Ye Qingxuan wanted to pursue him, but Mottled Fish refused to entangle himself with him. He suddenly planted his foot, turned, and fled for the gap in the courtyard wall.
The night wind howled, sweeping up the rotten leaves on the ground. That figure bounded like a rabbit and swooped like a falcon, about to vanish into even deeper darkness.
A surge of blood and qi roiled in Ye Qingxuan's chest.
If he let him go, everything that had happened tonight would come to nothing. Such an opportunity might not appear again for years.
He clenched his teeth, drove off the ground, and shot forward like an arrow in hot pursuit. One fled and one chased through the ruins and broken walls, while gravel and rubble kept giving off faint sounds beneath their feet.
Mottled Fish's left shoulder was injured, and his movements were inevitably sluggish as he ran. He nearly got caught several times. Shock and fury filled his heart, and he turned his head and roared, "Boy, are you really going to exterminate me to the last?"
Ye Qingxuan did not answer. He merely lowered his head and pursued with all his might, steadily narrowing the distance between them.
Seeing that escape was hopeless, Mottled Fish's vicious nature erupted. When he reached a corner, he suddenly halted, then advanced instead of retreating. Spinning around, he swung up his right leg, carrying a gust of vicious wind as it swept straight toward Ye Qingxuan's waist and ribs.
That whip kick was massive and powerful, producing a muffled boom in the air. It was a technique he had painstakingly trained for years at the second level of Body Tempering. Even an ordinary wooden post could be snapped with one kick.
He had calculated that Ye Qingxuan was young and, faced with such a vicious move without warning, would certainly block or dodge first. Any slight hesitation would give him a chance to survive.
Yet Ye Qingxuan's response was completely beyond his expectations.
Ye Qingxuan neither dodged nor evaded. Instead, he abruptly thrust out his chest and charged straight into the whip kick.
"Bang!"
The dull impact rang out with startling clarity in the deathly silent ruined courtyard.
Mottled Fish felt as though the instep of his foot had struck an iron plate wrapped in cowhide. A powerful rebound surged back along his leg bone, numbing half his body.
The viciousness on his face instantly froze, transforming into utter bewilderment.
He knew better than anyone how much force that kick contained. An ordinary person would either die or suffer several broken bones after taking it. Yet the youth before him had merely swayed, grunted, and remained standing.
A dull ache came from his waist and ribs through his clothes. His blood and qi churned, but his tendons and bones were unharmed.
After the Indestructible Vajra Body had reached mastery, the flesh throughout his body had become tough, with strength contained within. External force of this level could no longer injure his foundation.
In a life-or-death struggle, a moment's hesitation was a gulf impossible to cross.
At the instant Mottled Fish stood stunned, Ye Qingxuan moved.
He retreated half a step along the force of the whip kick, dissipating its remaining momentum. Then he lunged forward, spread his arms, and clamped them around Mottled Fish's right leg, which had yet to retract, like iron pincers.
Mottled Fish was horrified.
His right leg had been seized, forcing his entire weight onto his injured left leg. His shoulder, pierced through by a sharp arrow, already tugged at the qi and blood of half his body. Now that he had lost his balance, he tottered on the verge of collapse.
At the critical moment, his instinct to survive erupted. He forcibly twisted his body and, using the left leg that could barely support him, suddenly raised it and kicked straight at Ye Qingxuan's face with a heart-piercing blow!
The kick was sinister and vicious, entirely a tactic of mutual destruction.
Yet Ye Qingxuan seemed to have anticipated it.
His hands, which had been holding Mottled Fish's right leg, suddenly released it. At the same time, he sank his body and raised his right knee. Before Mottled Fish's left foot could reach his face, he viciously drove his knee into the outside of the other's left knee joint.
"Crack!"
A bone-splitting sound that set one's teeth on edge rang out clearly.
"Ah--!"
Mottled Fish let out a shriek unlike any human voice. The left leg supporting his entire weight bent inward at a bizarre angle, and he instantly lost all balance.
Ye Qingxuan showed no mercy once he had gained the upper hand.
As Mottled Fish toppled, he stepped forward, raised his right foot, and brought it heavily down on the instep of Mottled Fish's right foot.
"Snap!"
Another burst of fine bone-cracking sounds followed.
Both of Mottled Fish's legs were ruined. All color drained from his face, and only despair remained in his eyes. He fell forward, yet still refused to give up. Rolling over, he drove a fist from his uninjured right hand toward Ye Qingxuan's lower abdomen.
Ye Qingxuan neither dodged nor evaded, taking the punch head-on.
The fist struck his lower abdomen, bringing a dull ache, but nothing more.
Taking advantage of that opening, he bent down and slammed a straight punch squarely into Mottled Fish's face.
"Bang!"
His nasal bone broke. Blood mixed with broken teeth sprayed from Mottled Fish's mouth. His entire body was knocked backward, his head buzzing as golden stars danced before his eyes.
Yet Ye Qingxuan's assault came like a violent storm, relentless and unbroken.
He swept low with one leg, kicking Mottled Fish in the waist and knocking him completely onto the ground.
Before Mottled Fish could turn over, Ye Qingxuan had already closed in and dropped to his knees. His right knee, bearing the weight of his whole body, pressed precisely and mercilessly onto Mottled Fish's Adam's apple.
"Ghk... ghk..."
The ferocity and despair in Mottled Fish's eyes were swiftly replaced by suffocating panic. His hands clawed wildly at Ye Qingxuan's knee, while his legs kicked uselessly against the ground. A leaking, broken sound came from his throat.
Ye Qingxuan's face remained expressionless. He merely lowered his center of gravity little by little.
He could feel the resistance of the throat bone beneath his knee, the violent struggle of that body, and, more clearly still, the warm life rapidly ebbing away beneath his hands.
At last, a faint crack sounded beneath his knee.
Mottled Fish's body jerked violently, then went completely limp.
His wide-open eyes still held the last trace of attachment to and unwillingness to leave this world, but all light had already vanished from them.
The ruined courtyard fell silent once more.
Only the night wind passed through, carrying up the stench of blood from the ground.
Ye Qingxuan slowly rose from the corpse, the backs of his legs slightly weak.
He lowered his head and looked at his hands.
These hands had just ended a man's life.
A roiling nausea surged from his stomach to his throat. He braced himself against a broken wall and dry-heaved several times, but nothing came up.
It was not as though he had never killed living things. In his former and current lives, he had personally slaughtered chickens, ducks, and fish. But killing a person—this was his first time.
The sensation of bone cracking beneath his knee and the final tremors of that life were both burned clearly into his mind.
Leaning against the wall, he slowly sank to the ground. His chest heaved violently as he gasped for breath.
Only now did pain pulse from the places all over his body where he had been struck. Yet these fleshly aches were nothing compared with the emptiness and confusion in his heart.
The moonlight was cold and clear, illuminating the gradually stiffening corpse as well as his bloodless face.
He sat there without knowing how much time had passed.
The night wind grew colder, drying the cold sweat at his temples and slowly clearing his muddled mind.
He did not make excuses for what he had done.
In this turbid world, it was either you died or I did. If he had shown the slightest softness just now, the one lying here would have been Ye Qingxuan.
He rose and walked to the corpse, then squatted down.
He checked Mottled Fish's breath, then felt the pulse at his neck.
He was certain that the man was truly dead.
His heart settled completely along with that certainty.
Living was more important than anything else. For Nannan, and for himself, he could not die.
Once his resolve was fixed, he forcibly suppressed the discomfort that followed killing someone.
He began to consider his current predicament.
The words on the wanted notice surfaced in his mind.
"Those who lead men to capture and kill him will be rewarded with thirty taels of silver and one merit!"
Thirty taels of silver!
One merit!
That merit was neither great nor small, but it was enough for him, an unregistered temporary constable, to knock open the official gates of the Fengtian Division.
Once he was registered, he could justifiably receive martial arts manuals from the authorities, giving the origins of his unexplained abilities a cover.
The debt to Fierce Tiger Hall, his sister's future, and every burden pressing on his heart would all be resolved with ease.
A hard-to-suppress delight rose to his brows.
But that delight lasted only a brief moment before a more serious question doused it completely.
How was he to report this?
He was alone, an obscure temporary constable in the Fengtian Division. How could he explain to Chief Constable Hong, Chief Constable Zhang, and even the lofty Deputy Envoy Xiao that he had single-handedly slain a notorious bandit at the second level of Body Tempering?
Even though Mottled Fish had been seriously wounded, he had still been at the second level of Body Tempering.
And Ye Qingxuan, in everyone's eyes, was merely a thin, frail youth who had entered the Fengtian Division through his father's influence.
Once this matter was reported, the first people not to believe it would be the old hands of the Fengtian Division.
They would question him and investigate.
His martial arts were his greatest secret. Once exposed, they would bring not rewards, but endless trouble—even disaster enough to cost him his life.
But if he did not report it...
What would he do with the corpse? Would he simply give up the thirty taels of silver and the merit that could free him from his unregistered status and make him official?
Would the life-or-death battle just now become a joke?
Ye Qingxuan's brows drew deeply together.
He seemed to have fallen into a dead end.
Ahead lay a cliff; behind him yawned an abyss.
He lowered his head and looked at the corpse beneath his feet, then at his own hands stained with blood.
He had killed someone, yet found the matter even more troublesome than before he had killed.
The rules of this turbid world were far more complicated—and far crueler—than he had imagined.
What should he do?
Before you continue