Caught in the Act

Hung from a rack like cured meat, the battered Three Luo Brothers stared through swollen eyes at the flames ahead and the one-sided slaughter they had just witnessed. It all felt like a dream.

What sort of killing fiend was this?

He had slaughtered all the Beggar Gang's elite without so much as blinking?

This was the down-and-out nobody we were planning to deal with?

This was what they meant by "nothing to worry about"?!

"Junior Brother Lin-no, Senior Brother Lin! We were wrong!"

"Senior Brother Lin, we're still fellow disciples!"

"Look at what the Beggar Gang did to us..."

Once the three hanging men recovered their senses, they began begging for mercy one after another.

Even forced labor would have given us a chance to live!

Why did it feel like we were already dead now?

Lin Hao said nothing when he saw them. He simply swept his staff across, and with a crack, all three stopped breathing.

"Just like the Madmen. Crack their skulls, and they die."

Lin Hao glanced at the corpses on the ground. Hearing voices beginning to rise from the street outside, he started searching the bodies as he dragged them over and threw them into the fire.

[Ground-rolling Saber · Curved Saber (Blue)] ×2

[Value: 1,227 wish power]

[Weight: 1.5 kg]

[Additional attribute: Sharpness (White)]

[Additional attribute: Dexterity (White)]

[Extra additional attribute: Ground-rolling Saber training bonus (Green)]

[Additional skill: Ground-rolling Saber · Expert (Blue)]

[Two specially commissioned curved sabers. Easy to carry and sharp enough to sever a hair blown against their edges, they are suited to attacking the lower body. Stained with the blood of many innocents.]

[Eight Gates Staff · Iron Staff (Blue) → (Green) (Damaged)] The fourteen-kilogram refined-iron staff was marked as damaged after Lin Hao bent it. Its original [Expert]-level Eight Gates Staff had also dropped to [Proficient].

"Still, it weighs fourteen kilograms, and since it's another long staff, there's no additional weight penalty. That makes it pretty useful. As for the damage, I can repair it with wish power once I've evacuated."

Lin Hao tried equipping the iron staff. Sure enough, the martial arts of this world rarely conflicted with one another. Instead, they complemented each other in many ways.

"The more training methods I master, the better my overall coordination and conditioning will become. They can also cover blind spots that a single martial art would struggle to train. Not a bad deal."

Apart from a few peerless geniuses, the natives of this world rarely had the energy to spread themselves across so many training methods.

With equipment bonuses, however, he-and even the other Earthlings who had come here-had that opportunity.

Besides those two pieces of blue equipment, Liu Ping also had a pair of green iron-toed boots.

They looked like ordinary shoes, but their toes contained iron blocks. They increased training speed and dexterity, and granted [Proficient]-level [Twelve Routes Springing Leg]. Together, the pair could bring it up to [Expert]!

Without exception, all three pieces of equipment also had descriptions mentioning the killing of numerous innocents. Perhaps that was part of what had turned them into wish power equipment.

Aside from that, each of the three leaders carried more than ten taels of silver. The other gang members also had some loose silver on them. Added together, it came to fifty or sixty taels!

Unlike the silver from the apartment building, this world's silver was a green item. Each tael could also be exchanged for roughly a hundred wish power.

Lin Hao wrapped it all in a relatively clean coat, bundled it up, and slung it onto his back.

Then, as people outside began fighting the fire, Lin Hao hurried into the rear residence for a quick search.

"Shame. Too awkward to carry. Forget it."

With time running short, he could only make a cursory search. Apart from a few bracelets, the antique vases and other objects he could sell for wish power were difficult to carry. Still, the most valuable item was only a screen worth a thousand wish power. Putting safety first, Lin Hao had no intention of taking risks.

Unable to find where they kept their money in the time he had, he climbed over the wall and fled. Amid the cries of people fighting the fire, he threaded through the alleys and slipped back to the Martial Arts School.

There were no trees outside the school's wall to help him climb. Lin Hao could only leap up and catch the tiles atop the outer wall with one hand. Relying on his current bright force abilities, he hauled himself up single-handedly.

But as he grabbed the tiles and climbed, they scraped and clattered against one another.

Thus, the moment Lin Hao landed inside the wall, he heard a sharp female shout.

"How dare you!"

A graceful figure in white came rushing at him like a ghost, giving Lin Hao a slight fright.

Senior Sister?!

He immediately raised his long staff to block.

Recognizing Wu Xin, Lin Hao held back a little. His [Great Achievement]-level Crouching Tiger Staff left him room to change his move, and he prepared to call out to her.

Yet when his staff met Wu Xin's palm, a strange force made both his hands go numb. Shock surged through him.

Even when he clashed head-on with that refined-iron staff, his enchanted arms had absorbed most of the recoil. The force that remained had been perfectly bearable.

He would never suffer the torn webbing between thumb and forefinger that Lu Wu had!

Yet a pair of bare palms had made his hands go numb?!

Fortunately, he had switched back to his long staff and had [Great Achievement]-level Crouching Tiger Staff to rely on. He had also held back at the outset for fear of hurting her by mistake, leaving himself plenty of room to react.

Changing how he applied force through his palms, he drew the staff back a fraction, then flicked it upward with the remaining half of his strength. Wu Xin immediately had to borrow that momentum to retreat, dissipating the force like a drifting leaf.

But once she landed, Wu Xin flung up the white coat draped over her. As it obscured his vision, she accelerated further, closing in swiftly with tricky footwork.

Remembering Wu Xin's Emei Daggers from before, Lin Hao finally found an opening to speak. He hurriedly called out while using his staff to keep her at bay.

"Senior Sister, it's me!"

Wu Xin, who had already closed in with a murderous expression, froze. She stepped back out of the staff's potential attack range, then narrowed her eyes and made out Lin Hao's silhouette by the starlight and moonlight.

"Junior Brother Lin?"

Putting away her Emei Daggers, Wu Xin was taken aback.

Her right palm was still numb.

Even after she had used hidden force techniques to dissipate the force, then borrowed his momentum to withdraw and shed it, she could still feel how fierce that explosive burst of strength had been!

When she first saw him wielding a staff, she had intended to release a burst of hidden force to shake his hands loose, then seize the staff and disarm him.

Everything had gone normally at first. She had only thought that he was rather strong. But the enormous surge of force that followed immediately told her that the intruder possessed innate superhuman strength and held the advantage in raw power.

As a woman, she was naturally at a disadvantage when it came to strength.

She had not tried to meet him head-on. Instead, she had used hidden force to neutralize his strength while preparing to bring her own advantages into play. Only when she was about to succeed had she realized he was her own junior brother.

"Ah, haha. Yes, it's me."

Lin Hao also caught Wu Xin putting away her Emei Daggers and let out a long sigh of relief inwardly.

Luckily, he had held something back from the start. Otherwise, even if his staff strike could have injured his senior sister's arm, the lack of room to adjust might have let her burst of hidden force knock his staff out of his hands.

He might not have had time to speak then. Both of them would certainly have been injured!

The way his senior sister had suddenly darted out from behind her coat was practically like the Kasaya Demon-Subduing Skill. It created an instant visual deception, and a moment's distraction could reverse the entire fight.

If his senior sister had stabbed a few holes in him, he would have died for nothing.

This was also Lin Hao's first taste of how troublesome a hidden force expert could be!

Strike through a barrier, shed force like the wind!

In terms of the staff's power alone, his equipment enchantments definitely made him stronger. But a hidden force expert also possessed techniques for countering and killing him. Both sides were glass cannons. One mistake meant death!

A true fight to the death!

Far too brutal...

"What are you doing here, brat? Did you just go out? What were you doing?"

Wu Xin had originally draped a white robe over herself, but she had shed it earlier to obscure his vision and increase her speed. Now she stood in white underclothes, her arms bare.

Still, she was so flat that there was little worry about accidentally exposing anything.

Wu Xin had heard people outside shouting about a fire. Since her father and senior brother were currently away, she had thrown on a coat and gone into the courtyard to listen and assess the situation. Then she had heard someone climbing the wall and come over to catch the thief.

Who could have imagined that the thief would turn out to be Junior Brother Lin!

Moreover, both the changes in his Staff Technique and the strength transmitted through it had secretly shocked Wu Xin.

This was a rookie who had only just entered bright force?

What exactly had you gone out to do?