Chương 108: Death's Familiar Face, III

It turned out that Wei Mingku did have two knives that they weren't using. One was a knife used for cutting meat, the other a smaller knife used mainly for cutting cloth in the past, which had grown dull from repeated use. Wu Hao assessed them calmly, palming them to see if they fit his hands. Not perfectly, he decided, but well enough. He didn't really have the time to try and inspect them, and he definitely didn't have the time to engrave them into explosives.

So he'd simply taken them and headed for the hangout that Wei Mingku had mentioned. Wu Hao found no other debt collectors along the way, which was good because he'd have to waste valuable knives on killing them. It turned out to be a shabby building at the edges of the town, but the other edge of it. There was nothing that remarkable about the building except for the big demonic face painted across its side in an unsteady hand and the calligraphy that proclaimed this to be the Black Cleaver Gang's place.

Wu Hao ignored that and the warnings to stay out, instead walking up to the man standing outside. He sneered as Wu Hao came nearer, and he looked to have been made of the same mold as the debt collector from earlier: brawny, scarred, trying to look tough. He wore a cleaver on his hip, which he didn't try to draw as Wu Hao neared.

"Kid," he said.

"If you know what's good for you -" Without even listening, Wu Hao cut through his ankles and then, while the man was collapsing, tore his knife across the man's throat as well. He smacked into the ground, gasped, and began to die. Wu Hao moved on, heading through the door into a larger room. The inside of the building turned out to be a sort of camp. It might have been a restaurant once, judging from the surprisingly wide space that stretched across the floor.

It'd been divided into several sections haphazardly, using chairs and tables as impromptu fences. Curtains hung up around the large room, hiding the walll and making it feel even more cavernous. Things lay scattered across the place. Bottles across the floor, having rolled everywhere. Bits and pieces of random garbage lay where they'd been thrown down. Finally, there were also men, who were reclining in seats and talking to themselves in low voices.

Others weren't talking at all and were just staring up at the ceiling, their attention fully on their pipes. A sickly sweet smell hung in the air, so heavy that Wu Hao's nose crinkled in disgust, but the general odor was one of filth. They were all sitting near to a larger curtain that had been made of a patchwork of random cloth. Behind that curtain, a source of qi that'd been fouled up by some unidentifiable muck was lying down, and not stirring. He stepped closer, and the conversation broke off.

One of the men rose from his chair when he noticed Wu Hao.

"What the fuck?" he called to his comrades.

"What's with -" Wu Hao launched himself forward again, zipping over to the man's side, kicking his feet out from under him and then guiding his descent downwards by plunging the knife into his throat. He rose smoothly to his feet and ignored the sound of someone gagging on their own blood. The rest didn't fare much better. Of the two others who came at him, he dodged their first clumsy blows and then charged forward, bringing them down and then finishing them with a single stab or slash. It was grisly work.

Despite that, Wu Hao felt... very little. Even his own death meant almost nothing to him, so why should he feel anything for theirs? He felt empty, he told himself, even if there were instants between breaths where he felt almost cold despite the constant flashing. So emptiness was better, if not good. The last man let his cleaver clatter to the ground, his morale breaking as he turned to run, and Wu Hao sprinted forwards and cut him down. There was a moment of silence.

Even the men who'd sat in the chairs out of their minds had struggled their way out of their near-comatose state and tried to attack him, though never more than half-heartedly. Wu Hao didn't know what that was about but he didn't complain. Just as he'd thought that that was the last one, though, the qi that'd been in the background all the while finally shifted.

Wu Hao heard nothing in terms of movements, couldn't see through the curtain, but with his senses telling him that a loop was being closed he didn't need to.

"Black Axe Art," a voice whispered at the edge of his hearing. He flashed to the side just as a cleaver came ripping through the curtain, spinning wildly as it whistled through the air near to where he'd been. If he hadn't moved it might have missed him anyway, though. The curtain, ripped and slashed through in several places, fell into heaps of cloth across the floor. It revealed a man with thick arms, bloodshot eyes and a crazed look on his face. This was Yan Biao, then.

He'd laid in wait for Wu Hao, and he'd barely sat up in the makeshift bed he'd made for himself. The man's qi surged as he set himself upright, turning on itself as it began to twist and roil, until some of the thick black mucus that seemed to stick to it in Wu Hao's senses began to boil off. The rest of the qi had an odor of sweat and something Wu Hao couldn't quite identify. That was an interesting trick. A cure for a hangover or for drunkenness, maybe?

It didn't seem intricate or complicated enough to be a real technique, so maybe it wasn't more than just a small trick. Some color returned to Yan Biao's face, and his eyes seemed to get sharper. He reached behind him and took out another cleaver, his hands moving more steadily now. That said, with the muck gone, Wu Hao could read his qi more easily, and it spoke of terror and confusion.

"Who the fuck are you?" Yan Biao growled, brandishing his weapon like a lifeline. Wu Hao raised his knife and said nothing. Yan Biao barked a tired laugh.

"You kill my men and you don't even have the fucking grace to talk to me, huh?" Considering this carefully, Wu Hao nodded. His face growing red with anger, Yan Biao raised his cleaver. Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.

"You messed with the wrong man," Yan Biao sneered.

"Maybe you don't know who you're facing. Maybe you've got just a bit of martial arts training and now you're stupid enough to think that you can mess with a real martial artist." He swung his saber through the air, as if trying to further emphasize his skill.

"You're going to suffer," Yan Biao said slowly.

"I'll -" Wu Hao had tired of the man's boasting, though, and while it was doubtful that the man had a worthwhile technique, he didn't want to bother to let him gather the qi that he'd been trying to. Instead he pushed his own qi faster to his feet and moved, blurring across the distance between them with his knife in his hand. He scored a long, bloody line across the other man's belly, with him having moved just in time. A loud swear, a gasp of pain, and then Yan Biao was backpedalling even further.

"You're an assassin," he spat.

"Who sent you? Who the fuck sent you after me, huh? What did they pay you?" Wu Hao raised his knife again as Yan Biao's eyes flickered everywhere across the encampment. Was he looking for weapons, for friends, or for an escape?

"I'm under attack!" Yan Biao roared.

"Come out, all of you!" Only silence met his roar, though, and Yan Biao had to stagger back as another of Wu Hao's stabs tore a chunk of skin from his belly. Fighting all these tall people was annoying, Wu Hao decided, especially with a shorter knife like he'd been using. Turning, Wu Hao danced out of the reach of the cleaver again and stepped back. Yan Biao took a deep breath, and then his qi shifted again before he threw himself forward.

"Black Axe Art," Yan Biao proclaimed, his qi pouring into an ugly sort of line and then a clumsy loop. His cleaver flashed, quicker than mere muscle alone might have managed, and there was a gleeful grin on Yan Biao's face as it came cutting down into an arc that might have separated Wu Hao's head from his shoulders. If Wu Hao hadn't dodged, maybe. But he had, and Yan Biao had overbalanced himself in trying to strike at Wu Hao, so Wu Hao raised his knife, pushed some qi into it, and then charged forward.

A blast of phantom daggers smashed into Yan Biao's chest, crushing and slashing his chest, and then the dagger slammed home where Wu Hao'd meant for it to go. Yan Biao's fingers pawed at Wu Hao's hands, which were still on the knife that'd been driven deep into his chest, straight into his heart.

"What the fuck," he mumbled, face turning pallid. Blood dribbled from his lips.

"Just... why?" Wu Hao looked him in the eyes, shrugged off Yan Biao's desperate hands trying to claw away his grip on the knife, and twisted with a hard, qi-assisted jerk. Something in Yan Biao's sternum gave a loud crack, and the man's fingers stopped even their last movement. Then, like his brother earlier that day, he fell. Wu Hao stepped past and let the corpse thud to the ground. He left the knife there and drew the last one he had, just in case. Again he was left with a single knife.

Two steps forward, one step back, he thought to himself. He really was going to need to find better weapons soon, though. Or maybe to find someone with a Sky-tier Fist Art who'd be kind enough to kill him. Better yet, a Heaven-tier Fist Art. Wu Hao snorted, decided that that was a risky way to think, and hunched down, searching through the pockets of Yan Biao's clothing to see if the bandit was carrying anything interesting. He'd never before raided a corpse, but then he'd never really had the opportunity to.

A check of his outermost pockets revealed nothing except just a packet of that same white stuff that the others had carried. Wu Hao stripped the man's coat, wondering if maybe Wei Mingku would be interested in it, but then he considered the large gash in the middle and put that thought aside together with the coat itself. The only interesting thing was a thin, beaten-up booklet that had been reverently placed in Yan Biao's chest pocket. Wu Hao pulled it out, checked the title, and saw it didn't have one.

A quick read through the contents told him that this was the manual for a martial art meant to be practiced with an axe, though, the same one that Yan Biao had just tried to fight Wu Hao with. From what Wu Hao could see, it seemed to be an Earth-tier art. He almost threw it away, but then he shoved it into his own pockets instead. Just because he didn't see much use in it didn't mean it couldn't be useful for something down the line. Finally, there were a few bundles of money scattered throughout the place.

All in all, attacking this hideout had brought Wu Hao from barely being able to buy some bread to being able to buy a few good sacks of rice, if he decided to spend that money. He'd keep half, and the rest would be given to Wei Mingku. There were better ways of trying to hand it back to the people Yan Biao's gang had stolen it from, but Wu Hao didn't know what those ways might be and he didn't really care. The point had been that he'd decided to help Wei Mingku not become 729.

With this money, that wouldn't happen because there'd be no debt slavery since there'd be no debt and no slavers. Wu Hao nodded to himself. A job well done, he decided. Still there was a feeling of not quite being content with the entire situation, though he couldn't place his finger on why. He had a knife in his hands, he had new clothes that'd barely been stained with blood. He had money, for the first time ever.

Staring down at Yan Biao, Wu Hao couldn't help but wonder if maybe it was because this entire trip hadn't been challenging at all. He'd killed and killed and none of it had cost him particular effort. He hadn't used all that much qi, either. It hadn't been all that different from fighting Shan Kong or his two cronies, except there hadn't even been the initial thrill of dealing with that particular problem and taking revenge for himself.

But compared to facing a second-grade martial artist, there'd just been nothing too exciting. He'd never felt much of a threat at all from Yan Biao. He sighed. Another reason to head to Chongqing, then. There'd be challenges there.