"Intruders! We have thieves!"
The furious shouts of the pharmacy’s guards immediately followed, accompanied by the clang of drawing weapons and the patter of urgent footsteps. Clearly, the night watch had discovered something amiss.
"CLANG! CLANG CLANG!"
"PSHHHT—!"
"Argh!"
The brief, fierce clash of steel and agonized screams erupted almost instantly. At that very moment, the sound of hurried footsteps was already closing in on the small courtyard of his Alchemy Room.
"BANG!"
The less-than-sturdy wooden door to Chen Yue’s room was violently kicked open by a powerful force, splintering the bolt and sending wood chips flying.
Two figures dressed in black night-raiding clothes and brandishing short blades lunged inside. Their gazes instantly locked onto the human-shaped lump on the bed. Without a moment’s hesitation, two gleaming blades whistled through the air as they viciously hacked down at the bed from the left and right.
"SHRIIIP!"
The sound of cotton and fabric being easily torn apart filled the air.
The two men in black froze in unison. The feeling was wrong—it was too light! There was none of the resistance of striking flesh and bone!
"It’s a fake!" one of them exclaimed, his voice laced with shock and anger.
Both reacted with extreme speed, immediately trying to pull back their blades and turn. However, in the instant they spun around, a blurry shadow, moving with incredible speed and carrying a heavy, oppressive presence, closed in on the back of the man farther behind.
Chen Yue’s right arm was bent like iron, his elbow a hammer that he drove into the vital spot on the man’s back, right over his heart.
"THWUMP!"
The man in black convulsed violently as a hot mist of blood mixed with fragments of his internal organs sprayed from under his mask, splattering his companion in front.
He didn’t even have time to let out a full scream. As if struck by a battering ram, his whole body was lifted off the ground, smashing heavily against the earthen wall with a "THUD" and the sickening crunch of breaking bones.
Then, like a sack of mud, he slid slowly to the ground, twitched a couple of times, and fell silent.
"Seventh!"
The man in black at the front watched, his eyes nearly splitting with rage, as his companion was killed in a single blow. A frigid dread seized his heart.
’What the hell is this monster?’
’Didn’t the intel say that this newly promoted Alchemy Master, Chen Yue, was at most a Skin Refining Realm cultivator who had just recently broken through? How could someone in the Skin Refining Realm possess this kind of power? This speed? This ruthless, one-hit-kill lethality?’
Boundless terror gripped him in an instant, but his survival instinct forced him to react.
He let out a strange cry and, fueled by a mix of terror and rage, swung his blade in a backhanded slash at the approaching Chen Yue. The vicious arc of the blade aimed straight for Chen Yue’s neck.
Facing the incoming blade, Chen Yue took a seemingly casual sidestep, his body evading the edge by a hair’s breadth. Like a slippery fish, he instantly closed the distance and pressed into the man’s personal space.
The man’s pupils shrank as he saw nothing but a fist rapidly growing larger before his eyes, carrying with it a suffocating sense of power.
"CRACK!"
A crisp crack of bone echoed as Chen Yue’s fist landed squarely on his throat.
The man’s eyes bulged, instantly filling with bloodshot veins.
A gurgling, "Hkk... hkk..." sound escaped his throat as his neck twisted at an unnatural angle. The immense force sent him flying backward, knocking over the only wooden table and two chairs in the room. He landed in a tangled heap with a great CRASH, then went limp on the floor.
His body convulsed violently, and bloody foam bubbled from his mouth and nose. He was breathing out far more than he was breathing in.
Chen Yue slowly retracted his fist and stood up straight, looking at the two men on the floor.
The gap between the Refining Flesh Realm and the Skin Refining Realm, especially when combined with the Mountain Shattering Technique at Great Success, was just that vast.
In close-quarters combat, the outcome was never in doubt.
Chen Yue bent down and quickly patted down the two bodies. Aside from a few taels of Broken Silver and two ordinary-quality short blades, there was nothing else.
"Who are you people!"
Just then, Lin Quan’s aged voice, filled with shock and anger, rang out from a nearby courtyard. It was followed by the short-lived cries of other Alchemy Masters, which were snuffed out as quickly as candles in the wind, leaving only a few muffled thuds and the sound of heavy objects falling to the ground.
Chen Yue’s eyes narrowed. After a moment’s hesitation, he picked up one of the short blades from the floor, then grabbed the two dead assassins, one in each hand, and tossed them out of the room.
Then, his figure flashed as he dashed straight for the courtyard of Lin Quan’s Alchemy Room.
As he neared the courtyard gate, he saw a tall man in black walking out of the house, carrying the unconscious Lin Quan over his shoulder. Lin Quan seemed to have been knocked out, his body hanging limply.
"Get out of my way!"
The man in black’s pupils shrank when he saw Chen Yue rushing toward him, and he bellowed furiously.
Chen Yue acted as if he hadn’t heard. Pushing off with his feet, he increased his speed by another thirty percent. The short blade in his hand cut through the air, carrying a heavy, powerful force as it chopped down toward the man’s head.
"You’re courting death!" The man was both shocked and enraged, not expecting his opponent to be so decisive.
He threw the unconscious Lin Quan toward Chen Yue in an attempt to block him. At the same time, his other hand drew the longsword from his side with lightning speed, swinging it up in a counter-slash aimed at Chen Yue’s weapon hand.
Chen Yue’s eyes were like ice. His left hand shot out and precisely grabbed the back of Lin Quan’s collar, pulling him aside and placing him on the ground. Meanwhile, the downward trajectory of his short blade never wavered.
"CLANG!"
The two blades met, erupting in a shower of blinding sparks.
The man in black felt an overwhelming, terrifying force travel up the blade. The webbing between his thumb and forefinger split open instantly, dripping with blood. His longsword was torn from his grasp and went spinning through the air, embedding itself in the dirt several yards away.
The man was terrified out of his wits. ’I’m at the peak of the Skin Refining Realm! My strength isn’t weak, yet my weapon was sent flying after a single exchange?’
Before his horrified thought could even finish, Chen Yue, whose right hand had just sent the longsword flying, flipped his wrist and slapped the flat of the blade squarely against the man’s left temple.
Simultaneously, Chen Yue’s advancing left fist slammed viciously into his chest.
"BANG! THUMP!"
The man’s head snapped to the side as blood gushed from his ear. A dull crack of breaking bones echoed from his chest. The light in his eyes instantly faded. His tall frame swayed, as if his spine had been removed, and he collapsed limply to the ground, lifeless.
Without even a glance at the dead man, Chen Yue immediately knelt to check on Lin Quan.
He was only knocked unconscious, and his breathing was relatively stable.
Chen Yue carried Lin Quan back into the courtyard, took out the Blood Circulation and Blood Clotting Powder he carried with him, and waved it under Lin Quan’s nose a few times.
After doing this, he rose and looked inside the house.
There, he saw the Little Medicine Boy who usually took care of Lin Quan’s daily needs lying in a pool of blood. A gruesome gash marred his chest, still oozing blood. He was unconscious, his face as white as a sheet.
Chen Yue went over, tore off the hem of his own robe, and used the basic Medical Skill he had learned in the front hall to bandage the Little Medicine Boy and stop the bleeding. This was all he could do.
’Whether he lives or not will truly be up to the heavens and his own will to survive.’
Outside the courtyard, the chaotic sounds of fighting, shouting, and screaming continued to ring out sporadically. Suddenly, a shrill, piercing whistle echoed from an unknown direction.
As if receiving a signal, all the men in black still ransacking the pharmacy for valuables froze in unison. Then, without hesitation, they abandoned their targets and retreated swiftly in different directions like a receding tide.
In the blink of an eye, they disappeared among the cluster of buildings and into the darkness.
Almost simultaneously, the sound of urgent footsteps and shouts came from the direction of the pharmacy’s main gate, and the light of torches illuminated the front yard.