Above the sea, the water rippled and shimmered. The moisture had yet to disperse, and had turned into a thick morning fog that blanketed the ocean and the vast inlet.
In the mist, the emerald-green mountains and forests looked like a hazy ink painting.
In Lianjiang City, in the dilapidated Two Wells Alley.
A girl's cries shattered the morning's tranquility.
The doors and windows of the low houses cracked open, and the people inside peered out cautiously.
"Look again and I'll gouge your eyes out!"
A few hooligans brandished short clubs and shouted, glaring. The people in the houses hurriedly shrank back inside, only daring to curse the bastards under their breath.
"Ugh, what happened?" Zhao An came to his senses, his head throbbing as if someone had drilled a skylight into it.
He instinctively touched his head and felt blood on his hand.
"At least it's only blood, not brain matter..."
He breathed a sigh of relief, then realized that the hand touching his head and the clothes on his body weren't his.
At that thought, unfamiliar memories surged into his mind like a tide, leaving him rooted to the spot.
"He's awake! Brother Zhao's awake!"
The two thugs nearby were overjoyed and hurried to help Zhao An up.
"Brother Zhao, how are you?" Seeing Zhao An stand there in a daze without expression, Li Gou'er grew worried.
Could he have been knocked stupid?
"I'm fine." Zhao An furrowed his brow and let out a long breath, his voice muffled and nasal.
The girl's cries and the hooligans' shouts rang in his ears, making him irritable and confused.
But he had sorted out his thoughts.
He had died suddenly in his previous life and now he had transmigrated.
"The Great Wu Dynasty. People in this world can practice martial arts, and there are even sorcery and witchcraft..."
"An alternate world!"
After absorbing all of his predecessor's memories, Zhao An had a rough understanding of his current situation.
His predecessor had been a street thug, only marginally better off than a common lowlife. Thanks to his brawling, violent nature, he'd become a minor leader in the Tiger Head Gang.
Today, he'd gotten into a clash with members of another gang, only to be beaten to death in the street.
"So I was a bit-part villain..."
Zhao An sighed inwardly and stood up, looking around.
The girl's bothersome cries came from inside a shabby house with gaps in every wall.
A few hooligans stood guard outside. When they met the gaze of Zhao An, whose head was covered in blood, panic flashed across their faces.
Zhao An had always been vicious, and he held grudges like no other.
They hadn't expected the few clubs they'd used to ambush him to fail to kill the brute.
Meanwhile, having pieced together what had happened, Zhao An strode forward without hesitation.
In both his previous life and this one, he had been a hulking man, over eight feet tall, with broad shoulders and a thick waist, like a solid wall.
More importantly, he had never been the sort of mild-mannered man others could push around!
As he closed in, the hooligans instinctively shrank back in panic.
One of them blustered, trying to sound tough. "Zhao An! You dare come back!"
The moment he finished speaking, Zhao An didn't bother to answer. He slammed a fist into the hooligan's face with such force that his jaw was knocked crooked.
The hooligan collapsed to the ground, eyes rolling back, without even a groan.
"Beat him to death!" Seeing this, the other hooligans jumped up and swung their short clubs.
Zhao An shot them a fierce look and moved faster. He grabbed the hand of the thug raising his club. The strength in his massive arm far surpassed that of an ordinary man, and the thug couldn't bring his club down even an inch.
Another punch, delivered with even greater brutality, struck the thug in the throat.
There was a crack. His throat bone had shattered!
Just then, a club struck Zhao An in the back. The searing pain made his eyes fill with blood and his whole body burn with heat. He turned to face the hooligan behind him like a crazed tiger.
That single look made the thug's legs go weak. He didn't dare swing a second time.
Zhao An loomed over him, grabbed his head in one huge hand, and smashed it into the stone wall.
The already flimsy wall crumbled, leaving a gaping hole.
In the blink of an eye, he'd knocked three men down. Their fates were unclear, but the two hooligans farther away didn't dare come any closer.
Even with weapons in their hands, Zhao An seemed more like a mad tiger, terrifying enough to make their blood run cold.
Zhao An paid them no mind and kicked the door open.
Inside, a naked, lice-covered man was at the bedside, roughly tearing at a young woman.
A gray-haired old woman lay unconscious over a wooden table, and an old man with both legs broken lay on the floor.
The old man screamed himself hoarse, but he couldn't stop his daughter from being violated.
Zhao An barged in with a gust of bloody wind, making the naked man at the bedside jolt.
Before the lice-ridden man could turn around, Zhao An was already beside him. He kicked him in the waist with enough force to send him slamming into the wall and break the bed frame.
"Damn it, Zhao An! You mangy bastard, you've got a hard life!" Xu San cursed through the pain.
He opened his eyes and saw Zhao An barreling toward him like a tank. Terrified, he groped beside the collapsed bed and pulled out a short blade for self-defense.
He was about to stab Zhao An, but Zhao An grabbed him first. After a brief struggle, the blade turned around and plunged into the naked man's chest and abdomen.
Xu San's face twisted with rage. He couldn't believe he was going to die today.
"Zhao An, this isn't over! The Python Gang won't let you get away with this! I'll be waiting for you to join me down below!" Even as he was dying, Xu San refused to lose face. He glared at Zhao An with wide eyes.
Zhao An said nothing. He swung his arm, then punched again, his fist like a cannonball as it smashed into Xu San's face and silenced him.
With blood dripping from the back of his hand, he slowly got to his feet and took several deep breaths.
Only now did Zhao An's heart begin to pound.
He hadn't given it much thought just now. He'd acted mostly on his predecessor's memories and instincts.
By the time he came to his senses, he'd already killed more than one person.
No matter how tough he was, he couldn't keep himself calm after that.
Fortunately, in this world, killers were a dime a dozen. Gang fights in particular were something even the authorities tacitly chose not to interfere with.
He didn't have to worry about going to prison.
For now, his attention had shifted to the space above the naked man's head.
A faint red word had appeared there.
[Xu San]
"Red Name..." Zhao An looked at the cowering girl.
A word had appeared above her head too, though it wasn't red. It was an extremely faint white.
[Lin Xiaoxiao]
As if sensing Zhao An's gaze, the girl's already terrified face turned deathly pale, drained of all color.
It seemed that in her eyes, Zhao An was far more terrifying than Xu San, the lice-ridden brute who had just tried to assault her. She looked at him as if he were a demon.
Her bare legs trembled so badly that she looked ready to lose control right there.
"Don't—don't kill me! Master An, I'll do anything you want!"
At her words, Zhao An recalled that the reason he and Xu San of the Python Gang had clashed today was that they'd both taken a liking to the same girl. They'd fought over her and come to blows.
At heart, he was no different from the lice-ridden man on the ground. They were both cut from the same cloth.
Of course, he had no interest in her now.
His gaze fell on the old man at his feet, then on the old woman unconscious on the table.
Their names appeared above their heads in translucent letters, with no special color.
He'd noticed the same thing with the Python Gang thugs he'd just taken down. Of the names floating above their heads, one was faint red and two were gray.
"Can you see the words above their heads?" Zhao An pointed at the people in the room, then at his own head, and asked the girl.
Lin Xiaoxiao was frightened and confused. She didn't understand what Zhao An meant.
Seeing her reaction, Zhao An understood. He was the only one who could see the words above people's heads.
It wasn't particularly strange for someone who'd transmigrated to have a special ability.
He turned the thought over in his mind. The names he saw above people's heads had to mean different things depending on their color.
By then, Xu San, the lice-ridden brute on the ground, had finished coughing up blood and breathed his last.
A faint red glow floated out of his body and vanished into Zhao An's palm.
[Having committed countless evils, his sinful soul has been collected!]
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