Deadly Battle in the Night

The two faced each other for a moment. Then the assassin's body blurred, and he vanished without a trace right before Pan Long's eyes.

How was that possible?!

Pan Long knew an assassin's deadliest move was a Stealth Backstab. For someone like him, who wore no armor, a hit was almost certain to be fatal. He had watched his opponent's every move with painstaking care, his eyes fixed on the man's body, not daring even to blink.

Yet the man had slipped into Stealth right under his gaze!

What the hell!

They had been about ten paces apart. How had the assassin reached his back in the blink of an eye?

Pan Long was badly startled and hurried to dodge, only for a flash of steel to appear without warning before his chest and belly. Had he not instinctively leaned back and exhaled sharply, hollowing his chest, the blade would nearly have pierced him through the heart.

A feint!

Pan Long had not expected even his instincts to lead him astray. His rhythm faltered, exposing an opening, and the assassin closed in. Two blades flashed high and low, every stroke aimed at a vital spot. The man stuck to him at every step, almost pressing against his body.

When masters fought to the death, victory and defeat often hung on a hair's breadth. For his opponent to confound even his instincts was almost supernatural. Pan Long had never met such an adversary, nor had he imagined one was possible. If his fundamentals had not been sound and his footwork ingrained in his bones, his belly would have been laid open in an instant.

Fortunately, years of grueling practice had paid off. Once he evaded the most lethal strikes, he managed to hold on through shifts in his movement and footwork. His hands swept out again and again, turning aside blade after blade a hair's breadth from his vital points.

At that moment, his weapon had become a hindrance.

A longsword's effective reach ran from roughly half a pace to a pace and a half. Farther or closer than that, a swordsman had to adjust the distance with deft footwork. If a spear or another long weapon kept him two paces away, or a dagger or other short weapon crowded him, defending himself became difficult.

A longsword could be reversed so its hilt served as a little hammer, but that was an obscure trick, and Pan Long had never learned it.

Fortunately, he was an expert with his fists and feet. He had a way to deal with this.

Better still, the One God Religion assassin apparently had not realized that. Even now, he took Pan Long for nothing more than an agile swordsman.

Pan Long quickly recognized it for what it was: his chance to turn defeat into victory!

With the assassin too close for his longsword, he put on a panicked expression and kept retreating, gradually making room for his left hand.

All at once, he opened his right hand. The Slayer Sword fell to the ground, drawing a sliver of the assassin's attention. Seizing that fleeting chance, Pan Long spread the fingers of his left hand like a tiger's claw, clamped onto the assassin's right arm, and wrenched it hard.

He had practiced Iron Palm for years, and the strength in his hands was ferocious. One squeeze could wring oil from a handful of soybeans; one twist could turn an ordinary sword into a corkscrew. The assassin wore only a black robe, but even a steel bracer would not have saved him!

The Pan Lineage's Iron Palm had been passed down through seven or eight generations and carried a formidable reputation. It was said to shatter iron with a blow and split stone with a grip. Young though Pan Long was, his grasp already held something of its essence.

The assassin had no time to break free. Agony shot through his right arm, and the lower half twisted at an unnatural angle. Pan Long had snapped the bone in one move.

And with his sword discarded, Pan Long's right hand was free too. He shifted within the scant space between them, evaded the dagger sweeping toward his throat from the assassin's left hand, and drove a palm strike straight into the man's chest.

Bone cracked. The assassin gave a muffled scream, blood gushing from his nose and mouth, and flew away like a bundle of straw.

Pan Long had no intention of stopping there. A wounded beast was at its most dangerous. Strike while the enemy was weak; make sure he could no longer pose a threat. That was what mattered now!

He surged forward like a shadow, staying close behind the airborne assassin. The man had barely struck a tree and come to a halt, with no time even to catch his breath, when Pan Long slammed both hands into the sides of his skull.

The double strike was vicious. The assassin's skull caved in, and red and white matter spilled out. Even a priest of tremendous power could not have saved his life now.

After killing the One God Religion assassin with three strikes in succession, Pan Long finally let out a little breath. Then every hair on his body stood on end. It was as if someone had drenched him in ice water in the dead of winter, chilling him to the marrow.

Another enemy!

The realization hit him: he had probably already been struck. He hunched over and shot forward like a boulder hurled from a catapult, then tumbled into grass seven or eight paces away.

The forest was thick with dead grass. He rolled into it and let the stalks, half as tall as a man, hide him.

Only then did he feel the bone-piercing cold at the center of his back. It was as though a block of ice had been set there, its chill spreading toward his organs and limbs.

He opened his character panel and saw two statuses: "Frozen" and "Poisoned."

A Warlock from the One God Religion, just as I thought!

Pan Long understood at once. Only Warlocks connected to the Demon Realm could combine ice magic with poison. By borrowing a demon's power and turning themselves into beings half human and half demon, they could wield such demonic, poisonous cold without killing themselves.

Fortunately, he was a master of external martial arts. In battle, his True Qi surged and naturally formed a layer of protection around him. Though it could not compare with the protective true essence of an Innate master like his father, it offered some defense and had blocked part of the attack.

Otherwise, that single strike would have left him gravely wounded, if not dead.

He was injured, but as his True Qi circulated, the cold in his back slowly weakened. Before long, he should recover his normal fighting strength.

As for the health he had lost... that attack had taken twenty points. With a total of more than fifty, he could just about call it "moderate damage."

Pan Long lay motionless in the grass, alert to every stir around him, searching for the slightest clue.

A moment later, he heard a sound from one direction.

There!

His True Qi had now driven out the Frozen status completely. With a roar, he shot toward the sound like an arrow loosed from a bow.

There was nothing there but an empty stretch of forest.

As he charged in, a Cold Snicker came from behind a nearby tree. Several glimmers of dark light, all but invisible in the night, appeared in midair and flew toward that patch of forest.

It was a trap!

But the one who had set the trap had celebrated too soon. Before the dark glimmers had traveled halfway, Pan Long's body was already flying through the air, crashing hard into a treetop.

He was no fool. Why would a faint rustle lure him in? Whoever had tried to catch him that way had underestimated him.

Pan Long turned the trap against its maker. After striking the treetop, he used the branches to absorb the impact, flipped backward, and hurtled toward the tree from which the Cold Snicker and dark glimmers had come.

The person behind it had never dreamed that hunter and prey would trade places in an instant. Panicking, he raised a hand to cast a spell, but it was far too late.

With a roar, Pan Long rushed at him like a gale and slammed a palm into his forehead.

The gaunt figure in the black robe toppled straight over. Foul-smelling liquid spread across the ground.

Inside the Fres Army's command tent, a gentle, calm voice spoke, so steady that even the heavens collapsing and the earth splitting would not have shaken it. "Thirty-One is dead. The fellow who started the fire has some skill after all."

The guards stationed at the tent entrance began to tremble. Neither the fire nor the attack had moved them from their posts, and their faces showed no fear, only shame. It seemed that displeasing the speaker pained them more than any punishment they might face for letting an attack succeed on their watch.

"Don't concern yourselves. No matter how skilled he is, he's still an egg striking a stone," the voice said. "Besides, if he truly had the ability, why did he flee just now? Wouldn't it have been simpler to charge in amid the chaos and kill me?"

"We'll never let him lay a finger on the Golden Tent!" the captain of the Royal Guard declared.

"Heh. I believe in your resolve. Then let me see it." The voice carried a faint smile. "Those fools have made enough noise. Quiet them down."

The captain bowed and accepted the order. Then he announced to everyone nearby, "The Most Holy has commanded: silence. No shouting!"

The command was passed from one voice to the next, repeated by man after man. If anyone was too panicked or frightened to stand at attention and repeat it, the patrolling Royal Guard immediately drew their blades and cut him down.

Soon, though flames still raged through the camp, not a trace of panic remained. Under the Royal Guard's direction, the Fres soldiers fought the fires in orderly ranks and tossed bodies beside the roads.

There were far more bodies, however, than Pan Long had killed or the fires had burned.

Deep in the forest, Pan Long slowly exhaled. The True Qi that had boiled within him during the fierce fight settled completely and returned to his dantian.

The battle had lasted only a minute or two, yet it had been the most perilous of his life. If he had to fight it again, he could not be sure he would survive.

First, there had been the assassin. His stealth had truly been unfathomable, and on his second attack he had even fooled Pan Long's martial instincts. In the real world, that would have been a rare and extraordinary skill, enough to make people quake at the mere mention of it.

Martial artists in the real world placed great importance on honing their instincts and relied heavily on them in battle. If Pan Long could learn the assassin's trick and spring it in a fight, he stood an excellent chance of catching even an expert two or three levels above him off guard.

When masters fought to the death, being caught like that could settle life and death on the spot. Luck, more than skill, had let him evade the second blade at the last possible instant.

The assassin had probably never imagined there could be such a strange sort of fighter: someone in leather armor who moved faster than an assassin and grew even more dangerous after dropping his weapon. He likely had not understood what Pan Long was even as he died.

By this world's class system, I'd probably count as a Monk, wouldn't I? No, I can use armor and weapons, and I'm decent with weapons too. That can't make me a Monk...

Recalling the fight, Pan Long remembered the flicker of surprise in the assassin's eyes when his second strike missed. He could not help smiling.

Then there had been the Warlock. Cold and treacherous, he had watched his comrade die without lifting a finger, patiently waiting for a chance to ambush Pan Long. The malice of it sent a chill through him.

Fortunately, the man had been a notch weaker than the assassin, and had thought himself clever enough to sit back and reap the spoils. If the two had joined forces from the start, Pan Long would certainly have died.

"This world really is full of experts. Two nameless figures nearly took my life." Pan Long let out a long breath, privately warning himself, I have to be even more careful from now on! The road through the Martial World is long. Tread carefully and cherish every step!

Brother Long had nearly fallen flat in his first fight after setting out...