six burly men wielding all manner of weapons stormed into the room. Roaring and shouting, they charged at Yin Xuege and the two Yin Clan Warriors.

Yin Xuege licked a drop of blood splashed near the corner of his mouth from who knew where. Savoring the sweet vitality contained in the faintly warm blood, he pursed his lips in an odd smile. "Kill them all. These fellows don't look like good people either."

The Soft Sword at his belt sprang out like a venomous snake, soundless and without a flicker of cold light. The cicada-wing-thin blade gave a tremble and coiled around the neck of the burly man interrogating Old Jack. Just as he had done countless times in the Children's Hall, Yin Xuege merely gave a light tug, and the man's head flew high into the air. A column of blood sprayed two or three meters high, shrouding the entire room in blood.

The two Yin Clan Warriors left several afterimages as they rushed at the intruders. They did not use weapons. They merely swung their hands, their nails extending more than an inch like sharp blades and tearing open the invaders' throats. Several more jets of blood erupted. The entire room resembled a hellish pool of blood, every furnishing coated in a thick layer of gore.

With a heavy thud, the corpse of the burly man killed by Yin Xuege crashed to the floor. Holding the Soft Sword, Yin Xuege frowned at the man lying dead on the ground. Only then did he suddenly realize—this was an ordinary mortal. Once his head had fallen off, he could not possibly live again.

Taking a deep breath, Yin Xuege looked over the corpses strewn across the ground. It was his first time killing someone, yet he felt neither nausea nor excitement. The stench of blood merely made him frown slightly. Untreated blood was far too rank, nowhere near as mellow and sweet as an Essence Blood Potion. This slaughter left no greater impression on Yin Xuege than that.

"D-damn bastards!" Old Jack struggled to reach out and yank the dagger from his shoulder. But the barbed bolt had sunk more than a foot deep into the wall, its hooks tearing at his flesh. By his own strength, he could not free himself.

Yin Xuege walked over to Old Jack, gripped the bolt, and brutally yanked it out in one savage pull.

A great deal of shredded flesh was ripped out along with the bolt. Old Jack shrieked in pain, staggered forward two steps, then howled as he dropped to his knees and began convulsing. Blood poured continuously from the wound in his shoulder. Old Jack screamed and cursed wildly, filthy obscenities tumbling endlessly from his mouth.

"Bastards, bastards, those damned bastards! Heimda, those damned bandits—why haven't the Security Guards hanged them?" Old Jack cursed hysterically at the top of his voice. "If I'd known they were such ungrateful wretches, I should have squeezed another thirty percent off their prices whenever I took their goods! I kept them alive, and this is how they repay me!"

One Yin Clan Warrior took out a bottle of dark-red medicinal powder and poured it over Old Jack's wound. The bloody puncture wound quickly stopped bleeding. This powder was the leftover residue from the Yin Clan's refinement of Essence Blood Potions. It was useless to Yin Clan members, but to mortals, it was an unquestionable miraculous medicine.

The powder stopped the bleeding, stimulated the wound to heal, and swiftly eased Old Jack's pain.

Yin Xuege tucked the Soft Sword back into his belt and curiously looked at the corpses of the burly men on the ground. "Old Jack, what were they?"

Old Jack rose, panting heavily. Covering the wound on his shoulder, he ground his teeth and kicked Heimda's head away with one foot.

"Honored sir, they were thieves! A pack of greedy wolf cubs that could never be raised tame! They were sewer rats who stole valuable things that were inconvenient to sell, and generous, kind Old Jack provided them with living expenses, fine wine, bread, and women!"

Old Jack spread his hands, his face dark with resentment. "But I never imagined they would be so utterly heartless as to rob me! Those ungrateful bastards had completely forgotten who gave them life-saving bread when they were nearly starving to death!"

Yin Xuege nodded. The Children's Hall had taught them about such matters. This sort of thing was called dividing the spoils on the spot and concealing stolen goods.

Hasty footsteps rang out. The young man from the back alley rushed in with several burly men wielding various sharp weapons. The youth's hands were clenched into fists, faint sparks drifting from between his fingers. Clearly, he had come prepared for battle.

The moment he stepped into the blood-soaked room and saw the carnage before him, the youth let out a startled cry. "My mother! What happened here? Boss, are you changing trades and opening a slaughterhouse?"

Old Jack stood cursing at the doorway, discussing the cleanup with the young man. Heimda and the others had brazenly barged in with high-powered weapons, and the tavern's patrons outside had long since scattered in terror. There was no way to conceal this matter. How to settle the aftermath would test Old Jack's connections and influence.

Yin Xuege, meanwhile, crouched curiously before one intruder's corpse and took the oddly shaped firearm from his hand.

One Yin Clan Warrior wiped the blood from his hands and quietly walked over to Yin Xuege. Looking at the weapon made from six steel tubes as thick as goose eggs, the warrior said in a deep voice, "This is a human-made Gun-launched Grenade. It has decent power and can threaten the bodies of Star Warriors and Moon Warriors. But it poses no threat at all to a Night Warrior!"

"A human Gun-launched Grenade?" Yin Xuege curiously raised the weapon and narrowed his eyes as he aimed around the room.

"Even among humans, their powerful experts have now begun using Crystal Weapons and all kinds of Magic Artifacts. These Gun-launched Grenades are terribly outdated, extraordinarily outdated!" The Yin Clan Warrior shook his head disdainfully. "The elders say that as the laws of heaven and earth recover, as spiritual energy returns, these weapons will soon be completely eliminated."

Yin Xuege nodded and tossed the weapon onto the floor.

From the teachings of the Children's Hall, Yin Xuege knew that this was the End of the Dharma Age. The Era of Dharma Decline was about to end, and the age of Heavenly Gods and Buddhas was about to return. They stood at the boundary between two eras, where old civilization and new civilization, old power and new power, were colliding violently.

In such an age, one could rise to the heavens in a single step and stand high above all others, or miss one step and fall into eternal damnation. Just as Yin Jiying, chief steward of the Children's Hall, had told Yin Xuege and the others—this was an age in which the Yin Clan would rise with the tide, establish themselves atop all races of the world, transcend everything, and ultimately achieve the eternal and indestructible, supreme Dao Fruit!

Piercing clamor came from outside the tavern, accompanied by shrill police sirens. Yin Xuege suddenly realized that he had been thinking far too much just now. At present, he was merely a child of the Yin Clan's Children's Hall. Though he possessed the strength of a Star Warrior, he was still an insignificant little figure.

His foremost task now was to survive—to survive within the malicious Yin Clan! Before he possessed enough strength to protect himself, before he could truly grasp his own fate, his only task was to survive.

"Old Jack, find somewhere for us to hide!" Yin Xuege rose and called out to Old Jack.

As one of the Yin Clan's secret strongholds in the Great Berlin City-State, and also a notorious black-market den for laundering accounts and fencing stolen goods, Old Jack's tavern naturally possessed no shortage of hidden passages and secret rooms. In just a few minutes, Yin Xuege and the two Yin Clan Warriors had hidden themselves in an extremely concealed underground chamber.

After taking a comfortable hot bath and changing into a clean, loose robe, Yin Xuege—who had traveled all the way and had just killed someone—found himself a soft, comfortable bed. He plunged onto it and drifted into a drowsy sleep.

It was his first time leaving the Yin Clan City-State, his first time traveling such a long distance, and his first time truly killing someone.

With so many firsts, Yin Xuege was exhausted to the bone, both in body and soul. The instant his head touched the pillow, he lost all consciousness. He slept as though the sky had darkened and the earth had turned over, utterly oblivious to everything outside.

Outside Old Jack's Captain Jack's Tavern, more than a dozen Flying Cars of various sizes were parked. Dozens of Great Berlin City-State Security Guards clad in black armor moved in and out as they surveyed the scene. The intruders' corpses had all been carried outside and laid out neatly on the sidewalk, where several men in white robes were carefully examining them.

Dark shadows flickered atop several nearby high-rises. An enormous airship hovered directly above Captain Jack's Tavern, roughly a thousand meters above the ground. Inside the airship's gondola, another group of fully armed men in black stood ready in strict formation.

Old Jack stood at the entrance of his tavern, cursing and gesticulating wildly as he complained with an innocent expression to two men dressed in black trench coats and round bowler hats.

"Your Excellency the Inspector, I swear upon my father's soul that I am merely a victim! Yes, I am the victim! Those damned thugs blew open my office door. They wanted to rob me; they wanted this poor old man to lose his retirement savings!"

"That's right, they died. They were taken out. They all became dead men! But isn't that perfectly normal? According to the city-state security code, if they come to rob me, they should be prepared to be taken out by me! So they died. Isn't that perfectly normal?"

"Of course, of course, they died rather miserably. Poor children, not even their corpses were left whole! But you cannot blame me for that. It can only be said that the guards I hired had no sense of restraint. Isn't that so?"

No one knew what the two bowler-hatted inspectors said, but Old Jack suddenly leaped up in extreme agitation.

"Hey, you damned bastards, listen carefully! Even if you are inspectors of the Great Berlin City-State, you cannot treat a law-abiding citizen like me this way! The legal taxes and illegal protection fees I pay you every month are not for you to come and make trouble for me!"

"You should be going after the mastermind behind those bastards, arresting him, taking him out, and protecting my lawful rights! Instead of nagging here like an old, faded whore! Am I wrong? Have I violated any security code? Have I done anything harmful to the city-state? If not, then get the hell out of here right now!"

"I still need to clean up and reopen for business! Making money isn't easy these days. Is it wrong for a poor old man like me to earn a little retirement money?"

As he roared, Old Jack deftly stuffed two bulging money bags into the inspectors' trench-coat pockets.

Each money bag held one kilogram of unrefined natural Gold Dust. In this damned age, gold was the sole universal currency. In the Great Berlin City-State, one kilogram of Gold Dust was enough for a family of three to live comfortably and somewhat extravagantly for half a year, or to buy three to five young, beautiful maidservants.

The two inspectors pressed their hands against their pockets. Then they simultaneously lifted their bowler hats and bowed to Old Jack.

"All laws of the Great Berlin City-State exist to protect kind, law-abiding citizens like yourself! Esteemed Mr. Jack, we are deeply sorry for today's events. Without question, you are the victim. Those damned bandits got exactly what they deserved!"

Inside a large Flying Car parked by the roadside, a young man in a golden robe shook his head coldly. His dazzling golden hair swayed with the movement, like a golden waterfall rippling in the wind.

"These damned vermin, I truly ought to use Thunder Judgment on their souls!" The golden-haired, golden-robed youth snorted. Fine arcs of lightning leaped fiercely in his eyes, and a faint rumble of thunder echoed within the Flying Car.

"Sander, don't get so worked up!" In the corner of the Flying Car, a red-haired girl sat on the floor, happily drinking from a wine bottle. She smiled and tossed the golden-haired youth a seductive glance. "They are vermin, but the city-state cannot do without them! Without them, would we have to deal with those lowly lives ourselves?"

Her slender, fair hand made a gentle sweep, and three goose-egg-sized fireballs spun rapidly around her palm. She glanced through the Flying Car's window toward the tavern, then gave several cold laughs as though sensing something.

"Sander, there seems to be one of our kind inside that tavern. A fellow who has willingly fallen into depravity—he has sullied his bloodline."

Sander slowly rose. Threads of lightning emerged across his body, and low thunder rumbled without end. He raised his head proudly, extended one finger, and coolly wagged it at the girl.

"Fennice, that self-depraved fellow's aura resembles yours. In other words, he has sullied the bloodline of your clan. I'm curious—with your temperament, shouldn't you be rushing over right now and burning him into a heap of ashes?"

Someone knocked on the Flying Car's door. Sander and Fennice both fell silent. The third person in the cabin, a young man in white robes with a peaceful face and a blazing, pure aura, answered gently and opened the door.

On the sidewalk, one of the white-robed men examining the corpses darted into the Flying Car and respectfully bowed to the three people inside.

"My lords, we carefully examined the corpses and found some very interesting traces. That fellow called Heimda had his head cleanly severed in a single strike. Judging from the wound, the weapon that killed him should have been an extremely sharp Soft Sword with excellent flexibility."

"An extremely sharp, highly flexible Soft Sword?" Sander smiled as he snapped his fingers at the white-robed youth. "Hey, boss, tell me—if someone was killed by an extremely sharp, highly flexible Soft Sword in the most chaotic, crime-ridden district of the Great Berlin City-State, who would the killer be?"

The white-robed youth slowly rose to his feet. Both hands gripped a silver, radiant cross, and his peaceful face suddenly became incomparably savage.

"Damn vampires. Those evil monsters have only one fate: to turn to ashes beneath the sunlight."

A layer of blazing white light surged from between the youth's brows, swiftly forming a magnificent suit of silver-white armor over his body.

"Gather every Hunter under our command and completely surround this district. Better to kill a hundred thousand by mistake than let a single one escape!"

Sander and Fennice exchanged a glance. They shrugged simultaneously and smilingly agreed.

The weekend had arrived. Please remember to vote!

Even if you're heading out for Wind Flower Snow Moon, you can still cast a recommendation vote for Pig Head before you leave!