"You're the one who plays with flying daggers, right? Is your surname Li? And is the dagger art you practice called Little Li's Flying Dagger?"
Wang Hao finally turned his gaze to the young woman whose hands were empty.
That was right, she was a little assassin... no, a big-sister assassin. Her face and figure were quite good, placing her among the very best, just one tier below Dongfang Bai.
Unfortunately, her cold, sinister eyes spoiled that beauty, giving her a mean and malicious look.
Several of the Blood Wind Hall assassins killed in the training ground earlier had willow-leaf flying daggers buried in their throats. The sight had felt very familiar to Wang Hao, so he had casually asked.
"I don't know what this Little Li's Flying Dagger you're talking about is, but my flying daggers can still take your life!"
The malice in the young woman's eyes deepened. She rubbed her fingers together, and three willow-leaf flying daggers, thin as cicada wings, appeared in her hand. Their edges were incomparably sharp, and they gleamed with a faint, eerie ice-blue sheen. Clearly, they had been coated with deadly poison.
"Good, you're not!"
Wang Hao breathed a sigh of relief. The moment the words left his mouth, he stamped hard on the ground and covered nearly two zhang in the blink of an eye. He stamped again and flashed forward, reappearing directly in front of the young woman.
He swung his greatsword in another Two Armies Facing Off, slashing diagonally upward at her.
The young woman's face filled with horror, but Wang Hao was too fast. By the time she realized something was wrong and tried to dodge, it was already too late.
The sword flashed, and Wang Hao appeared behind her, curling his lip in disdain.
"If it's not Little Li's Flying Dagger, what the hell are you so cocky about?"
Even as he spoke, Wang Hao did not stop. He unleashed Sweep Away a Thousand Troops at the young man holding a pair of rings nearby.
His opponent's weapons were bronze rings two chi in diameter, with more than a dozen sharp blades along their outer and inner edges. They were quite unorthodox weapons, usable both in close combat and as projectiles.
Unfortunately, no matter how unorthodox your weapons were, once a close-combat expert like Wang Hao got near you, death was your only fate.
The young man's face went pale with terror. He hurriedly used his lightness skill and movement technique to rush toward the boundary ten zhang away, clearly having lost the will to fight.
Wang Hao's strength was not something he could possibly match alone. Fighting him would only mean death, so naturally he would not take him on head-on.
As long as he escaped beyond the boundary, he could live. That was also his only chance of survival now.
He was fully confident he could escape. He had already recognized the movement technique Wang Hao had used: Lightning Straight-Line Step.
He had once seen an introduction to it in the Martial Repository Pavilion's catalog of First-Rate martial arts. It explicitly stated that the technique placed a considerable strain on the body and could not be used repeatedly in a short period.
That fellow had just used it twice. The muscles and bones in his legs had to have sustained some damage, making it absolutely impossible for him to use Lightning Straight-Line Step again anytime soon.
Without Lightning Straight-Line Step, a hard-style practitioner like him could never catch up to someone using a lightness skill and movement technique.
Of course, he was also on guard.
He was guarding against Wang Hao using that lethal attack of flinging his greatsword again. With a previous example before him, how could he make the same mistake?
So he retreated backward, keeping his yin-yang rings before his chest to make absolutely sure nothing went wrong.
But what happened next made his face change drastically in shock, his expression full of disbelief.
After using Lightning Straight-Line Step twice, Wang Hao stamped hard on the ground and shot forward nearly two zhang in an instant. He had used Lightning Straight-Line Step again.
That was not all. Wang Hao stamped out four consecutive steps and arrived in front of the young man. The greatsword in his hand came chopping straight down in Destroy the Withered and Crush the Rotten, a move from the Ten Stances of Bloody Battle.
The young man did not dare meet the descending sword head-on. He rolled away like a stubborn donkey and dodged the blow. Though he looked utterly bedraggled, he had kept his life.
But in doing so, he had fallen completely onto the back foot.
Wang Hao pressed his attack, swinging his greatsword again and again. In the end, he severed the young man's left leg, but the man himself rolled beyond the boundary.
After half a month of grueling practice, Wang Hao's Lightning Straight-Line Step had reached the point where he could cover one zhang, seven chi and five cun in a single step, and use it ten times in succession.
He would suffer no backlash at all within those ten uses, which was how he had been able to surpass his opponent's speed and defeat him in one fell swoop.
Only then did the young woman fall to the ground. A gruesome line of blood had appeared across the front of her body, and the life had long since left her.
"He could actually bring himself to strike down a beauty like that, and so cleanly too. Is he even a man?"
On the raised platform, Zhao Dachui stood behind Zhao Fengxue and could not help making a regretful complaint. Although that beauty's breasts were not very large, they were not small either, and her face was quite gorgeous.
Yet that fellow had cut her down without even blinking. Was he really a man?
Unlike the impetuous Zhao Dachui, Zhao Fengxue wore an appreciative expression, clearly very satisfied with Wang Hao's decisiveness.
An assassin needed precisely that kind of resolve. No matter how beautiful the opponent was, even if she were the greatest beauty under heaven, once she was confirmed to be an enemy, one must never hold back in the slightest.
Wang Hao had done well just now. He really was good material for an assassin.
"Quite decisive indeed!"
Wang Hao stood leaning on his sword and gave the young man, whose face was full of relief at surviving, an indifferent glance. He paid him no further attention.
Although the man had survived, he had lost a leg and was effectively crippled. Naturally, there was no need to bother with a cripple.
"Bang!"
"I have no need for trash under my command!"
Just then, however, an old man suddenly flashed forward and planted a foot on the young man's chest. His internal force erupted, shaking the young man to death on the spot. His expression was utterly cold.
He was the young man's hall master.
The young man stared at his own hall master in disbelief. He opened his mouth, but the life left him before he could say anything.
Such was the Blood Robe Tower, an assassin organization renowned throughout the world. This was how cruel things were within it.
The ruthless act made Wang Hao raise an eyebrow, but he said nothing.
After all, the man had been someone else's subordinate. His master could do as he pleased, and an outsider like Wang Hao had no say in it.
Wang Hao turned his gaze to the four remaining young men in brocade. A hesitant yet somewhat tempted look appeared on his face, as though he were considering something but had reservations. He looked deeply conflicted.
The four young men in brocade, who had been frightened into retreating beyond the boundary, were about to return behind their hall masters. But when they saw Wang Hao's expression, their hearts all stirred.
"Wang Hao, we admit we're no match for you one-on-one. Do you dare fight all of us together? A fight to the death!"
The young men in brocade exchanged glances. Finally, a young man in green stepped forward and spoke in a serious voice.
"Pei! How shameless! You actually have the nerve to suggest four against one!"
"Hehe! Since you have the gall to fight one man with four, can we all go up and gang up on you too?"
"Exactly! Everyone, get your weapons ready. In a moment, we'll rush up together and slaughter those four shameless bastards."
As soon as the young man in green finished speaking, the Blood Wind Hall assassins around the training ground began cursing him. Some even intended to rush up and gang up on them.
The proposal was simply too shameless!
When Wang Hao had proposed fighting two against one earlier, that was bold and heroic. Four against one like this was just slutty!
Hearing the curses from the crowd, the other three young men in brocade all looked somewhat displeased. The young man in green leading them, however, remained unruffled, as though he paid the crowd's words no mind at all.
"Hmph! Do you really take me for a fool?"
Wang Hao gave the young man in green a disdainful sidelong glance, hoisted his greatsword onto his shoulder, and prepared to leave.
Given the fighting strength he had displayed earlier, the four remaining fellows must have been scared. They might not dare accept a one-on-one fight, a two-on-one, or even a three-on-one.
Only if he proposed fighting all four at once might they accept. But facing four Peak Second-rate experts whose martial arts and techniques were surely all First-Rate, Wang Hao, despite his formidable strength, really did not have much confidence he could withstand them.
If he had Fortune Points to activate the Dao Comprehension Function and bolster his fighting strength, he would have been confident of holding out, perhaps even winning. But he had no Fortune Points left now!
So after giving it some thought, Wang Hao ultimately abandoned the idea.
"What? Are you, Wang Hao, afraid of me, Yang Lianting? If you're afraid, crawl between my legs and I'll let you go."
Naturally, the man in green was unwilling to let Wang Hao leave like that. After all, their hall master had just used a secret voice-transmission technique to give them a strict order in secret: do everything possible to kill this brat here, lest he fully matured and became a huge threat to them.
So he taunted Wang Hao, intending to provoke him.
At those words, everyone present was left speechless. They felt this fellow was redefining the word shameless for them.
Wasn't this taking shamelessness too far?
Wang Hao was clearly the one with the upper hand and formidable strength. You bastards didn't even dare fight him one-on-one, and only had the courage to face him by joining forces with four men.
And now you actually had the nerve to say that!
Where was your shame?
"You're Yang Lianting?"
Hearing that name, Wang Hao abruptly turned around and fixed the fellow with an incomparably icy stare, even displaying a chilling murderous intent.
According to Old Master Jin's writing, Yang Lianting ended up in an ambiguous relationship with Dongfang Bubai. Dongfang Bubai in this real world was the female version, but had it been the male version, or rather the man-monster version, what Yang Lianting did would have been quite extreme.
When all was said and done, this was one fierce man who charged toward men-or rather, charged toward monsters!
But in this world, he had already reserved that girl Dongfang Bai as his future wife. Now that he had encountered a fellow who would covet his wife in the future, how could he not feel killing intent?
Moreover, Yang Lianting's identity was also highly questionable. After all, he was currently an assassin of the Blood Robe Tower, which had no ties to the Sun Moon Holy Cult and was even somewhat hostile toward it.
For him to enter the Sun Moon Holy Cult in the future, he would either have betrayed the Blood Robe Tower and sought shelter with the cult, or been sent by the tower to deliberately get close to Dongfang Bai. In the latter case, there had to be some sinister scheme.
The first possibility would be fine, but the second would be bad news.
So, to be safe, it was better to find a way to kill this fellow.