Combat X Passive Buff X Rampantly Growing Madness

Bago did not loosen his grip on the wooden staff again.

While Jiang Ye's words, "You're not allowed to stop," were still echoing in his ears, he had already shifted his center of gravity.

He held the staff across his body, his toes grinding into the gravel and his back bent into a slight arch, like a beast that had just identified its prey, tensing its muscles to spring.

The curve of Jiang Ye's lips did not fade, but his fingers tightened around his staff.

The next instant, Bago moved.

He did not wait for Jiang Ye to make the first move, but pressed straight in.

His staff chopped down diagonally from the right, its brutal force crisp and direct as it cut precisely toward Jiang Ye's left side.

Jiang Ye twisted aside, the tip of the staff brushing past the hem of his clothes, but that was only Bago's opening move.

Using the momentum of his swing, Bago twisted halfway around and drove his left elbow toward Jiang Ye's chest.

The elbow came too fast. Jiang Ye did not even have time to decide whether to dodge.

He could only hold his staff upright in front of his chest and take the blow head-on.

Bang!

The dull impact traveled through the shaft of the staff into his forearm, then through his bones into his chest.

He stumbled half a step back, his heel landing on a piece of gravel and nearly sending him slipping. But as he staggered, he switched the staff to his left hand and swept it backhanded at Bago's knee.

Bago reacted quickly and jumped away.

He retreated half a step and looked down at the spot on the front of his knee where the staff had brushed him. When he raised his eyes again, his lips curved into a smile.

"Good one."

With that, he pressed in again, his attacks coming faster and closer together than before.

He struck twice in succession, one blow chopping down from above, the other sweeping up from below the instant Jiang Ye raised his staff to block.

Jiang Ye could hear the wind from the staff brushing past his ear and smell the dust kicked up as gravel was crushed underfoot. He could even see the tiny signs that preceded each of Bago's strikes.

Bago's shoulder moved first, followed by his arm.

But there was more than one line between seeing an attack and dodging it.

He took three hits.

One struck his thigh, another landed on his right shoulder, and the third grazed his forehead, breaking the skin. Blood trickled down his brow bone and into his eye, staining his vision dark red.

He did not stop, or even raise a hand to wipe it away.

Only when Bago's next blow came down did he suddenly sense a change.

The evening light was growing dimmer, but the shadow beneath his feet was becoming clearer.

The gray-black shadow spread out against his ankles, and a feeling called instinct welled up in him.

Jiang Ye understood. Night had fallen, and the Ten Shadows Technique's passive buff had arrived!

He stepped back and turned sideways to evade Bago's thrust, simultaneously stamping his heel on his own shadow.

The next second, a thread-thin shadow sprang up from the ground and wrapped around Bago's lower leg.

Bago's next downward strike was half a beat slower because he had been tripped.

Jiang Ye did not miss that half beat.

He pressed forward a step and swung his staff across, striking Bago's forearm.

The blow was not hard, but it was accurate, landing at the junction of bone and muscle and making Bago's fingers loosen around his staff for an instant.

Bago's pupils narrowed slightly at the sudden change.

He tightened his grip on the staff again and retreated two steps to open the distance. He glanced down at the fading trace of shadow on his lower leg, then looked up at the shadow slowly spreading around Jiang Ye's feet.

"You... did something with the shadows?"

Jiang Ye did not answer.

He merely raised his thumb to wipe the blood from his brow bone, then tightened his grip on the staff again.

Listening closely, his breathing was heavier than before, and his chest rose and fell more deeply, but he stood more steadily than he had just now.

He had grasped one thing.

Darkness was his home ground!

The Ten Shadows Technique granted him a natural affinity for shadows.

During training in the daytime, this affinity had not stood out, but as the light began to fade, the range of his perception was silently expanding.

Through every shadow his feet touched, he could sense Bago's movements. Through the subtle shifts in the shadows on the ground, he could predict where Bago's next step would land. He could even tell the path of an attack from the direction of the shadow on Bago's shoulder before the staff was swung.

From that moment on, Bago began to struggle.

His staff had not slowed, and his angles were still tricky, but Jiang Ye's dodges were growing more and more precise.

The blows that would once have struck him squarely now either missed by the hem of his clothes or were caught on his staff.

He even began to counterattack.

Not often, but each counter came in the gap after Bago's previous move had spent its force and before he could muster strength for the next, forcing Bago to pull back and retreat.

The twilight sky changed from gray-white to deep gray, then from deep gray to dark blue edged with gold.

The two shadows in the clearing stretched longer and longer beneath the last rays of the sun, while the dull thuds of clashing staffs bounced between the scrap-iron frames.

Bago stopped talking.

Every strike he made grew faster, and every block carried more force, but he could feel it clearly.

Jiang Ye was catching up!

And quickly.

Their final clash came as the light faded completely.

Their staffs locked together, and Bago pressed down on Jiang Ye's shaft with his wrist, but Jiang Ye did not resist him head-on.

Instead, he yielded downward with the force. At the same time, a shadow rose silently from beneath his feet and wrapped around Bago's ankle.

In the instant Bago's center of gravity shifted-

Jiang Ye used the opening created by his lost balance to pull back his staff, switch hands, and swing sideways. The side of the staff struck Bago's wrist.

With a bang, Bago's staff flew from his hand.

The hardwood staff, as thick as an arm, spun twice through the air and plunged into the gravel, its end trembling slightly.

Bago stood where he was, his breathing steady, but his hand had stopped moving.

He looked down at his empty right hand, then raised his head to look at Jiang Ye.

Jiang Ye stood three meters away with his staff held across his body. The blood on his brow bone had dried, covering half his face in dark red streaks.

His breathing was heavy, his chest heaving like a bellows, and his knees trembled slightly, but his grip on the staff did not loosen.

He glanced at the staff embedded in the ground, then at Bago.

"Tomorrow afternoon."

"We continue."

With that, he turned and left.

His steps were unsteady, and he stumbled over the gravel.

Bago stood where he was, watching the small, slender figure pass through the scrap-iron frames at the edge of the clearing and disappear into the dim evening light.

He pulled the staff from the gravel, weighed it in his hand, then lowered it again.

Bago looked up in the direction Jiang Ye had disappeared, saying nothing.

There was neither the pride of victory nor the unwillingness to accept defeat in his eyes.

Suddenly, he remembered something.

Several years ago, when he was still being kept down by the Shattered Iron Group, he had gone out once to look for work and seen a battle from a distance.

It had taken place on a mountain of scrap on the outskirts of the Fifth District. He had only intended to go around it, but the commotion was so great that he could not help stopping for another look.

There was a slender, small-framed man in a long black high-collared coat, with a mask covering his nose and mouth and only a pair of narrow eyes exposed.

He held a short blade, and the corpses of more than a hundred gang members lay scattered around him.

Blood had dyed the piles of scrap iron dark brown, but there was hardly a trace of it on the man's black coat.

It was not that the blood had missed him. He had simply moved too fast, leaving each spot before the blood had time to fall.

Bago had crouched in the distance, not even daring to breathe too heavily.

Later, he spent a great deal of time asking around before piecing together the man's identity.

Phantom Troupe, number 2.

Feitan Portor!

Someone who had come from Meteor City, someone who could make it out.

He had not seen the start of the battle, only its end.

But that ending alone had been enough to stay with him for years.

He did not know why he saw something similar in Jiang Ye.

It was not his build, nor his fighting style.

Jiang Ye's physique was far different from Feitan's, and his fighting style was rougher, far from possessing that terrifyingly fluid sense of killing.

But the way he accelerated madly in battle, the speed at which he evolved to become harder to deal with after every hit, made the hairs on Bago's back rise involuntarily.

Jiang Ye's true strength had never been that black-and-blue face of his.

It was the madness growing rampant from deep within his bones!

Bago withdrew his gaze, slung the staff over his shoulder, and headed in the opposite direction from the camp.

After two steps, he paused again, turned his head, and muttered to himself.

"Rust Bone Gang..."

"No,"

"Rust Remains Alliance!"

He smacked his lips, as though savoring the afterburn of a strong drink.

Then he smiled and strode into the gloomy twilight.

At that moment, he was immensely glad he had joined the Rust Remains Alliance!