Chapter 101: Chapter 101
“You…!”
Wang Jindao was livid.
He had never been a man of words. Tang Jin’s brazen sophistry had left him sputtering, face the color of iron, unable to string a coherent retort together.
At his side, the first to arrive — Squad D’s Patrol Envoy, Li Han — let out a cold snort. His voice cut like winter.
“If Chief Tang doesn’t intend to fight, then what exactly is the point of this army you’ve brought to our Yunyi Island? Surely… you didn’t come all this way just to admire the scenery.”
“The scenery? No, no, no…”
Tang Jin’s lips curled. A cruel smile surfaced.
“What I came for today is to invite the fine men of this island to trade a few blows with my Chenjian Wu brothers. The rules of the rivers and lakes — your people and ours, down in the ring for a ‘match of fists’!”
The moment the words left his mouth, Tang Jin threw his head back and laughed, as though relishing the prospect.
His laughter set off the pack of bandits behind him — a chorus of savage howling, thick with bloodlust.
A match of fists!
The instant they heard those words, Wang Jindao’s and Li Han’s faces turned ugly.
A so-called match of fists was a death ring.
No rules.
No restrictions on weapons.
No boundary lines.
It ended only when one side stopped breathing — or had their limbs broken beyond any hope of fighting back.
In plain language…
It was murder dressed up in the costume of a “sparring match.”
Now that Tang Jin had declared a match of fists… there would be no clean end to today’s business.
“Shameless!”
Wang Jindao ground his teeth.
“You talk about a match of fists, but with you standing right here, Tang Jin — what fairness is left?”
“Fairness?”
Tang Jin’s face went cold as a blade.
“In this world, the bigger fist is fairness! Enough talk. Today’s three bouts — don’t you dare try to duck them. Otherwise, my brothers here will stop being polite about it… So who’s first?”
As he spoke, the masked man at his side stepped forward and tore the black cloth from his face.
“That’s Tu Xiaotian?!”
The instant his features were revealed, gasps of horror erupted across the dock. Every face went white as paper.
This was none other than Chenjian Wu’s Ninth Chief!
Two and a half years ago, this man — alongside the now-dead Qu Bushi and Chenjian Wu’s Second Chief, the Blood Ascetic — had hunted down and killed Ji Guannan on this very island.
Back then, he had already broken through to Bone Tempering. By now, he could only be stronger.
If he was the one fighting the match…
Aside from Ji Ning, who on Yunyi Island could stand against him?
Despair spread through the patrol guards like a plague.
Cold sweat streamed down Li Han’s temples. He turned and hissed urgently to a subordinate.
“Did anyone go to wake the garrison commander? Why hasn’t he shown up?”
The guard’s face was ashen, his voice cracking with the edge of a sob.
“No one’s come… We fired three signal rockets, but the rear hill’s been dead silent. So I sent two men to knock on his door — they should have gotten there by now…”
Li Han felt a fraction of relief.
In a standoff like this, Ji Ning had to come out and hold the line. Only with him present would these bandits think twice before doing whatever they pleased.
What Li Han didn’t realize was that every word he’d spoken had landed squarely in Tang Jin’s ears.
Tang Jin had been in the Hidden Strength realm for four years and had opened three apertures.
The Taichong point!
The Guanyuan point!
The Tinggong point!
The Tinggong aperture — the “Palace of Hearing” — in particular had sharpened his senses far beyond the ordinary. Every rustle and whisper within several zhang fell on his ears as clearly as a murmur at his shoulder.
A mocking grin crept across Tang Jin’s face. His gaze drifted toward the distant bamboo grove.
Just then, a wave of panicked commotion erupted among the guards behind him.
Wang Jindao and Li Han whipped around instinctively — and in the next second, their eyes nearly burst from their skulls.
Behind them, on the boardwalk.
A man was approaching at an unhurried pace — rail-thin as a bamboo pole, yet with arms unnervingly long.
His face was covered in a great blotch of blue-green birthmark, giving him the look of a grotesque mantis.
“That’s — that’s Pang Yi!”
“Chenjian Wu’s Sixth Chief, Pang Yi!”
“It’s over… Tang Jin, Pang Yi, Tu Xiaotian — three chiefs at once. We’re finished!”
The guards drained of color. Some men’s legs gave out beneath them. Eyes darted left and right, already hunting for an escape route.
Pang Yi bared a mouthful of yellow teeth in a grin. In each hand he dragged a guard — legs broken, drenched in blood.
BANG!
BANG!
The two men hit the ground at Wang Jindao’s feet with agonized screams, tossed like dead dogs.
These were the very guards who had been sent to the rear hill to rouse Ji Ning.
“…”
Wang Jindao and Li Han locked eyes. Their hands and feet went ice-cold, and their hearts plummeted into the abyss.
They had even blocked the escape route to the rear — clearly, this had been planned from the start.
Today’s match of fists was happening whether they liked it or not.
Otherwise… never mind Tang Jin. Pang Yi and Tu Xiaotian alone were more than enough to butcher every last one of them.
At the very brink of despair — another twist.
A sudden, brash shout rang out from the rear.
“Who dares cause trouble on my Yunyi Island?!”
SWISH SWISH SWISH!
In the next instant, accompanied by the rapid rustle of wind-whipped robes, eight figures dropped one after another onto the blue-stone steps of the dock.
CLANG!
A single, piercing ring of steel echoed across the scene.
Ji Yuande stood at the very front, three feet of gleaming sword in hand, chin raised high — every inch the man in charge.
Shen Xiuhan, meanwhile, led the squads A and C guards in quietly, taking position at the rear.
The arrival of two full squads of reinforcements eased the near-collapse of morale, if only slightly.
Shen Xiuhan glanced left and right. Ji Ning was nowhere in the crowd, nor were Deng Shan and the others.
A thread of unease stirred.
‘The garrison commander is in seclusion, senses sealed off… Deng Shan and his men would have gone to alert him. But he still hasn’t appeared — could they have been intercepted too?’
‘Most likely. This island already had infiltrators. Killing off one Lu Ya didn’t necessarily clean house. The sentries, the layout — Chenjian Wu had long since riddled it all with holes. Having men in place to cut off the alert routes isn’t surprising…’
‘But…’
Shen Xiuhan’s gaze flickered.
Under cover of the crowd, he slipped a hand into his shirt.
His fingertips brushed something smooth and warm — the Four Seas Heart-Link Disc Xiao Wu had given him.
Without hesitation, Shen Xiuhan pressed his thumb to the disc’s center, channeled a thread of qi-blood into it, and placed his fingertip precisely on the nearest blue light-point.
One breath.
Two breaths.
On the third breath, the disc’s surface began to vibrate.
The tremor grew stronger, until his fingertip tingled.
‘That’s… a response?!’
Shen Xiuhan marveled inwardly.
A communication method that only required a wisp of qi-blood and could reach across any distance — truly extraordinary.
He lifted his head and glanced at the blood-red smoke still lingering in the sky. A measure of tension eased from his chest.
Once Ji Ning came out of seclusion to hold the line…
The other side would have to fear the iron pact laid down by the Transforming Strength masters. They would hold back for fear of consequences no one could contain.
‘Which means…’
‘The dead end just became a live game.’
But when Shen Xiuhan looked at Ji Yuande standing at the front, a flicker of exasperation crossed his eyes.
‘And by sheer dumb luck, I’ve just handed that fool a lifeline.’
Meanwhile.
Ji Yuande had already heard from Wang Jindao’s own mouth the full account of the standoff with Chenjian Wu.