Throat-Severing Kill

Whoosh!

The man in black leaned back to dodge the punch. The bones and muscles in his back worked together like a spring that had been stretched taut and was now recoiling on its own.

In one exceedingly fluid motion, he folded backward until the crown of his head abruptly touched the ground, then followed through with a skyward kick aimed at Chu Tianshu's chin.

Moves that inverted the body and used the crown of the head to support it were not unheard of.

But getting his head onto the ground that quickly, without using his hands for support or showing any signs of dizziness from the impact, was truly astonishing.

Chu Tianshu hurriedly retreated half a step. The man in black powered the movement with his waist and back, twisting his body and sweeping his legs through a wide arc in a spinning kick.

His legs were not fully spread and level, so the kick was not aimed at Chu Tianshu's waist or hips.

It was aimed at the lowest rib on Chu Tianshu's right side.

Chu Tianshu's pupils shifted slightly, and he simply leaped back, retreating a full stride.

There was no way to keep fighting for long with the crown of the head on the ground, relying on a twist of the waist and back for power.

After one or two kicks to seize the initiative, remaining in that position would leave far too large an opening. It would be courting death.

Having forced Chu Tianshu back with all his strength, the man in black immediately moved to rise.

His kick had only just met empty air, and his body had yet to stop spinning, but his hands were already reaching for the ground. He flipped upright like a carp springing from the water.

The man in black's balance as he flipped, and his agility, made him faster than a wild civet.

At this moment, Chu Tianshu, who had just been forced back, should have barely managed to touch the ground with his feet, with no time yet to exert any force.

Yet this man in black, who acted as viciously as a beast, also possessed human boxing skills and combat experience.

His grasp of timing had probably been tested in hundreds of life-and-death battles.

But just as he flipped upright, before his body had fully straightened, he heard an unusual, cracking impact.

Rather than wait for his feet to land naturally after jumping back, Chu Tianshu drew a deep breath in midair, leaned forward, tensed his waist, and whipped his leg out.

His left foot was still hovering, not yet firmly on the ground, when his right foot stamped heavily down at an angle behind him.

The length of a person's body was not completely fixed to begin with; it had a certain degree of flexibility.

Chu Tianshu drove his right foot down with such force that his entire right leg seemed a little longer than his left.

Tongbei Fist imitated apes, and the most remarkable thing about apes was their ability to leap.

Gluttonous Tongbei Fist had developed some downright brutal methods of exerting force from the footwork in the original Tongbei Fist manual.

The moment his thick-soled cloth shoe stamped heavily onto the ground, the packed earth visibly sank. The sole was thick enough, but every thread around the seam joining the upper to the sole snapped.

Boom!!!

That was the cracking impact the man in black had heard.

The stomp canceled Chu Tianshu's backward momentum, with plenty of force left over to send him shooting straight back.

Before the man in black could make out his figure, he let out a strange cry and struck forward with both hands.

A faint crack seemed to sound in the air as well.

As Chu Tianshu charged forward, his right arm stabbed straight ahead, his fingers held together like a sword as they pierced the air.

A flash of blood erupted.

Chu Tianshu's hand plunged into something like a pool of warm mud. His fingertips kept stabbing deeper until they touched something hard.

Squelch! Crack!

The man in black's body suddenly went rigid. His eyes opened wide, his eyeballs seeming a size larger than before. His limbs stiffened, and his arms went straight as wooden sticks.

Both his hands had been striking at Chu Tianshu's ears, a move meant to take them both down.

If his opponent showed the slightest fear, he could still keep fighting.

Even if his opponent charged straight in, whether striking at his heart or his head, the man in black's dying counterattack could still land.

But Chu Tianshu's blow had not only been aimed at his throat; it had stabbed straight into his cervical spine.

When a person's cervical vertebrae broke, the brain and spinal cord suddenly lost contact, and the muscles throughout the body went into tonic contraction, instantly stiffening the limbs.

The man in black's hands had already reached either side of Chu Tianshu's head, less than half a foot away.

But the tonic contraction made his hands stop on the spot like a jammed mechanism, leaving him no chance to complete the strike.

"Phew..."

Chu Tianshu stared into the dead man's eyes and held his position. His body gradually relaxed, and he took several breaths. The fight had come out of nowhere, yet it had clearly been a perilous struggle to the death, leaving him irritated and unable to make sense of it.

He reached forward with his left hand and pushed the man in black.

As the man fell onto his back, the wound in his neck was no longer blocked, and a jet of blood sprayed out, landing entirely on his own black clothes.

The corpse hit the ground, raising dust. Blood continued to flow, gradually spreading into a pool around his neck.

A few seconds later, the tonic contraction passed, and the man in black's raised arms fell to the ground.

Chu Tianshu looked at the blood on his right hand, fell silent for a moment, then looked at the corpse.

He had slain quite a few evil spirits, but this was his first time killing a person, and in such a bloody manner at that.

"That way of dying... Hmph, it's no more frightening than a ghost."

Chu Tianshu's brow relaxed, and he shook the blood from his hand.

Footsteps suddenly sounded in the street.

Chu Tianshu turned to look.

Shopkeeper Ma was hurrying over with a kerosene lamp in hand, moving quite quickly.

"Little Chu, I just heard someone banging a gong like mad. What happened... Hm?!"

Shopkeeper Ma stopped short, his expression growing somewhat grave as he raised the lamp to shine it over the scene.

The warm yellow light revealed the iron finger guards on the ground, then swept over Chu Tianshu and illuminated his bloody hand.

Finally, the lamplight and moonlight fell together on the corpse.

Although he was in the right, it looked as though he had been caught at the scene of a killing.

Chu Tianshu could not help feeling a little nervous. He was about to explain.

"Don't panic!"

Instead, Shopkeeper Ma spoke in a steady voice to reassure Chu Tianshu.

"My old eyes are blurry, but I'm not blind yet. Before this, you were a greenhorn who'd never taken a life. This was your first time, wasn't it?"

He started walking again. "You dispense medicine to make money, eat meat and train, and have a simple, single-minded nature. I know you wouldn't kill without reason. Who was this man?"

A little surprised, Chu Tianshu stepped back twice, letting Shopkeeper Ma approach the corpse.

"This man ambushed me out of nowhere. I don't know who he was either, but I think he killed a bamboo-strip craftsman earlier."

Shopkeeper Ma walked up beside the corpse and saw its wide-open eyes.

The green vertical pupils were slowly returning to normal, then growing unfocused.

"This is..."

Shopkeeper Ma's expression changed. He held two fingers of his left hand together like a sword and pressed them against the kerosene lamp's glass shade.

"Firewood from the east, charcoal from the west, burn heaven and earth bright and clear. Fire dragon and fire crow, guard the doors and windows; smoke from the kindling keeps the plague god busy."

He spoke so quickly that the lines seemed to run together, finished in the space of a breath.

Inside the kerosene lamp, the flame flickered.

The glass shade was clearly unbroken, yet the old man plucked a flame from its outside and tossed it into the wound in the man in black's neck.

The flame flashed and vanished.

Chu Tianshu saw clearly that the fire had not gone out. It seemed more like it had burrowed into the wound. "Shopkeeper Ma, you really are no ordinary man."

"The one lying on the ground is no ordinary man either."

Shopkeeper Ma glanced at Chu Tianshu. "And you managed to slay him. You're even less ordinary."

Soon, the skin on the man in black's face began to squirm, and strange insects shaped like cockroaches but as small as ants crawled out of his seven orifices.

Chu Tianshu frowned deeply at the sight. Unable to help himself, he tore a piece from the hem of his clothes and wiped his right hand. "What are those?"

"Poisoned civet claws, crocodile-skin boots, Leopard Worms in his body. He's a Leopard Cat Warrior from Jiaozhi."

Shopkeeper Ma's expression turned somewhat grim.

In ancient times, the royal house of Jiaozhi trained such death warriors. They adopted large numbers of children when they were young and taught them various boxing techniques imitating tigers, leopards, and civets. Each child kept a leopard cat, feeding it dead human flesh and corpse oil.

Once both the person and the leopard cat had grown up, and master and pet moved in harmony, their steps matching, the person like a cat and the cat like a person, a shaman would preside over the killing of the leopard cat. Insects would be left to devour it completely, and the person would then swallow the insects.

The leopard cat's soul would attach itself to the insects and be nurtured inside the person's body, eating and drinking alongside its master. When needed, the ferocious soul could possess him and display extraordinary abilities.

These were among the finest assassins and spies in ancient Jiaozhi. They moved silently, scaled walls and crossed rooftops, and had enough strength in their fingers to tear the skin from a person's face with ease.

Everything they did made them look like accomplished martial artists, but in truth they had taken a different path, becoming sorcerers who practiced spirit communion.

Even people who could normally sense wandering spirits would not easily detect a ferocious soul hidden inside insects, with the insects in turn hidden inside a human body.

"You killed him while he was attacking with all his strength, so the leopard cat's ferocious soul died on the spot too. But the insects aren't dead yet. They have to be dealt with, in case these poisonous bugs fly out and bite someone."

The insects Shopkeeper Ma had forced out with his spell were already listless. He struck them with another flame, setting every one of the little insects alight.

Hearing this, Chu Tianshu silently invoked the token screen.

Sure enough, a material called "Worm-Belly Leopard Cat" had appeared in the evil spirit materials section.

Watching the insects burn away, Shopkeeper Ma showed no relief. Instead, his expression grew even heavier.

"You just said he killed a bamboo-strip craftsman too. That was where the gong was sounded, wasn't it?"

Shopkeeper Ma asked, "Did the corpse look like it had been mauled by a wild beast?"

Sensing something, Chu Tianshu said, "Yes. Did he have some special purpose in doing that? Was he trying to use some kind of evil art?"

"Probably not an evil art. Leopard Cat Warriors can't learn other evil arts."

Shopkeeper Ma's expression shifted uncertainly. "But this is more troublesome than that. Most likely, he came to scout the place for mountain bandits and roving raiders."

"A leopard cat's ferocious soul is prone to turning on its host in spring, and someone has to help suppress it. Besides the powerful and wealthy of Jiaozhi, only a leader of roving raiders would keep someone like this."

"Foreigners have taken most of Jiaozhi, and there's fighting everywhere over there too. It's not uncommon for raiders to slip into Yi Province. Because of the language barrier, when they scout a place, they often send their most capable and resourceful man aside from the leader to slip into town, kill someone, and leave the body there."

"Then they watch from the shadows to see what the local people are like, how long it takes the town militia to arrive, what equipment the militia uses..."

At this point, Shopkeeper Ma frowned. "No, that's not right. Since he had already killed someone, why did he attack you too?"

Chu Tianshu turned it over in his mind and understood. It was because of his underlying susceptibility to invasion by Yin evil.

People who were easily invaded by Yin evil were also easily sensed by it. In the eyes of evil spirits steeped in bestial nature in particular, he would be especially delicious.

Back in his hometown, however, his family had placed quite a few objects around the house to ward off evil. The evil spirits he encountered had also been mostly human souls, and relatively weak, with no bestial ferocious spirits among them.

This was his first encounter with a Leopard Cat Warrior like this.

"I went to look around where the gong was sounded, hoping to find a clue to the killer."

Chu Tianshu said, "His ferocious soul was probably unruly to begin with, and the strong hostility I gave off provoked him."

Looking at the corpse, Shopkeeper Ma murmured, "That makes sense. If a Leopard Cat Warrior is lucky enough to live to middle age, the ferocious soul does become more easily provoked after being nurtured for so long."

"To dare keep a Leopard Cat Warrior like this, that band of raiders must be far more savage and fierce than ordinary bandits..."

Shopkeeper Ma's expression turned stern. "I need to warn the people in town at once!"