"That useless coward... he sure runs fast."
Xiao Lin was worried about Lu Xuan’s safety and wanted to pursue, but he was tightly entangled by the mountain bandits and couldn’t break free.
Nearby, Ye Qingyi brought her sword down, cutting through a mountain bandit’s defense before forcing him to stagger backward. Her gaze briefly followed the cart disappearing along the mountain road.
For a moment, her expression grew thoughtful... but only for a moment. She turned back to the fight.
The one-eyed bandit leader had noticed the cart as well. His remaining eye narrowed, and the scar running across his face twisted as he bared his teeth.
"Pursue! Don’t let him run off to report this!"
He had no intention of letting a witness escape.
Ten mountain bandits immediately broke away from the fighting, mounted their horses, and galloped after the cart.
The cart rattled wildly along the mountain road, its wheels crashing over stones and exposed roots. The wooden frame groaned with every jolt, and the horse snorted as it struggled to maintain its pace.
Lu Xuan sat at the front and looked back.
Four mountain bandits on horseback were the first to catch up, gaining ground fast, close enough now that he could hear the hooves pounding behind him.
"Stop!" one of the bandits shouted. "Keep running, and I’ll hack you to death!"
"Give it up, kid!" another called. "You can’t escape us!"
Lu Xuan didn’t listen. He didn’t even flinch.
Because he was never running.
His gaze toward the bandits behind him changed... and if any of them had been close enough to see his eyes, they would have turned their horses around.
It was not fear.
It was hunger.
He glanced at the dense woods lining the roadside, pulled the reins hard, and the cart lurched off the main road onto a narrow side path.
The path was tighter here, the canopy closing overhead, shadows swallowing the moonlight.
Lu Xuan jumped off the cart, slapped the horse’s flank, and let the cart keep rolling forward on its own.
Then he vanished into the bushes.
The first bandit rounded the bend at a gallop.
When he saw the empty cart rolling ahead, he frowned and immediately pulled on the reins. The horse slowed, its hooves scraping against the dirt.
"Where the hell is he?"
"Behind you."
The bandit’s eyes widened. He twisted around, but before he could bring his weapon to bear, Lu Xuan was already upon him.
Deer Form. Great Perfection.
Tiger Form: Heart Ripper.
Crack!
His fist smashed clean through the bandit’s chest. Ribs cracked inward, blood erupted from the man’s mouth, and his body flew off the horse like a ragdoll, crashing into the dirt with a wet thud.
Lu Xuan didn’t stop. Didn’t even look down.
The second bandit came around the bend, saw the crumpled body on the ground, and his pupils shrank.
"There’s an ambu—"
Before the word left his mouth, Lu Xuan was already in front of him.
Another punch. Clean through.
Tiger Form: Heart Ripper.
The third followed the second. The fourth followed the third.
Lu Xuan moved through the dark woods like a ghost, using the trees as cover, the shadows as his cloak. Every time a bandit rounded the bend and saw the body of the man before him... Lu Xuan was already behind the next one.
Fifth. Sixth. Seventh.
Corpses piled along the narrow path, one after another. Each one with a hole punched clean through their chest. Each one killed before they could scream.
He wasn’t fighting.
He was hunting.
A decade of being called trash. A decade of swallowing every insult, every beating, every drop of blood drawn from his body. All of it poured into his fists tonight, and it felt... good.
No... it felt right.
The dense forest had gone completely silent. Even the insects had stopped chirping. The only sound was the dripping of blood from the branches where it had splattered.
Eighth. Ninth. Tenth.
Lu Xuan slowly withdrew his hand. There were no more bandits left to kill.
He stood alone on the path, surrounded by corpses and silence, and exhaled.
Then he moved.
His body flowed forward like a cool breeze, ten paces in a single step, and within moments he had caught up to the still-rolling cart.
He flipped onto the front, grabbed the reins, and slowed the horse to a walk.
His breathing was steady. His heartbeat was calm.
As if nothing had happened.
Back at the ambush site, Ye Qingyi’s sword descended in a single devastating arc.
The one-eyed leader raised his broadsword to block it, but the force of the strike overwhelmed him. Metal rang out, and his weapon shattered beneath the blow. Before he could recover, her blade continued through his shoulder.
He staggered, his face twisted in disbelief, then collapsed to the ground.
The mountain bandits were instantly leaderless, and within moments they were scattering into the trees like rats.
"Pursue! Get the cart back!"
Old Guo shouted, limping from a wound on his thigh.
Ye Qingyi didn’t speak, she mounted her horse and rode hard down the mountain road.
Xiao Lin followed close behind.
They hadn’t ridden far when they found the first body.
A mountain bandit lay in the middle of the road, one arm twisted beneath him and his weapon lying several feet away. His horse was nowhere to be seen.
Xiao Lin pulled his reins sharply.
"What happened here?"
He dismounted and approached cautiously, his earlier worry giving way to disbelief.
The man’s chest had been struck with terrible force, leaving a gaping wound in the center of his torso. There was blood on the dirt around him and splashed across the nearby vegetation.
Xiao Lin swallowed hard and stepped back.
"This... who did this?"
Ye Qingyi dismounted without answering and crouched beside the body, studying the wound.
"Pierced with a single punch," she said quietly. "This technique... it’s brutal."
She stood up and kept walking, The second body. The third. The fourth.
One after another, all the way down the narrow path, a total of ten corpses laid out like milestones. Each one killed with a single blow. Each chest hollowed out the same way.
Xiao Lin looked like he might be sick.
"What... what kind of person could do this?"
Ye Qingyi didn’t answer.
She looked at the bodies, then at the bloodstains trailing off the road into the brush. The pattern was clear... someone had hidden in the woods and picked them off one by one as they passed.
A thought surfaced in her mind.
Impossible.
How could it be possible?
She shook it off, mounted her horse, and said only, "Keep moving."