A Brief Interlude

The man stood nearly two meters tall, his upper body packed with muscles that looked ready to burst through his black shirt at any moment. His well-groomed full beard and wild, rugged features made him look like a fearsome brute straight out of Water Margin—Li Kui himself!

"What are you doing?"

The moment the burly man spoke, his voice boomed like muffled thunder, drowning out the frenzied music playing in the dance hall and making their eardrums ache.

Perhaps the pain of having his wrist twisted had sent the biker's hormones surging and driven away what little sense he had left. He immediately roared at the man built like a bull.

"I (beep) your mother!!! What the hell are you supposed to be? My hand..."

Before he could spit out all the curses caught in his throat, the bearded brute swung his enormous, fan-like palm and slapped him hard across the face, the force of the blow even whipping up a gust of wind!

Bang!!

A heavy thud rang out. The biker seemed to have been struck head-on by a train, and he went flying like a kite with its strings cut!

He slammed into the wall with another loud crash, then crumpled to the floor and twitched faintly. Blood mixed with other fluids ran from his eyes, ears, nose, and mouth. Whether he was alive or dead was anyone's guess...

Seeing what had happened to their companion finally snapped the others back to their senses.

That build, that strength—he was clearly a strength-type Baptized One of at least the second tier. In other words, an Apocalypse Warrior!!

Once they realized this, the two remaining bikers hurriedly helped up the companion Xia Leng had stared into a daze and fled the bar, not caring what happened to the other two members.

The biker whose wrist Xia Leng had clamped down on, leaving him unable to pull his hand out of the backpack, was already flushed from the pain. He was just short of dropping to his knees and begging for mercy.

Seeing this, the bearded man immediately understood. "Oh, so you're just a bunch of sneaky little thieves. Didn't you see the rules scrawled on the wall outside?"

The bearded man's expression darkened, making him look even more ferocious, like Zhong Kui himself had come up from the underworld!

The graffiti outside the bar didn't spell out the rules in words. Instead, they were drawn in extremely abstract images. Unless you studied them closely for several minutes, you'd have no idea what the bloody pictures were meant to show. Anyone who didn't know better might think they depicted tomatoes and eggs being stir-fried...

As for how to deal with people who couldn't keep their hands to themselves, the answer was obvious: disable the "tools" they used to steal.

The bearded man somehow produced a nearly one-meter-long, thick-backed cleaver. Without another word, he brought it down on the biker's right arm, still stuck inside the backpack!

Crack!

For the bearded man, chopping through a solid arm bone was as easy as cutting through a stalk of sugarcane.

After a brief moment of numb shock, the pain signals reached his brain. The biker whose arm had been severed finally let out another desperate, bloodcurdling scream.

The flailing stump sprayed thick blood like a water gun, splattering the floor and the bar counter. The other bartenders frowned at the sight, since their boss had just added more work to their shifts...

"Throw these two lumps of stinking meat into the infected zone."

The bearded man casually wiped the blade, still warm with blood, on the biker writhing in agony on the floor, then slid it back behind his waist.

One biker was as good as dead, and the other wasn't much different. Several bartenders dragged them outside. The other patrons had long since grown used to scenes like this. It didn't affect them at all: those who wanted to dance kept dancing, and those who wanted to drink kept drinking.

Just then, the bartender who had traded some of his own water for the magazine came out from the back, carrying two full canteens. He froze at the sight before him. He'd only been gone for a few minutes. How had a fight broken out already?

"Have those guys frightened you, sir? It was my fault for letting them in. My name is Leino, and I'm in charge of this bar."

The bearded man named Leino saw Xia Leng sitting motionless in his seat and assumed he'd been scared stiff. Apologetically, he walked over, grabbed the severed hand still caught in Xia Leng's backpack, and went to toss it into the trash.

As soon as he pulled the hand free, he noticed a dark ring pressed into its wrist!

It looked as though the flesh around the wrist had been crushed and killed before the arm was chopped off!

"Oh? Sir, are you a Baptized One too?"

Leino examined the dark mark on the severed wrist without the slightest revulsion. He saw that even the wrist bone had been crushed. An ordinary person couldn't possibly have that much strength!

What puzzled him was that if the young man was a strength-type Baptized One like himself, he ought to have a sturdier build. This young man looked so thin.

Of course, he couldn't generalize. Otherwise, every brain-enhanced Baptized One would have a head as big as an alien's...

"I'm not. Maybe his hand was already like that."

Xia Leng's expression remained perfectly calm, without the slightest flicker. In truth, he wanted to look frightened so Leino would think he was an ordinary person.

But he'd always been this way. He couldn't act, even if he tried.

Leino could tell that the young man was deliberately changing the subject, so he didn't press him.

"Yang Wei, pour this customer a drink to calm his nerves. I still have other things to take care of. Enjoy your drink, sir."

"Understood! Take care, boss!"

The bearded brute patted Xia Leng on the shoulder, then left.

When Xia Leng heard that the bartender who'd traded pure water for his porn magazine was actually named Yang Wei, the corner of his mouth twitched involuntarily...

A glass, no taller than a thumb, was set down in front of him. It held a clear liquid with a rich, mellow aroma—the liquor brewed in the old world from several times the grain.

Even this single glass was worth a full canteen of pure water.

Xia Leng didn't hesitate. He picked up the glass and gulped down the precious liquid, feeling a warm sensation flow from his throat to his stomach and then spread throughout his body.

He wasn't much of a drinker, but he wouldn't turn down any food that could provide him with heat.

Then Xia Leng put the two full canteens back in his backpack and got up to leave the bar.

A tempting place like this had never been somewhere he wanted to be.

Xia Leng looked at the endless road ahead, its air wavering in the scorching sun. He pulled off his black hood, put the brief interlude behind him, and set off on his journey.

Just then, not far behind him, three bikers with shotguns in hand sat astride their motorcycles, glaring viciously as he moved farther and farther away from the bar's territory...