Interception

Before he could finish speaking, the cross-eyed gang member stared past Lei Tiger, his legs trembling.

"B-Boss! They're... they're back!"

The cross-eyed man's words had barely left his mouth when a razor-sharp breeze silently swept past Lei Tiger's neck. He didn't even have time to turn around.

Lei Tiger felt a chill at his throat, and his vision abruptly tilted and inverted.

The last thing he saw was his own body, frozen in place halfway through a turn, blood gushing from his neck like a spring.

He wanted to shout, but all he could manage was a breathy "Hrrk." Darkness swallowed him in an instant.

"Boss!" Scarface was both shocked and furious. He drew his blade and lunged forward.

But the thing that had killed Lei Tiger was faster than he could comprehend.

A blurry, yellowish-brown paper afterimage glided toward him with an eerie, almost sliding motion.

A flash of blade light flickered in the dim candlelight.

Scarface's thick-backed Ghost Head Blade had barely risen halfway when he and the blade were cleaved apart, from his left shoulder to his right flank!

His entrails and blood spilled across the floor, and the heavy stench of blood exploded through the room.

Only then did the remaining gang members see what had attacked them.

It was a human-shaped figure about as tall as an ordinary man. It didn't look like flesh and blood, but rather like it had been pieced together from some kind of thick, stiff paper.

In its hands, it gripped two paper blades, thin as cicada wings, their edges glowing faintly red in the candlelight.

It spread its arms and swept past two gang members, dancing like a wraith from a shadow play, reaping lives.

The two men froze in place. Fine lines of blood appeared around their necks, and then their heads rolled to the ground.

"A m-monster!" One gang member was so terrified he nearly lost his mind. At last, he found his voice, but he no longer cared about brotherhood. He turned and bolted for the door.

The Paper Doll gave a light leap and drifted after him like a paper kite.

In the blink of an eye, the only ones left standing in the room were the baleful, godlike Weaponized Paper Puppet and Mr. Xu, who had collapsed to the ground.

His crotch was already soaked. His teeth chattered so violently that he couldn't even beg for mercy.

The Paper Puppet slowly turned its head, its two cinnabar-red eyes coldly fixing on him.

Chen Mo's real body didn't appear, but his voice drifted eerily from somewhere in a crack of shadow. "Where is the Black Tiger Gang's Secret Vault?"

He had already searched Lei Tiger's bedroom and found only a little over a hundred silver dollars.

How could the mighty Black Tiger Gang have so little cash? He was certain they had a secret chamber somewhere else.

In the courtyard, Mr. Xu wept and dribbled snot as he kowtowed frantically. "Spare me! Immortal master, spare me! The Secret Vault... it's not at the main hall. It's... beneath the cellar of the Fortune Pawnshop in the south of the city."

"There's a hidden door. The key... the key is inside the Black Tiger Jade Pendant on Lei Tiger. Twist the tiger's head and it opens... The mechanism map is... in my robe..."

The Paper Puppet stepped forward. Its paper blade lifted the thin, cured sheepskin from Mr. Xu's robe, and it vanished into the shadows.

Then, without pause, the blade swept across Mr. Xu's throat.

After confirming that no one was left alive, the Paper Puppet searched Lei Tiger's corpse, took the Black Tiger Jade Pendant, and tossed it into the corner where Chen Mo was hiding. It then swept up the silver dollars and several antique jade pieces in the room and stuffed them into the bundle on its back.

Before even a quarter of an hour had passed, the Paper Puppet was carrying the bundle as it swiftly leaped out of the courtyard and melted into the deep darkness outside.

Chen Mo's consciousness was attached to the Paper Puppet. It raced silently across eaves and rooftops toward the Fortune Pawnshop in the south of the city.

The night breeze was cool, carrying the memory of the bloodshed, but Chen Mo's heart was as still as an ancient well.

The Black Tiger Gang had done evil for years and taken ill-gotten wealth. He had no qualms about it.

Just as he flew over a secluded alley, a sudden change occurred!

From the shadows below, an aura as vast and heavy as a mountain erupted, locking firmly onto the Paper Puppet in midair!

"Hmph. I knew something was off. You think these sinister tricks can fool the heavens?" A deep, resonant sneer rang out.

Then a fierce, unstoppable force of a punch blasted through the air!

The punch was solid as a giant hammer. Before it even struck, the violent gale it stirred pressed down on the Paper Puppet, slowing its form and halting its nimble drift.

Yue Shan!

He hadn't stayed at the main hall to wait for them. Instead, he had predicted the escape route the intruder would take after succeeding and laid an ambush here!

The Weaponized Paper Puppet was sharp, but a direct clash with a martial arts expert like Yue Shan, who had reached the innate realm and possessed vigorous qi and blood, wasn't its forte.

Chen Mo's heart tightened. At the last possible instant, he forced the Paper Puppet to twist around.

Its paper blades carved through the air in several sharp slashes, trying to cut apart and weaken the distant punch, while it used the force to dive toward the eaves on one side.

"Bang!"

The force of the punch collided with the keen edge of the paper blades, producing a dull thud.

The Paper Puppet was struck hard and drifted backward. Several creases on its body seemed to dim.

The brocade bundle holding the loot was torn apart by the force, and gold, silver, and jewels clattered across the alley.

Yue Shan's tall figure emerged from the shadows, his eyes flashing as they locked onto the bizarre Paper Puppet.

"Controlling puppets to kill and rob? You're not getting away!"

He stepped forward, and the bluestone paving cracked beneath his feet!

His second punch was already building, more ferocious, heavier, faster. A faint tiger's roar accompanied it as it sealed off every possible route the Paper Puppet could take.

Chen Mo's thoughts raced. He controlled the Paper Puppet to hurl the remaining bundle straight at Yue Shan's face.

At the same time, the Paper Puppet's whole body abruptly contracted, turning in an instant into a stiff paper sheet no bigger than a palm.

Like a shuriken, it shot several times faster than before at an incredibly tricky angle, skimming the edge of the punch's wind with a sharp "whoosh" as it sped toward the far end of the alley!

The sudden transformation and burst of speed clearly caught Yue Shan by surprise.

He punched the debris away, but by the time he moved to give chase, the paper sheet had already disappeared into the thicker darkness in the distance, its aura quickly concealed and gone.

Yue Shan lowered his fist and stood still, staring at the scattered jewels and the vanished paper sheet. His brows knitted tightly.

He crouched and picked up a broken fragment of the Paper Puppet, rubbing it between his fingers as a sharp glint flashed in his eyes.

"A Paper Puppet... This nimble and ingenious thing is no ordinary unorthodox craft." He looked toward the direction the paper sheet had vanished, then back toward the Black Tiger Gang's main hall. After pondering for a moment, he didn't give chase. Instead, he carefully put away the fragment and strode off, disappearing at the other end of the alley.

Far away, a palm-sized sheet of stiff paper lay still on the beam of an abandoned attic, its cinnabar-painted eyes completely dim.

In a more distant patch of darkness, Chen Mo's real body let out a soft breath, his face slightly pale.

"Someone from the Bureau of Strange Suppression... They're that strong. His senses are astonishingly sharp. The Paper Puppet almost got captured."

He muttered under his breath, his gaze growing darker. "I have to get to the Secret Vault right away, or something might happen if I wait too long."