Narrow Alley Assassination

In the blink of an eye, ten days had passed since Chen Jing went to the slaughterhouse to butcher pigs.

His days passed in perfect order.

Every day, he rose at the mao hour, ate with Liang Youheng and practiced martial arts. After finishing practice in the morning, he went to the slaughterhouse, butchered ten pigs a day, and when darkness fell, he packed up and returned to the side courtyard, then practiced boxing for more than another hour.

After ten days, the proficiency of his Pig-Slaughtering Blade Technique had steadily risen by 500 points, and the proficiency of Nine Forms of the Mountain Lord had risen by 450 points.

The proficiency numbers on the panel climbed every day.

That solid sense of being able to see his returns made him feel a steady, grounded happiness.

That night, after he finished butchering the last pig, the sky had gone completely dark, and the slaughterhouse workers packed up their tools one after another and left.

Qian Zheng was still in the accounting room doing the final tally.

Chen Jing rinsed the chopping block clean, wiped down his knives and tucked them away at his waist, then called out to Qian Zheng and headed back first.

He stepped out through the yard gate.

Green Mountain City had a night curfew. It was not especially strict, but after nightfall, there were basically no people on the streets.

After leaving Livestock Lane, one had to pass through a narrow alley before reaching the main street by the Golden Water River.

The alley was not wide. On both sides stood towering courtyard walls; during the day, some daylight could still filter in, but at night it was pitch-black, with only a sliver of moonlight leaking down from overhead, barely enough to see the ground beneath one's feet.

When Chen Jing reached the middle of the narrow alley, he suddenly stopped.

Two figures appeared, one in front and one behind, blocking off the entire narrow alley.

Both of them were rather burly.

In just an instant, Chen Jing sensed that their gazes, stances, breathing rhythm, and even the aura around their bodies were all extraordinary.

And on them, there was killing intent!

The instant the two appeared, they almost simultaneously sprinted toward Chen Jing in the narrow alley.

Their footsteps were fast and dense, striking the bluestone ground with urgent tap-tap sounds, like two drumbeats urging a life to its end.

With two clangs, two steel blades left their sheaths at the same time, their edges glinting with a cold, eerie light beneath the moon.

Almost in the very same instant that Chen Jing sensed the killing intent, he reacted.

[Tiger Valiance] erupted abruptly, increasing his strength by 100%!

The qi and blood throughout his body were like a gunpowder barrel exploding. A tiger's roar and thunderclap burst from deep within his marrow. Chen Jing kicked off, and with a crack, a fissure burst open in the bluestone beneath his foot.

His whole body shot toward the black shadow ahead like an arrow loosed from the bowstring.

In this pounce, Chen Jing had already activated the power-generating technique of Descending Mountain Stance. The [Mountain Lord] talent moved in response to the emergency, increasing both his strength and speed by 15%, making Chen Jing's figure seem to blur into a mass of black shadow.

The newcomer's pupils shrank sharply. So fast!

He seemed to see a ferocious tiger pouncing down from the mountain.

Clang!

Chen Jing swept a hand behind his lower back, and the pig-slaughtering knife abruptly left its sheath.

With the 50% draw-speed enhancement from the [Butcher] talent, the pitch-black blade of the pig-slaughtering knife scraped along the opponent's blade. Though it moved later, it arrived first, stabbing into the opponent's throat ahead of him.

Pshh! Blood sprayed.

Pig-Slaughtering Blade Technique proficiency +100.

The black shadow's hand holding the blade dropped powerlessly.

Chen Jing did not relax.

At the same time that this stab went out, the fierce wind behind him had already arrived.

Chen Jing had no time to turn around. He only felt every hair on his back stand on end.

The black shadow chasing him from behind was faster than he had expected, giving him almost no chance to breathe. The blade had already chopped down toward the air above his back.

He immediately bent both knees, his whole body sinking abruptly, almost pressing against the ground.

That horizontal blade cleaved past, scraping over his scalp, and the wind from the blade chilled his neck.

Following the motion, Chen Jing stretched his foot through the crotch of the corpse in front of him, hooked it backward, and kicked the corpse in the back, sending the body flying sideways behind him with a whoosh.

The black shadow behind him was just about to follow up with a second strike when he suddenly saw a dark shape flying toward him.

Seeing that it was his companion crashing into him, the newcomer hesitated. Subconsciously, his blade edge shifted aside, and he stopped the downward chop, reaching out with one hand to catch the corpse.

In that one moment of hesitation, Chen Jing had already turned his body. Like a fierce tiger crouched against the earth, his entire body shot out close to the ground—Crouching Stance!

The pig-slaughtering knife slashed out horizontally, chopping into the newcomer's ankle.

Agony erupted in the man's ankle. His tendons and bone were hacked apart in one cut, his knee bent violently, and his whole body toppled sideways.

But he was actually a ruthless character who feared no death. As his body lost balance, he swung the steel blade in his hand in a full arc and chopped fiercely down at Chen Jing's neck, wanting to force a mutual ruin.

Chen Jing's chest swelled, and a deep tiger's roar abruptly erupted from his throat—Roaring Mountain Stance!

That tiger roar burst out between the high walls on both sides of the narrow alley, shaking the air until it trembled faintly.

The black-clothed man only felt his ears buzz. It was as if someone had struck a muffled club-blow inside his head, and the force of the blade in his hand involuntarily stalled for an instant.

In that instant, Chen Jing's butcher knife had already pierced through his neck from the side.

The sound of the blade entering flesh was light and clean. The tip emerged from the other side of his neck, bringing with it a burst of scalding blood mist.

Pig-Slaughtering Blade Technique proficiency +100.

In the blink of an eye, all creation fell silent.

Only Chen Jing's slightly hurried breathing remained in the narrow alley, along with the faint sound of blood gurgling from beneath the two corpses.

The night wind poured in from the mouth of the alley, scattering that fresh reek of blood and carrying it off toward the Golden Water River.

Chen Jing slowly straightened. Blood slid down the edge of the butcher knife, drop by drop.

He lowered his head and glanced at the two corpses by his feet, then lifted his gaze to the thin line of moonlight above the alley's entrance.

The burst of [Tiger Valiance] just now had drained a fair bit of his strength in an instant, but compared with that time in Creek River Village when he had been directly sapped of all power, now that his stance training had reached perfection, his physique had risen greatly.

And he had not fully unleashed [Tiger Valiance]'s power either, merely controlling it at a 100% increase. Thus his strength had not been completely exhausted, and he still had the stamina to keep fighting.

Chen Jing regulated his churning qi and blood through his breathing, using force to send tremors through his marrow and ease the soreness swelling in his muscles. Very soon, he had recovered.

"Ahhh!!!"

A terrified scream exploded at the mouth of the alley.

Chen Jing looked toward the sound and saw Qian Zheng standing there, a string of keys fallen to the ground from his hand.

This manager of the slaughterhouse had just finished checking the accounts and locking the main gate, preparing to go home, only to happen to run straight into this scene in the alley.

Chen Jing showed Qian Zheng a smile and said in a calm tone, "Manager Qian, I'm afraid neither of us will be going home tonight."

Qian Zheng's lips trembled, his legs shaking like chaff in a sieve. Only after a long while did he squeeze a few words out of his throat.

"Jing... Brother Jing... this... this is..."

Chen Jing wiped the blood from the butcher knife on a corpse's clothes and tucked it back behind his waist. "For no reason at all, I was intercepted and attacked by villains in this humble alley. I'll have to trouble Manager Qian to help me report it to the authorities."

The yamen runners arrived very quickly.

Torches blazed at the mouth of the narrow alley as four or five yamen runners charged in with fire-and-water staves in hand and waist sabers at their sides.

The squad leader at the front was just about to bark a question.

Then, at a glance, he saw the miserable state of the two corpses on the ground.

One had his throat stabbed through, the other his neck pierced clean through. Blood spread far across the bluestone ground, and the thick stench of blood choked them until nausea surged up.

Then they looked again at Chen Jing, seated on a stone block by the side of the alley, his whole body bathed in blood, a butcher knife tucked behind his waist.

There was not much expression on his face, which only made him seem all the colder.

That appearance, as if he had just crawled out from a heap of the dead, made the yamen runners all retreat two steps in unison, their calves trembling uncontrollably.

The squad leader swallowed and turned his head, giving a low order to the yamen runner behind him. "Quick, go report this to Six Gates."

The county yamen managed the people's livelihood and petty trifles, things no bigger than chicken feathers and garlic skins.

Murders and armed clashes between martial artists of the jianghu were under Six Gates' jurisdiction. If Chen Jing truly was a vicious criminal, then if the few of them went up, they would not even be enough for him to cleave apart with one slash.