With the Eunuch's Retreat, Wuxia Regressed Twenty Years

It was at the very moment the Bandit Leader's courage faltered that Lu Bai moved once again.

Mindset is a crucial factor in the exertion of one's strength; if your mental state is unbalanced, it becomes a question of how much of your true power you can even bring to bear.

Lu Bai lunged forward, and the Bandit Leader's first instinct was to pull back and retreat—a retreat that diverted even more of his internal energy toward actions irrelevant to the fight.

The Great Success stage of the Iron Shirt allows one to channel internal force to a single point through the effect of internal recoil with every movement.

This is indeed powerful, but it simultaneously consumes a massive amount of stamina.

If one were sufficiently proficient, one could naturally control this effect, but the Bandit Leader had merely used a module to forcibly push his Iron Shirt to this level.

Never mind him; even those who had trained the Iron Shirt to Great Success through their own efforts could not master that internal recoil ability so quickly.

Thus, with this retreat of the Bandit Leader, the standard of martial arts in Huaguo cinema effectively regressed by twenty years.

Although the Bandit Leader's surname was not Cao, they were both eunuchs in spirit.

It was at this moment that Lu Bai straightened up, thrusting his two fingers forward to strike true against the throat.

The opponent's already unstable breathing was thrown into complete disarray in an instant.

When a force collapses, it does so like a mountain; such is the way of life as well—rising and falling, falling, falling, until death.

Lu Bai forced himself to hold his breath, while the Bandit Leader could no longer sustain his own; therein lay the difference.

After the throat strike came the "Double Peaks Piercing the Ears," his hands raised high to slam against the opponent's ears.

As his palms pulled away, fresh blood flowed from the ear canals.

"Ahhh!" The Bandit Leader, gripped by fear, could not help but scream, and it was precisely as his mouth hung open that Lu Bai's next combo arrived.

He snatched up an arrow and thrust it directly forward, driving it deep into the mouth as blood splattered out.

Once the orifices were breached, the White Jade Body on the Bandit Leader could no longer be maintained.

A large amount of blood sprayed from the cracked wounds all over his body.

The opponent's body began to flail wildly for a moment before collapsing backward like a ragdoll.

Lu Bai approached him and hammered his head with a fierce punch until it twisted to the side; only then did Lu Bai exhale and cease his skill.

At this moment, he too was covered in cracks, his skin feeling as if it had been scorched, aching with every movement.

He had also grown gaunt, resembling someone long-suffering from illness, just one breath away from starving to death.

He slowly approached the Bandit Leader's corpse and placed his hand upon it; before long, several modules were extracted.

Lu Bai had no time to examine them closely and could only stow them all away.

Then, he began to loot the body.

The archer from before lay amidst the ruins, though it was unclear if he had died of exhaustion or been crushed to death.

Lu Bai crouched before the corpse and managed to extract only two modules.

Perhaps too much time had passed, and the relevant factors had begun to dissipate.

Had he come sooner, he might have had a better harvest.

After all, this archer had caused Lu Bai quite a bit of trouble, and the lethality of every arrow had demanded a significant portion of his energy.

Of course, it was also thanks to him that Lu Bai had seized the opportunity to deal the first heavy blow to the Bandit Leader.

Lu Bai placed the extracted [Internal Force] module into his [Combat Mode], using the internal force to flood his body and protect his physical form.

He then pushed aside the debris and crawled out, bit by bit.

The surrounding fighting had gradually subsided; corpses lay along the street, and broken swords and shattered blades were scattered everywhere.

The people of Lianwu Mountain had lost, and they had lost completely.

Aside from a few who had fled, most had been buried here.

The place was no longer as bustling as it had been early that morning.

The most prominent sounds were those of wailing.

Those who had tried to flee earlier now lay nearby, their backs covered in wounds.

The young man who had wanted to kill the bandits earlier was now holding his father's corpse and weeping bitterly.

Most of those who had wanted to rescue Lin Haixian were also dead or wounded.

The commotion at the ruins of the Heshan Pavilion attracted the attention of these survivors.

A great battle had just passed, and their nerves were stretched taut.

Any movement would draw their attention and put them on guard.

When the blood-soaked Lu Bai crawled out, he found himself the focus of many eyes.

Despite being severely wounded, Lu Bai showed no sign of timidity, sweeping his gaze around with a look of disdain.

Most people averted their eyes, not daring to meet his stare.

Lu Bai walked out of the ruins step by step; at this moment, the man weeping over his father's corpse finally noticed the movement.

He looked up and saw Lu Bai.

"Blood Monk, I demand you pay for my father's life with your own!"

Displacing anger is a common emotional behavior; clearly, it was he who insisted on staying here to kill the bandits, and clearly, it was his own lack of strength that forced his father to sacrifice his life to save him.

Yet now, he blamed everything on Lu Bai.

He believed that if Lu Bai hadn't triggered this golden age of the Martial Forest and raided the lair at Lianwu Mountain, those people wouldn't have gone berserk, and his father wouldn't have died.

This line of reasoning, which could trace the blame all the way back to the origin of the universe, was clearly irrational.

Watching the young man approach with a blade, Lu Bai had no intention of indulging him. His eyes tracked the opponent's movements before sweeping across the surrounding objects.

The plaque of the Heshan Pavilion, broken swords, corpses, stones, wood, and so on.

He took a slight step forward, stepping onto a piece of a broken blade, and watched the young man walking toward him.

Just as the opponent was about to step over a corpse, Lu Bai moved his foot, and the broken blade went flying.

The spinning blade moved with extreme speed; the young man had no time to react. The gap in combat experience was simply too vast.

Some onlookers couldn't bear to watch; the boy had just lost his father, and now he was about to die himself, but it was too late to intervene.

"Bang!"

A stone flew from afar, striking the broken blade and knocking it off course.

At that moment, Lu Bai's gaze shifted toward the direction from which the stone had come.

Flower Face stood there, a hint of mockery etched onto his scarred face.

It was as if he were saying, "So, you have finally fallen into my hands."

The young man, having escaped death, gasped for air and looked toward Flower Face.

Flower Face gave him a friendly nod, a gesture that filled him with immense courage. The Hundred Flower Grave stood behind him, and Lu Bai was nothing more than a wanted criminal of the Hundred Flower Grave.

"Lu Bai, surrender your life!" The young man raised his blade and charged at Lu Bai once more.

Due to that previous kick, several wounds on Lu Bai's body had reopened, and he now appeared to have lost the ability to resist.

Excitement flickered in the young man's eyes. If his previous motivation was hatred born of displaced anger, now it was driven by profit.

Killing Lu Bai would not only earn him the appreciation of the Hundred Flower Grave but also allow him to step on Lu Bai's reputation to make a name for himself.

The pain of his father's death seemed to heal in that very instant.

Second update, goodnight everyone.

Happy Winter Solstice, everyone. Did you have dumplings or tangyuan?