"You... you really think you’re clever keeping all those hidden weapons tucked away in the secret lining of your clothes, don’t you?"
Chen Feng wheezed, his voice raspy. "You’re a master of concealment, hiding your kunai and daggers in those inner sleeve pockets."
The assassin paused mid-stride, slightly unnerved by the target’s eerie composure despite being on the verge of death.
Although an assassin should normally kill their target as quickly as possible, this assassin had no reason to hurry.
His three companions were already inside the inn, dealing with everyone else.
His only task was to kill target su yun friend Chen feng.
So, for the moment, he had plenty of time.
He wanted to see what a man standing on the edge of death could do.
Perhaps watching his target struggle and reveal his final tricks would give him some valuable experience.
After all, every battle could teach an assassin something new.
With a slow, deliberate motion, Chen Feng grabbed the front of his tattered inner tunic and ripped it wide open.
Stripped to his waist, his physique revealed the hard-earned changes brought by his initial martial training. His skin was firm, his body lean and athletic, with the faint outlines of well-developed muscles visible beneath it.
However, his condition was far from perfect.
A dark purple bruise spread across his ribs and a steady trail of crimson blood dripping down his thigh.
Despite the gruesome injuries, a strange, confident smile played across Chen Feng’s lips.
"Want to see a magic trick?"
With theatrical flair, Chen Feng flicked his right hand through empty air, making a sharp snapping motion as if plucking something invisible straight out of the atmosphere.
As he turned his palm upward, a heavy, pristine Silver Nugget materialized out of thin air, resting casually on his fingertips.
The assassin froze dead in his tracks, his eyes bulging behind his dark veil.
Chen Feng grinned, channeling every ounce of bravado he had left while his mind still echoed with butchery drills.
He coughed slightly, fighting back a wince of pain, and continued playing the role of an eccentric, unfazed master.
"If you promise to spare my life right now, I might consider teaching you the secret of this spatial storage technique. Imagine what the Red Serpent Assassin Guild could achieve if every single assassin could pull weapons straight out of thin air. You’d become the most feared guild in the entire empire."
"This is an ancient secret technique passed down through my lineage. We don’t need hidden pockets or clumsy pouches; we store our gear directly inside the spatial currents of the wind and void. It makes your little sleeve-hiding tricks look like child’s play."
The assassin’s steps halted completely. His mind raced in a chaotic loop.
How does he know the name of our guild? And... spatial storage?! Even grandmasters and my master doesn’t have spatial storage, yet this kid is pulling pure silver out of thin air without a single pouch, rune, or hidden trick?!
Taking advantage of the assassin’s stunned hesitation, Chen Feng casually tossed the silver nugget aside, letting it clatter noisily against the floorboards.
Then, with another wave of his hand, he pulled a handful of heavy copper coins from his inventory, letting them spill out with a jingle.
"Look," Chen Feng whispered, his voice dripping with mystical arrogance while his internal organs screamed in agony. "More items drawn right from the ether. You can’t even guess how I’m doing it, can you? Because to me... this realm of magic is effortless."
Looking at Chen Feng, one might have thought he was a dying man trying to reveal a secret in exchange for his life.
Or perhaps a magician who knew a few tricks, desperately performing them before his death just to buy himself a little more time.
And strangely enough...
Both assumptions were true.
Inside Chen Feng’s mind, the Heavenly Cleaver Knife Technique mastery reach 20% .
The technique was unlike an ordinary knife art.
Its movements resembled those of a master chef handling a blade—precise, controlled, and economical.
There was no wasted motion.
A slight turn of the wrist.
A subtle shift of the fingers.
A small adjustment of the elbow.
Every movement flowed naturally into the next, as if the blade were following an invisible line already drawn through the air.
Chen Feng could almost see those movements in the light of his enlightenment.
One moment, the blade would move in a seemingly ordinary arc.
The next, his wrist would change direction, turning that simple motion into a completely different strike.
The technique wasn’t about swinging the knife with brute force.
It was about precision.
Finding the smallest opening.
Following the correct angle.
And using the minimum movement necessary to produce the greatest effect.
As the countless movements flashed through Chen Feng’s mind, he finally understood why the technique was called the Heavenly Cleaver.
Although it was only a low-grade technique, Chan Feng had already reached 20% mastery of it by investing just 200 points.
Yet despite its low grade, the technique had taught him the fundamentals of knife fighting at a level that many more advanced techniques might never be able to convey.
Chan Feng calmly said,
"Interested in this?"
The assassin didn’t answer.
Chan Feng smiled faintly.
"Keep your technique to yourself. Once I knock you unconscious and drag you back, the guild will strip every secret straight from your corpse."
The assassin took a sharp stride forward, raising a hand to strike a pressure point and instantly render Chen Feng unconscious.
Chen Feng didn’t flinch. Instead, he reached into the void of his system inventory once more.
He pulled a single folded page from his inventory and held it up for the assassin to see.
"The technique I’m talking about is extremely valuable," Chen Feng said, holding the manual out with a steady, defiant gaze. "If your guild obtains it, your assassins’ strength will increase considerably."
In reality, Chan Feng had found this page back when he was still living as a beggar.
He had spotted it lying on the street. A map of the Azure Cloud Empire was drawn across the page.
Thinking that something containing a map of the entire empire might be valuable, he had picked it up and kept it with him.
The page had remained in his possession ever since.
Later, when he changed his clothes inside the system shop, Chan Feng had placed it into his inventory.
Now, he was taking it out once again.
The assassin’s gaze shifted toward the page.
For the first time, his attention drifted, his absolute killer focus breaking for a fraction of a second.
That was enough.
Chen Feng’s eyes became ice cold.
He had been waiting for this exact, calculated split-second.
The integration of the Heavenly Cleaver Knife Technique had already sharpened his instincts, teaching him how to mentally map the anatomy, posture, and reflex arcs of a lethal combatant.
But now, layered on top of that was the profound resonance of The Way of the Wind.
He could feel the air swirling around him.
Every subtle disturbance in the room’s atmosphere was clear as day.
The assassin’s shallow breathing.
The minute shift of muscle fibers. Even the tiny twitch of the assassin’s arm as his fingers greedily twitched toward the manual.
Chen Feng could feel all of it, down to the millisecond.
The assassin took another step forward, his weight shifting onto his front foot. His attention remained fixed on the manual.
Chen Feng’s foot fingers pressed hard against the splintered floorboards.
Eagle Step!
A compressed, violent burst of wind erupted beneath his heels. Despite his battered, bleeding body, he launched forward like a compressed spring released from a trap.
The assassin’s expression shifted instantly. Panic flashed behind his veil as his lethal instincts kicked in, and he jerked his hands away from the manual to reach for his weapon.
Too late.
Chen Feng had already anticipated the reaction.
The Heavenly Cleaver Knife Technique had allowed him to visualize the exact weak point in the assassin’s guard, and The Way of the Wind had given him the supernatural timing to exploit the moment before the muscle could even contract.
Mid-stride, Chen Feng twisted his torso in midair, altering his trajectory with ghostly fluidity.
Skyfall Strike!
His body suddenly descended from an unexpected, high-angle arc, transforming his fingertips into razor-sharp talons driven by wind and momentum.
The assassin threw up his arms to defend himself, but Chen Feng’s strike slipped effortlessly past the flawed guard.
SWISH!
Channeling the razor-sharp momentum of his training into his fingertips, Chen Feng transformed his hands into lethal talons. With a swift, vicious swipe, his hardened fingers slashed directly across the assassin’s exposed neck.
A sharp spray of warm blood painted the air.
The assassin’s eyes widened in horror as he dropped his weapons, both hands flying up to clutch his throat in a futile attempt to stop the devastating wound.
He gurgled, staggering backward a few steps before his legs finally gave out beneath him, collapsing heavily onto the wooden floorboards with a dull, final thud.
Silence rushed back into the room, broken only by the whistling wind outside the window.
Chen Feng landed unsteadily, his injured body trembling violently as the adrenaline began to fade.
He stared down at the fallen assassin, exhaling a long, ragged breath that came out hot and shaky.
He had never intended to overpower a First-Rate Martial Artist through sheer brute strength. Against opponents far above his current rank, force alone was a fool’s errand.
Just like a magician fooling his audience with carefully prepared tricks, Chan Feng did the same.
He played the part perfectly, using every trick at his disposal to deceive the assassin.
[Ding! Host has reached the First-Rate Martial Artist realm.]