Revenge (Revised)

After bidding the aunt farewell, Song Wen came to the outside of House Number Twenty-Five.

The house looked somewhat dilapidated. By the looks of it, no one had lived there for quite some time.

Song Wen turned and left Copper Gong Alley.

The aunt had said Gou Hang had moved away more than twenty days ago. It should have been around the time Tang Liang attacked him last time.

This was enough to show that Gou Hang was an extremely cautious man. Having guessed that Song Wen might come looking for trouble, he had moved away in advance.

Song Wen returned to the main road. As he passed a ready-made clothing shop, a thought crossed his mind, and he walked inside.

A short while later, he emerged dressed in fitted martial attire, a conical hat on his head with a thin veil hanging from its brim to hide his face. He looked rather like a wandering hero of the martial world.

Song Wen made his way to a restaurant not far from the entrance of the Heavenly Baleful Gang and took a seat by the window on the second floor.

The view from this spot was excellent, affording him a perfect view of the Heavenly Baleful Gang's main gate.

He waited for nearly half a day. It was not until the afternoon that he saw Gou Hang leave the Heavenly Baleful Gang with two subordinates.

Song Wen did not alert the three of them. Instead, he trailed far behind them the entire time.

He followed them from afternoon until nightfall, and truly learned what real hooligans were like.

Extorting petty merchants and street vendors, dining and dashing, harassing young wives by the roadside, bullying beggars...

Had he not seen it with his own eyes, Song Wen would scarcely have believed that someone could commit so many evil deeds in the span of a single afternoon.

In the end, the three entered a cheap brothel. Just as Song Wen thought he would have to wait outside for a long time, the three came out in less than a quarter of an hour.

"Fuck, were they tigers? That fast!"

Song Wen could not help grumbling. Then, under cover of the night, he followed the three to a private residence.

The house was somewhat low and had three rooms in total. Only the main room in the middle had a door leading outside. The two side rooms had no doors leading out, only windows.

Gou Hang and his two subordinates were all loners. During this period, the three normally lived in this private residence.

Song Wen looked up at the sky. It was already past midnight—the perfect hour for murder beneath a moonless sky and howling winds.

Song Wen adjusted his sleeves, concealing the packet of powder in his hand, then stepped forward and knocked directly on the door.

"Who is it? In the middle of the damned night?"

A burly man roared a curse as he opened the door.

"Song...?"

The burly man stared at Song Wen in shock. He could not understand why Song Wen had appeared at his doorstep so late at night.

Yet before he could finish speaking—

Bang!

Song Wen kicked him into the room, sending him crashing onto a table in the back.

The commotion quickly drew the other two from the side rooms. Gou Hang and another burly man rushed out.

The moment he saw Song Wen's sudden appearance, Gou Hang's face changed drastically.

"Song Wen, how did you find this place?"

Song Wen swept his left hand. Powder filled the air as it flew straight at Gou Hang, and in an instant, the entire main room was shrouded in white dust.

The white powder was a mixture of lime and caustic soda.

Caught unprepared, all three men were struck.

"Ah... my eyes..."

The three clutched their eyes and cried out in pain. Blood even streamed from one burly man's eyes.

"Song Wen, you despicable bastard! What exactly do you want?" In his panic, Gou Hang backed away while demanding harshly.

Gou Hang still clung to a sliver of hope. He had never openly clashed with Song Wen, and he tried to conceal the truth and muddle through.

"What do I want? Naturally, I've come to repay Dog Lord for his favor in promoting me, and to settle the grudge of you colluding with Tang Liang to attack me." Song Wen's voice was cold and sinister.

"Tang Liang attacked you, so go find Tang Liang! What does it have to do with me?"

"Don't worry. Before long, he'll surely go to hell to meet you."

"Song Wen, you're a dignified immortal cultivator, yet you use such lowly tricks as throwing lime. Aren't you ashamed?"

As he spoke, Gou Hang had already felt his way into a side room. There were windows at both the front and back of the room. As long as he escaped through the rear window, he still had a chance to live.

"Enough. There's no point talking any further. At least you'll die knowing why. Off to hell with you."

The reason Song Wen had not made his move was that the powder had not completely settled yet. He did not want to be hurt by his own dirty trick and become blind like the three men.

By now, the powder had mostly settled.

Dagger already in hand, Song Wen sprang forward, swooping toward the nearest man like an eagle spreading its wings.

Pfft!

The incomparably sharp dagger plunged directly into the man's skull.

With a hard twist, Song Wen did not bother checking whether the man was dead. He pulled out the dagger, took two steps forward, and stabbed the second man in the chest.

Then, dagger in hand, he charged toward Gou Hang at the very back.

Just when Song Wen thought victory was in the bag, he suddenly saw Gou Hang raise his right hand. Through his sleeve, Song Wen could see a set of sleeve arrows strapped to his wrist.

At the sight of the sleeve arrows so close at hand, Song Wen's soul nearly fled his body. He hurriedly ducked.

The sleeve arrow shot past, grazing Song Wen's scalp.

Having barely dodged it, Song Wen drove his dagger straight into Gou Hang's chest.

As he watched Gou Hang collapse to the ground and slowly stop breathing, a wave of lingering fear washed over Song Wen.

Luckily, he had blinded the three beforehand. Otherwise, he might truly have been caught off guard by the sleeve arrows in Gou Hang's hand.

Gou Hang was quite capable of enduring. He had not revealed the sleeve arrows until the very last moment.

Afterward, Song Wen began absorbing the three men's blood essence. While doing so, he deliberately conducted some tests.

He discovered that he had to touch another person's wound in order to devour their blood essence quickly. Once his hand left the wound, the speed of blood devouring dropped noticeably. When his hand did not touch the corpse at all, it seemed he could still absorb it, but the process became exceedingly slow—so slow it was nearly imperceptible, as though he were merely absorbing the blood aura scattered through the air.

Moreover, the blood-devouring process was controllable.

With a single thought, Song Wen could stop or resume absorbing blood.

A short while later, the three had become dried corpses.

After devouring the blood essence of the three burly men, blood energy surged within Song Wen, and every cell in his body trembled.

The exhilaration he had felt when devouring the first man gradually turned into dizziness from being overly energized.

Perhaps because he now had experience devouring blood essence, his blood essence and mind had begun adapting to this sudden explosive growth. This time, neither his body nor mind went out of control; he merely felt uncomfortably overstuffed.

Song Wen had planned this killing well in advance, so naturally, unlike the first time, he was not unprepared to deal with the bodies.

He threw all three dried corpses onto the bed, then piled clothes, bedding, and other flammable items on top of them.

Song Wen then pulled a waterskin from his robes. It contained fierce oil, somewhat like the gasoline of his previous life, and highly combustible.

He poured the fierce oil over the dried corpses, took out a firestarter and tossed it over, then left without looking back.

In an instant, roaring flames rose within the room. Since the house was built of wood, before long, the entire house was ablaze.

The nearby residents were quickly awakened by the blaze. As they watched the raging fire, no one went forward to put it out. Who knew how many deeds that outraged Heaven and stirred the resentment of men Gou Hang had committed in his daily life?

The nearest house was also around three zhang away from Gou Hang's residence, so the neighbors were not worried that the fire would spread to their homes.