Brotherhood

"Old Ninth, get the fuck out here!"

A Lang climbed off the floor, the last of his shorts burned away.

He looked toward the end of the hallway, but Old Ninth was nowhere to be seen.

Ring, ring, ring.

A phone rang inside the room.

After searching around without finding Old Ninth, A Lang answered it, his face flushed with fury.

"Brother Lang, I'm out of blasting caps, so I'm heading out. I'll come find you next time," Old Ninth said calmly.

"Fuck your mother!" A Lang completely lost it.

He hurried to the window and looked down, but there was no sign of Old Ninth.

"Where the fuck are you? Come fight me one-on-one if you've got the balls!"

A Lang, a mighty second awakening fighter, had been played like a fool by Old Ninth. His composure shattered.

He could no longer think straight. All he wanted was to tear Old Ninth apart.

"To your left."

Old Ninth's voice rang out again.

Standing on an outdoor air-conditioning unit on the KTV's exterior wall, Old Ninth spoke casually with the Shotgun on his shoulder.

A Lang turned his head, putting himself right in Old Ninth's shotgun's sights.

Bang!

The Shotgun hit A Lang square in the eye. At that range, with that much power, even a second awakening fighter would be blinded by a direct hit to the eyeball.

One of A Lang's eyes burst apart, leaving a bloody hole that looked horrifying.

"You underestimated me." Old Ninth curled his lip. "Lucky for you, you're a whole awakening ahead of me. Otherwise, you wouldn't last a single round against me."

A Lang had indeed paid dearly for underestimating him.

In his mind, Old Ninth was just an ordinary person. Even armed with firearms, he couldn't possibly hurt him.

Then there were Old Ninth's constant taunts, Bones wrecking the place, and the explosion in the elevator.

Every link in the chain had been designed to mess with A Lang's head.

Old Ninth could have written a book on killing people.

"Old Ninth..."

A Lang roared in fury, his voice carrying down the entire street.

Everyone instinctively looked up.

Old Ninth slipped into the next room. A Lang pulled out some toilet paper and pressed it to his eye, then gripped his blade in one hand, smashed through the wall, and charged into the adjoining room.

Old Ninth had vanished again. A blasting cap lay on the bed, its fuse almost burned down.

Boom!

A Lang was blasted off his feet again.

Amid the rubble, A Lang lay facedown in a pool of blood, looking as though he was about to breathe his last.

Tap, tap, tap.

Listening to the approaching footsteps, A Lang gritted his teeth as he played dead. His hatred for Old Ninth had reached its peak.

A minute passed, but those footsteps still hadn't reached the room.

Unable to keep waiting, A Lang raised his head slightly.

Old Ninth sat on a long bench outside the doorway, calmly smoking and playing on his phone.

"Playing dead?" Old Ninth spread his hands. "Keep going. I'll pretend I didn't see you."

"Childish," Old Ninth muttered.

"Fuck!"

A Lang sprang up and lunged at Old Ninth like a pouncing tiger.

In midair, A Lang activated his Enhancement Type ability. His arms turned silver-gray, gleaming like metal.

"I'll show you the difference between an ordinary person and an Awakened!"

A Lang seized Old Ninth by the throat with one hand and sneered. "You think you're good enough to kill me?"

But what happened next made A Lang's expression change drastically.

Red scales sprouted all over Old Ninth's body. Unlike A Lang, who had enhanced only his arms, Old Ninth was covered from head to toe.

"You're an Awakened too?" A Lang stared at Old Ninth in disbelief.

"When did I ever say I wasn't an Awakened?" Old Ninth looked completely innocent.

A Lang tightened both hands around Old Ninth's neck, trying to strangle him.

"Awakened or not, you're dying today!"

Under the full crushing strength of a peak second awakening fighter, the scales on Old Ninth's neck began to crack.

A Lang saw this and laughed excitedly. "CNM, just die already!"

Old Ninth grinned.

"Why do you think I let you grab me?"

A Lang froze. Old Ninth moved with blinding speed.

His blade-like fingers plunged into A Lang's remaining eye.

"Fuck... argh..."

Now blind in both eyes, A Lang kept his grip on Old Ninth and smashed him through several walls before punching him away.

"Cough, cough."

Old Ninth coughed up blood, slowly stood, and brushed the dust off himself. "Second awakening fighters sure can take a beating."

A Lang took a defensive stance. Though both his eyes were blind, he could still pinpoint Old Ninth by sound.

"I'm done playing with you." Old Ninth leaped down from the top floor.

There was no way A Lang would let him leave. Without thinking, he jumped after Old Ninth.

Beep, beep!

"Whoa, he's got no pants on!"

"Isn't that Brother Lang?"

Beep, beep! "Move aside!"

Traffic streamed along the road. The moment A Lang landed in the street, he panicked.

The cacophony around him made it impossible to locate Old Ninth.

In the middle of the road, blood streaming from both eyes, A Lang listened carefully to every sound around him.

Ten meters away, Old Ninth also stood amid the traffic, calmly smoking.

I've fallen into his trap. A Lang felt his scalp prickle.

Old Ninth had never intended to leave. He knew a first awakening fighter would suffer in a head-on clash with a second awakening fighter, so he had never planned to face A Lang directly.

That was combat instinct, and Old Ninth's talent was monstrous.

From the moment Bones started causing trouble, every move A Lang made had been part of Old Ninth's calculations.

"Brother Lang, above you!"

Several shopkeepers who knew A Lang shouted warnings from their doorways.

A Lang performed several consecutive flips, then heard a heavy thud land in front of him.

"Brother Lang, now that you're blind, you could become an acrobat. Those flips were perfect."

A Lang had barely steadied himself when Old Ninth's mocking voice came from behind him.

"Death coil!"

Old Ninth's body became supple as though boneless. His arms coiled around A Lang's neck from behind like a giant python, while his legs locked around him to keep him from moving.

"Know how a python eats a person? It crushes their bones one inch at a time. Take a deep breath. It'll be over soon."

Old Ninth had A Lang completely locked down. The two lay in the middle of the road in an extremely indecent position.

A Lang's face flushed crimson, but Old Ninth's arms only tightened.

Like a python wrapped around its prey, he viciously compressed every bone in A Lang's body.

As the seconds ticked by, A Lang's struggles grew weaker.

"A Lang, duck!"

A shop owner who knew him couldn't stand watching any longer. He grabbed a gun from his shop and fired several shots at Old Ninth.

A Lang seized the chance to break free from Old Ninth.

"Immovable as a mountain!"

Once A Lang stood firm, he pressed his palms together.

A silver-gray metallic sheen rapidly spread over his entire body.

"Old Ninth, come at me again!"

"Savage flood dragon's rending fangs!"

Old Ninth spread his five claws. His index and middle fingers stabbed into A Lang's forehead like a pair of fangs, his hand clamping tightly around A Lang's face.

The biting force of a flood dragon was terrifying. In a single exchange, the silver skin on A Lang's head began to crack.

"Force beyond a thousand pounds!"

A Lang seized his opening and sent Old Ninth flying with a punch.

Old Ninth was about to attack again when more than a hundred people suddenly rushed out from the roadside and opened fire on him.

A Lang's men had returned.

"CNM, you dare cause trouble on our turf? Boys, don't let him get away!"

Faced with an endless hail of bullets, Old Ninth didn't dare take chances. He darted behind a car on the other side of the street.

Hearing his brothers' voices, A Lang finally breathed a sigh of relief.

The joy of surviving a brush with death welled up inside him.

Old Ninth was downright uncanny. A first-awakening fighter had actually managed a thirty-seventy split against someone at the Peak Second Awakening.

"Old Ninth, you're not getting out of here today! Fuck, I'm killing you today, no matter what!"

Supported by his men, A Lang roared in excitement.

"We have to kill this brat, or he'll become a huge problem!"

"Everyone, surround him and turn him into a sieve!"

A Lang loudly directed his men. "Even if we have to overwhelm him with bodies, don't let him escape!"

"Kill!"

"Finish Old Ninth!"

"Bury him!"

"Show the people of Red Three Street what real strength looks like!"

"You want to compare numbers? We could drown you if each of us spat once!"

More and more returning thugs swarmed toward Old Ninth. Quite a few shopkeepers also took the opportunity to fire sneaky shots.

The situation took a sudden turn for the worse.

Old Ninth was pinned behind the car. His fight with A Lang had already injured him, and he couldn't maintain his full-body scales for much longer.

There were too many enemies. They could wear Old Ninth down until he died.

"Hahaha! Old Ninth, today's the day you die! CNM, weren't you supposed to be so badass? Didn't you want a one-on-one fight? Come out! Fight my brothers one-on-one!"

A Lang laughed without restraint.

Every onlooker sighed. With another ten minutes, Old Ninth really would have finished A Lang.

Circumstance was fate.

Vroom, vroom, vroom!

Just as A Lang's thugs rushed forward, the roar of motorcycles came from the end of the road.

Three motorcycle riders sped over the roofs of the long line of cars.

The one in front was livid with rage.

"Who the fuck thinks our Old Ninth has no brothers?"

"Brother Nine, Hi Dog's here!"

"Brother Nine, we're here!"

"CNM, who said my Brother Nine has no brothers?"

"Brother Nine's brothers, come show A Lang what a real turnout looks like!"

Rat-tat-tat!

At the end of the street, Bones, who had already gone far away, came charging back with his men.

Inside the KTV, Xiao Feng also led his men bursting through the doors.

A dozen or so youths charged toward Old Ninth like madmen, guns in hand.

Even facing enemies who outnumbered them dozens to one, even knowing that returning meant certain death.

In that moment, the loyalty of those young men shone unmistakably.

Every one of them raced through the hail of gunfire toward the same goal.