Nighttime Reckoning

Lu Zhen looked down at him from above, like a demon god exhaling white mist in the rainy night.

"Who sent you?"

Sun Gouzi struggled to swallow a mouthful of muddy spit, his Adam's apple bobbing violently.

Facing a Bright Force god of slaughter like this, he knew exactly where he stood: this was a job that would cost him his life. If he named his employer, he would surely die; if he kept quiet, he'd be beaten into a puddle of mush right here and now.

But he didn't want to die. Even if there was only one chance in ten thousand, he wanted to gamble that this lord might show him mercy and let him go like a fart.

"It was... it was Duan Hu, the second-in-command of the Black Dragon Water Stronghold!"

"...,..."

Sun Gouzi trembled like a sieve. "Our young chief was lost at Soul-Falling Gorge. The chief was warned by the Eastern Foreigners and didn't dare openly move against the Gu Family, so... so he ordered the three of us to take your head and offer it to the river..."

Lu Zhen listened, his face expressionless, and gave a slight nod.

Seeing this, Sun Gouzi felt the taut nerves in his body suddenly loosen. He thought he'd finally won the gamble and salvaged his worthless life.

A fawning smile, uglier than a grimace, barely surfaced on his pale face. He hastily begged for mercy again. "Thank you for sparing me, grandpa! I'll get lost right away, I'll get lost..."

Before he could finish,

Lu Zhen casually stepped forward.

"Crack!"

A crisp snap of breaking bone, enough to set one's teeth on edge, burst through the rainy night.

Lu Zhen brutally and precisely kicked in Sun Gouzi's cervical vertebrae.

The relief and ingratiating smile froze on Sun Gouzi's face. He collapsed into the standing water like a puddle of mush, his eyes fixed wide on the night sky, dying with grievances unresolved.

The night rain fell in a bleak haze, while the river wind carried bone-chilling dampness through Ocean City's sky.

Along the riverbank, black waves churned.

An old night watchman bundled in a tattered straw rain cape carried a dim yellow storm lantern. Shoulders hunched, he trudged along the muddy embankment, one step sinking deep, the next barely finding purchase.

"Thud—! Thud, thud!"

"The air is dry, be careful with fire—!"

The old man clacked the bamboo rattle in his hand and mumbled his cry, shivering as he cursed the cursed heavens under his breath. "Rain like this, not even ghosts want to go out. What's the point of making the rounds..."

All of a sudden,

several dull thuds sounded from high on the embankment ahead, like heavy objects falling.

"Thud!"

"Thud!"

"Thud!"

It was as if someone had effortlessly tossed three heavy sacks stuffed with raw pork into the rushing river, one after another.

Pale splashes leapt up, then vanished into the deep, surging waves. Not even a bubble rose to the surface.

The old man jumped, and the storm lantern in his hand swung wildly.

In its faint glow, he made out a hulking black silhouette at the edge of the raised river platform, standing like an iron tower amid the rain.

After a lifetime of walking the night roads in this Ten-Mile Foreign Field, the old man knew all too well what those sounds meant.

A feud between martial artists. Bodies dumped in the river to feed the fish.

He sucked in a terrified breath, hastily smothered the lantern with his sleeve, and didn't dare so much as breathe. Pressing himself against the embankment wall, he scrambled away from this place of trouble.

After disposing of the bodies, Lu Zhen trudged through the mud and returned home in Pig Cage Alley beneath the cold winter rain.

The remaining blood on the bluestone slabs outside the narrow courtyard had long since been washed away by the downpour, leaving not a trace.

Inside, Lu Zhen took off his soaked shirt and casually tossed the spoils he'd taken from the three dead assassins onto the table.

They were more than a dozen Silver Dollars speckled with water, several loose banknotes, and a long sword.

A quick count came to barely over twenty Silver Dollars.

Lu Zhen looked at the silver coins on the table and gave a slight shake of his head.

"Three top assassins at the Late Force Refining Realm, and they only had this much loose change on them." He muttered coldly to himself. "Pathetic."

Lu Zhen sat in the dim wooden room, his gaze flickering in the dark.

"With all three dead, this isn't over. It's only just begun."

The three assassins wouldn't return to report tonight. It wouldn't take long for Duan Hu, the second-in-command of the Black Dragon Water Stronghold, to realize something was wrong.

On the surface, Lu Zhen's cultivation was only at the Late Force Refining Realm.

In the eyes of a vicious bandit like Duan Hu, it was no great mystery if a martial arts school's lowly grunt had used his familiarity with the terrain—or some hidden Western firearm—to get lucky and kill three assassins.

The first strike had missed. With the river bandits' venomous, vindictive nature, they would surely have an even more ruthless move waiting.

With his Copper Skin Iron Bone and Bright Force cultivation, Lu Zhen naturally had nothing to fear.

But he wasn't alone in the world.

In the next room, his younger sister Lu Wan was asleep, along with Sister Shen, who seemed so frail.

If the river bandits couldn't get to him and turned instead on those two unarmed women... that would be a red line Lu Zhen could never tolerate!

"Duan Hu has to die."

Lu Zhen's gaze gradually hardened like iron.

At first glance, taking the initiative to kill the second-in-command of the Black Dragon Water Stronghold seemed like a foolish act of courting death, one that would easily expose his true cultivation. But that wasn't the case!

Who was Duan Hu?

He was a top bandit who had genuinely entered the early Bright Force Realm!

In the eyes of Duan Hai, chief of the Black Dragon Water Stronghold, a Bright Force expert crushing a mere Late Force Refining Realm martial arts school grunt was like a boulder crushing an egg.

If Duan Hu died outside tonight, or simply vanished without a sound,

Duan Hai would never suspect an insignificant little figure at the "Late Force Refining Realm"!

He would only be left in doubt, wondering whether Gu Wanshan of the Tongjiang Chamber of Commerce had set a trap, or if some other hidden Bright Force expert in Ocean City had turned on them and secretly clipped the wings of his stronghold.

Killing Duan Hu would instead muddy the waters completely and let Lu Zhen, an inconspicuous pebble, slip away without a trace!

The odds of being exposed were infinitesimal.

Keeping Duan Hu alive, on the other hand, would make exposure more likely!

There was only one question left.

Duan Hu was Bright Force.

So was Lu Zhen.

Should he go kill him now?

A sudden flash of the serene insight that had swept through him earlier, as he listened to the rain beneath the eaves, crossed Lu Zhen's mind.

All things in heaven and earth changed with the prevailing force.

Turning every perilous dead end into a weapon to overcome one's enemies—that was the true path to the summit of martial arts!

He lifted his eyes toward the window.

The cold wind and rain continued. The night wind had torn a long, narrow rift through the heavy clouds, and half of the pale remnant moon had passed its zenith.

Three in the morning, the hour of the tiger.

A dark, windy night—the perfect time to kill and burn!

"Since this is a crisis no matter what, I'll strike first."

"If not now, when?!"

Lu Zhen sat in the shadows and wiped the new sword with a coarse cloth.

The sword was three chi and three cun long. It had yet to taste blood today.

He ran through the route he would take to infiltrate the place, possible evasive maneuvers, and how he would respond if things went wrong.

"Bang—"

A gust of night wind abruptly slammed the old door open!

Moonlight spilled into the room, landing squarely on the blade laid flat before Lu Zhen.

The polished sword spine reflected Lu Zhen's cold eyes with perfect clarity.

Looking at himself in the blade, Lu Zhen picked up the sword and rose, striding out through the door.

"A thousand schemes are no match for blood spilled within five paces."