The Wang Family compound was not difficult to locate. It was among the biggest mansions in the eastern side of Green Leaf Town, and it was encompassed by tall stone walls with guards patrolling around it. To a human, it was a fortress. To me, it was a paper cage.
The moon was throwing long shadows as I walked up. My new form was light, my footsteps entirely quiet. The two at the main gate were lounging on their spears, chatting idly. They were both Second Layer of Body Tempering cannon fodder, not even worth paying attention to.
I cared not for stealth. Stealth is for thieves and assassins. I am a god, and I had come to reclaim a debt. My actions would be a proclamation.
I strode straight for the gate, my black robes whipping in the night wind.
"Halt! Who goes there?" one of the guards bellowed, finally seeing me approaching. He stood tall, attempting to look stern.
"The one who has come to gather your lives," I said, my tone as icy as the grave.
The guards glanced at one another, then erupted into laughter. "Hahaha! What is this, some kid who has gone crazy? Do you know where you are? This is the Wang Family compound!"
"I do," I said, moving forward steadily. "That is why I am here."
"You're inviting death, boy!" The first guard bellowed. He lifted his spear and drove it towards my chest. It was a clumsy, pitiful motion, riddled with vulnerabilities.
I didn't even lose my stride. As soon as the tip of the spear was set to land on my robes, I lifted my hand. Not to deflect, but merely to catch. My index and middle fingers wrapped around the steel tip of the spear like it was a toy.
The guard's eyes widened in shock. He pushed as hard as he could. He strained every muscle in his body. The spear did not move. He attempted to pull it out. The spearhead seemed glued to my fingers.
CRACK!
With a careless swing of my wrist, I broke the spearhead off cleanly. I was holding the pointed piece of metal in my fingers. The guard took a step back, his face white with sheer horror.
Before he was even able to let out a scream, I snapped my wrist again.
SWISH!
The shattered spearhead whirled through the air like a chunk of black lightning. It was quicker than the eye could track. It sank deep into the throat of the second guard. He emitted a choking noise, his hands grasping at his neck as blood spouted from the wound. He fell to the floor, dead before he had any idea what was occurring.
The initial guard glared at his deceased comrade, then at me, his body shaking wildly. His face was a ghostly white. The arrogant bully of moments before was now a quivering rabbit trembling at the presence of a primordial beast.
"You. you." he stuttered, letting go of his now-benched spear shaft.
"Make your master know that Ling Chen has arrived to put out the fire of his clan line," I said, my voice carrying a maddening calm.
The guard screamed with fear, spun around, and fled into the compound like a mad dog with his tail afire. "Intruder! Intruder at the main gate!"
I didn't wait for them to regroup. I strode through the now-unattended gate, every step ringing out in the ensuing instant, panicked silence.
Lights started flaring up throughout the compound. Shouting and the beat of running feet filled the air. Within a few moments, I was encircled. More than thirty guards, each carrying sabers and spears, had closed in behind me in the main courtyard. Their faces were stern, but an undertone of fear existed. What had happened at the gate must have spread word quickly.
A huge, muscular figure with a raging face emerged from the main hall. He had a vicious face and a scar across his left eye. He was in the Seventh Layer of Body Tempering, a captain of the Wang Family guards.
He gazed at the dead guard being pulled away, and then at me. "Just a boy to cause trouble at my Wang Family. Who are you? Do you have a death wish?"
I just stared back at him, my face a mask of complete disregard. I raised a finger at him. "You will be the second to die."
The face of the captain purple with fury. He had never been disdained as much in his life, particularly by a punk who seemed to not have grown all of his hair yet. "Conceited child! All of you, attack! Cut him into meat paste!"
"KILL!" The thirty guards howled and charged together at once. The courtyard shone with the light of thirty swords all pointed towards me. It was a frightening prospect for any ordinary cultivator.
But I was not ordinary.
My body shifted. I didn't employ any deep movement principle. I merely stepped forward. Yet, that single step was a ghost's, an illusion. I disappeared from my initial position at once and reappeared in the middle of the guards.
My hands were my weapons.
A guard swooped his saber at my throat. I did not flinch. I merely lifted my hand and hacked down at his wrist. My hand, tempered by the Nine Orifice Tempering Liquid, was as hard as steel. With a disgusting crunch, his wrist bone broke and his saber fell from his hand. Before he could even scream, the point of my palm cut across his throat. Blood spattered. He dropped.
Another guard charged with his spear pressed against my heart. I dodged, and it went past my ear. I caught the end of the spear and used his own momentum to send him stumbling forward. When he passed by me, my other hand curled into a fist and hit his temple. CRACK! His head collapsed in upon itself. He died before his body even struck the floor.
My actions were a dance of death. They were direct, uncomplicated, and coldly effective. There were no wasted movements. A punch, a kick, a palm strike. Each movement claimed a life. My combat skills from my previous life, acquired over ten thousand years of fighting demons and gods, were an ingrained instinct burned into my soul. Even in this fragile vessel, that instinct made me a matchless killing machine.
The guards were a bunch of bumbling dogs attempting to bite an invisible. They flailed their weapons around, sometimes striking each other. They could not even graze the edge of my robes. All they saw was a black-robed apparition striding through their midst, a trail of death and destruction following behind him.
Cries of pain and fear replaced their previous cries of battle. "wuwuwu. he's a demon!" "He's a ghost!" "Run!"
The guard captain stood by, his first anger congealing into stark, cold fear. He couldn't believe what he was witnessing. Within a minute, over half of his men were dead or dying, and the boy didn't even have a scratch on him.
At last, his terror got the better of his responsibility. He wheeled around to flee.
"I said," my voice materialized suddenly behind him, "you would be the second to die."
Captain Thaymar stopped short, shivering as a chill colder than death climbed up his vertebrae. He spun around inch by slow inch. I was there, my face as serene, my black robes unspotted by even the trace of a drop of blood. My eyes, though, were wells of boundless, icy blackness.
"Die," I stated bluntly.
I shot out my hand. It wasn't a punch. My fingers were in a straight line and clenched together like a spear. This was a fundamental thrusting method, but with my undiluted, condensed Qi in it, it was more deadly than any sword.
The captain bellowed and tried to block with his arms crossed over his chest. He was a Seventh Layer Body Tempering master! His body was resilient!
Puchi!
My hand pushed through his arms like they were tofu. It kept going, deep into his chest, and stabbed through his heart directly.
The captain's eyes popped out. He stared down at the hand sticking out of his chest in horror. He opened his mouth, and a gush of blood spilled out. "Im. poss. ible."
I withdrew my hand. His body stiffened for a second before falling onto the flagstone courtyard with a loud thud, his eyes frozen in permanent shock.
The other guards, seeing their captain so quickly slain, lost all desire to fight. They shrieked, dropped their swords, and fled in all directions.
I did not chase after them. They were irrelevant.
I gazed down the central hall. "Wang Lie, Wang Hu. I know you're watching. Are you going to skulk in your hole like the rats you are, or come out and meet your death?"
My voice, with the power of my Qi, boomed across the entire compound.
A minute later, two people came from the central hall. The leader of them was a middle-aged man with a somber look on his face and a strong aura. He was Wang Lie, the head of Wang Family, a master of the Ninth Layer of the Qi Condensation Realm. Following him was his son, Wang Hu, his face as white as paper with fear and his injured arm still in a sling.
When Wang Hu caught sight of me, he screamed as if he had witnessed a ghost. "Father! It's him! It's Ling Chen! He's the one who broke my arm! He's a demon!"
Wang Lie narrowed his eyes, his look pinning me. His Qi Condensation aura overwhelmed me, attempting to smother me. "You are Ling Chen? The slum trash?" His killing intent was thick in his voice. "You dare to murder my men and trespass on my grounds?"
I sensed his aura. To me as I was now, it was indeed strong, like a tiny mountain bearing down on me. But my soul was divine. A dragon being threatened by an ant is a joke. I didn't move, didn't change my face.
"Trash?" I smiled a little. "Your son, a Fourth Layer Body Tempering cultivator, was disabled by me with one finger. Your captain, a Seventh Layer, could not even hold off one blow. And you, a Ninth Layer Qi Condensation cultivator, have the audacity to call me trash?"
Each sentence that I uttered was akin to slapping Wang Lie in the face. His face darkened.
"You've had a lucky meeting or something," Wang Lie's voice dropped to a menacing low. "But do not fool yourself for even an instant that a little strength makes you unstoppable. The difference between Body Tempering and Qi Condensation is a pit you can never leap. Today, I shall show you what real power is!"
He charged with a loud roar. He was quick, quicker than anyone I had encountered before. He materialized in front of me in a split second, his hand curled into a claw aimed at my throat. This was the Wang Family's "Tiger Claw Art" and, in his control, had a fearful power that could tear through steel.
His movements were full of flaws in my view.
I did not step back. I stepped forward. I circulated all of the Qi in my body and channeled it into my right fist. A soft, golden aura, nearly imperceptible, covered my hand. This was the first glimmer of my Primordial Chaos energy, a power greatly beyond the normal Qi of this world.
I punched.
It was a straight, uncomplicated punch. No complicated technique. Just raw, raw power.
My fist met his claw.
BOOM!
A muffled explosion of air erupted at the point of impact. The stone tiles beneath our feet cracked and spiderwebbed outwards.
Wang Lie's smug, enraged face stilled. It was replaced with an expression of complete shock and incredulity. An unimaginable power, a force so clean and so brutal that it defied understanding, burst from my fist into his arm. It did not merely conflict with his Qi; it destroyed it.
CRACK! CRACK! CRACK!
A succession of bone-crushing sounds in terror shook the night. Wang Lie's whole arm, from finger to shoulder, was broken into fragments. He was hurled backward like a damaged marionette, gliding a dozen meters before slamming into a stone pillar in the main hall.
CRUMBLE!
The heavy stone column snapped in two. Wang Lie collapsed to the ground, spitting out a great wad of blood. His face went white. He looked at his twisted, useless arm, then at me, his eyes full of nothing but raw, unalloyed fear.
"How. How is this possible?" he spat out, blood trickling from his mouth. "You are obviously only in the Body Tempering Realm! How can you possess such power?!"
I strode towards him, my footsteps like a death knell.
"I said it," I stated calmly, gazing down at the frail, shattered patriarch. "The distance between us is certainly a chasm. But you are on the bottom."
Wang Hu, who had been watching from the steps of the hall, was paralyzed with fear. His mind had gone completely blank. His father, the strongest person he knew, the master of the family, defeated in a single blow? This was impossible! This was a nightmare!
"wuwuwu. don't kill me. don't kill me, please!" He clapped his knees to the ground, kowtowing over and over, his forehead crashing against the stone stairs. Snot and tears streamed down his face. "It was all my mistake! I was blind! I shouldn't have provoked you! Please, have mercy! I'll be your dog!"
I looked at the groveling idiot, my disgust-filled eyes.
"When you murdered the last Ling Chen," I told him, my tone growing bone-freezing cold, "did he not plead with you to spare his life? Did you have any mercy on him at that time?"
Wang Hu's body became rigid. He gazed up, his countenance a tangled knot of despair.
I kicked up and stamped down on Wang Lie's chest. With one last, sloppy crunch, his heart was destroyed. The Wang Family Patriarch was no more.
Next, I looked at Wang Hu.
"Now," I said, a sadistic grin spreading across my lips. "It's your turn to scream."