You Only Know That You Are Going to Die

Jiang Tian slowly stood up. Without any superfluous movements, he simply stood there quietly, watching Wang Moshan with a calm expression.

Several of Wang Moshan's attendants filed out from behind him, surrounding Jiang Tian. The only attendant with Manifest Energy, Hou Tianzu, stood by Wang Moshan's side with his arms crossed and a blank expression, looking like a temple guardian.

"You lot—" Wang Moshan's eyes were sinister as he squeezed the words through his teeth, "break every bone in his body, but leave him with one breath!"

As the words fell, several attendants stepped forward with cruel grins.

"The first time you offended Young Master Wang, he was kind enough to spare your life. Have you still not learned your lesson?"

One attendant reached out to grab Jiang Tian's shoulder.

He was at the Hidden Energy level, and Hidden Energy surged over his palm, the force winding between his five fingers like threads of silk.

He was absolutely certain that with this strike, he could crush Jiang Tian's scapula directly.

However, the moment this thought crossed his mind, a large hand began to loom larger in his vision.

He wanted to dodge.

But that hand was too fast—so fast that he couldn't react in time at all.

"Crack—"

Jiang Tian clamped onto the man's face, his five fingers exerting a slight force as his energy surged.

With a crisp snap, half of the man's head was crushed instantly. Red and white matter seeped out from between Jiang Tian's fingers, shimmering with a nauseating luster under the candlelight.

The cabin fell silent in an instant.

The attendants who had been surrounding Jiang Tian stumbled backward, their faces pale and their lips drained of all color.

One man's blade clattered to the floor, while others' legs turned to jelly, nearly causing them to collapse.

Wang Moshan's pupils dilated sharply; his mouth opened and closed, but he couldn't utter a single word.

The indifferent expression on Hou Tianzu's face vanished instantly, replaced by extreme gravity and vigilance. His hand had already moved instinctively to the hilt of the blade at his waist.

Jiang Tian tossed the limp corpse aside as if he were throwing away a bag of trash.

He looked at Wang Moshan with deep, dark eyes, the corners of his mouth curling into a slight arc.

"Wang Moshan, didn't you want to kill me? Why aren't you coming over?"

The voice was not loud, even carrying a hint of a smile, but to Wang Moshan's ears, it sounded like a death warrant from the depths of hell.

Wang Moshan's Adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed hard.

He glanced out of the corner of his eye at the attendant with the caved-in skull, then back at Jiang Tian, who stood nearby with a faint smile. His calves wouldn't stop trembling.

A Hidden Energy attendant had his skull crushed by a single hand.

Manifest Energy? Or Transformation Energy?

Is this really Jiang Tian? Is this really the Jiang Tian who used to be bullied at will?

No, at most he is at the Manifest Energy level—it's impossible for him to be at the Transformation Energy level!

Wang Moshan suddenly whipped his head around to look at Hou Tianzu beside him.

When he saw the look of utter dread on Hou Tianzu's face, his heart sank to the bottom of a well.

"Hou Tianzu!" Wang Moshan gritted his teeth, his voice bordering on hysterical. "You and these men hold him off! I'm going home to get reinforcements! We are only a tea-time away from the Wang Family, just hold him for me!"

With that, he turned and ran.

With Hou Tianzu at the Manifest Energy level and a group of Hidden Energy attendants, holding Jiang Tian back... that shouldn't be a problem, right?

Wang Moshan swore that he had never run so pathetically in his entire life.

He scrambled down from the second deck to the first, never once looking back, his ears filled only with the sound of his own heavy gasps and the drum-like pounding of his heart.

So what if these attendants died? Was their lives more important than his own?

He still had to take the imperial examinations, earn his rank, and secure a bright future.

"Bang!"

A black shadow fell from above and slammed into the ground before him with a dull, heavy thud.

Wang Moshan's pupils constricted violently.

It was Hou Tianzu!

The man who possessed Manifest Energy was now sprawled on the ground like a dead dog, his eyes wide open, the light in his pupils rapidly fading.

His neck was twisted at a bizarre angle, and there was a fist-sized, jagged hole in his chest, as if it had been punched through by some blunt force.

Blood gushed from the hole, spreading into a dark red pool on the wooden floorboards.

In an instant, the fear in Wang Moshan's heart reached its absolute peak.

His legs gave out, and he collapsed onto the floor, his face as pale as paper, his body shaking uncontrollably like a sieve.

How much time had even passed?

A Manifest Energy expert and a group of Hidden Energy fighters, all wiped out just like that?

Even slaughtering pigs wouldn't be this fast!

"Where are you planning to go, Young Master Wang?"

A smiling voice drifted from behind him.

Wang Moshan jumped in fright, and the stench of urine and feces instantly began to spread from his crotch.

Jiang Tian walked up to Wang Moshan at a leisurely pace, pinched his nose, and looked down at him with an expression of utter disgust: "Didn't you pride yourself on being a man of culture? What kind of cultured person relieves themselves in the middle of the street?"

"Thud--"

Wang Moshan struggled to climb up, then knelt straight down on the ground.

His voice was thick with sobs as he began to slap his own face, one strike after another, the "smack-smack" sounds echoing clearly, while he begged incoherently: "Jiang Tian—no, Master Tian! You are a man of great stature, please just treat me like a fart and let me go! I was ignorant before! My poetry really was trash, everything you said was the truth!"

"So you know you were wrong?" Jiang Tian looked down at him from above, his eyes devoid of even a ripple.

"I know, I know! There won't be a next time—"

The voice came to an abrupt halt.

"Wrong?" Jiang Tian tilted his head, the smile at the corners of his mouth slowly turning cold.

"You only know... that you are about to die."

"Splash--"

A dull sound of something hitting the water came from the river not far away, like a heavy object falling into the depths, sending up a large spray of water.

And Wang Moshan, who had been in front of Jiang Tian, was now a headless corpse.

Jiang Tian had punched his head clean off.

"Hoo--"

Jiang Tian let out a long, heavy breath, feeling his body become much lighter, as if a heavy shackle had been cast off.

The resentment that had been festering in his heart dissipated at this very moment.

That was the lingering grudge left behind by his predecessor.

Now, that grudge had finally vanished.

Jiang Minghai was sprinting with all his might through the night, wearing the black uniform of the City Patrol Division, a long saber strapped to his waist, the scabbard slapping against his thigh with a rhythmic "pat-pat" sound.

Last time, he hadn't protected his younger brother well, nearly letting him lose his life.

This time, he would never allow such a thing to happen again.

The Wang Family? If that young master of the Wang Family refused to let things go, then he would simply kill that spoiled brat and flee far away with his brother, wife, and children!

Soon, he saw the two-story ship on the river.

The ship sat silently on the water, devoid of music or laughter, quiet to the point of terror, like a tomb floating on the surface.

Jiang Minghai's heart tightened, his pace quickening as he leaped onto the deck in a few strides.

The first floor—completely empty.

The second floor—

The moment he stepped onto the second-floor deck, his thick eyebrows knitted together violently, and his pupils shrank to pinpricks.

Corpses were everywhere.

Blood flowed like a river on the floor, the dark red liquid snaking through the gaps in the wooden planks, and the air was filled with a thick, nauseating stench of blood.

The candle stand had been knocked over, the flames long extinguished, leaving only the moonlight to filter through the ship's windows, casting a pale, ghastly light over the carnage.

He recognized one of the men.

Hou Tianzu, a Manifest Energy expert of the Wang Family. It was said he had been stuck at this level for years; though he hadn't reached Transformation Energy, he could still trade blows with such experts.

But now, Hou Tianzu lay on the ground with a fist-sized hole in his chest, the edges jagged and uneven, as if he had been punched through by some blunt force.

His eyes were still open, the light in his pupils long extinguished, and what remained frozen in his gaze was a bone-deep terror, as if he had seen something truly horrific before he died.

"Brother, why are you here?"

A familiar voice came from the depths of the cabin.

Jiang Minghai looked up.

Jiang Tian was squatting in the corner, pouring a jar of wine onto the deck of the second floor. The liquid flowed across the planks, mixing with the blood, adding a strong, sharp aroma of alcohol to the air.

"You..."

Jiang Minghai opened his mouth, his gaze sweeping over the sea of corpses before slowly shifting to Jiang Tian's handsome face.

His expression became incredibly complex.

Even if he were a fool, he would understand by now—

These were all the work of his younger brother, who had been practicing martial arts for less than half a month.

Yet, he still couldn't believe it.

He couldn't believe that this scene of carnage, like a Shura field, had anything to do with the calm young man standing before him.