Though the World Had Changed, the Martial World Was Not Far Away

"Rat-a-tat-tat!!!"

In an instant, bullets poured from the barrel.

Casings fell to the ground, muzzle flashes dazzling.

A film of red covered Lian Youming's eyes. He saw the man clearly now, saw that somewhat familiar face.

This mysterious master was indeed the Xingyi Sect's traitor.

Almost simultaneously, the young man also saw Lian Youming's face clearly, but he seemed to have no recollection of him whatsoever, as though once the urge to kill arose, his heart had room for nothing else. With every move, he meant to settle life and death.

In a fleeting instant, malice surged in his eyes, his killing intent intensifying. His hands changed moves repeatedly, turning and seizing. For a moment, Lian Youming saw nothing but overlapping claw shadows, unable to distinguish feints from real attacks.

More scalp-prickling still, while those claw shadows dazzled his eyes, the young man twisted and leaped, shifting left and right, springing up and pouncing down. He kicked off the walls for leverage, evading the oncoming bullets like a phantom.

Fast.

Too fast.

Lian Youming's eyes widened, his index finger clamped tightly on the trigger. He was clearly aiming at the man's chest, yet every bullet missed in an utterly uncanny fashion, pouring into the walls and throwing up a string of sparks behind his opponent.

It was as though the man possessed foresight and could predict where the bullets would strike.

Sweat appeared on Lian Youming's forehead. Only as the man drew closer, his face fully revealed by the muzzle flashes, did Lian Youming realize with horror that the young man had been watching his gun-holding right hand all along.

No.

More precisely, he was watching his right wrist.

Lian Youming's thoughts raced, and he understood at once. Every time he shifted his muzzle, his wrist moved first. Could this man be predicting the bullets' trajectories through those minute changes?

From the thought of moving to the actual shift of his muzzle took barely an instant, yet his opponent could still observe it and react in advance.

Lian Youming forcibly suppressed his terror and turned his wrist slightly right, as though testing his theory. The movement was so slight that an ordinary person would hardly have noticed any change. Yet at that almost imperceptible motion, virtually the instant he thought of it, his opponent had already reacted, slipping aside with the bullets grazing past him.

Across those few steps, viewed from a distance, it looked as though the submachine gun's bullets were chasing the young man.

Yet they always fell those few inches short.

Lian Youming also noticed that the closer they were, the more at ease his opponent seemed. Earlier, when they were farther apart, bullets had grazed him several times in perilously close calls.

Here he comes.

Everything happened extremely quickly.

Lian Youming's thoughts flashed like lightning. In the blink between one thought and the next, a right hand seemingly cast from refined steel was already before him, piercing through the gunfire with boundless murderous intent, clawing toward the crown of his skull.

Fuck.

After that brief shock, startled fury welled up in Lian Youming's heart instead.

Does he mean to pluck me out like a roadside weed?

"Click!"

At that very moment, the spitting tongue of flame abruptly stopped.

The bullets had run out.

Lian Youming clenched his teeth, tension bringing the tendons and bones of his hands into stark relief. Watching that savage face flicker in and out of the gunfire's light, he gripped his Type 56 tightly and thrust its bayonet up toward the large hand without hesitation.

As the bayonet swept upward, Lian Youming drove through his legs, steadying himself while raising the stock, ready to smash it forward.

Unexpectedly, halfway through his thrust, the space before him suddenly emptied. The figure twisted at the waist as though shifting through thin air and slipped aside. His large hand silently closed, turning claw into fist, and smashed down from above.

Lian Youming's heart lurched. He hastily twisted his upper body, barely managing to pull the gun back across his chest.

Then came...

"Bang!"

Figures crossed, flames flickered, and an explosive report struck Lian Youming's ears.

His body suddenly felt weightless as he flew backward. The Type 56 in his hands bent inward at its middle, scattering fragments.

The young man smiled chillingly. His striking right fist swiftly became an eagle's claw again, and he pursued at a sprint, looking ready to kill Lian Youming on the spot.

But amid the surging killing intent, a slender, fair hand swept across his path. With an upward lift of one arm, it drew the young man's killing move before its owner instead.

Gong Wuer's expression remained as calm as before, though a streak of still-wet blood marked the corner of her pale mouth.

Lian Youming, meanwhile, tumbled and rolled five or six steps away, ending facedown on the ground without a sound, covered in dust and dirt.

After a long while, he swallowed a mouthful of surging blood with immense difficulty. Catching a couple of breaths, he first glanced at the two already exchanging blows, then at Qin Yuhu lying nearby.

Sensing the man's barely perceptible breathing, some of the tension in his heart instantly eased.

As long as he's alive.

Only by the firelight did he see that Qin Yuhu's injuries were far more terrible than he had imagined. The lower half of his right arm below the elbow was gone, leaving stark white splinters of bone exposed.

Only then did indescribably immense pain sweep through Lian Youming's entire body, as though arriving belatedly. His whole face flushed red with agony, his body twitching uncontrollably.

Beneath the dancing, flickering firelight, the two figures had already begun a hair-raising fight to the death.

Gong Wuer held the fingers of each hand together, shaping her hands like ox tongues. Her footwork appeared unhurried, but her feet barely rose an inch before sliding forward another stretch. Light and utterly soundless, she moved between light and darkness like a roaming dragon.

Lian Youming watched, his gaze darting over the Gong family descendant's palms. Their centers were cupped inward. She looked effortlessly composed, yet as she pushed and moved her palms, ripples visibly spread beneath her high-collared sweater. Wherever those ripples passed, sinews and bones tightened-clearly another extraordinarily marvelous pattern of muscular movement, an internal martial method.

The fiendlike young man, meanwhile, was crazed and sinister. His hands formed fists with hollow openings, his breath rumbling through throat and tongue like a bull's bellow. Facing those two silent palms, he chose the most direct response.

Attack in place of defense.

His arms drove straight in and withdrew straight back. As they extended and retracted, whether from fists cutting sharply through the air or clothing snapping, a string of piercing whistles rang out like arrows leaving bowstrings.

It was astonishing.

Lian Youming's eyes widened slightly. In his sight, the man's body tightened and relaxed like a bow being drawn and an arrow nocked. His spine surged, his body became a great bow, and his clenched fists became arrows. With each contraction and release, the arrow was nocked and the string drawn.

Fist shadows flew, nothing like the street brawls Lian Youming had seen. In every fight he had witnessed before, people swung their arms in wide arcs to strike. But this man only bent his arms and raised his elbows to his armpits to reach full readiness. Each fist shot out like an arrow piercing the heart.

Overbearing. Frenzied.

Fists tore through the air, cloth cracked, and their shadows flew back and forth like a violent squall, dizzyingly fast.

An ordinary person would probably struggle to generate force with such movements, yet this man was unstoppable, driving relentlessly forward.

His fists were overbearing, and his footwork was equally peculiar. He advanced only half a step at a time, yet his steps were extraordinarily quick, just like his two frenzied fists.

Gong Wuer relied on nimble, elusive footwork to circle left and right, repeatedly dissolving that unmatched, ferocious punching force with her bare palms. Rather than blocking head-on, she flicked or lifted, pressed or pushed with the edges of her palms, guiding the two fists aside.

But Lian Youming did not place his hopes of victory on her.

She was clearly already injured and had presumably suffered badly in their earlier exchange. He simply did not know whether her opponent was injured too.

As for Qin Yuhu and his men, despite their firearms, their role in this deadly struggle had probably been negligible.

The answer was simple: Qin Yuhu knew nothing whatsoever about these extraordinary people's abilities. Worse still, in this dark, enclosed setting, knowing nothing and seeing nothing, some had presumably been killed instantly without even a chance to react.

The first corpse at the entrance had most likely been keeping watch outside. Only upon hearing the commotion below had he hurried in, only to follow the others to his death without understanding what had happened.

Among them, perhaps Qin Yuhu alone had reacted, then paid for it with a severed arm and grievous injuries.

Perhaps he had survived because Gong Wuer intervened.

Lian Youming's gaze swept over the submachine gun beside Qin Yuhu's hand.

Just as his thoughts raced, considering how to eliminate this scourge, the situation in the fight changed.

"Let's see you block this!"

With a crazed laugh, the sallow-faced young man changed his punches again. His tattered Zhongshan suit suddenly billowed. The sharp, overbearing fist shadows steadied in midair, and his right fist rose with the motion. His entire right arm instantly swelled thick as a python, stretching the sleeve round, before smashing viciously down at Gong Wuer.

The punch's force was like cannon fire.

Its momentum was like startling thunder.

Lian Youming's eyelids twitched violently. A strange, dull sound reached his ears, jolting his breathing into disarray.

"Hm?"

Gong Wuer actually caught it.

One palm coiled like a nimble snake and instantly caught the young man's wrist. Wrapping and winding, her palm took that extraordinary fist into her grasp.

Palm against fist.

Yet the instant one punch landed, the fiendlike young man raised his left hand and punched again.

Overbearing beyond compare, supremely hard and fierce.

Gong Wuer's fair cheeks grew paler still. Without hesitation, she sank slightly through her feet and met it with her right palm.

When fist met palm, nothing seemed unusual between them, yet both their clothes billowed wildly. The blue bricks beneath their feet cracked thunderously, as though struck by a heavy weight.

With fists against palms, Gong Wuer's shoulders shook, and a visible streak of crimson trickled from the corner of her mouth.

"Good. Impressive indeed."

The young man chuckled, opening his fists into palms and pressing them against Gong Wuer's. At the same time, he crowded forward step by step, laughing wildly as he channeled force through his palms and drove her back.

Seeing this, Lian Youming was about to pick up the submachine gun from the ground. But as the young man strode forward, his gaze sharpened. He distinctly saw a faint palm print on the back of the man's clothes.

Almost instantly, he made a life-or-death decision. His half-raised left hand suddenly dropped back to his side. Lian Youming drew a sharp breath and mustered his remaining strength.

With a low "mm," his cheeks slowly puffed as he inhaled.

The tip of his tongue pressed upward, and a breath rolled past his tongue and throat, swallowed straight into his belly.

In an instant, something like a warm current spread through his chest and abdomen, stimulating his numb hands and feet.

"Die!"

Xue Hen's eyes brimmed with ferocity. Veins bulged across the backs of his hands, each blood vessel swelling outward.

Gong Wuer finally could no longer hold on. Her body swayed, seemingly a bolt at the end of its flight.

But just as Gong Wuer had nowhere left to retreat, nearly at the end of the road, another sound besides theirs abruptly arose in the deathly still, empty chamber.

"Croak, croak!"

Two almost inaudible yet heart-jolting toad calls suddenly sounded at this critical moment.

The wild grin on Xue Hen's face first froze, then grew more savage, for those toad calls had come from behind him.

A figure sprang from the ground like a black dragon rolling over, raising his right arm as he rushed forward, then smashing it down hard.

Lian Youming's eyes stretched nearly to splitting. As murderous intent surged, for some reason the Mountain-Guarding Old Man's fists appeared in his mind. The five fingers of his right hand closed without conscious cause, forming a hammerlike fist. He silently drove his Coiling Silk Force once more, his entire right arm tightening instantly as he smashed it into the young man's back, aiming precisely at that palm print.

"Hah!"

As his fist landed, Lian Youming saw the clothing on the back before him twist in a spiral where his force struck, as though torn and wrung by an invisible power.

"Urgh!"

From Gong Wuer's view, Xue Hen's Adam's apple bobbed, and an unnatural flush instantly rose across his sallow, bronze-colored, thunder-god face, as though he were struggling to hold something back.

The situation had shifted, and an opportunity lay before her. How could she miss it?

Her tongue immediately unleashed spring thunder as she shouted, "Kill!"

As that killing cry entered his ears, Xue Hen's brows knotted. A blast of scalding breath shot between his lips and teeth, carrying a thin arrow of blood.

His eyes were crimson. Whether from shock or anger, sorrow or joy was impossible to tell. His expression strange and savage, he laughed hoarsely. "Tai Chi Hammer? Coiling Silk Force! Hahaha, marvelous!"

Blood stained his lapels red.

As Xue Hen's breath escaped, Gong Wuer immediately felt the force against her palms recede like the tide. She decisively advanced instead of retreating, stepping into a bow stance with her knees slightly bent. Both bare palms thrust straight in, then lifted like a white ape presenting fruit, cupping Xue Hen's chin.

With another muffled grunt, Xue Hen's head tipped upward and his body flipped backward, flying straight out. Yet his eyes fixed with a man-eating gleam on Lian Youming, who was tumbling aside.

He wanted a clear look at this person.

At that moment, their eyes met. Xue Hen finally recognized the youth he had met once before. A rare, peculiar look entered his eyes, both astonished and curious, exceedingly strange.

Who could have imagined that in just a few months, this person would receive the Taiji Gate's true teachings, and even launch a surprise attack to such remarkable effect?

Of course, Lian Youming could not have been the one to injure him, but that punch had instantly triggered the injuries he had been suppressing. With a formidable enemy like Gong Wuer beside him, it had actually reversed the battle.

"Good!"

His hoarse voice sounded like praise, yet also like a sigh over life's uncertainty-that it could be so unimaginable, like shifting winds and clouds, bringing utterly different paths of fate crashing together.

Lian Youming, however, had no intention of giving him breathing room. The instant his punch landed, he rolled and lunged aside, picking up the submachine gun from the ground.

Watching Xue Hen's retreating figure, he tipped onto his side and pulled the trigger almost immediately.

"Rat-a-tat-tat!"

Gunfire rang out again.

But unexpectedly, Xue Hen used his backward momentum, bracing with both hands to flip and roll. Swift as a fleeing hare, he darted around the corner at the entrance with bullets chasing him.

Seeing this, Lian Youming slowly lowered the muzzle.

This man was truly formidable.

As though after careful consideration, he said softly, "Leave your name."

Knowing his chance of victory was gone, Xue Hen was about to withdraw. But at the youthful voice behind him, his steps abruptly stopped. His cheek twitched. Neither laughing nor angry, he answered in a peculiar tone, quite calm, yet seemingly suppressing heavenly thunder and earthly fire beneath that calm. "Xue Hen!"

The word "Hen" emerged like the shriek of a vengeful ghost.

"Hehehe... hahaha... interesting... interesting... good!!!"

But a moment later, he burst into peals of jackal-like laughter, then strode away.

In this era, the world had changed. Martial warriors were seldom seen, true teachings scarce. Yet fortunately, it was still heart-stirring. There were still people singing hot-blooded songs, still newcomers following behind, and there would never be a shortage of enemies or opponents.

Those who came before remained, and those who followed had arrived.

The martial world was not far away, and the martial path was certainly not lonely!!!

(End of chapter)