Night Duel

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

"Who sent you?"

Sun Gouzi swallowed a mouthful of mud-mixed saliva with great difficulty, his Adam's apple bobbing violently.

In front of such a Bright Force killing god, he knew the situation clearly: he was on a death mission, and revealing his employer meant certain death; but if he didn't speak, he would be beaten into a pile of mush right here and now.

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

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

Sun Gouzi trembled like chaff, "Our young master died at Soul-Falling Gorge, and the big boss is afraid of the Eastern Foreigners' warnings, so he didn't dare move against the Gu Family openly. So... he ordered the three of us to take your head to offer as a sacrifice to the river..."

Lu Zhen listened, his expression indifferent as he nodded slightly.

Seeing this, Sun Gouzi's tightly wound nerves suddenly relaxed, thinking he had finally won his gamble and saved his miserable life.

Just as a fawning smile, uglier than crying, squeezed onto his pale face, he hurriedly begged for mercy again: "Thank you for sparing my life, Grandpa! I'll get out of here right now, I'm going..."

Before the words could finish.

Lu Zhen stepped forward, seemingly casual.

"Crack!"

A crisp, bone-chilling sound of snapping bones erupted in the rainy night.

Lu Zhen had precisely and brutally shattered Sun Gouzi's cervical vertebrae.

The relief and fawning smile on Sun Gouzi's face froze instantly. His entire body collapsed into the standing water like a pile of mud, his eyes staring fixedly at the night sky, dead with his eyes wide open.

The night rain was desolate, and the river wind, carrying bone-piercing damp cold, raged across the night sky of Ocean City.

By the riverbank, black waves rolled.

An old night watchman wrapped in a tattered straw raincoat, carrying a dim, yellow windproof lantern, walked with uneven steps along the muddy river embankment, his neck hunched.

"Dong—! Dong, dong!"

"The weather is dry, watch out for fire—!"

The old man tapped the bamboo clapper in his hand, shouting in a slurred voice. Shivering from the cold, he cursed the god-forsaken weather under his breath: "In such heavy rain, even ghosts wouldn't want to come out, what's the point of this watch..."

Suddenly.

From the high ground of the river embankment ahead, came several dull thuds of heavy objects falling.

"Thud!"

"Thud!"

"Thud!"

It was as if three heavy sacks filled with raw pork had been effortlessly tossed into the turbulent river one after another.

The pale splashes had barely erupted before being completely swallowed by the deep, rolling river waves, not even leaving a bubble behind.

The old man was startled, his lantern swaying violently.

Through the faint halo of light, he vaguely glimpsed a silhouette as sturdy as an iron tower standing on the edge of the high platform in the rain curtain.

Having walked the night paths of the Ten-Mile Foreign Field his whole life, the old man knew exactly what this meant.

Jianghu vendetta, sinking bodies to feed the fish.

Terrified, he gasped, quickly covering the lantern with his sleeve. Not daring to even breathe, he hugged the base of the embankment wall and scrambled away from this place of trouble.

Having finished disposing of the bodies, Lu Zhen stepped through the mud and returned to his home in Pig Cage Alley through the biting winter rain.

On the bluestone slabs outside the narrow courtyard, the residual blood had long been washed clean by the heavy rain, leaving no trace behind.

Inside the room, Lu Zhen took off his water-soaked cloth shirt and tossed the spoils he had scavenged from the three dead men onto the table.

There were a dozen silver dollars stained with water, a few scraps of banknotes, and a long sword.

A rough count revealed barely twenty-some silver dollars.

Lu Zhen looked at the silver coins on the table and shook his head slightly.

"Three top-tier dead soldiers at the late stage of Lianli, yet they only carried this much loose change." He muttered coldly in his heart, "Truly poor."

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

"With these three dead, the matter isn't over; it has only just begun."

If these three dead soldiers didn't return to report tonight, Duan Hu, the second-in-command of the Black Dragon Water Stronghold, would soon realize something was wrong.

His own cultivation, as far as the world knew, was only at the late stage of Lianli.

In the eyes of a ruthless bandit like Duan Hu, it was no miracle for a mud-legged martial arts student to kill three dead-men by luck, whether by exploiting the terrain or hiding some Western firearm.

Having failed the first strike, the viper-like nature of a water bandit, who would never let a grudge go unavenged, meant a far more vicious follow-up was inevitable.

With his own Copper Skin Iron Bone and Bright Force cultivation, he was naturally unafraid.

But he was not alone.

In the next room slept his little sister, Lu Wan, and the seemingly fragile Sister Shen.

If the water bandits couldn't take him down and turned their sights on these two defenseless women instead... that was a reverse scale that Lu Zhen absolutely could not tolerate!

"Duan Hu must die."

Lu Zhen's eyes gradually turned cold and hard as iron.

It might seem like a suicidal move to actively hunt down the second-in-command of the Black Dragon Water Stronghold, a foolish act that would easily expose his true cultivation, but that was not the case at all!

Who was Duan Hu?

He was a top-tier, ruthless bandit who had truly stepped into the early stage of Bright Force!

In the mind of Duan Hai, the leader of the Black Dragon Water Stronghold, a dignified Bright Force expert crushing a late-stage Lianli martial artist was as easy as Mount Tai crushing an egg.

If Duan Hu died outside tonight or vanished from the face of the earth without a sound, Duan Hai would never cast his suspicious gaze upon a small fry at the "late-stage Lianli" level!

He would only be filled with doubt and suspicion, wondering if Gu Wanshan of the Tongjiang Chamber of Commerce had set a trap, or if some other Bright Force powerhouse hidden in Ocean City had played a double-cross, secretly clipping the wings of his stronghold.

Killing Duan Hu would instead muddy the waters completely, perfectly extracting himself—a pebble of no consequence—from the situation!

The probability of exposure was infinitesimal.

On the contrary, leaving Duan Hu alive was what would lead to exposure!

Now, only one problem remained.

Duan Hu was Bright Force.

And he, too, was Bright Force.

Should he kill him now?

In Lu Zhen's mind, the ethereal epiphany he had felt while listening to the rain under the eaves flashed by.

All things in heaven and earth transform according to the momentum.

To turn every dangerous predicament into a weapon to defeat the enemy—that was the true path to the pinnacle of martial arts!

He raised his eyes to look out the window.

The bleak wind and bitter rain continued, and the night wind tore a narrow fissure through the thick clouds, revealing a pale, waning moon that had already passed its zenith.

Three in the morning, the hour of the tiger.

A night of dark moon and high wind, a perfect time for killing and arson!

"Since it is a dangerous situation either way, I shall strike first."

"If not now, when?!"

Lu Zhen sat in the shadows, reaching out to wipe his new sword with a coarse cloth.

The sword was three feet three inches long, and it had yet to taste blood today.

In his mind, he simulated the night's infiltration route, evasive maneuvers, and methods of response.

"Clang—"

The old door was suddenly blown open by a gust of urgent night wind!

A pool of moonlight spilled into the room, landing squarely on the flat blade of Lu Zhen's sword.

The mirror-bright spine of the sword clearly reflected Lu Zhen's cold, indifferent eyes.

Looking at himself in the reflection of the blade, Lu Zhen stood up with his sword in hand and strode out the door.

"A thousand strategies are not worth five steps of blood."