The Assassin's Blade

Chapter 43: The Assassin's Blade

[Part 3 of 9].

Beneath the black moon, Ning Xuan opened his eyes again. He sat in silence, then suddenly threw his head back and laughed without warning. He laughed like a madman. Every inch of his body still throbbed with pain, yet he couldn't help laughing.

Laughing uproariously.

He hadn't managed to kill himself right away.

He had saved a bit of strength, but the White Bear Demon had been on guard against him trying to take his own life. Whenever Ning Xuan gathered his strength, the White Bear Demon would promptly shake him, dispersing it. So he tried again and again, until both his legs had been eaten, before he finally succeeded.

Still, it hadn't been for nothing.

He had become intimately familiar with the White Bear Demon's movements when it gathered strength—and with the telltale signs that came beforehand.

Now he sat motionless, hands limp, head bowed. He looked drowsy, but his eyes were cold to the extreme, and a frenzied, eerie light flickered deep within them. No one could say what he was thinking.

He sat there until the night passed.

The place was this big, wide open, with nowhere to run and no room to maneuver. Walk? He might as well sit.

Suddenly, he felt a thread of pallid sunlight quietly fall upon him, sliding down the side of his face and onto his thigh.

He looked at his thigh and imagined his own white bones.

He glanced at his waist. It, too, was nothing but bone.

Then he looked into the distance.

There stood a Snow White Bear Demon with a kindly face.

"Where's my weapon? Where did my weapon go?"

The Snow White Bear Demon muttered to itself, then looked at the seated boy and asked, "Have you seen my weapon?"

Ning Xuan stood and lifted the Beast Slaying Saber. With a sudden smile, he asked, "Is this your weapon?"

The Snow White Bear Demon shook its head.

Ning Xuan produced a throwing knife and asked, "What about this?"

The Snow White Bear Demon shook its head again.

Ning Xuan smiled. "You can't make it out from far away. I'll bring it closer so you can see."

With a twitch of his fingers, blue light flashed, and the throwing knife shot toward the Snow White Bear Demon.

Its beady eyes slowly narrowed. Just as the knife was about to touch its brow, it came to a halt.

Ning Xuan asked, "Is this it?"

The Snow White Bear Demon shook its head, still on guard.

Ning Xuan said, "Fair enough. This is my weapon."

He raised a hand and recalled the knife, then said cheerfully, "I'll help you look for yours."

The Snow White Bear Demon grinned. "You're a pretty good person, you know."

The boy and the demon began searching for the mysterious weapon.

After they had searched for a long while, Ning Xuan suddenly said, "Master Bear, could you do me a favor?"

The Snow White Bear Demon chuckled. "You're a good person. You've helped me for so long, so I can help you too."

Ning Xuan raised a hand and summoned the throwing knife again. It landed in his palm, and he held it out. "Master Bear, this knife is too big for my liking. You look incredibly strong, so I bet you're powerful beyond measure. Could you break it apart for me?"

The Snow White Bear Demon paused, then chuckled. "Sure, sure."

It grabbed the knife and squeezed, but nothing happened.

It gathered its strength again. Scales sprouted across its claws as it clenched the knife. Then, with a grunt, it crushed the blade into more than ten fragments, each about the size of a fingernail.

The Snow White Bear Demon scratched its head. "I broke it into pieces that were too small."

Ning Xuan took the fragments and smiled. "That's all right. Let's keep looking for your weapon."

"You really are a good person," said the Snow White Bear Demon.

The blazing sun slowly sank in the west.

Night gradually fell.

The Snow White Bear Demon's throat suddenly bobbed. It opened its mouth to speak, but the boy beside it abruptly stopped.

Ning Xuan asked out of the blue, "Are you hungry?"

The Snow White Bear Demon nodded, then asked in return, "Are you hungry?"

Ning Xuan didn't answer. He held out his left hand. "If you're hungry, go ahead and eat."

The Snow White Bear Demon froze.

Ning Xuan smiled calmly. "I can tell you practice Buddhist teachings, Master, while I'm just an ordinary man. If my flesh can nourish you, then I'll have done a good deed."

The Snow White Bear Demon:

Ning Xuan said, "Of course, I have a selfish motive too."

"What motive?" asked the Snow White Bear Demon.

Ning Xuan smiled. "Master, your understanding of Buddhist teachings must be profound. If I could become one with you, flesh and all, then I could recite the scriptures alongside you and bathe in the incense. Who knows? I might even reach paradise ahead of schedule. I'd be getting a tremendous bargain."

The Snow White Bear Demon was utterly stunned.

It was astonished beyond words.

Ning Xuan urgently held out his hand. "Master, eat! It's best while it's warm."

The Snow White Bear Demon took his arm, then put it down. "I'm still used to starting with the feet."

Ning Xuan lay down at once and took off his boots. "No problem."

The Snow White Bear Demon seized his foot, wiped it off, and bared its tucked-away fangs. Then it bit down.

Ning Xuan seemed completely numb. A smile spread across his face, and he began to laugh.

"Hahahaha!"

"Hahahahahaha!"

"Come on, eat faster! Hahahaha!"

He wasn't merely laughing with delight; he was urging the demon on between laughs. It made the Snow White Bear Demon's scalp prickle.

The Snow White Bear Demon had eaten countless people, but never had a meal surprised it as much as this one.

"Hahahaha!"

Ning Xuan laughed wildly.

The Snow White Bear Demon ignored him and lowered its head to eat, hurrying to finish.

This man was pretty good.

It had to grant his wish.

As Ning Xuan's laughter turned thoroughly hysterical, the Snow White Bear Demon wolfed him down, smacking its lips as saliva flew. Tough strands of flesh and human skin stretched between its fangs.

Ning Xuan suddenly forgot the pain in his body. Laughing like a madman, he raised his arm slightly and brought his right hand to his mouth. In it lay more than ten fingernail-sized fragments of the throwing knife, which he slipped into his mouth with practiced ease.

The throwing knife was merely a special metal capable of carrying power; it had no function of its own. Even shattered, it could still bear that power.

Yan He.

The fragments of the throwing knife that Ning Xuan had put in his mouth were imbued with the power of "Yan He."

A thin, humming whine rang out, like swallows returning in spring and trilling beneath the black-tiled eaves.

The fragments suddenly accelerated, ripping through Ning Xuan's completely relaxed body. They severed his organs, tore through the flesh of his legs, and burst out from the foot that had been reduced to white bone!

Whoosh!!

The fragments streaked along Ning Xuan's body toward the Snow White Bear Demon's throat.

He had actually used his own body as a channel to fire the throwing knife!

He had done many things to set up this strike.

He had demonstrated his power in front of the demon, making it feel threatened by the knife.

Then he had made the demon break the knife into pieces. Since it felt threatened, the demon had naturally crushed it into tiny fragments—but not too tiny, because it was only helping him.

He had laughed uproariously to mask the sound of the knife being fired, so the sudden strike wouldn't alert the demon in the quiet.

He had urged the demon to eat faster, making it open its mouth wider and swallow more hurriedly.

The demon had eaten him before, so he knew its movements before it gathered strength inside and out. Naturally, he could pick the perfect moment to attack.

Every last thing he had done was for this one strike.

When faced with an opponent too powerful to fight, assassination was the only choice.

Assassination was different from fighting head-on.

A fighter facing an opponent directly considered strength; an assassin focused more on timing.

Since ancient times, assassins had stopped at nothing to create an opening. Destroying their families, disfiguring themselves, offering up their heads—such things were commonplace. Spending months or years on a single attempt was commonplace too. But an assassin who fed their own body to an opponent while hiding their fiercest, deadliest strike inside it was unheard of.

This strike—

Ning Xuan had already unleashed it.

He had put everything he had into it.

The instant he struck, the blade was no longer under his control.

After passing through his body, the fragments flew straight into the demon's throat. Then, as it completed a swallow, they followed the food down into its organs.

The Snow White Bear Demon's body shuddered. It abruptly stopped eating, clutched its belly with both hands, and stood there dazed. A moment later, it began coughing violently.

Its flesh was powerful, but its organs weren't wrapped in such powerful muscle. Nor could it use its strength to compress the muscles until they hardened into scales.

So neither its esophagus nor its organs could withstand this strike.

Its esophagus and organs had taken the full force of Yan He!

Ning Xuan laughed uproariously, but before long, he began coughing violently too. Shattered pieces of his organs came up with his coughs.

The Snow White Bear Demon hunched over as well, coughing up mouthful after mouthful of blood.

Black smoke came out with it.

The smoke detached from the Snow White Bear Demon and rolled toward Ning Xuan, pouring back into him through his eyes, ears, nostrils, and mouth.