Fang Shuwen didn't look back.
But he could feel the footsteps behind him keeping a steady distance of about twenty paces, neither hurried nor slow. There was no shaking them off.
At the same time,
Snake Form Talent gave him keen enough senses to pick out the rhythm of those footsteps.
Steady, powerful, with almost exactly the same interval between each step.
Anyone capable of that was no ordinary person!
A martial artist!
And a tough one at that.
Fang Shuwen's brow creased slightly. He neither sped up nor slowed down, continuing at the same pace as before.
He quickly ran through the possible pursuers in his mind.
Someone from the Wild Wolf Gang?
It didn't seem likely.
Those two thugs had died cleanly and swiftly. Zheng Shulan's second uncle was the director of the Public Security Bureau, and Lord Zheng was there to hold the fort.
With the Zheng Family's power, wiping away the cause of death of a few gang members would take no time at all.
So it wouldn't be the Wild Wolf Gang.
Could Guo Ziming have refused to accept his loss and hired someone?
Or was it that so-called director of the Folklore and Antiquities Investigation Division, Lin Xiu?
The faces of the two men flashed through Fang Shuwen's mind, but for the moment, he couldn't tell which of them had sent the person behind him.
"Interesting."
The corner of Fang Shuwen's mouth curled up. He decided to find a chance to "meet" his pursuer.
He changed direction. Instead of heading toward the Zhao Estate, he turned into a narrower alley beside East Street.
The alley stretched deep between towering walls, with only a sliver of sky overhead.
The footsteps behind him faltered, then resumed.
Fang Shuwen quickened his pace, weaving through the alley and choosing the dark lanes with no lights.
Before long, he reached the end of the alley.
There lay an abandoned vegetable market.
Half the roof of the market shed had collapsed, exposing several crooked wooden beams.
The terrain here was complicated. Anyone unfamiliar with it could easily get caught up in the obstacles.
Fang Shuwen stopped and turned around.
"You've been following me all this time. Aren't you tired?"
At last, the shadow at the alley entrance stepped out of the darkness.
The moonlight was faint. A thin shaft of pale light slipped through a gap in the half-collapsed roof and fell across the man's face.
He looked to be in his forties, with a square face, thick eyebrows, and a faint scar on his chin.
He wore a gray short jacket with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, revealing two thick, sturdy forearms.
A fierce aura rolled off him. He clearly knew martial arts!
"Fang Shuwen?"
The man's voice was hoarse, like iron scraped with sandpaper.
"Someone asked me to bring you back for a cup of tea."
"Oh, you're inviting me?"
Fang Shuwen smiled. "This isn't a very polite way to invite someone."
The man said nothing. He took one step forward.
At that single step, Fang Shuwen's pupils contracted sharply.
It wasn't an ordinary step.
When the man's foot came down, it left a shallow print in the flagstones.
He hadn't crushed them. He had planted his foot firmly.
His force had seeped into the stone, shaking away the surface dust and stamping a clear shoe-tread pattern into it.
Bright Force.
A Bright Force martial artist who had already trained his power into his feet.
A chill crept down Fang Shuwen's spine.
His current strength was Three-Sound Bone Crack, with seven hundred pounds of force in one arm.
In sheer strength, he wasn't far off the eight hundred pounds of someone who had just entered the Bright Force stage.
But if he truly faced a Bright Force martial artist, he had no confidence.
At that thought,
Fang Shuwen suddenly accelerated and charged into the ruins behind him.
The half-collapsed roof, crooked beams, heaps of rotten vegetable leaves and broken baskets, and several rusted handcarts—
Perhaps these obstacles could buy him a little time.
"Trying to run?"
The man's cold laugh came from behind, dripping with the contempt of a cat toying with a mouse.
"Do you think you can get away?"
The footsteps suddenly quickened.
He wasn't running. He was gliding.
A Bright Force martial artist's stride was far faster than an ordinary person could imagine. Every step seemed to skim just above the ground.
Fang Shuwen didn't look back, but he could feel that presence rapidly closing in.
At most five minutes, and the man would catch up.
"Damn it!"
Fang Shuwen cursed under his breath and drove off hard, darting forward.
The gaps between the wooden beams were narrow. He turned sideways and slid through, nearly scraping the ground, his spine twisting at an impossible angle as if he had no bones.
At that moment, Snake Form Talent showed itself to the fullest.
A muffled grunt came from behind.
The man clearly wasn't as supple. A wooden beam blocked him, and his speed dropped sharply.
Taking advantage of that brief opening, Fang Shuwen put more than a dozen paces between them.
But it was only temporary.
No matter how complicated the abandoned market's layout was, it still had an end.
He had to come up with a solution before then.
"You little brat, you sure are slippery!"
"Your skills are better than people said!"
"You really do have a secret."
The man's voice chased after him, tinged with irritation.
But irritation or not, he only got faster.
He stopped trying to squeeze through the narrow gaps and began smashing straight through anything in his way.
A beam as thick as a man's arm blocked him. He didn't even slow down. He punched, and the beam snapped, splintering wood flying everywhere.
Hearing the beam break behind him, Fang Shuwen's heart sank.
The man was resorting to brute force.
At this rate, he'd catch up soon.
"No, I have to find a way to save myself!"
Fang Shuwen's thoughts raced.
He reached into his coat and felt the blue cloth bundle Zheng Shulan had given him.
Five pieces of Ghost Jade.
The dark green one contained a concentration of alien energy far greater than any he had absorbed before.
He had no idea whether the energy inside would be enough to deal with the enemy in front of him!
Fang Shuwen gritted his teeth and pulled the blue cloth bundle from his coat.
He slipped behind a pile of collapsed bricks and tiles and, shielded by the darkness and debris, quickly untied the cord.
The five pieces of Ghost Jade lay in the bundle, glowing with a faint, cold light under the moon.
The largest, dark green one, was icy to the touch.
The other four were slightly smaller and varied in quality, but each was far better than the defective pieces he had bought at the National Martial Arts Hall.
"Fuck it!"
Fang Shuwen drew a deep breath and clutched all five pieces of Ghost Jade in his left hand.
He didn't know what would happen if he absorbed several pieces at once.
But at that moment, he couldn't afford to worry about it.
He took out all five pieces of Ghost Jade, gripped them tightly, and covered them with his vital-blood energy.
At once,
Five utterly different streams of cold erupted from his palm.
It wasn't the gentle chill he had felt before. It was as if someone had plunged five icy blades into his veins at once.
The cold surged from his left palm, up his arm, converged at his shoulder, then poured into his chest, spine, and brain like a flood bursting through a dam.
In an instant,
A bloody scene appeared before Fang Shuwen's eyes.
It was as if five demons had emerged from the mountains, charged into a village, and slaughtered its people.
At the same time, an extreme chill accompanied the vision, nearly freezing his mind solid.
Bloodlust and the urge to kill rose uncontrollably in his heart.
In that instant, Fang Shuwen felt himself about to lose control.
Just then,
[Alien energy detected. Absorb?]