"Forget it."
Jiang Dao's voice echoed in the empty air, but his body was already gone.
The next moment—BOOM!
The massive, tightly sealed gate behind him didn't just break; it disintegrated. A shockwave of searing heat blasted outwards, as if from an anti-aircraft cannon. The entire entrance—door, frame, and eaves—was pulverized into a cloud of splinters and dust. The ground buckled, spitting stone. In a single, terrifying instant, the gateway ceased to exist.
The two guards at the gate stared, their faces frozen in shock. Before a scream could even form in their throats, tendrils of pure force coiled around them. There was a sickening, wet crunch as the pressure squeezed them into a fine red mist that hung in the night air.
A low, chilling chuckle rumbled from Jiang Dao's chest as he walked into the Black Tiger Gang's headquarters. "Don't let me down," he murmured to himself. "Let's see if the famous eldest son of the Xie family is all he's cracked up to be."
The explosion sent shockwaves of panic through the compound.
Lights flickered on—masters and hardened fighters shot up from their beds, their faces masks of alarm. Instinct took over; they grabbed the nearest weapons and vaulted through windows, hitting the ground running. Someone frantically began hammering the alarm bell, its desperate clangor ripping through the courtyard.
The Black Tiger Gang hadn't become the city's fastest-rising power by being slow. With over a hundred thousand members and countless mercenaries—including rogue spirit exterminators—on its payroll, its response was brutally efficient.
Within seconds, figures were swarming from every direction.
"Oh? Look at all of you," Jiang Dao mused with a smirk. "A pity you're all just lambs for the slaughter."
"Who the hell are you?" a voice barked.
"You've got a death wish, barging in here and killing our men!" another shouted.
"Spit out your name, you bastard!"
A ring of steel closed in as the gang's elite surrounded him, weapons gleaming under the moonlight.
Jiang Dao slowly turned his head, his gaze sweeping over the crowd of angry faces. His voice was calm, almost bored. "Get Xie Xuan out here. I want to see him."
"Insolence!" a hall master roared, his face purple with rage. "Kill this arrogant fool!"
The dam broke. With a collective battle cry, a wave of bodies surged forward. They were a blur of motion, a storm of flashing steel aimed at Jiang Dao. From the back ranks, a hail of hidden darts and crossbow bolts filled the air, whistling towards him.
A flicker of irritation crossed Jiang Dao's face. Fucking gnats, he thought, a familiar, violent annoyance boiling up inside him. I didn't want to waste my time on you, but you just had to push it.
THUMP.
He stomped his foot, and the stone courtyard cratered beneath the force. He launched himself forward like a human cannonball, wreathed in a shimmering aura of toxic heat that warped the very air around him. He didn't even bother with his inner qi; raw, physical power was more than enough.
The result was a massacre.
The moment he hit their front line, screams and the wet sound of tearing flesh filled the air. Blood sprayed in thick arcs. Limbs were torn from sockets and sent spinning into the darkness. It was a hellscape of gore. Anyone caught in his path simply ceased to exist, their bodies bursting like overripe fruit.
One man, a master of the legendary Iron Shirt technique, bellowed and tried to stand his ground. Jiang Dao plowed through him without slowing, leaving behind nothing but a mangled ruin. Two more leaped from above, their hands glowing with power, but the sheer force of his aura shredded them in mid-air, turning them into a shower of blood and bone.
He smashed through a thick courtyard wall without breaking stride and emerged into another section of the compound. He paused, looking back over his shoulder. A wide, gruesome path of carnage stretched behind him, slick with blood and littered with unrecognizable pieces of what were once men. The raw brutality of it all stoked the fire in his soul, making it harder to rein in his murderous instincts.
He shook his head, clearing it, and continued deeper into the compound. His voice, now a low, hoarse growl, echoed through the courtyards. "Xie Xuan… Where are you, Xie Xuan? I'm here for you. You wanted to kill me, didn't you?"
The surviving gang members could only tremble, staring in abject horror at the trail of destruction. The sight was too much for many; they doubled over, vomiting. What kind of inhuman force could do this?
"Hall Master Wang… his Iron Shirt was perfect… he's gone…"
"Liu is dead, too!"
"They're all dead! Zhao, Hu, all of them!"
"It's a monster! It's a demon!"
"Get the Consecrated Experts! Now!" someone shrieked.
They didn't need to be told. In the deeper courtyards, the resident spirit exterminators had already been roused by the chaos. At first, they'd dismissed it as a common turf dispute, but then they heard Jiang Dao's unique, guttural voice drawing closer. Frowning, they moved as one, flowing from their rooms like shadows. With a series of silent leaps, they landed in the blood-soaked front yard.
"What's the situation?" one demanded.
"Where is he?"
A terrified hall master, his face ghostly pale, pointed a shaking finger. "A monster… It's a monster. He went deeper inside… looking for the Gang Leader!"
"A monster?" The lead exterminator's eyes narrowed, his expression hardening into a cold, murderous mask. "Let's move."
With a blur of motion, the seven rogue spirit exterminators vanished, streaking deeper into the compound.
In a secluded courtyard at the heart of the compound, Xie Xuan, the man with the chillingly mismatched yin-yang face, sat in meditation. His face was a placid, unreadable mask as he received the report. He opened his eyes—one a pool of black light, the other a searing white.
"So, he's here."
"Yes, Master," a woman in a red dress whispered from the shadows. "The Seven Consecrated are engaging him now. Shall I intervene?"
"Are you positive it's the leader of the Raging Flames Gang?" Xie Xuan's voice was as cold as a tomb.
"Positive."
"I underestimated him. I took him for a common brute." A terrifying light gleamed in Xie Xuan's eyes. "Go. Capture him. Do not allow him to disturb me."
"Yes, Master." A faint smile touched the woman's lips as her form shimmered and faded into nothing.
"Xie Xuan, my dear little Xie Xuan, where are you hiding?" Jiang Dao called out, a grin spreading across his face. "You wanted to kill me, and now I'm here! Come out, come out, wherever you are. I just want a little look…"
He punctuated his calls by punching his way through rooms. BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! Walls exploded into dust and splinters. He was a walking engine of destruction, and nothing in his path remained standing.
Suddenly, the air whistled. Jiang Dao's eyes flashed as he spun around.
Seven figures dropped from the rooftops, landing silently in a half-circle before him.
"Alright," Jiang Dao said, cracking his neck. "Which one of you is Xie Xuan?"
"You've come to the end of the line, you bastard," one of the men, a Consecrated Expert, snarled. "Take him."
They didn't hesitate. In perfect sync, all seven shot forward, moving so fast they seemed to teleport, leaving ghostly afterimages in their wake. They unleashed their strongest techniques at once.
Beams of debilitating light slammed into Jiang Dao. Ethereal chains erupted from the ground to bind his limbs. Waves of soul-crushing force washed over him, followed by phantom blades and invisible claws. Four shimmering, magical halos—Weakness, Paralysis, Entanglement, and Petrification—locked onto his body as the other three experts hammered him with a relentless barrage of physical strikes. A thick, enchanted chain was even looped around his waist, its wielder straining to drag him down.
Through it all, Jiang Dao didn't move a muscle. He just stood there and let them hit him.
Finally, a deep sigh of boredom escaped his lips. "Are you done?" his voice rumbled, dangerously calm. "Because now… It's my turn."
With a sound like tearing leather, his body began to swell. His clothes ripped apart as his muscles expanded at an impossible rate, thick veins bulging across his skin like knotted ropes. A terrifying, oppressive wave of pure, toxic heat erupted from him in a silent explosion.
In the span of a single breath, he transformed into a hulking, monstrous giant. The four magical halos encircling him shattered like glass. The three men battering his body froze, their faces paling with dawning horror.
It was too late.
BOOM!
Jiang Dao clapped his hands together as if swatting a fly. One of the Consecrated Experts was caught between them. His head simply ceased to exist.
The other two scrambled back, their eyes wide with terror. But Jiang Dao was faster. He snatched one by the leg, swung him like a club, and smashed him into his comrade.
SPLAT.
There was a final, choked scream as both men exploded in a shower of gore.
"What is that thing?"
"It's impossible!"
"Retreat!"
The four remaining Consecrated Experts stared in utter disbelief, their professional calm shattered. They turned to flee, but a savage grin split Jiang Dao's monstrous face. He charged, his feet carving deep furrows in the stone ground, his sheer mass distorting the air around him. An invisible field of pressure slammed down, freezing the four men in place and yanking them back toward him.
He grabbed one, lifting him effortlessly. His enormous eyes bored into the man's terrified face. "Alright, little mouse," he growled. "Which one of you is Xie Xuan?"
"Not me!" the man babbled, trembling uncontrollably. "I swear! He just hired me! Don't kill me!"
SPLAT.
Jiang Dao closed his fist. The man exploded into a mist of blood, which was instantly incinerated into ash by the toxic heat rolling off Jiang Dao's body. He casually grabbed another.
"How about you?" he asked with a smile. "Are you the one I'm looking for?"
The man, having just watched his companion die, was paralyzed with fear. "I know where he is!" he shrieked. "I'll take you to him!"
"See? You're the smart one." Jiang Dao's smile widened as he glanced at the last two. "Which means I don't need you."
"No, wait—"
A wave of fiery energy washed over them, and they were simply gone—annihilated.
Jiang Dao held up his terrified guide. "Lead the way."
"Yes, yes!" the man stammered. "Straight ahead… the deepest courtyard… he's in a secret room! You'll never find it without me!" In the face of such overwhelming power, his pride and dignity had evaporated.
Jiang Dao strode forward, his massive steps shaking the ground. As he entered the next courtyard, the world twisted.
A flicker of crimson light, accompanied by the sound of faint, girlish giggling, darted past him. Suddenly, his vision swam. He was surrounded by seven or eight spectral women in red, their hair flowing wildly, their faces contorted in rage. They lunged, their forms growing monstrous as they neared, their mouths opening impossibly wide to reveal rows of needle-like fangs.
Jiang Dao barely glanced at them. With an annoyed grunt, he backhanded the air. His toxic aura flared, and the phantoms burst like soap bubbles.
But the courtyard was gone.
He stood in a vast, dark field under a sky of cold, distant stars. All around him stretched an endless sea of wheat. Dotted throughout the field were scarecrows—dozens of them, all dressed in tattered red cloth, with black blood streaming from the carved eye and mouth holes in their sackcloth heads. The air was thick with the sweet smell of wheat and the coppery tang of old blood.
"An illusion?" Jiang Dao looked down at the whimpering man still clutched in his hand. "Interesting. Looks like I get a bonus prize. This must be the work of an evil spirit."
Heeheehee…
The chilling laughter returned, seeming to come from all around him. Jiang Dao turned. The bleeding scarecrows were grinning, their stitched mouths pulling wide as their bodies began to sway. They pulled themselves from their posts and started stumbling out of the wheat field, their movements jerky and unnatural.
"Are you here to play with us?" their voices whispered on the wind, a chorus of childlike innocence and ancient malice.
"We've been so, so lonely…"
"Come play with us… forever…"
Dragging trails of bloody light, they swarmed him. Jiang Dao swiped at one, but his hand passed right through it. They were phantoms, circling him faster and faster, their trails of light weaving a net around him. Their forms flickered between solid and ethereal as they clawed at him, their fingers scraping against his hardened skin with a sound like metal on stone.
"Is that all you've got?" he muttered, unimpressed. He reached out, his hand glowing with energy, and snatched one of the scarecrows from the air. A pulse of power, and the phantom disintegrated. He checked his internal panel. Not an evil spirit? Some kind of puppet, then?
"Alright, I'm bored now," he said to the empty air. "Time to end this."
"I couldn't agree more," a sweet, feminine voice whispered directly behind him.
Jiang Dao ignored the circling scarecrows and turned.
Standing there was a woman in a long red dress. Her face was pale but exquisitely beautiful, and she was watching him with a playful, knowing smile. In her delicate hand, she held a single, thin red thread that pulsed with dark energy. It stretched from her fingers through the illusion, connecting directly to the center of Jiang Dao's chest.
"Surprise," she purred. "Welcome to my little playground. No matter how strong you are, everyone dies in the end. I wonder…" She held up the thread between her thumb and forefinger. "What happens if I just… tug?"
"Oh?" Jiang Dao said, his expression unchanged. "You're a lot like another ghost I killed. She liked to giggle, too."
"Is that so?" the woman laughed. "Well then, let's see what your heart tastes like."
She flicked her fingers.
The red thread went taut, and a bolt of sinister energy shot down its length, aimed at ripping Jiang Dao's heart straight from his body.
The energy hit him… and did nothing. He didn't even flinch.
The woman's smile faltered, her brow furrowing in confusion. How?
"Playtime's over," Jiang Dao said, his voice flat and final.
WHOOM!
A supernova of pure, toxic heat erupted from his body, a wave of incandescent destruction that vaporized everything in a fifty-foot radius. The circling scarecrows shrieked as they were instantly erased from existence. The entire illusory wheat field buckled and dissolved under the sheer force of the blast. The red thread connected to his chest sizzled and burned away in a split second.
The woman's eyes went wide with terror. She dropped the thread and tried to backpedal. "You—!"
She never finished the thought.
An afterimage was all she saw. The ground beneath her exploded as Jiang Dao crossed the distance in a heartbeat. He slammed his open palm onto her face, driving her head straight down into the stone courtyard with a sickening crunch that collapsed the entire structure around them.
He kept the pressure on, his voice a low, contemptuous growl. "I was hoping you'd be a challenge. But you're just another insect."
He closed his hand.
CRUNCH.
Her head exploded. The toxic fire that wreathed his body engulfed her, and in a final, silent scream of agony, she was reduced to a pile of smoldering ash.