Death by a Thousand Cuts for Your Son, a Brutal Boss Kill

Lu Ding sat on the only clean patch left on the sofa and said, "You, a commander, fled in the face of battle and left your men behind for me to slaughter like rotten fish and spoiled shrimp. Tell me, how do you feel now?"

Fang Du trembled.

His eyes swept over the cramped room once again. It was already drenched in blood and flesh.

It was here that the human before him had ground the soldiers he had substituted into pieces.

Fang Du looked at Lu Ding, his eyes filled with unwillingness to accept it. "In... inside?"

Lu Ding crossed his legs, looking relaxed, and propped his elbow on top, resting his chin in his hand. "All dead. Didn't leave you a single one. It was gruesome outside, but even worse inside. Blasted into little chunks. Remember that drum-beating personal guard of yours with the hammer?"

Fang Du looked at Lu Ding. He already had a guess.

But until he heard it from the mouth of the man bearing down on him with such an imposing presence, he still clung to a thread of hope.

Then Lu Ding added with a playful expression, "He died even worse. Not even chunks left. Pounded into powder."

"Hahahahahahahaha..."

Lu Ding laughed wildly, his expression defiant. He stood, walked over to the pile of corpses beside him, rummaged through it, and picked up something round.

"Look. Go on, look. This is your son. He screamed so miserably when he died. I even gave him special treatment."

Lu Ding raised his hand and tossed the bodiless ghost's head into Fang Du's arms.

He caught it with trembling hands.

Lu Ding's voice kept coming. "Everyone else, I killed in one blow. Not the slightest pain. But him? I tore off his arms first, then his legs, and saved his head for last. Twisted it off. You heard me right-twisted. I just forcibly twisted it right off."

The amusement in his voice as he spoke made him sound like a naughty child tearing apart his own toy.

He spoke so casually, so comfortably.

Coupled with his slightly exaggerated expression.

He successfully shattered Fang Du's composure!!

"Ah!!!!!!!!"

His scream tore at his heart and lungs, and sinister ghostly energy spread around him.

"You beast! Wives and children should be spared! He was a child!!!!!!!"

Lu Ding shot straight back, "Bull-fucking-shit! Your child is a child, but other people's children aren't? Your son can't be killed, but you can slaughter someone else's family of three however you like?"

"You even had a sparrow steal a dove's nest and swapped a civet cat for the crown prince. Count yourself lucky I was so furious that I didn't torture that little beast too much. If I'd been a little calmer, I'd have sliced him a thousand times."

Perhaps Lu Ding was relatively indifferent when it came to feelings. He could not really understand the pain a mother who had lost her child had to endure.

So what he could do was make this fellow lose his child too, and have it properly empathize with the person who had reported the case.

A life for a life. That held true in the past and now alike.

"I'll kill you!!!!"

Yin energy surged. Fang Du raised his hand and gathered it, and an enormous ghostly hand slapped down toward Lu Ding's face.

A vertical slash cut out, instantly splitting the ghostly hand in two.

"Trash. You really are trash. You couldn't protect your son, and you couldn't protect your men. Now you want revenge for them, only to find you can't do a thing to me. Does it hurt? Are you in despair?"

"Die!!! Just die!!!!!"

Fang Du was beside himself with rage. He raised his hand, ripped up the floor beneath his feet, and hurled it over, but the result was the same as before. It was sliced into pieces before it could get close to Lu Ding.

This fellow had replaced living people and murdered someone else's family of three.

Of course Lu Ding would not let him die so easily.

Physical torment would do little to a ghost transformed from a fierce general like him.

But what Lu Ding had just said was different. To Fang Du's ears, those words killed the man and pierced his heart, every cut a critical hit, striking straight at his weak spot.

His son had come back to life, only to die again. He had soldiers, only to lose them. His wife had returned, only to run away.

Tsk, tsk, tsk...

Even Lu Ding himself thought he seemed a little wicked.

But he really liked this feeling.

This was exactly how beasts like these should be treated.

"I'll kill you! I will kill you and avenge my soldiers and my offspring!!!!"

As Fang Du lost his reason, the scattered yin energy began gathering around him, forming a heavy suit of armor. Beneath him stood a tall black warhorse, its four hooves aflame, its hollow eyes giving off the eerie glow of ghost fire.

Fang Du swung himself onto the horse.

He grasped the yin energy in his hand, transforming it into a cavalry lance eighteen feet long, and held it level beneath his arm. Phantoms of ancient soldiers appeared behind him, each carrying a saber or spear, following at his back with their spearheads leveled at Lu Ding.

The warhorse pawed the ground, and Fang Du charged forward, thrusting and lifting his long lance amid billowing yin energy.

The next second.

Lu Ding raised his bare hand to meet the blade and caught the lance shaft in his grip. Fang Du could not believe it.

Which of them was the monster-him, or this "human"?!

Never mind that becoming a ghost had greatly increased his strength. Even back when he had been alive and human, he had never encountered anyone who could stand on foot and seize his mounted lance barehanded.

What kind of monster could possess such strength?

Fang Du strained with his hands, but Lu Ding still did not retreat so much as half a step, his expression relaxed.

"See? That's your strongest strike, and it's still so weak and feeble. You think you can kill me with tricks like that? You couldn't protect your son. You couldn't protect your soldiers. And you can't kill me either."

With terrifying strength clamping the lance shaft in place, Lu Ding yanked it toward him, dragging Fang Du and his horse into a stumble.

Then he turned and kicked. The yin energy drifting through the room surged backward past his foot, driven by the sheer speed and ferocity of Lu Ding's kick.

At that moment.

Lu Ding's expression grew larger and larger in Fang Du's eyes.

Brutality, coldness, and the indifference of the strong.

Boom!!!!!!!

The kick sent Fang Du flying backward, smashing through the entire wall behind him. Half his body was gone, pulverized. All of it had been caused by a single kick from Lu Ding, showing just how terrifying its power was.

The feeling of death surged over him like a tide once again.

Fang Du kept grasping at something in midair as scenes of his life flashed before his eyes like a revolving lantern.

The warhorse falling through the air with him was torn apart by an overpowering force, scattering flesh and blood. Lu Ding shot straight through it and planted a foot on the remaining half of Fang Du's chest.

The force of their fall combined with Lu Ding's strength. The two forces converged and fused, carrying one human and one ghost like a cannonball from the nineteenth floor toward the ground on the first.

At the same time.

The Bureau 749 investigators coming to reinforce them had just entered the residential complex.

There were six of them altogether, all on patrol duty in the three nearby districts.

"So annoying, so annoying. How are overlapping yin domains something we can handle? Aren't they just sending us to our deaths? Something happens in Baofan District every day. Why doesn't anything happen in my jurisdiction? Ming Jun and Bei Heguang were useless, even making mistakes on the job, and now Lu Ding and Yan Feifan are even more ridiculous.

"They've barely been here, and they've already caused something like this!!!!"

"Xiao Xiong, you can't put it that way. We're all colleagues, and this is what we Bureau 749 investigators ought to do."

The girl wore her hair in twin ponytails and sucked on a lollipop. Dressed in a baseball jacket, hot pants, and combat boots, she skipped along beside a boy in a black hoodie with a gun resting on his shoulder, ignoring the person who had spoken.

"Brother Xue Ning, don't you think I'm right?"

Xue Ning, one of those involved in the Baiyao Ancient Town mission, was known as the Little Conqueror. Because he had needed to join his colleagues in taking the gravely injured peace officer into the city for treatment.

He had not met Lu Ding.

Later, when the matter of the Wind-Calming Pearl came to light, Xue Ning had kept a simmering resentment bottled up inside.

But faced with one terrifying battle record after another from Lu Ding, he had never gone to demand an explanation from him.

Only recently had he broken through to the Illuminating the Jade Pivot Ninth Stage. Believing he could also beat someone in the Spirit Sea Realm to death, his confidence had risen, and he had volunteered for patrol duty in the area next to Baofan District.