"Ah!!"
A pig being slaughtered could not have screamed louder.
The One-Eyed Bandit Leader had been the one to suffer. Wu Dao had blasted away one side of his waist, and now he lay on the bridge, blood gushing like a spring as he howled in agony.
Boom!
The ground shuddered violently.
Wu Dao's mighty frame tore through the air. In the blink of an eye, he crossed dozens of meters and appeared before the One-Eyed Bandit Leader, who was still screaming.
His overwhelming presence was like that of a savage beast from the primordial wilderness, vast as an abyss and oppressive as a prison. The bandit leader instantly fell silent, enduring a pain worse than death as he knelt and kowtowed, begging for mercy.
"Spare me, great hero! I'm willing to hand over all my wealth. Just let me go..."
The One-Eyed Bandit Leader kowtowed frantically in Wu Dao's shadow, not daring to raise his head and look at him.
If I kill you, won't your money be mine anyway?
Wu Dao found it amusing. His steel hand, broad as a cattail fan, clamped down on the bandit leader's head. Feeling the scalp tense and tremble beneath his palm, he asked coolly, "What do you mean by 'Skull-Crushing Hand'? Do you know me?"
"This..."
The One-Eyed Bandit Leader trembled all over and froze for a moment, apparently unsure why Wu Dao was asking when he already knew the answer. But when he felt the pressure on his head suddenly increase, he hurriedly replied:
"Great hero, you flatter me. Wretches like us aren't worthy of knowing you.
"I only heard your name because, lately, the underworld has been talking about a Cocoon-Breaking Expert who goes around upholding justice and killing bandits who prey on travelers. And you always wipe them out to the last man, crushing their skulls.
"Since no one knew your name,
"they could only call you 'Skull-Crushing Hand Black Pupil,' after your unusually colored eyes. So..."
So that was it.
Now that his question had been answered, Wu Dao's face twitched. He felt utterly speechless.
Upholding justice and killing bandits?
Wasn't that just slandering him out of thin air?
The truth was, he had only been traveling. How was he supposed to know he would run into so many idiots who didn't know when to quit?
He had always stood by the principles of fairness and impartiality.
If you wanted my life,
wouldn't it be disrespectful of me not to take yours?
As for "Skull-Crushing Hand"...
Wasn't smashing someone's head the fastest, most efficient way to kill them? The way people talked, you'd think he had some kind of strange fetish.
Seeing that Wu Dao didn't lash out immediately,
the bandit leader thought he'd escaped with his life and secretly breathed a sigh of relief. He pleaded, "This was all my fault. I was blind to your greatness and offended you, great hero. If you'll spare me this once, I'll repay your kindness handsomely someday."
Hm?
Wu Dao looked at the One-Eyed Bandit Leader in surprise, then sighed helplessly.
"Why do people always think a light apology can make up for every mistake and failure?
"If you put your prey's life on one side of the scales while hunting, you should be prepared to put an equal price on the other side.
"But you..."
As he spoke,
Wu Dao gently patted the One-Eyed Bandit Leader's head with his steel hand. It made a hollow thumping sound, like someone tapping a watermelon.
"You're just too rude. You have no reverence for nature, and you don't even respect your own life. Tell me, how can someone who doesn't respect his own life ever change?
"Only death—
"only seeing your own brains—
"can teach you a lesson and make you change.
"Therefore,
"if I don't kill you, I'll only be ruining you and robbing you of the chance to change.
"Don't you agree?"
"I..."
"Nothing to say? Since you agree, then off you go."
"Wait! I'm Elder Qin's man. You can't—"
Bang!
Wu Dao couldn't be bothered to hear him out. He flicked a finger, and the "Raw Melon Head" burst apart, splattering red and white flesh everywhere.
Elder Qin...
Wu Dao wiped the filth splashed across his hand and turned those two words over in his mind, then glanced up at the peak of a distant mountain.
Just now,
with his Subtle Mastery-level perception,
he had been able to sense an intermittent gaze watching him from the mountaintop. It was probably the bandits' overseer.
After he killed the One-Eyed Bandit Leader,
that watchful gaze had disappeared as well.
Combined with his earlier suspicions,
if he wasn't mistaken,
that Elder Qin was probably a member of the White Whale Martial Arts Hall's Council of Elders.
These bandits
were most likely his privately raised tools for "special tutoring."
Otherwise,
mere Divine Strength Realm fighters wouldn't dare compete with the White Whale Martial Arts Hall for a share of the spoils.
But it didn't matter.
He had offended them, so be it.
He understood the power structure within the White Whale Martial Arts Hall.
Broadly speaking, it was divided into two factions.
The younger generation was led by Chief Hall Master Qi Canghai.
Most of the warriors from the old Giant Whale Sect who had survived the calamity followed the old guard—in other words, the Council of Elders as it stood today.
The two sides might not get along,
but on the surface,
the White Whale Martial Arts Hall still operated according to Qi Canghai's will. After all, this was a world where might made right.
Schemes and machinations, petty intrigue and backstabbing—
all of it was pale and powerless before absolute strength.
And Qi Canghai, the White Whale Martial Arts Hall's only Innate expert and a man still in his prime, had the strength to keep everyone in the hall in line.
At the end of the day, it was just a matter of picking a side.
Nothing worth mentioning.
After dealing with the One-Eyed Bandit Leader,
Wu Dao searched him and found several thousand taels' worth of banknotes, then returned to the bridge entrance.
Under the awe-filled, admiring gazes of the crowd, he also searched the bandits' corpses and came away with quite a few banknotes.
All told,
there were no fewer than five or six thousand taels.
It was easy to imagine how many people these bandits had harmed during this time.
In the end, though, it had all benefited Wu Dao.
He stuffed every last banknote into his Small Treasury.
Money was a bastard.
But without money, you were a bastard too.
After reaching the Heroic Domain, practicing the Stealing Heavenly Secrets Breathing Technique had become a money-burning machine. Every day, it required large quantities of precious medicinal herbs to replenish his body.
But the world's scarce resources
were mostly monopolized by the major factions.
To take a nearby example,
just in Guangqing Prefecture,
Wu Dao had passed through several cities over the last few days, yet precious herbs were nowhere to be seen in the markets.
When he made inquiries,
he learned that they all ended up in the hands of the Three Great Factions.
For now, he didn't have what it took to cross swords with the Three Great Factions.
Therefore,
for the foreseeable future, he could only fend for himself and spend his own money buying medicine.
Fortunately,
along the way,
plenty of people couldn't bear to see him suffer and go hungry. Their charitable donations had netted him a hefty stack of banknotes, bringing his total to nearly twenty thousand taels of silver.
Silver had quite a lot of purchasing power in this world. Ordinary people could sell everything they owned and still not scrape together ten taels. In the short term, at least, he wouldn't have to worry about money.
After finishing his search,
Wu Dao tightened the bulging bundle packed with banknotes and prepared to leave.
As for the merchants, their faces ashen,
their eyes pleading as they looked at him, he simply ignored them.
If a tiger ate a wolf, would it then spit out the mutton the wolf had eaten and return it to the sheep?
There was no such rule.
However, as he left,
Wu Dao glanced again at the two middle-aged men in the crowd whose bearing set them apart.
The two men
wore blue and black, respectively.
Each carried a long spear with a crimson tip protruding above his shoulder.
They had appeared just as the matter was drawing to a close.
To Wu Dao's senses, they stood out like blazing furnaces in the dead of night.
They were strong.
Judging by their Vitality and Spirit alone, they were at least warriors who had undergone the Second Rebirth, and had reached its very peak.
But that was only what it seemed.
He couldn't tell what level they were actually at.
Wu Dao's mental perception had only reached the stage of attuning to the world, sensing things as fine as the rumble of thunder.
He still couldn't see inside himself or perceive the true nature of others. If he could, he wouldn't hesitate to do so.
Probing another person's secrets without cause
was an absolute taboo in the martial world, a grave insult to their dignity.
He had no need to act like a reckless bastard, picking fights with everyone he met and going through life as if he had a blood feud with the whole world.
When there was nothing to gain from it,
he simply couldn't summon much interest.
Of course, if someone else provoked him first or threatened his interests, that was another matter.
Before you continue