Chapter 22

Bai Lang didn't want trouble, but trouble always seemed to find him. Perhaps that was simply the fate of the protagonist.

He lived in the suburbs of Bangkok, a city with more than four hundred Buddhist temples. His home was near one of them. The area wasn't as bustling as downtown, and the temple served only the local worshippers, so it wasn't very large. Even so, its courtyard and garden were spacious. Bai Lang practiced his martial arts there every day, though he made far less of a commotion than he had back in Lanzhou. He had already reached the limits of cultivation in this world. The only reason he still got up early to train every day was to maintain his discipline.

If he only wanted to toughen his body, his inner force could now circulate through the Lesser Heavenly Cycle and stimulate every tendon. At this stage, a person could train their body by shaking their muscles, just like a tiger or leopard. But Bai Lang was now searching for inspiration—ideas for bringing all his martial arts together. He had already fused the inner force and external techniques of Thirty-two Forms Long Fist and Golden Bell Shield, but he believed that without practicing, he would never find inspiration. After a thousand repetitions, a new feeling would naturally emerge.

This peaceful life had lasted about half a year when, one day, Bai Lang sensed something ominous. "Strange. Why do I have a bad feeling? Something doesn't seem right. Never mind. Time to move!" He decided he needed to find somewhere else to live. After packing up, he pushed open the door and walked a short distance. Then he lightly touched down with the ball of his foot and swiftly used Flight Over Grass to dart diagonally backward.

A bullet struck the spot where he had been standing, though its aim was a little off. Even if Bai Lang had stayed put, it probably would only have grazed him. "A sniper? A civilian?" Bai Lang shifted his body, making it impossible for the shooter to aim, then ducked into an alley and disappeared from sight. "Interesting. They found me? Probably. Let's see where that shooter is."

Bai Lang could only determine the direction. Judging by the bullet's trajectory, there were only two or three possible places it could have come from. "And if that guy has any brains, he's already gone." Bai Lang figured he probably couldn't catch the shooter now. Even if the man were still there, would Bai Lang recognize him? If he had put away his gun, there were plenty of Thai people around, and Bai Lang had no confidence he could pick the shooter out of the crowd.

"Someone must have seen me. Someone I know, who knows me too. But they wouldn't need to come here in person. A photo would be enough." Bai Lang suspected the gambling syndicate was behind it. After all, he had killed a whole group of their people in one go. And he had killed them so brutally that, even setting aside the huge sum of money they'd lost, their fear of his speed and strength would be enough to make them try to kill him.

Fear was probably the bigger factor.

Bai Lang moved quickly and found a hotel downtown to stay in for the time being. "It's time to strike back. If I wait for them to come after me, this will never end. I might as well go after them!" He had originally thought of letting things go, but after today's shot, he changed his mind. He would have to kill every person in the syndicate with any say in the matter.

But how should he proceed? Bai Lang was only seventeen, and he had no experience with this sort of thing. He knew martial arts, but when it came to this kind of business, he was completely at a loss. He could only turn to the underground fighters and club enforcers he'd known before. He remembered a few of them: the young men who had once tried to tempt him into taking addictive drugs, and his agent.

Bai Lang silently returned to the place where he used to fight. He kept to the night and wore a mask to conceal his face. Those guys were probably night owls too, so he'd have the best chance of finding them at an entertainment venue after dark.

Bai Lang soon found the young man called Guess-Whatever, the one who had produced the drugs. That day, the guy had had his fill of fun with his cronies and taken a few pills. With an arm around a woman, he was getting ready to head home when a figure silently approached from behind. The woman's legs went weak. The young man suddenly wondered why she had become so heavy, not realizing she had already passed out. Before he could react, a hand clamped around his neck, and both of them were knocked down by the roadside.

Crouching beside him, Bai Lang began questioning him in clumsy Thai. The man had been trusted enough by the syndicate to be used to lure Bai Lang into drug addiction, so Bai Lang wanted to know where his agent was and what the syndicate's leaders were like. Bai Lang used his inner force to torture him. The pain caused by inner force worming through the man's meridians couldn't be seen from the outside, but the itching and agony were unbearable. Under this torture, Bai Lang got the information he wanted.

The man wasn't some revolutionary fighter with unbreakable resolve, and he had no reason to feed Bai Lang false information. He didn't want to die, and he wasn't the sort of person who could hold out under this kind of torture. After questioning him in detail and writing everything down in a small notebook, Bai Lang crushed his throat and killed him. The man had possessed and sold addictive drugs; he deserved to die. Bai Lang threw the body into a nearby river, tearing it apart and dumping the pieces in as well.

That was to delay the discovery of the body. Bai Lang needed time.

The second person he went after was the man's superior, a leader in the gambling syndicate's drug-dealing operation.

The leader always traveled with a group of bodyguards. The syndicate wasn't particularly large, but it could afford to have three or five guards protect him around the clock. Bai Lang chose to attack him at home. The man's house was like a manor, with cameras everywhere. But its security wasn't much to speak of. Bai Lang destroyed several cameras, and before anyone could react, he used his lightness skill to rush into the house.

He moved like a cat, his short-range bursts of speed as swift as thunder. Bai Lang let out a shout and slammed his shoulder into the door, forcing it inward. The door blocked their view, and Bai Lang curled his body, then lunged diagonally out from beneath it. Some bodyguards were shielding their boss, while others fired shotguns, but none of them realized Bai Lang was attacking from another direction. They were just a bunch of country bumpkin bodyguards, not the US president's security detail.