When a Common Man Rages

At a quarter past midnight, the night was black as ink.

A howling gale swept goose-feather snow through the sky above Qinghe County, its mournful wails like ghosts crying and wolves howling.

Chen Ping blew out the bean-sized oil lamp in his room.

In the darkness, he swiftly stripped off his usual long robe and changed into a set of close-fitting short clothes he had prepared long ago.

The clothes were somewhat tight, drawing his muscles taut, but they also allowed him to move more easily.

He went to the Kitchen Stove, reached beneath the pot and smeared a handful of black soot over his face, neck, and the backs of his hands, using the half-basin of cold water as a mirror.

The icy touch cooled his originally feverish body.

Finally, he bent down and secured the sharpened dagger to the side of his leg.

"Creak—"

The door opened a crack, and the biting wind immediately poured in, completely masking the sound of his departure.

Like a black phantom, Chen Ping melted into the raging snowstorm.

Lin Manor was vast, but Chen Ping had swept its grounds for three years. He knew every rise and dip in every Blue Stone slab by heart.

He avoided two groups of night-patrolling servants.

In weather like this, the servants were all hunching their necks and carrying lanterns, watching only the road beneath their feet. No one noticed the shadow that flashed past beneath the rooftop eaves.

Before long, Wang Meng's private courtyard came into view.

The courtyard gate was shut tight, but the wall was not high.

Using the old locust tree by the wall, Chen Ping flipped into the courtyard as lightly as a civet cat, landing without a sound.

A faint red glow seeped from the room, the lingering embers of charcoal that had yet to go out.

Through the paper window came thunderous snores, interspersed with several indistinct mutters from a dream.

Chen Ping pressed himself against the base of the wall and adjusted his breathing until his heartbeat gradually matched the rhythm of those snores.

He took a thin strip of iron from his clothes. He had removed it from the frame of a discarded lantern.

The iron strip slid through the gap in the door and gently flicked.

"Click."

With an exceedingly faint crisp sound, the latch was lifted.

Chen Ping paused for three breaths. Only after confirming that the snores inside had not stopped did he gently push open the door and enter.

A powerful stench of alcohol mixed with the smell of charcoal rushed at him.

The room was warm and cozy, a world apart from the ice and snow outside.

Wang Meng lay sprawled across the bed, covered by a thick brocade quilt. One hairy, massive foot stuck out from beneath it as he slept like the dead.

On the table beside the bed sat half a jar of leftover Strong Liquor and several plates of messy cold leftovers.

Chen Ping quietly shut the door behind him.

He did not strike immediately. Instead, his gaze flashed like lightning as he swiftly surveyed the room's layout.

The window was on the left. If anything went wrong, he could smash it and escape; the table was on the right, and if his first strike failed, it could serve as cover.

Chen Ping displayed a composure far beyond that of a seventeen-year-old boy, a calmness frightening enough to chill the blood.

He rose onto the tips of his toes. One step, two steps, three steps.

When he reached the bedside and looked at Wang Meng's fleshy face rising and falling with each breath, killing intent surged in Chen Ping's eyes.

When a common man raged, blood splashed five paces away.

Since you would not leave me a way to live, then I would send you on your way.

"Die!"

Chen Ping roared inwardly. His right hand suddenly drew the dagger, and with every ounce of his strength, he viciously plunged it toward Wang Meng's throat!

That thrust was swift as lightning, carrying an unflinching resolve to charge forward without turning back.

Yet Wang Meng was, after all, a practiced martial artist with twenty years of training. Even dead drunk and senseless, his body instinctively reacted to killing intent.

Just as the dagger was about to pierce his skin, Wang Meng abruptly jerked his head aside.

"Pshk!"

The sound of a blade entering flesh rang out.

The dagger, originally aimed at his throat, drove viciously into Wang Meng's left shoulder, sinking to the hilt.

"Aah—!!"

A shrill scream exploded through the room.

Wang Meng's eyes bulged wide. The excruciating pain sobered him instantly.

With an enraged roar, his right hand instinctively threw a punch straight at Chen Ping's face.

The punch was heavy and powerful, carrying a whistling gust of wind.

Chen Ping felt the fierce wind strike his face. If that blow landed squarely, his head would likely burst like a rotten watermelon.

He had no choice but to release the dagger and roll backward in a miserable tumble.

"You little bastard! It's you!!"

Wang Meng saw his attacker's face. Even though it was smeared with soot from the bottom of a pot, he recognized those eyes.

Ignoring the dagger in his shoulder, he sprang from the bed like an injured violent bear, lunging at Chen Ping with Sha Qi rolling off his body.

In the cramped room, the two immediately grappled.

Though Wang Meng was injured, his hardened external martial arts were no mere decoration, and his strength was immense.

He seized Chen Ping by the throat and viciously slammed him to the floor.

"Bang!"

Chen Ping's back struck the ground. His organs nearly shifted out of place, his blood and qi churned, and darkness swam before his eyes.

That hand, like an iron pincer, clamped tightly around his throat as suffocation crashed over him.

"I'll fucking kill you!" Wang Meng's face twisted hideously, spittle spraying across Chen Ping's face.

At the brink of life and death.

Not only did Chen Ping fail to panic, he instead felt an unprecedented calm.

He recalled the Longevity of Pine and Crane he had painstakingly cultivated day and night over the past half month.

Within his Dantian, that warm current that had once flowed as gently as water seemed to be stirred by the threat of death, suddenly surging violently.

It was not an explosive blaze, but more like an incomparably resilient steel wire running through Chen Ping's limbs and bones.

"Let me... break free!"

Chen Ping's eyes turned bloodshot. His originally thin arms erupted with a monstrous strength beyond that of ordinary men.

He grabbed Wang Meng's wrists with both hands and wrenched them apart with all his might.

"Crack!"

The sound of bones dislocating was especially piercing.

"Aah!" Wang Meng cried out in pain, his grip loosening.

Seizing that fleeting opportunity, Chen Ping exerted force through his waist and abdomen. Like a slick loach, he slipped out from beneath Wang Meng and rode him in one fluid motion.

The situation reversed.

At this moment, Chen Ping no longer cared about techniques, nor was he the timid little bookboy he had once been.

He became a beast driven into a dead end.

He yanked the dagger from Wang Meng's shoulder. Blood sprayed forth, splashing across his face.

Warm. Fishy. Salty.

"Psh! Psh! Psh!"

Chen Ping gripped the dagger in both hands and stabbed at Wang Meng's chest and abdomen. Once, twice, three times...

There was no technique, only the most primitive instinct to kill.

Wang Meng struggled at first, trying to resist, but as seven or eight bloody holes opened across his body, his strength drained away along with his blood.

His pupils began to lose focus. His throat made a wheezing bellows sound, his body convulsed violently several times, and then he finally fell silent.

The room became quiet again.

Only Chen Ping's heavy breathing remained.

He sat astride the corpse, still gripping the dagger now dyed red with blood, looking like an Evil Ghost that had crawled out of hell.

After a long while.

Chen Ping slowly released his hand, and the dagger fell to the floor with a clang.

Looking at the face beneath him, its eyes still wide open in death, a violent wave of nausea surged up from his stomach.

"Urgh—"

Chen Ping rushed to the corner and dry-heaved several times, but nothing came out.

His hands were trembling violently. He could barely even stand.

It was a physical reaction, the inevitable response after killing someone for the first time.

But after only a moment, the instinct to survive forcibly crushed down that nausea.

"I can't stay here... I have to hurry..."

Chen Ping viciously wiped the blood from his face with his sleeve, and his gaze turned cold and hard once more.

He forced himself to calm down.

First, he searched Wang Meng's body.

He found a heavy money pouch in his clothes. Opening it, he discovered three one-hundred-tael silver notes inside, along with more than ten taels of loose silver.

"So much money. Looks like this bastard had skimmed plenty of fat from the pot over the years."

Chen Ping did not hesitate in the slightest and stuffed it directly into his own clothes.

Then, he felt a thin booklet.

One corner of the booklet was stained with blood, and the cover bore three words: Shattered Stone Palm.

This should have been Wang Meng's signature skill.

Chen Ping had no time to inspect it closely and put it away as well.

After looting everything, he looked at the corpse on the floor and frowned.

If he left it like this, it would be discovered at daybreak.

He looked around, his eyes settling on a large wooden chest beneath the bed used for storing miscellaneous items.

Chen Ping walked over, dumped out all the old clothes inside, then dragged Wang Meng's corpse over and laboriously stuffed it into the chest.

Wang Meng had a burly frame, and it took considerable effort to force him inside. Chen Ping had to break one of his leg bones before he could barely close the lid.

By the time he finished, he was drenched in sweat.

The bloodstains on the floor were far too obvious.

Chen Ping picked up the half-jar of strong liquor from the table and poured it onto the floor in great gulps. The powerful scent of alcohol immediately spread through the room, concealing the pungent smell of blood.

He then overturned the tables, chairs, and stools, creating the appearance of a "hasty departure" or "an acquaintance who had fled after committing the crime."

Finally, he carefully checked the room once more. Only after confirming that he had not left behind anything of his own did he silently push open the door and leave.

Outside, the wind and snow raged on.

The goose-feather snow would soon cover his footprints in the courtyard, wiping away every trace of sin.

Braving the wind and snow, Chen Ping slipped back to his servants' quarters by the same route.

Even after lying on the cold earthen kang and pulling the quilt over his head, his heart continued pounding madly in his chest, making his eardrums buzz.

He stretched out his hand and looked at those palms in the darkness, still trembling without stop.

The sensation of that scalding blood splashing across his face still lingered on his skin.

Killing for the first time left lingering fear in his heart, but he did not regret it.

In this man-eating world, if he wanted to survive, if he wanted to avoid being casually crushed like an ant, then he had to be more vicious than the wicked and more ruthless than the ruthless.

Outside the window, the wind wailed.

Chen Ping closed his eyes. Beneath the burial of the endless snowstorm, in this lonely dead of night, he truly merged into this cruel world of immortal cultivation for the first time.