Hong?

"Friends in the shadows, please come out and show yourselves." After seeing both his opponents dead, Lu Hong still didn't let his guard down. He first shouted in English, then repeated himself in Chinese.

This was Chinese territory.

The powerful figure hiding in the shadows was very likely Chinese.

"Not bad, but you still need to be more careful."

Sure enough, a familiar voice spoke in Chinese.

Hearing the other party's tone, as if he were lecturing a junior, Lu Hong suddenly felt relieved.

It meant the other party probably meant him no harm.

Beneath the moonlight, Teng Qingshan stepped out from the shadows nearby.

Xingyi masters all had excellent eyesight, and Lu Hong was no exception. With the faint moonlight, he easily made out Teng Qingshan's features.

"So young!" Lu Hong was shocked. "He seems about my age."

Although Lu Hong had spent years in the underworld, he was actually very young—he wouldn't turn eighteen for several more months...

Now, seeing Teng Qingshan, who was about his age yet clearly stronger than him, he was naturally shaken.

Likewise, seeing Lu Hong up close left Teng Qingshan secretly surprised by his age.

They had been some distance apart before, and they had both been fighting, so Teng Qingshan hadn't gotten a good look at Lu Hong's face.

Now that he had a proper look,

he understood just how talented Lu Hong was.

"This boy will surely be extraordinary one day!" Teng Qingshan thought to himself.

Had such a genius been born on the Nine Provinces Continent, with his current level as an Xingyi Fist master, it would have been easy for him to advance further, cultivate Gang Energy, and become an Xingyi Grandmaster. He would even have had a good chance of becoming a Void Realm powerhouse like a "Heavenly God."

Originally, Teng Qingshan had only been unwilling to watch an Xingyi Fist master die beneath a hail of bullets, and had wanted to learn more about the mysterious map the boy had obtained.

But now, Teng Qingshan had truly developed a desire to nurture this talent.

An Xingyi master this young had boundless prospects.

"This isn't the place to talk. Let's take care of the bodies first, then find somewhere to chat," Teng Qingshan said calmly.

"Okay!"

As he spoke, Lu Hong went over to the bodies of White Bear and Monkey. First, he stripped them of all their gear, then searched their backpacks and took out all the cash they had been carrying.

Only then did he take a small, unmarked glass bottle from his pocket and drip a drop of clear, unidentified liquid onto each body.

Hiss, hiss, hiss~

As soon as the mysterious liquid touched the bodies, it reacted violently, rapidly corroding them into piles of ash.

"What potent Corpse-Dissolving Water," Teng Qingshan thought admiringly.

It seemed the assassins' organizations in this world were equipped with all kinds of gear.

"Senior, it's taken care of," Lu Hong said with a smile.

Not only had he survived this time, he had also gained quite a bit of loot.

The special-metal gloves White Bear had used were worth far more than the same weight in gold.

Monkey's custom-made firearms were easy to disguise and packed quite a punch, too.

On top of that, the two of them had been carrying 200,000 in Huaxia Currency, along with over 100,000 U.S. dollars.

That was no small haul.

"Let's go."

Watching Lu Hong loot the bodies and dispose of them with practiced ease left Teng Qingshan a little speechless.

It seemed the other boy had done this plenty of times.

With Lu Hong in tow, Teng Qingshan bounded away in three quick leaps, and they reached Nanshan Park several kilometers away.

After finding a secluded pavilion,

the two sat down facing each other.

Teng Qingshan watched him quietly.

After holding back for ten minutes, Lu Hong finally couldn't stand it any longer. "May I ask your name and where you come from, Senior? That way, I can repay you someday."

From Teng Qingshan's swift, nimble movements earlier, Lu Hong was certain that they were techniques from the Xingyi Fist tradition.

But he was clearly still far weaker than Teng Qingshan, which meant Teng Qingshan had to be a Grandmaster!

That was why he'd said he would repay him someday.

Lu Hong had always yearned for the legendary Grandmaster realm and was confident he would reach it one day.

But he was still a long way off.

"My name is Teng Qingshan, but you can just call me Wolf." Looking at the young assassin before him, Teng Qingshan was reminded of himself in his first life, when he too had been an assassin. So he told the boy the codename he had used back then.

"As for my school, I come from Teng Bolei's lineage. You may not have heard of it."

"Thank you for saving my life, Senior Wolf!" For some reason, Lu Hong felt a strong sense of closeness toward Teng Qingshan. Besides his real name, he, too, had an assassin's codename.

"I really haven't heard of Senior Teng Bolei's lineage, but it must be one of the strongest and most prosperous branches of the Xingyi Fist tradition."

Lu Hong praised him.

A lineage able to produce a Grandmaster who wasn't even twenty had to be an extremely prosperous and powerful Xingyi Sect.

Xingyi Fist had developed over a thousand years, naturally giving rise to many different schools.

It was only normal that he hadn't heard of many of them.

After all, apart from the years he had spent as a child at the Huaxia Orphanage,

Lu Hong had been sold overseas at the age of ten and put through brutal assassin training.

After surviving the initial, merciless elimination process, he had caught the eye of the Dark Hand organization with his grit and apparent talent. They sent him to train at an overseas Xingyi Martial Arts Hall.

He really was talented.

This overseas Xingyi Martial Arts Hall, which worked with the Dark Hand, accepted several people sent by the organization each year, generally choosing people of Chinese descent.

This time had been no exception. Of the five people of Chinese descent accepted,

Lu Hong had indeed been the most talented.

In fact, he had been the most gifted of all the students taught by the Hall Master.

So the Hall Master had secretly taken Lu Hong on as a personal disciple and passed on the true teachings to him.

After graduating at sixteen, Lu Hong had returned to the Dark Hand organization and begun carrying out various missions.

He had come to Yangzhou this time through a twist of fate.

"Our lineage really was prosperous once." Teng Qingshan thought of the hundreds of millions of Xingyi Fist practitioners on the Nine Provinces Continent, along with its countless disciples. "But now, I'm the only one left in this branch."

"I see." Lu Hong gazed at Teng Qingshan's strikingly youthful face and thought, "Senior Wolf must have quite a story to tell."

Most Internal Martial Arts Grandmasters knew how to preserve their health. Many in their thirties or forties looked twenty, but Teng Qingshan looked no more than twenty-something. Lu Hong had never imagined someone so young could be a Grandmaster.

It gave him a deeper appreciation for China's strength.

The major assassin organizations around the world, as well as top assassins like Lu Hong, had always regarded mysterious China with awe.

Masters and Grandmasters were incredibly rare in the outside world.

Yet on Chinese soil, one or two would appear from time to time.

"By the way, Senior, my real name is Lu Hong, but I prefer it when people call me by my codename, 'Hong,'" Lu Hong suddenly said.

"Hong?" Teng Qingshan nodded. The Little Cauldron in his mind suddenly trembled, and an image entered his consciousness.

It showed the boy before him, years in the future, single-handedly sweeping aside countless powerful Monsters.

"It looks like, after next year's upheaval, this boy will grow at an astonishing pace. Good thing I saved him." Teng Qingshan trusted the Little Cauldron's abilities completely.

"That's a good codename. I'll call you Hong from now on," Teng Qingshan said with a smile. "By the way, can you tell me how you got that codename?"