Cross Residence
Hao Shuai sat in the Cross's room, looking at the densely packed strategy notes about the Mutual Aid Society's headquarters on the table. Suddenly, he fell into deep thought.
He had been in the Assassin's Alliance world for more than two months.
During that time, Hao Shuai had learned to shoot with a pistol and snipe from a distance. The Cross's two-man killing spree had also forced Sloan to recall the assassins who were out on assignment and find Wesley to begin training him. Before long, the father and son would be trying to kill each other.
But Sloan wouldn't get the chance. Tomorrow, Hao Shuai and the Cross were going to storm his headquarters.
The next morning, Hao Shuai and the Cross drove to a spot five hundred meters from the Alliance's headquarters—the No. 17 Weaving Mill. The Cross got out first. His job in this operation was to deal with any assassins who tried to escape, while Hao Shuai kept driving toward the mill.
Hao Shuai had no intention of attacking with rats like Wesley had. Setting aside how much trouble it would be, the thought of strapping explosives to rats disgusted him.
Hao Shuai decided to charge straight in. When you had the strength, you could do whatever you wanted.
Soon, the car reached a five-story factory building more than twenty meters tall. Hao Shuai shifted gears and floored it, speeding toward the mill's main gate.
He stomped on the gas, and the car smashed straight into the mill's gate.
Crash! The gate burst open, and the car drove into the mill's courtyard before coming to a stop in the middle.
The many assassins spotted the intruder and began firing from upstairs and around the courtyard.
Hao Shuai got out of the car without a care in the world. Two pistols appeared in his hands, and he strolled forward, shooting as he went.
Honestly, Hao Shuai loved the feeling of being impossible to hurt while his opponents couldn't stop his attacks.
In the movie, Wesley first launched a surprise attack with rat bombs, then fought desperately to reach the fifth floor. Hao Shuai, meanwhile, strolled upstairs, taking one life after another. He wondered if Wesley would cry himself to sleep in the bathroom if he found out.
When Hao Shuai reached the recovery room and saw the injured Russian, he remembered that there was something else useful in the Assassin's Alliance world: the wax bath from the movie, which could heal injuries quickly. Hao Shuai probably wouldn't need it himself, but if he ever went to conquer the world in ancient times, he could use it on his subordinates.
So Hao Shuai forced the Russian to give him the wax bath formula, promising to spare his life in return.
With his life on the line, the Russian didn't try to play the hero. He immediately handed Hao Shuai the paper with the formula written on it. Hao Shuai had him recite it as well, and after confirming it was correct, took the formula and collected all the wax baths in the recovery room. He told the Russian to wait there and not go outside, lest the Cross kill him.
The third-floor meat locker.
It was the Butcher's domain. Pork hung everywhere, and the crimson floor gave the place a gruesome, blood-soaked look!
Faced with the Butcher, who stood brazenly in the middle of the room holding two butcher's knives, Hao Shuai couldn't help grinning.
You're a foreigner, and you dare challenge a master of internal power like me to a knife fight?
Hao Shuai drew his twin blades and used Wing Chun's Eight-Cutting Blades to slash the Butcher 365 times, teaching him the importance of being humble and cautious.
On the fourth floor, Hao Shuai ran into Fox and Wesley. After a thoroughly satisfying, intense battle—the kind where they couldn't kill him, but he could kill them—Hao Shuai injured both their hands and told them the truth about the Loom of Fate.
Sloan's office on the fifth floor.
Sloan was every bit the big boss. Even with all his men dead, he remained composed.
When he saw Hao Shuai enter, Sloan raised his hands and tried to tempt him. "If you let me go, I can give you more money than you could ever spend in your lifetime!"
"Sorry, you're a rotten old man, so you'd better die!"
Bang!
Knowing that villains died because they talked too much, Hao Shuai showed no mercy. He put a bullet in Sloan's head, blowing it apart like a rotten watermelon. As for why Sloan hadn't dodged—he couldn't move!
No. 17 Weaving Mill,
After a massacre that left only three members of the Alliance alive, the already quiet factory fortress had fallen utterly silent.
Hao Shuai strolled out through the main gate and ran into the Cross, who had come to pick up his son. After telling him where his son was, Hao Shuai drove off on his own.
Mainly, he didn't want to witness the melodramatic father-son reunion.
In the days that followed, Hao Shuai practiced long-range sniping while asking the Cross to sell his gold and buy large quantities of guns and ammunition.
When the Cross said Hao Shuai's sniping skills were good enough for him to graduate, Hao Shuai knew it was time to leave.
After saying goodbye to the Cross, Hao Shuai waited until he was somewhere no one could see him, then vanished from the Assassin's Alliance world.
Morning in the Night Shift World
It was August in Japan, the hottest time of the year. Most people on the streets wore light clothing, and girls who cared about their looks wore skirts that seemed to get shorter by the day.
Hao Shuai lay bored on his bed in an air-conditioned room. His resistance to heat and cold had improved, but if he could live comfortably, why would he go out of his way to suffer? The path of a martial arts fanatic or an obsessed cultivator who didn't care about the environment wasn't for him.
It had been more than a week since he returned from the Assassin's Alliance world. During that time, aside from occasionally visiting Thirteenth Aunt and checking on the villa renovations in the real world, he'd spent most of his time at the villa enjoying a happy life with the girls: three-player Fight the Landlord, four-player mahjong, five-player basketball, and six-a-side soccer.
If Hao Shuai hadn't still been pursuing beautiful women and treasures, or remained obsessed with Eternal Life, he might have decided to spend the rest of his life that way.
This book now declared itself complete.
Within the borders of the Ming Empire, Huayin County was a fairly prosperous town at the foot of Mount Hua.
At that moment, a handsome, wealthy-looking young man in blue-and-white Taoist robes, with a treasured sword at his waist, strolled leisurely down Huayin's bustling streets.
A breeze stirred his sleeves, making them flutter in the wind. He looked as graceful as an immortal, and drew countless admiring and jealous glances from the crowd.
Any gamer who saw Hao Shuai's outfit would recognize that he was cosplaying Murong Ziying. Hao Shuai had many such game costumes in his space, all custom-made in the Night Shift World for one reason: to look cool.
This was Hao Shuai's first day in the world of The Smiling, Proud Wanderer. He'd been transported to a barren mountain, and it had taken him ages to find people and learn that he was in the Mount Hua region. Eventually, he'd made his way to Huayin County to ask around for information.
Hao Shuai had come to the world of The Smiling, Proud Wanderer simply to experience what the jianghu was like. After all, what Chinese person hadn't dreamed of being a martial arts hero?
As a child, Hao Shuai had dreamed of becoming a wandering master like the heroes in martial arts dramas—someone who could soar through the sky, master peerless martial arts, and roam the world with sword in hand.
He'd chosen The Smiling, Proud Wanderer because it was a relatively straightforward jianghu world. Its power levels weren't high, and it didn't have the endless schemes and strange poisons found in Gu Long's jianghu. Nor was it like The Deer and the Cauldron, The Return of the Condor Heroes, or The Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre, where the imperial court, harem intrigues, and dynastic upheavals all played a part. For someone as afraid of death as Hao Shuai, it was relatively safe.
As for the remarkable internal arts of this world, Hao Shuai had no plans to learn them.
Everyone knew that in Jin Yong's martial arts novels, the later the era, the lower the power level. The Smiling, Proud Wanderer was somewhere in the lower-middle range, and there weren't many internal arts in the jianghu. The Yi Jin Jing was one of the most famous.
The book said that Fangzheng had mastered the Yi Jin Jing to the point of perfection and could withstand Ren Woxing's Star Absorbing Great Method. Unfortunately, it really wasn't suitable for Hao Shuai.
That was because practicing the Yi Jin Jing required not only a solid foundation in Buddhist teachings, but also an ability to see through such concepts as "Human-Illusion" and "Self-Illusion"!
How could Hao Shuai understand that?
He knew how to take photos, at least! And he was pretty good at it! His ex-girlfriends had taught him!
The Star Absorbing Great Method could only absorb other people's internal energy, and it came with serious risks. Compared with other methods of absorbing internal energy, wasn't the Northern Darkness Divine Skill a much better choice?
The Purple Haze Divine Skill and Wudang Internal Energy took far too long to master. By the time Hao Shuai trained either one to its peak, he'd probably have become an immortal already.
Dongfang Bubai, the greatest master in the world, had been able to hold her own against four opponents at once, but that was only because of her speed.
The experts in The Smiling, Proud Wanderer all relied on exquisite techniques to win. Lin Pingzhi, after castrating himself, had used the sword techniques in the Bixie Sword Manual to kill Yu Canghai. In terms of internal energy alone, Yu Canghai could have crushed Lin Pingzhi.
This showed that the exquisite sword techniques of the jianghu were the wisdom of the era—the pinnacle of an age defined by technique.
But no matter how exquisite a sword technique was, it held little appeal for Hao Shuai, who believed that internal energy was supreme, that overwhelming force could overcome ten techniques, and that greater strength could defeat any skill.
Still, even though Hao Shuai had no intention of practicing them, that didn't stop him from collecting them. He planned to build a Scripture Repository someday, filled with famous martial arts from across the myriad worlds. Just imagining it made him feel accomplished.
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