'Hero'

Lu Bai made no effort to hide his intentions. Though the bandit stronghold was loosely guarded, there were still living people here.

It wasn't fully night yet. The light of dusk, reflected off the snow, still provided some illumination.

"An outsider!"

The shout rang out, and people immediately stirred.

One man even grabbed his weapon, came up in front of Lu Bai, and pointed at him as he shouted.

"This is the Black Tiger Sect's territory. The Hundred Flower Grave, Luohe Sect, and Longshan Sect have all sent word ahead of time, friend!"

"Friend, my ass!" It was hard to tell whether Lu Bai was swearing at him or not.

He sprang forward and charged at the enemy.

The bandit's heart jumped. He raised his knife and hacked at Lu Bai, but his aim was far off.

Lu Bai shifted one foot slightly and dodged the blade. His hand snaked out and coiled around the man's wrist.

As he yanked hard, his other hand turned sideways into a knife-hand and struck forward. The man's body went limp.

Lu Bai didn't stop moving, nor did he release the man's wrist.

He dragged the corpse across the snow for a while before a large number of people emerged from the various houses.

Then Lu Bai tossed over his greeting gift.

The corpse whistled through the air like a cannonball as it flew toward the crowd.

"Get out of the way!" someone shouted, and the crowd scattered to either side.

Unfortunately, they weren't quick enough. Two people were struck and fell to the ground, coughing up blood.

Lu Bai put away the module he had extracted and bared his white teeth.

Beneath that cruel smile, even the ferocious bandits felt a chill in their hearts.

"Kill him!" Someone shouted to bolster their courage, and the bandits charged at Lu Bai with their knives.

"Good!" Setting aside Internal Force, the modern world was actually ahead of this Martial Forest Dimension in terms of its martial environment.

In the Martial Forest Dimension, plenty of people still had to worry about food, clothing, shelter, and transport. Few had the means to focus solely on martial arts.

In the modern world, resources were abundant, and it was easy to connect with people from far and wide.

Those with the means could even fight every day, sparring with all kinds of people.

The frequency of various fights and sparring matches far exceeded that of the Martial Forest Dimension.

Fighting came with consequences. Without proper medical care, all kinds of bodily injuries could easily lead to serious problems.

That was why people in the Martial Forest Dimension rarely fought others of the same level. They either bullied the weak or disappeared into the mountains after a single battle.

That was nothing like the modern world, where people from all over could gather quickly and fight one another again and again.

As Lu Bai saw it, the only drawback of the modern environment was that fights between people didn't involve their lives. They weren't battles to the death.

Fights in the Martial Forest Dimension were rare, but every one of them could be a matter of life and death.

Lu Bai was no different. He had plenty of combat experience, and he had taken many lives.

But he, too, had little experience fighting to the death against others of a similar level.

He had little experience fighting to the death against a group of people, too.

So the next moment, Lu Bai charged forward instead of retreating.

In the next instant, two clouds of lime powder collided in midair.

The man who had thrown the lime powder stared in astonishment and stumbled backward. He saw Lu Bai pass straight through the cloud with his eyes closed and appear right in front of him.

Perhaps he was shocked that Lu Bai, a martial arts expert, had used lime powder just like a bandit.

The bandit didn't even have time to react before Lu Bai closed in. Then he felt a pain in his chest, and the world shifted before his eyes.

Lu Bai grabbed the corpse with one hand and searched it for the lime powder.

He had been in this dimension for so long that he was running low on lime powder. It was time to restock. It didn't have his secret chili sauce mixed in, but it was better than nothing.

While he was at it, Lu Bai extracted two modules from the corpse.

One was still [Vitality]. The other was [Concealment], and this module even came with a comment.

Elemental Module [Concealment]: Conceals things. Comment: You are weak, and concealment is the best way for you to survive, whether you're concealing yourself or hiding an attack.

"Ah, a kindred spirit!" Lu Bai read the comment, then tossed the corpse aside.

He turned his eager gaze toward the other bandits.

He had thought that high-quality modules with comments like this could only be formed by experts who had mastered Internal Force.

But now, it seemed that wasn't the case.

Instead, it had a lot to do with the person's life.

"If you make some factor the defining principle of your life, you may eventually condense it into a corresponding factor module."

Lu Bai didn't have much time to think. During that brief pause, two ropes with stones tied to their ends spun toward him.

The bandits used these against mounted riders and martial artists who moved at high speeds.

Once the ropes caught their target, they would quickly slow them down. Usually, their target couldn't untangle themselves in time and would be hacked to death by the bandits.

At the same time, another group of bandits held bamboo canisters. They squeezed them to spray a slightly viscous, foul-smelling black liquid at Lu Bai.

Others clutched blowpipes and fired thin, foul-smelling needles at him.

But faced with all this, Lu Bai didn't dodge at all.

The air around him seemed to warp for an instant.

It was like the air above a road on a summer day, shimmering in the scorching heat.

Then Lu Bai's relatively fair skin quickly turned red. His already swift figure accelerated to the point where it seemed about to leave afterimages.

Most of the attacks missed. The few that didn't were pushed aside the moment they touched Lu Bai, as if by a force surging from within his body.

Lu Bai felt as though he were underwater. An unusual buoyancy filled his body, while the air around him grew heavy.

The wind roared in his ears, yet somehow its sound turned gentle, like the feverish caresses of a lover.

"No! Don't come any closer!!!"

Shouting was useless. Begging was useless. Trying to run was useless.

With the Blood Burning Technique activated, Lu Bai became a frenzied killing machine.

It was as if an internal combustion engine inside him was supplying an endless stream of power.

His enemies' bodies were like paper. With the slightest tug, Lu Bai tore them apart.

After a while, Lu Bai stood still, his body steaming with clouds of white vapor.

Snowflakes drifted down, but before they could touch him, they melted into liquid.

Looking at the corpses scattered across the ground, Lu Bai put away the modules and continued deeper into the stronghold. There were still plenty of people here.

Of course, they were all women and children.

They watched Lu Bai with complicated expressions: fear, gratitude, or perhaps hatred.

"Hero, why didn't you come sooner?" A woman with purplish bruises on her body held one hand to her belly and a knife in the other. She looked at Lu Bai, barely able to suppress the resentment in her eyes.