The Butcher Gripped His Pig-Slaughtering Knife, Blood Frost Staining the Rotten Mud Alley

Late at night.

Mud Alley, Outer City of Black Mud City.

Torrential rain crashed down. Dense raindrops lashed viciously against shattered roof tiles, washing away the bloodwater that had yet to seep into the bluestone pavement. The murky current became thick and viscous, gathering along the dips and hollows into a bottomless dark gutter.

Several immortal city guards left behind to keep watch kicked open the Zhang family's already tottering courtyard gate.

Their rough footsteps shattered the standing water in the yard, splashing water half a foot high.

The guards barged straight into the main house and began turning everything upside down. Coarse cloth garments were torn into strips, while old clay jars were smashed directly against the walls, bursting into pieces.

The wooden cabinet doors were ripped off by brute force and hurled heavily to the ground, stirring up dust and the stink of mildew.

In an abandoned cellar in the corner of the courtyard, concealed beneath wood ash and dry firewood.

Fourth Li was submerged waist-deep in foul water. This place had never seen daylight year-round; the water was cold enough to pierce the bone, and nauseating rotten debris floated across its surface.

The prolonged soaking had turned his skin white and wrinkled. His entire body shook violently beyond his control.

His back teeth were clenched tight, the flesh along his cheeks drawn taut and rigid. His upper and lower teeth ground against each other until threads of fishy, salty blood seeped continuously from his gums.

Above his head lay only a thin layer of wooden planks. The guards' unrestrained laughter, mixed with the sounds of rummaging, poured clearly into his ears.

"That old bastard's bones are pretty hard. The commander kicked him so hard his spine snapped, yet he still didn't die."

"What good is being hard? Wasn't he still dragged off like a dead dog to the inner city to fill an array eye? Hurry up and search. That old man was usually so stingy—who knows what riches he might've hidden away."

"Come give me a hand. There's a hidden compartment under this rotten bedboard. Dug up a few bits of broken silver!"

The crisp clinking of broken silver against itself pierced through the gaps in the planks.

Those lackeys of cultivators, clad in black iron armor, were above him, calmly dividing the old farmer's lifelong savings earned through blood and sweat.

Fourth Li raised his right wrist from the stinking water.

The tendons in that wrist had been severed on the spot earlier by the guard commander's wind blade. The flesh around the wound curled outward.

The released fascia had gone completely white, exposed directly to the murky, damp air, still smeared with green moss and sludge from the water.

He gulped down the stale air in the cellar.

His uninjured left hand reached over. His rough fingers did not hesitate in the slightest as they pressed directly onto that white length of fascia.

The instant his fingertips touched it, a piercing agony shot along his nerves straight into his brain. Veins bulged one by one along both sides of his neck.

He did not let out the slightest groan.

The five fingers of his left hand tightened, brutally forcing that exposed length of fascia bit by bit back into the depths of the curled flesh. The muscles along the wound's edges convulsed wildly from the violent stimulation.

Fourth Li fumbled out half a piece of filthy cloth reeking strongly of mold from the foul water.

Lowering his head, he clamped one end of the strip tightly between his teeth. His left hand pulled the other end, wrapped it twice around his right wrist, then gave it a savage yank.

He tied it tight.

The filthy cloth was instantly soaked through with seeping blood, barely stemming the blood flowing out.

The intense pain cleared his mind to an extreme.

What had happened in the courtyard not long ago replayed over and over in his mind by force.

Zhang Elder had collapsed in the mudwater, his lower body completely numb. Yet that shriveled old farmer had used his shattered palm bones to clutch the immortal city guard's black iron spear without letting go.

Blood dripped down the spear shaft. The old farmer's soot-blackened face, and the savage resolve with which he still shielded his grandson despite his broken spine, smashed through the final line of defense in Fourth Li's heart.

The cowardly butcher who had only dared slaughter pigs on the chopping block and could only kowtow whenever he met an immortal master had completely vanished.

All fear faded from his eyes.

In its place rose an extreme ferocity. That ferocity reddened the whites of his eyes and made his breathing unbearably heavy.

Fourth Li turned around to face the abandoned dry well on the other side of the cellar, which connected to the surface.

The well walls were covered in slick moss, and greasy yellow mud packed the gaps between the bricks.

He raised his left hand, spread all five fingers wide, and clawed directly at the well wall. His nails cut deep into the cracks of yellow mud, which instantly filled the soft flesh beneath them.

With his feet braced on protruding bricks below, he used the strength of his left arm alone to climb bit by bit up the wall.

His coarse cloth shoes slipped through the moss, so he simply kicked them off and planted his bare feet on the rough brick surface. His toes found purchase on the uneven wall.

Every time he exerted force to move upward, an intense tearing pain came from the severed tendons in his right wrist. The cloth strip had been soaked through with blood, which dripped down his arm.

He did not pause once as he silently climbed through the narrow dry well toward the surface.

Aboveground, in the Zhang family courtyard.

One of the guards left behind held a half-empty wine flask, humming an unknown tune as he staggered toward a corner by the courtyard wall.

In that corner sat a large water vat filled with rainwater.

The guard tucked the flask beneath his arm, unfastened the buckle of his leather armor with one hand, loosened his belt, and prepared to piss into the vat.

A trickling sound struck the water's surface.

"These lowborn wretches really don't know what's good for them." The guard burped, breathing out a heavy stench of wine as he mocked the empty courtyard without restraint. "Mortals are mortals. The immortal sect only has to toss down a single spell to burn these mud-legged trash into ash, and they really think their worthless bones can block a cultivator's formation?"

He gave himself a shake and pulled his trousers back up.

At the mouth of the dry well, less than three steps from the water vat.

Fourth Li had already climbed more than halfway out, his entire body pressed tightly into the shadow along one side of the well rim.

He suppressed his breathing to the utmost. His chest lay pressed against the cold stone slabs, scarcely rising or falling.

In his left hand, he held a pig-slaughtering boning knife in a reverse grip.

The guard had just finished pissing, his guard at its lowest for that single instant.

Fourth Li's bare feet suddenly kicked off the uppermost bricks of the well wall.

The bricks were kicked loose and rolled backward.

He sprang up with brutal savagery and pounced directly at the guard. In midair, raindrops shattered against his body.

After slaughtering pigs at the chopping block year-round, he could find cartilage and gaps even with his eyes closed.

He did not even look at the heavy black iron leather armor on the guard's body. His left hand gripped the hilt, every ounce of strength drawn into his arm.

The pig-slaughtering knife avoided the guard's neck armor with perfect precision and stabbed viciously into the soft throat beneath his jaw, where no armor offered protection.

The blade sliced through skin, tore apart muscle, and pierced the windpipe.

One strike, buried to the hilt.

The bloodied tip even emerged a short distance from the back of the guard's neck.

Once stripped of the protection of his true essence, the lofty cultivator's flesh-and-blood body revealed the same fragility as any mortal's.

The guard's eyes bulged out in an instant, bloodshot veins filling the whites as though his eyeballs might burst from their sockets.

He instinctively raised both hands and clawed desperately at his own throat.

His throat had been completely pierced through. He could not cry out a single word for help, only make an ugly, wet, leaking noise.

Scalding blood gushed madly from the blade groove, spraying Fourth Li across the head and face.

Fourth Li neither backed away nor pulled out the knife.

Borrowing the force of his forward lunge, he used his thin body to pin the burly guard down with all his might.

The two crashed heavily into the rotten mud. Mudwater splashed everywhere.

At death's door, the guard erupted with immense strength born of survival. His hands clawed frantically, tearing Fourth Li's coarse cloth shirt to shreds.

His nails raked several deep bloody furrows across Fourth Li's chest.

Fourth Li let him struggle. He merely pressed all his weight onto the man, his left hand gripping the hilt as he forced it down viciously.

The struggling beneath him gradually weakened.

A few breaths later, the guard finally swallowed his last breath. His limbs went limp in the mudwater, and he moved no more.

Only then did Fourth Li release the knife and collapse beside the corpse as though all strength had left him.

He panted heavily, his chest heaving violently from lack of air.

Lowering his head, he looked at his trembling left hand, its palm covered in sticky blood. On the ground, rainwater mixed with the guard's hot blood, flowing into a glaring dark red pool.

In the darkness, he suddenly bared his teeth. From deep in his throat came a low, miserable laugh suppressed to the extreme. The laughter mingled with the rain, carrying a hint of madness.

The laughter abruptly stopped.

Fourth Li quickly shifted his body and reached out to unfasten the buckles on the guard's corpse.

He brutally stripped off the set of black iron leather armor that still carried body warmth and put it directly on himself. The armor was somewhat large, so he pulled the straps tight and secured it firmly in place.

Bending down, he picked up the black iron spear the guard had dropped into the mudwater and gripped it tightly in his left hand. Its heavy weight brought a few real traces of killing intent.

Next, he scooped up a handful of black mud mixed with blood stench and smeared it directly across his face, completely concealing his features.

After finishing all this, Fourth Li straightened up.

He raised his head, his bloodshot eyes piercing through the storm as they fixed dead upon the direction of Black Mud City's inner city.

That was where the guard commander had taken Zhang Elder.

Though he knew the lofty inner city was a dragon's pool and tiger's den from which mortals never returned, he still gripped the spear tightly. He would bring back that old farmer with the broken spine.

The night wind, laden with a heavy blood stench, blew past the entrance of Mud Alley.

Within the ruined Zhang family courtyard, only the corpse of a lackey remained, stripped of its armor, a pig-slaughtering knife lodged in its throat as the torrential rain washed over it.

Fourth Li's thin yet ferocious figure stepped through the mud all over the ground, turned, and disappeared into the deeper darkness of the alley.