Chapter Fifty: The Slaughter Begins

Kou Li lunged forward with deceptive speed. The tip and midsection of the “Iron Whip” missed their target, but the forceful end—the upper arm—slammed heavily into the hollow of his shoulder.

A muffled groan escaped him. The pain was tenfold greater than when he’d been struck by the heavy wooden pole atop the Plum Blossom Stakes. Worse yet, a foreign substance invaded his body, bringing on a wave of dizziness and near-unconsciousness.

Fortunately, the mastery he’d achieved in the Child’s Stake technique instantly revealed its effects. With a sudden contraction and seal of his vital energy and blood, the intruding substance was blocked in his forearm. Seizing the opportunity, Kou Li’s hands grasped his opponent’s forearm and wrist.

Wrist-Severing Blossom!

A killing move from the Leopard Style Fist of the Five Elephants Pavilion!

Kou Li’s aura shifted in an instant, transforming from the ferocity of a wild tiger to the ruthless cunning of a mountain leopard. His five fingertips shot out from his palm, twisting backward in a raking motion. With a single twist, he shredded ten strips of human skin like silk ribbons. Yet, what oozed from the wounds was not blood, but a thin, silvery liquid that felt hot, as if it were fresh blood.

Kou Li was no Lu Yao, who had mastered the Leopard Form to a monstrous degree, whose tendons and sinews could tear muscles from bone. But Kou Li had his own methods: a backward strike with the shoulder bone aimed straight at the opponent’s Jianjing point, while his reversed palm stabbed into the Taiyuan point.

The Jianjing point, at the highest part of the shoulder—midway between the Dazhui point and the acromion—is where the Shaoyang meridians of both hand and foot, the Yangming foot meridian, and the Yangwei meridian converge. A strike here brings paralysis to half the body.

The Taiyuan point, in the hollow on the radial side of the wrist crease when the palm is up, is the origin point of the Lung Meridian. A blow here obstructs the hundred vessels, inflicting internal damage.

A shoulder strike at Taiyuan, a claw at Jianjing—two soul-snatching blows, delivered in lethal succession!

There were two dull thuds. Blood spurted from the wrist like flying daggers, but unexpectedly, the opponent showed no reaction at all. Instead, a wave of pain shot through Kou Li’s spine as his opponent hammered a fist into his spinal joint.

A flash of ferocity crossed Kou Li’s eyes. With the Five-Flower Mountain Posture and Tiger Embrace, his tiger-bone frame came alive. Both arms, one forward and one back, closed like the jaws of a tiger, trapping his opponent’s arms above and below—not defending, but counterattacking, trading blood for blood, wounds for wounds.

He was like a starving tiger, all bone and sinew!

If Kou Li’s gaze was a sea of murderous intent, then this military officer was as cold as ice, as if nothing before him, not even his own body, mattered.

With a step as taut as a drawn bow, tendons strung like an arrow, bones snapping like a shot, he drove a mountain-splitting punch straight for the back of Kou Li’s head.

A contest of lives—life for life!

A desperate will to survive exploded from deep within Kou Li’s heart.

To die is easy; to live is hard; to live forever is harder still.

Amid the thick, black sea of murderous intent in Kou Li’s eyes, a brilliant spark flared like fireworks, elevating him out of his animal frenzy.

He must take the killer’s blade, and twist it into the hands of the living!

Pressing his back to his foe, he thrust his mind backward, delivering an internal soul-striking blow. Each vertebra exploded in turn, his flesh and bones withstanding the impact, his spine striking outward!

Like a divine dragon twisting its body, emerging from the clouds.

With a violent flex of his joints, at that life-or-death juncture, he smashed through the opponent’s guard. His surging joints forced the enemy’s body airborne; the killing punch brushed past Kou Li’s ear.

At that same instant, with a bamboo-cracking snap, half of the officer’s arm was “bitten off” on the spot, blood spraying everywhere.

Transformed into a tiger, arms as fangs, spine as dragon—dragon moves, tiger bites!

At this most perilous moment, when life burned brightest, Kou Li’s mind exploded with clarity, and, in the midst of the incomplete Seventeen Tiger Forms, he rederived a killing move of the Tiger Form.

Using the force of his bite, the officer was hurled five or six yards, crashing into an unfinished ship and smashing a hole in its hull.

Kou Li was about to finish him off when a sinister voice hissed in his ear, “Go, now! Do you want to die?”

The Ghost Shadow flashed past him. Kou Li turned to see hundreds of torches surrounding them on all sides.

“Kill the pirates!”

“Slaughter the sea bandits!”

“Don’t let any of them escape!”

As Kou Li fled, he realized his steps were uneven and heavy, sweat pouring from his body. Though September nights were cooling, steam rose from his head.

That brief exchange, less than ten breaths long, had left him utterly drained.

The gates of the navy camp creaked open just a crack; Crocodile Boy was frantically waving him over.

Once inside, he and Chu San braced the door with two beams they’d found somewhere, then leapt into a waiting boat and rowed away.

At last, the gate was battered open and countless soldiers poured out.

“Get to the boats!”

“Lower the drawbridge! Don’t let any of the pirates escape to raise the alarm!”

With a thunderous crash, the drawbridge did come down—but it fell apart on impact, planks and beams flying everywhere. The foremost dozen soldiers were immediately knocked into the river.

As the soldiers boarded the ships, they realized something was wrong.

“The boats have been holed!”

“Jump off! Swim back!”

“Those who can swim, chase them! Don’t let them get away!”

But no matter what, no man can outrun a boat—especially in the dead of night, beyond the reach of the lanterns, the boats soon vanished from sight.

“Damn!”

“Commander Gongsun, are you alright?”

A figure slowly emerged from the gate—it was the officer whose arm had been severed. Grayish-black blood dripped steadily from the wound, bone fragments still embedded in the flesh, though his expression showed no change.

Yet his gaze, as he looked after the escaping boat, was no longer merely cold; deep killing intent and frustration flickered there. At his waist, the badge engraved with “Gongsun” flipped in the wind.

On the reverse was a single, bold character: “Forbidden.”

“Commander, should we tend your wound first?” a trembling soldier asked, terrified not only by the officer’s demonic resilience but by his identity—he was an envoy sent by the Ministry of War itself.

Even Commander Shen had to show such men great respect.

There were four such envoys in total. All military officials below the third rank were subject to their summary judgment—a power known as “execute first, report later.”

“No need,” Commander Gongsun replied coolly. As he spoke, the blood inexplicably stopped flowing.

“Bad news—two pirates have jumped into the southern estuary!”

“The current there is swift—even ships of a thousand stones risk capsizing. The pirates are as good as dead.”

“Yes, those men are finished!”

As the soldiers began to relax, another calamity swept through the camp: Admiral Shen Bing, the “Fire General” among the four generals of Wind, Fire, Mountain, and Forest, had been struck by a poisoned arrow amid the chaos and lay unconscious.

It was, beyond doubt, the gravest news the soldiers could have heard that night.

……

“You actually defeated a Bronze Guard from the Ministry of War?” On the boat, Ghost Shadow looked at Kou Li in astonishment, as if seeing him for the first time.

“What’s a Bronze Guard?” Crocodile Boy asked excitedly, still riding the high of long-awaited vengeance.

Kou Li, too, looked questioningly, wondering about the origins of that strange officer.

With the frame-up accomplished, Ghost Shadow’s expression finally softened. He began, “That’s the most mysterious office of the court, subordinate to the Ministry of War but with a complicated makeup—comprised of palace masters, battlefield generals, and top fistfighters subdued by the court. Even the deadliest assassination fists originated there.”

“More importantly, my sources say they’re conducting bizarre experiments—turning ordinary people into martial monsters.”

“That’s impossible!” Chu San exclaimed.

“It’s true. And they succeeded. The Bronze and Silver Guards—the Bronze Guards counter all fistfighters who have mastered the four tips, while the Silver Guards are even more terrifying, reputedly able to rival the four great cultivation masters. I can’t believe you managed to kill a Bronze Guard. Your skills are formidable. Look at your own body—see if anything strange has happened.”

Kou Li did as instructed. Sure enough, every spot that had come into contact with the enemy was covered in a gray-black tinge—the very substance he’d felt infiltrate his body and threaten unconsciousness during the fight.

“That’s lead poison. Legend has it that Bronze Guards are forged by infusing their bodies with alchemical mercury, making them immune to pain, emotionless, and their muscles and bones coated in lead and mercury. They have no physical weaknesses. The mercury even replaces their blood circulation, and their strikes carry toxic force.”

“The higher your blood and energy surge during combat, the faster the poison spreads. By the time you realize it, it’s already too late. That’s what makes them so terrifying.” Ghost Shadow paused, then added, “Fortunately, you’re a master of internal martial arts. If you can seal your qi and blood even in the heat of battle, you can drive out the lead poison afterward by circulating your energy.”

Clearly, he had mistaken Kou Li’s mastery of the Child’s Stake for an internal martial arts achievement.

Kou Li did not explain. He had never expected that officer to be such a formidable figure. Had he not regained clarity amidst his murderous frenzy, fusing the will to live into his technique, he would already be dead.

Bronze Guards, Silver Guards, Killing Fists, the Ministry of War—so the imperial court, too, was finally making its move in the chaos of Yuezhou.