"I object!"
Before his words had even faded, Deputy Director Yang smashed through the wall and crashed into the adjacent training grounds.
Chen Xu stood where Deputy Director Yang had just been. His gaze swept over the other senior instructors. None dared meet his eyes, and all looked away.
Hu Liming's palms were soaked with sweat. He had not seen how Chen Xu had attacked at all. Not even Director Xu could achieve such a feat. This man's strength was likely among the greatest in Jinning Commandery.
"Chen Xu, you are acting so recklessly! The Martial Pavilion will not stand by and do nothing!" Deputy Director Yang invoked the Martial Pavilion, hoping to frighten him off.
"What did I do? I merely offered an opinion as a consultant. Why would the Martial Pavilion interfere in the internal affairs of Zhicheng Martial Arts Academy?"
Chen Xu flashed his white teeth, bent down, and grabbed Deputy Director Yang by the collar. He smiled faintly at the dumbstruck trainees. "We're discussing something. You keep training."
Several timid trainees collapsed to the ground on the spot. Even when Tiger Might at level six was not deliberately released, sensitive ordinary people could still sense the faint pressure.
Chen Xu threw Deputy Director Yang to the floor, then strode back and sat in the main seat.
"I'll ask one last time. Who supports Chang Wei becoming director, and who objects?
Those who support him will receive fifty percent more Great Abyss Coins every month and be given priority for promotion to deputy director."
After a moment of silence, a senior instructor cautiously raised his hand. "I support it."
"Ma Kaijun, you!" Deputy Director Yang's face was filled with disbelief. Ma Kaijun had worked at the academy for nearly ten years. How had he been so quickly corrupted by the enemy's sugar-coated bullets?
Once someone took the lead, more voices gradually joined in. By the end, aside from Hu Liming, who had never gotten along with Chang Wei, only Deputy Director Yang refused to agree.
"From today onward, Chang Wei will serve as director of Zhicheng Martial Arts Academy, and Ma Kaijun will serve as deputy director." After making the announcement, Chen Xu had Chang Wei take people to the Martial Pavilion to handle the transfer procedures, while he headed straight for the other two martial arts academies.
Blood Blade Martial Hall.
Several burly men lounged by the entrance, chatting idly.
Their topics were vastly different from those of most martial arts academy trainees. They talked about cutting people down, gang fights, or which young woman was especially pretty, occasionally breaking into lewd laughter.
On the surface, they were the so-called Blood Blade Martial Hall. In secret, they were Jinning Commandery's largest underworld gang, the Blood Blade Gang.
"Huh, someone's coming up the mountain path." The bare-chested brute had a lifelike bloody blade tattooed across his chest.
"Could it be another idiot looking for a master? Are there still people who don't know that Blood Blade Martial Hall is the Blood Blade Gang?" The man in a black tank top, his arms folded, stepped forward a few paces as though he wanted a clearer look at the idiot.
"What if he's here to join the Blood Blade Gang?" The man whose left pinky had been severed flicked his cigarette butt to the ground and crushed it beneath his foot.
The Blood Blade Gang members burst into laughter. "Then let's make a bet."
"I bet ten Abyss Coins that he's an idiot here to take a master."
"An outsider who doesn't know the way. Fifteen Abyss Coins."
"I'll put down thirty Abyss Coins that he's here to join the Blood Blade Gang."
"Is this Blood Blade Martial Hall?" Chen Xu looked up at the Blood Blade sign, then turned to the gang members present.
"Haha, I told you he was here for Blood Blade Martial Hall. Pay up, pay up!" The bare-chested brute laughed as he held out his hand toward the others, completely ignoring Chen Xu.
The bare-chested brute slammed into the entrance and passed out.
The boisterous laughter came to an abrupt halt, and the mountaintop fell deathly silent.
"Is this Blood Blade Martial Hall?" Chen Xu repeated each word slowly.
"Your mother!" Rather than showing fear, the burly men surrounded him.
Unfortunately, in Chen Xu's eyes, their attacks were as slow as crawling turtles.
After taking down the gang members standing watch outside in just a few moves, Chen Xu raised his hand and threw a punch at the red-painted doors.
The two people who had been about to open the doors to see what was happening outside were sent flying backward by the shattered pieces.
Nearly a hundred men in black Federation-style suits stared directly at Chen Xu.
"Who are you? Don't you know that the Blood Blade Gang, Sky Wolf Society, and Bamboo Cloud Sect are holding a Triple Alliance Meeting today?"
As they spoke, they rushed toward Chen Xu. Breaking through the doors was equivalent to giving the three major gangs a hard slap across the face. If they failed to capture the culprit, their fate was easy to imagine.
"Although guns are banned in Great Abyss, I still need to be careful in a place like this."
Chen Xu had no intention of tangling with them head-on. No matter how strong he was, he had not reached the point where he could completely ignore numbers. A short, intense battle was manageable, but if they surrounded him, escaping would not be easy.
He took one step that covered two or three meters, knocked the first few gang members rushing at him to the ground, and charged into the building.
His 5.9 Strength and 5.3 constitution allowed him to move through the gang members' pursuit and blockade as though no one were there.
Crash!
Chen Xu smashed through a window and darted into the building, forcing the gang members outside to stop.
Gang rules were strict. Without authorization from a leader, they were not qualified to enter the building. Anyone who entered would be treated as an intruder and beaten half to death on the spot.
If they happened to catch the boss in a bad mood, dying on the spot was not impossible.
Groups dressed in three different styles of clothing rushed toward Chen Xu, carrying all manner of weapons.
Relying on the eighth layer of the Bronze Body Technique, Chen Xu did not defend at all. Every strike of his Tiger Howl Fist sent three or four people flying.
"He's a Martial Dao expert! We can't fight him head-on! Hurry and get Master Cui!" someone shouted.
With a sweeping kick, Chen Xu struck nearly ten people at once. They vomited blood, and several clearly would not survive.
Taking the opportunity, he dashed forward several steps and rushed up to the second floor. He remembered that this building covered a vast area. As long as he made a few more turns, he could shake off these persistent pests.
Agility might have been Chen Xu's weak point, but compared to ordinary people, it was still far beyond theirs. After turning left and right, the gang members lost track of him in less than two minutes.
"So they stationed most of their people on the first floor and outside." Chen Xu casually used a hand chop to deal with a patrolling gang member, then headed deeper into the second floor.
Two minutes later, Chen Xu stared thoughtfully at the fire hydrant he had seen not long ago. In this building, unfamiliar with its layout, the handsome and dashing man who relied entirely on talent to grow stronger seemed to have gotten lost.
Chen Xu had no desire to take the emergency exit. Running that way would be no different from walking into a trap and looking for a fight.
"I'll find a window first. With a view outside, it should be easier to tell where I am. It would be best to find someone to ask for directions too. If I'd known I would get lost, I wouldn't have killed that guy earlier."
Choosing another route, Chen Xu strode onward.
As his Martial Dao improved, his hearing had been greatly enhanced. He faintly heard deliberately softened footsteps coming from the corridor ahead on the right, and Chen Xu's muscles tensed slightly.
When the footsteps drew close, Chen Xu suddenly darted out and pinned a blonde woman, whose appearance differed from that of a typical Great Abyss woman, against the wall.
"I ask, you answer." Chen Xu could not be bothered to waste time. He needed to learn the general layout of the building from the woman before him.
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