The underground world of Southeast Asia trembled at the name "Shura Qing."
In the battle at Bangkok's Lotus Grand Hotel, Wu Tianxiong and his elite forces had been wiped out.
The news was like a boulder hurled into a still lake, sending ripples through the dark world.
Forces on all sides were secretly investigating the mysterious expert's origins, but no one could get to the bottom of his background.
Rumor had it that this expert, who called himself "Shura Qing,"
could wipe out an entire criminal den in a single night,
and even the most elite bodyguard team was powerless to resist him.
In a secluded villa somewhere in the north, crime boss Nawachai listened to his subordinate's report, his face grim.
This formidable figure, who had dominated the Golden Triangle for decades, felt genuine fear for the first time.
"Have you found out yet? Just what is Li Qingshan's background?"
His voice was hoarse, and the cigar in his hand trembled slightly, ash spilling unnoticed onto the expensive carpet.
The atmosphere in the conference room was heavy as iron.
A dozen or so core members exchanged looks, none daring to meet Nawachai's eyes.
At last, a middle-aged man wearing gold-rimmed glasses spoke in a trembling voice:
"Boss, we... we couldn't find any information.
It's as if this man appeared out of thin air. All we know is that he's skilled in martial arts from various schools, and his strength is unfathomable."
"Useless!" Nawachai slammed the table and sprang to his feet, a crack splitting the mahogany tabletop.
"You can't even investigate one man! Wu Tianxiong had Master Basong,
retired SEALs, and an Internal Martial Arts expert. How could they all have been wiped out?"
Dead silence fell over the conference room.
The bosses who usually commanded the wind and summoned the rain were all deathly pale.
Some had already begun secretly arranging for their families to leave Southeast Asia,
while others were considering how to keep their distance from this suddenly appeared harbinger of doom.
The hotel's surveillance footage had come through an encrypted channel, and though the crucial parts had been destroyed,
they could still make out the ferocity of the fighting and how one-sided it had been. It sent a chill down the spine of everyone present.
"I have to go to Europe and lie low first."
A tall, thin man suddenly stood, his fingers tapping the table absentmindedly.
"I have a safe house in Switzerland. I'll come back when things have settled down."
"Coward!"
another man, a scar across his face, roared, slamming his fist down on the table.
"Running away now is just waiting to die!
We should pool all our strength, find this 'Shura Qing,' and kill him!"
A cold light flickered in Nawachai's eyes as he listened to the two sides argue. At last, he made a decision:
"We'll attack this from several directions.
"First, hire the 'Shadow' assassin organization and offer triple the bounty;
"Second, contact Khun Sa's private army and borrow his elite troops;
"Third, pay a fortune to bring Muay Thai grandmaster Chai and Vietnamese boxing champion Nguyễn Văn Hùng out of retirement;
"Fourth, mobilize every intelligence network and spare no effort tracking down Li Qingshan."
"I'll make this brat who doesn't know the immensity of heaven and earth understand the consequences of angering us!"
Nawachai said through gritted teeth, but his slightly trembling fingers betrayed the fear in his heart.
Meanwhile, the name "Shura Qing" spread through the entire Southeast Asian underground world at an astonishing speed.
Bangkok, Yangon, Phnom Penh, Hanoi-in every city's dark corners, people talked about the mysterious expert's exploits.
At an underground boxing arena in Bangkok, several fighters huddled together, speaking in hushed voices:
"Have you heard? 'Shura Qing' took out Wu Tianxiong's stronghold in a single night."
"That's terrifying. Even Master Basong lost, and he was a true Muay Thai grandmaster!"
"We'd better be careful about the jobs we take from now on. We mustn't cross that harbinger of doom."
In a casino somewhere in the Golden Triangle, several representatives were also whispering among themselves:
"This 'Shura Qing' is no ordinary man."
"We need to make plans early. Those who need to lie low should lie low, and those who need to grease palms should grease palms."
Even some upstanding members of the martial arts world discussed it in private:
"Though this expert's methods are ruthless, he only targets those guilty of the most heinous crimes. You could say he's meting out justice on heaven's behalf."
"But his killing aura is too strong. I fear this isn't the proper path of martial arts."
At the center of the storm, however, Li Qingshan vanished from everyone's sight like a ghost.
Li Qingshan lived in a corner of Bangkok's bustling city center.
Though he kept to himself and rarely went out, the name "Shura Qing" had already swept through the Southeast Asian underground like a hurricane.
He had no need to investigate deliberately. He only had to sit for a short while at a street food stall,
and the hushed talk around him of a "sky-high bounty" and "experts from all sides gathering in Bangkok" drifted into his ears in fragments.
When night fell, he sat cross-legged in meditation in his humble room,
his Embryonic Breathing skill profound, his mind merging with the world around him.
Though he could not see clearly across ten thousand li,
the intangible killing intent and hidden currents directed at him that filled the entire city
were like pebbles cast into a still lake, raising distinct ripples in his mind.
He did not "see" any specific movements of mercenaries or experts coming out of retirement,
but he could sense Bangkok's "Qi" growing restless, sharp, and full of malice.
Several strong senses of danger pointed faintly toward his location from different directions.
These rumors from the underground world intertwined with warnings from his own spiritual perception, already sketching out a vast net closing in on him.
Li Qingshan opened his eyes, a light like a cold star flashing briefly in them.
"They've come, just as I thought."
"They came at just the right time."
Li Qingshan opened his eyes, a sharp light flashing in them.
"Just in time for me to catch you all in one net."
He decided to lure the snakes from their holes.
The next day, Li Qingshan deliberately showed himself in Bangkok's Chinatown, leisurely sipping tea at a teahouse.
His deliberate appearance was like a beacon in the dark, drawing the attention of every tracker.
Sure enough, in less than an hour, several presences had locked onto his location.
Toward evening, Li Qingshan deliberately headed for an abandoned industrial district on Bangkok's outskirts.
The terrain was complex, with factory buildings standing in rows and rusted pipes crisscrossing everywhere. It was the ideal place to pick them off one by one.
He unleashed his Embryonic Breathing realm to the fullest, his mental perception scanning his surroundings like a precision radar.
He clearly "saw" three groups closing in.
Li Qingshan's sudden appearance had caused the groups to arrive separately, which was exactly what he wanted.
The first to arrive were members of the "Shadow" assassin organization.
Three men in black approached like phantoms from three directions,
their steps as light as cats', landing without a sound, the poisoned daggers in their hands glinting eerily in the moonlight.
Li Qingshan appeared like a ghost, closing in on them before they could strike.
His Embryonic Breathing realm let him anticipate every movement. His Xingyi Crushing Fist struck after theirs but landed first, directly shattering their heart meridians.
All three died before they could even cry out. The entire process took less than three seconds, clean and swift.
Li Qingshan quickly dragged the bodies behind the rusted pipes and hid them, making sure not to beat the grass and startle the snakes.
Li Qingshan quickly searched their bodies.
He found only some ordinary communications equipment and weapons, no valuable intelligence.
This confirmed his judgment: these were merely cannon fodder sent to probe him.
Five minutes later
A reconnaissance squad from Sa's private army, fifteen men in all, advanced in two tactical formations.
They had evidently heard some movement and searched every corner warily.
They soon found the bodies lying scattered on the ground.
Using the factory buildings' shadows and abandoned machinery for cover, Li Qingshan approached without a sound.
Before they could pull their triggers, Li Qingshan had already charged into their formation.
His Bagua Step carried him through like a roaming dragon, moving nimbly among the abandoned pipes and equipment.
Then his Bajiquan erupted with ferocious force.
Men flew out one after another like hurled sandbags, their neck bones shattered.
Then the truly powerful fighters finally appeared.
Muay Thai grandmaster Chai pounced like a fierce tiger, the Ancient Muay Thai killing move Divine Elephant Breaks Tusks aimed straight at Li Qingshan's throat;
Vietnamese boxing champion Nguyễn Văn Hùng emerged like a snake from its hole, attacking the lower body with sinister viciousness.
One was hard, the other soft, and they worked together seamlessly.
Li Qingshan, however, neither dodged nor retreated, circulating his Embryonic Breathing realm to its limit.
The instant Master Chai's elbow strike was about to land, he turned slightly to the side.
His right hand brushed out like a cloud, Taijiquan's Cloud Hands neutralizing the fierce force,
while his left hand drove a Xingyi Drilling Fist straight down the center.
Master Chai felt a force as concentrated as a steel needle pierce his body, and his internal organs throbbed with pain as though they had been churned to pieces.
Seeing things going badly, Nguyễn Văn Hùng aimed the Vietnamese boxing killing move Venomous Snake Flicks Its Tongue straight at Li Qingshan's eyes.
Li Qingshan stepped into a Bagua Step and spun, easily avoiding the lethal blow,
then struck back with a Splitting Fist like a giant axe cleaving a mountain, landing squarely on the crown of Nguyễn Văn Hùng's head.
The two grandmaster-level experts could not last three moves against Li Qingshan.
The mysterious expert Nawachai had hired at great expense was Santos, a master of stick fighting from the Philippines.
He had originally planned to join forces with the others to surround Li Qingshan.
Before they could form an encirclement, his two companions were already dead.
He could not help roaring as he swung his sticks and charged forward.
He wielded a stick in each hand, whirling them like the wind. His moves were strange and unpredictable, aimed exclusively at the body's vital acupoints.
Santos let out a fierce shout, his twin sticks darting like venomous snakes from their holes, straight for Li Qingshan's eyes and throat.
An ordinary Transformation Jin expert might well have fallen for it.
But Li Qingshan's mental cultivation in the Embryonic Breathing realm had already transcended the ordinary.
He snorted coldly, his body moving like willow fluff on the wind as he easily evaded the fierce assault.
Just as Santos's old force was spent and his new force had yet to arise,
Li Qingshan blasted out a Xingyi Cannon Fist, striking him squarely in the chest.
Santos flew backward as though hit by a truck,
crashed into a rusted steel frame, and breathed no more.
The entire fight had taken less than ten minutes, and all three waves of elites had been wiped out.
Li Qingshan stood amid the bodies covering the ground, his breathing steady as ever.
His cultivation in the Embryonic Breathing realm allowed him to control every fraction of his strength perfectly, killing with the precision and efficiency of an art.
Li Qingshan walked slowly across the battlefield strewn with wreckage, the perception of his Embryonic Breathing realm spreading out like an invisible spiderweb.
Through keen observation and reasoning, he pieced together crucial information from the clues left at the scene.
He crouched beside the Muay Thai grandmaster Chai's corpse and noticed a specially made satellite communications watch on his wrist.
An intricate cobra totem was engraved on the back of the watch face.
It was the emblem of the Golden Triangle warlord Nawachai's personal guard.
Three days later
"So he's hiding on the river."
Li Qingshan looked toward the Chao Phraya River, a cold light flashing in his eyes. Three days of following clues all pointed to the same conclusion:
Nawachai's true hiding place was not a fixed location, but a luxury yacht that moved along the river.
Every night at eight, it passed the stretch of river near the abandoned factory district.
This discovery made Li Qingshan immediately adjust his plan of action.
He decided to launch a surprise attack from the shore that night at eight, when the Pearl of Siam passed the factory district's stretch of river.
His Embryonic Breathing realm and Transformation Jin cultivation gave him the confidence to leap aboard from a hundred meters away
and catch Nawachai off guard.
As night fell, Li Qingshan appeared as planned at the abandoned factory district on the bank of the Chao Phraya River.
At seven fifty, a brilliantly lit three-deck yacht did indeed appear on the river in the distance,
with "Pearl of Siam" written in Thai on its bow.
Li Qingshan took a deep breath, the Qi and blood throughout his body surging as he circulated them to their limit.
When the yacht sailed into the optimal range for attack, he swept out like a great roc spreading its wings,
his body tracing a graceful arc through the night sky before landing steadily on the yacht's uppermost deck.
The battle that followed was never in doubt.
Nawachai's bodyguards did not even have time to draw their guns before Li Qingshan killed them all with the speed of thunder before one could cover one's ears.
When Li Qingshan appeared before Nawachai like the god of death, the crime lord who had believed himself unrivaled finally broke down.
"Y-you, how could you possibly have found this place?"
Nawachai slumped on the leather sofa, the cigar in his hand falling onto the carpet.
Li Qingshan did not answer. He merely looked at him coldly.
Every answer was written in those eyes, like cold stars.
Death.