Provoking the enemy with wild words, slaying Yama with a fist

"Wh-what?!" The vicious grin on Lei Hu's face abruptly froze.

Chen Xuan gave him no chance to interrupt. An utterly scornful sneer curled his lips as he continued unleashing his venom at full blast:

"If I were your parents, I'd have shoved you straight into a piss bucket and drowned you the moment I gave birth to that lump of rotten meat, instead of leaving you in this world to pollute Qingzhou City's air! What, someone calls you Second Boss and you actually think you're somebody? In my eyes, the only difference between you and that puddle of foul black sludge underfoot is that the sludge doesn't spew shit from its mouth like you do! You suicidal piece of trash-before laying a hand on my young lady, did you ask whether your grandpa's fists would agree?!"

Silence!

An utterly uncanny deathly silence instantly engulfed the scene!

The fifty or sixty burly Black Tiger Gang men surrounding them all looked as though they had been slapped hard across the face, sucking in sharp breaths in unison!

Here in the western market district, Iron-Boned Yama Lei Hu was practically a local emperor. The shopkeepers ordinarily dared not even raise their voices when speaking to him, yet today, a lowly groom who had only just entered early-stage Bright Force had pointed at his nose in the street and called him a "black-skinned wild boar" and "trash that should have been drowned in a piss bucket"?!

Behind Chen Xuan, Xiao Ling'er listened with her almond-shaped eyes wide open. Even the tears that had welled up were forcibly held back-How could this bastard servant have such a poisonous tongue?! But... hearing him tear Lei Hu to shreds to defend me, why does it feel so satisfying, so vindicating?!

"You little bastard... you-you're fucking asking to die!!!"

After that brief deathly silence, Lei Hu's bell-sized eyes instantly grew bloodshot like two red lanterns, and veins bulged along his thick neck like coiling dragons!

He was a mighty body-hardening expert at the peak of the middle stage of Ming Jin, the Black Tiger Gang's second-in-command, subordinate to only one man, yet a servant had humiliated him utterly before dozens of his men. The towering fury in his chest instantly swept away all reason!

"If I don't smash every one of the two hundred and six bones in your body into splinters, inch by inch, I'll write my name backward!!"

Boom-!!

With a savage roar that shook heaven and earth, the blood and Qi of Lei Hu's peak of the middle stage of Ming Jin cultivation erupted like a volcano dormant for a hundred years! His bronze skin instantly flushed a purplish red. His enormous body, over two meters tall, resembled an ancient savage beast driven utterly berserk. Both feet shattered the bluestone beneath him as he raised the black refined-steel spiked club weighing over a hundred jin in both hands. He sprang more than three feet into the air and brought it crashing down at Chen Xuan's crown with the terrifying wind pressure of Mount Tai bearing down!

"Turn into meat paste-!!!"

Whooo-!

The hundred-jin weapon tore through the air, releasing a shrill sonic boom like wailing ghosts and howling wolves! Before the spiked club even descended, its mountain-toppling, sea-overturning wind pressure had already forced the bluestone slabs within a one-zhang radius to crack and creak. Even several Black Tiger Gang saber-wielders cheering in the front row turned pale and retreated repeatedly before that suffocating killing aura!

"Chen Xuan!! Dodge, now!!"

Behind him, Xiao Ling'er let out a heart-rending scream of despair, scalding tears spilling from her eyes!

She desperately drove her blood and Qi, trying to rush forward and deflect the strike with her whip, but the savage wind pressure of Lei Hu's full-powered eruption sent her clothes whipping wildly and choked her breathing. The blast even forced her half a step backward, leaving her no time to help!

Seeing the hundred-jin spiked club, covered in vicious iron spikes, already descending within three inches of Chen Xuan's head, Xiao Ling'er squeezed her eyes shut in despair. Even her heart stopped beating at that moment. She could not bear to watch the boy shielding her be smashed into a heap of bloody minced flesh on the spot!

"Hahahaha! He's dead! That arrogant pretty boy is absolutely dead!"

"He dares take our Second Boss's full-powered club with his flesh? Even an immortal couldn't save him!"

The Black Tiger Gang thugs around them all revealed savage, bloodthirsty grins.

Yet at the very heart of the storm, the instant that shadow engulfed him, a flicker of utterly icy mockery flashed deep within Chen Xuan's lowered eyes.

Dodge? Why the hell should I dodge?

I spent all that breath cursing this idiot into losing his mind and leaping into the air with all his strength precisely to wait for this moment, when his old force is spent and new force has yet to arise, when his entire body is locked into leaving itself wide open!

"For the Third Young Lady-kill!!!"

Outwardly, Chen Xuan adopted a tragic, heroic stance, as though determined to trade his life for his enemy's despite knowing certain death awaited him, and let loose a death-defying roar that shook the clouds!

His legs drove firmly into the bluestone slabs like the entwined roots of an old tree, while his outward presence maintained the illusion of an early-stage Bright Force practitioner "forcibly overdrawing himself." But deep within his extraordinary meridians, the blood and Qi of his major accomplishment realm Boulder Art were already thundering like rivers bursting their banks. His minor accomplishment realm Eight Desolations Prison-Suppressing Yang Gang became an awakened primordial fire dragon, roaring madly along the meridians of his right arm and instantly gathering over the knuckles of his right fist!

Instead of retreating, he advanced!

Facing the hundred-jin refined-steel spiked club crashing down upon him, Chen Xuan twisted his waist and drove his hips forward. His right fist surged upward with the crushing weight of a thousand jun!

"Madman! This kid's really gone mad! He actually dares meet Second Boss's hundred-jin refined-steel spiked club barehanded?!"

"Just watch! His entire right arm and his head will be smashed into rotten watermelon any second!"

Amid all the thugs' gleeful jeers, in a flash of lightning, Chen Xuan's flesh-and-blood fist collided thunderously with the sharp iron spikes at the foremost end of the club!

In the hairbreadth instant of contact, Chen Xuan's five senses, ten times sharper than an ordinary person's, precisely detected a hidden casting defect-an air pocket inside the crudely made refined-steel club! His wrist turned slightly at an exceedingly tricky, uncanny angle. The flawless spiraling force-redirection technique of Boulder Art, combined with the first layer of Eight Desolations Prison-Suppressing Yang Gang's outwardly released fire force, condensed almost into substance, blasted straight into that hidden casting flaw!

Bang-!!!

A deafening explosion, terrifying as thunder erupting from level ground, burst through the center of the long street!

The expected sight of Chen Xuan's arm breaking and his flesh and blood flying never appeared!

In the next instant, a horrifying scene unfolded that made everyone along the street's scalps crawl and frightened their souls out of their bodies-

Crack! Crack, crack-!!

The instant the black spiked club, cast from refined steel and weighing over a hundred jin, touched Chen Xuan's flesh-and-blood fist wrapped in an exceedingly faint red glow, it became like rotten wood or brittle ice struck head-on by a red-hot hammer. Beginning at its foremost tip, it released a string of teeth-grating cracks and exploded apart inch by inch!

Countless hard, sharp fragments of refined steel rebounded under the incomparably overbearing concussive force of Yang Gang, becoming a sky-filling black rain of death that shot madly in every direction with piercing shrieks!

"Pfft, pfft, pfft-!"

"Ah!! My eyes! My leg!"

Seven or eight Black Tiger Gang thugs watching from the front row had no time even to react. The flying steel fragments riddled them like sieves, and they rolled to the ground screaming!

"Wh-what?! Impossible!!"

Lei Hu's wild laughter stopped dead in midair, and the pupils in his bell-sized eyes instantly shrank to pinpoints!

He felt a terrifying, scorching force that could not possibly belong to any early-stage Bright Force practitioner in this world surge backward through the club's crumbling handle and flood into his iron arms like collapsing mountains and a tsunami!

Crack! Crack!

The arm bones he took such pride in, hardened through ten full years of training to the peak of the middle stage of Ming Jin, were as fragile as two dry sticks before that peerlessly overbearing Yang Gang concussive force. They shattered inch by inch on the spot, stark white bone splinters piercing straight through his bronze flesh!

But that was only the beginning!

After shattering the hundred-jin spiked club, Chen Xuan's punch lost none of its momentum. Instead, he pressed forward another step into his airborne opponent, and the twofold bone-penetrating inch force compressed to its limit within him erupted once more in that hairbreadth instant!

That iron fist, carrying a concealed, faint red fiery glow, passed through the flying refined-steel fragments and struck squarely, solidly, without the slightest flourish, into the very center of Lei Hu's broad chest, tattooed with a black tiger totem!

Boom-!!!

Another terrifying explosion rang out, muffled as though a war drum had been beaten apart!

Lei Hu's iron-tower body, nearly nine feet tall and weighing three hundred jin, abruptly stiffened in midair as though struck head-on by an out-of-control siege hammer!

Then, beneath the horrified gazes of all fifty or sixty thugs present, an enormous, shocking fist imprint suddenly bulged high along the spine of Lei Hu's broad back. The savage Yang Gang fire force then tore that tough, blade-and-spear-proof flesh apart from within!

Splurt-!!

A thick, scalding column of blood mixed with charred fragments of internal organs spurted from the bowl-sized bloody hole in Lei Hu's back like a fountain bursting its banks. It crossed a full three zhang and splashed against the bluestone wall opposite the Cloud Silk Fabric Shop, staining an entire large stretch of white wall red!

"Ugh... hhk, hhk..."

Lei Hu's feet landed heavily. His bloodshot, bell-sized eyes stared fixedly at the cold-faced boy in blue before him, his face filled with an ultimate terror and horror he could not comprehend even in death. He opened his mouth to cry out "Gang Qi," but great gushes of dark red blood mixed with fragments of his heart and lungs spewed from his throat like a spring, instantly choking off every sound!

Crash!

That nine-foot iron-tower body, infamous for its ferocity after bullying the western market district for years, toppled stiffly backward just like that, slamming into the cracked bluestone street and throwing up clouds of dust mixed with bloody foam!

The Black Tiger Gang's second-in-command, the body-hardening expert at the peak of the middle stage of Ming Jin, "Iron-Boned Yama" Lei Hu-

Chen Xuan had shattered his hundred-jin weapon with one punch in the street, punched straight through his chest and back, and killed him on the spot!