"Big guy, surrender."
"You're very lucky to have met me. I'll give you a chance to live."
"If you'd run into anyone else, you wouldn't have had that chance."
"Like those two friends of yours before—you didn't even get the chance to live."
"As long as you surrender, I'll let you go at once. Perhaps someday, we might even become friends."
"I'm sick of a life of scheming against one another, sick of a life filled with calculations. People like you are the ones I like best."
Shadow Fiend's voice drifted out in a drawn-out whisper from the empty space, as though it had come from an immense distance away.
Shi Poxiao knelt on the arena stage, drenched in blood, his fists braced against the ground to hold up his tottering body.
He raised his head. His face, hard as black iron, was smeared with his own blood and sweat, yet the corners of his mouth slowly curled upward.
"...In all my life... I've never said those two words."
As soon as the words fell, Shadow Fiend fell silent for half a breath.
Then the blade appeared again.
This time, it did not probe for a weak point. It sliced in through the back of Shi Poxiao's neck, the edge driving straight into the gap between his cervical vertebrae.
Shi Poxiao's body jerked violently, but with his last ounce of strength, he tilted his head slightly.
The blade slid past his spine, severing only half the tendons.
But the second strike followed immediately, stabbing in beneath his ribs, passing through the intercostal gap and reaching straight into his lung.
Shi Poxiao coughed up a great mouthful of bloody froth.
A third blade, a fourth, a fifth...
From the layers between space, Shadow Fiend delivered strike after strike. Every cut precisely