"Die, you meddling bastard!"
The bald thug's roar came with a whistling rush that tore through the air, straight toward the back of Bruce's head.
Bruce was still frozen in place. His brain, armed with a towering intellect and countless tactical theories, had briefly crashed under the shock of the old man's betrayal.
He had risked burning to death, rolled through sewage, and suffered blisters across his back from flying embers to drag that old man out of hell. In return, the man had identified him and sold him out without a moment's hesitation.
[Go see whether, after starving for three days, you would fight back and kill a homeless man who was robbing you of your last half-piece of bread at knifepoint, or choose to starve to death yourself.]
Yang Ming's cold voice echoed in his mind like a sharp knife, slicing precisely through the cloak of idealism Bruce had always clung to.
Bam!
The dull impact thundered beneath the bridge.
The rusty, hollow steel pipe slammed into Bruce's temple. Its tremendous force instantly tore his skin and even caused a slight fracture.
Blood burst out like water through a broken dam, streaming down his prominent brow into his eyes and staining his vision a glaring scarlet.
"Ugh..." Bruce grunted, his tall, powerful body stumbling forward two steps.
The stinking rubber shoes on his feet made slick squelching sounds in the muddy water.
"Fuck, that didn't drop him?!" The bald thug froze. He looked at the slightly bent steel pipe in his hand, then at Bruce, who had merely staggered.
In an East End street fight, a blow like that would leave even a two-hundred-pound bruiser on the ground with a concussion, twitching and foaming at the mouth. Were this homeless man's bones made of steel beneath that ragged