“Lin Zongwu! I’ll f— your mother—”

The tremendous crash of the wooden building collapsing, paired with that furious roar, marked the arrival of the man known as the world’s foremost fighter. And with that commotion, the many masters under the Yama King’s banner surged with excitement, pressing forward.

More masters belonging to the Great Brightness Sect, led by Wang Nantuo, were also surging toward this area, already thick with the chaos and smoke of shellfire.

On the Huaxia Army’s side, almost the very instant Lin Zongwu appeared, a flare went screaming into the sky. Several figures also shot forward at full speed, converging on the direction Lin Zongwu had come from.

Ever since Ning Yi’s regicide and rebellion had turned the Huaxia Army into an organization, its internal messaging no longer glorified lone-wolf heroics. But after years of fighting across the realm, there was certainly no shortage of astonishingly skilled masters among those assigned to this mission today. Battlefield advances usually proceeded in orderly fashion, but the appearance of certain specific targets triggered special contingency plans agreed upon in advance. Centered on the street Xue Jin had walked into, the most formidable and lethal members of the four nearby special-operations squads mobilized at once, converging on the rampaging Lin Zongwu.

The Huaxia Army had fought across the realm for over a decade, with countless figures coming and going. Masters like “Feather Blade,” who had already made a great name for himself in the jianghu, or those with famous lineages like Yuwen Feidu and Xiao Hei, were actually the minority. Over the years, figures like the underhanded Chen the Hunchback, or upright ones like “Five Phoenix Blade” Lin Nian and Hou Lietang, had, for the most part, already faded into the smoke of the killing along the way.

But amid all this shifting fortune, those who had joined the Huaxia Army over the years included not only people who’d already had reputations, but also a great many third-rate masters from the old jianghu world — some who could hardly even be called third-rate. Having fought their way through the Xiaocang River campaign, through the southwestern war, and all the way to now, these men, though they had never made a name for themselves in the jianghu, had honed killing skills — even in one-on-one combat — that were more than enough to look down upon a great many so-called green-forest grandmasters.

These men had seen combat against seas of enemies, had frontally crushed Jurchen forces capable of toppling an entire dynasty. They regarded the jianghu as a joke. Even so, the prospect of personally hunting down this so-called “world’s foremost martial artist” was enough to set the blood of these Huaxia Army elites boiling.

And so, as the enemy came surging forward with morale soaring, the four Huaxia Army squads contracted rapidly — few among them realizing that, in this very instant, the Huaxia Army’s own morale had also surged.

Yuwen Feidu and the two other snipers sprinted across the rooftops, trying to reposition into the most ideal crossfire angles.

The core fighters of the special-operations squads, having quickly gathered, fell back a short distance and then hurled grenades at the surging enemy — meant to serve as anchor points, splitting the wave apart on impact.

Several figures streaked through courtyard after courtyard, charging straight at Lin Zongwu — like ancient humans setting out to hunt down some colossal beast.

Ahead of them, figure after figure also raced across the front line at breakneck speed, their trajectories far exceeding what any ordinary person could manage — these were the great masters who had come here following Lin Zongwu.

“Feather Blade” Qian Luoning shot along the front line at that moment, and directly ahead of him, “Five-Blossom Slash” Tang Qinghua, along with several other masters, charged in to block his path. In the next instant, a fierce sweep of blade-light cut across a distance of over ten zhang, and the masters caught in its path seemed struck by a hurricane — some had blood burst from their bodies, some were flung to the side, and some rolled across the rubble like balls, kicking up clouds of dust as they went.

Tang Qinghua, a long-famous guest master of the Great Brightness Sect, was for a moment carried along as if by a runaway horse, his footing suddenly slipping in the midst of the frantic blade-clash, sending him tumbling and colliding across the ground, the world spinning around him.

Masters swept past each other across the front line, weaving together — behind them, grenades detonated within the surging tide, throwing up sheets of smoke. In that instant, the enormous figure of Lin Zongwu became the focal point of every gaze on the whole stage, and a stinging sensation, as if thousands of silver needles were piercing his skin, welled up in his mind—

Wang Nantuo’s voice cut across the battlefield as he ran.

“Kill the riflemen first—”

Figure after figure had already shot toward the various rooftops.

The most intense fighting exploded in every direction at once—

…

Ning Ji ran through the blood-soaked chaos.

Through courtyards, through buildings, through alleyways, and finally, back to the long street where it had all begun.

He searched for a moment before finding Xue Jin lying in a pool of blood behind a shattered shield-cart.

The bones in his chest had been crushed, but even in the throes of death, he had still dragged himself several steps forward — the trail of blood spreading beneath his body was proof of it.

Turning the body over, Ning Ji saw that Xue Jin’s still-open eyes held no grief or hatred. His eyes had not closed, but in that gaze there was something more like anticipation and yearning.

Ning Ji crouched there for a moment, then stood up.

What was in that gaze?

Ning Ji did not know.

Ever since Yueniang’s death, Ning Ji had always known Xue Jin’s death was inevitable. He had lost an arm and a leg, dragging his sickly body along for this long — even given more time, he would only have died in agony eventually. Facing the Fair Party was, in a way, a decent death, and Ning Ji understood this well; that was part of why, when he’d charged forward earlier, he hadn’t given it much more thought.

There was no need to worry too much about Xue Jin anymore.

But learning that Li Yanfeng had killed him partway through with a thrown rock stirred up something complicated and unmoored in Ning Ji’s heart.

The roar of battle pressed in around him.

He stood there, turned his head, and looked ahead down the street — the enemy was surging forward in overwhelming numbers, seeming, for some reason, to have grown excited once more.

Figures collided and tangled together, flares rose into the sky, grenades burst into clouds of smoke. Ning Ji felt an inexplicable heaviness in his chest — it wasn’t the first time he’d seen a dead man, but for some reason, this one hurt more than usual.

Some things in this world are painful when they can’t end. But even when they end suddenly, that too is painful, all the same.

He hefted the blade in his hand and started walking forward.

“Need to get a gun…”

He muttered this to himself, his steps quickening, quickening, until he broke into a sprint toward a rooftop at the side of the street. He surged up to the high ground, and before him lay a scene of dragons and tigers locked in battle.

Lin Zongwu was rampaging madly through the battlefield.

“Need to get a gun…”

Ning Ji murmured this again, weaving and leaping above the chaotic field.

…

Flying stones streaked across the sky like cannon shells, smashing through beams and tiles on the gray-blue rooftops. As debris exploded outward, blood-soaked figures tumbled clumsily out from the wreckage.

Lin Zongwu’s form flickered in and out of view among the courtyards and groves, his strides so fast that in the blink of an eye he could cross a distance of several zhang, like some enormous phantom carving an unpredictable path through the world.

At times he smashed through rock, at times he vanished into a sprawl of buildings; now and then he hurled a whistling brick, now and then he leapt onto a rooftop where Huaxia Army soldiers were advancing like some towering deity from the heavens — and when he came upon a crumbling wooden building, he would nearly tear half of it apart with overwhelming force.

Some skilled Huaxia Army soldiers managed to corner him in the rooms of certain courtyards, both sides charging into a room in a chaotic, thunderous clash — but before a second Huaxia Army soldier could arrive, he would usually smash through a door or window and stride away unhindered. In just a short span of time, several Huaxia Army soldiers were left lightly or severely wounded in succession.

Meanwhile, the masters of the Great Brightness Sect had already charged in, cutting off Huaxia Army soldiers who tried to pursue and encircle Lin Zongwu in courtyard after courtyard, on rooftop after rooftop; some also began trying to hunt down the riflemen and snipers positioned above.

The entire scene turned white-hot in an instant. Some soldiers settled matters with their opponents within seconds of engaging; others, their arms broken in exchanges with Lin Zongwu, turned and dragged two Great Brightness Sect fighters into a nearby house before it exploded in a shower of earth and stone — after which, amid the smoke and rubble, only the wounded could be seen clumsily crawling about, with no telling which side had survived.

Xiao Hei, charging at full speed, slammed into and sent flying a strangely-shaped master coming at him from the other side. Off to one side of his vision, he saw an equally fast, massive figure weaving through the half-visible trees and courtyard walls, suddenly filling his sight. He let out a furious roar and swung his fist to meet it head-on.

Lin Zongwu’s fist came whistling in, heavy and swift; Xiao Hei’s footwork was lightning-fast, matching the man stride for stride, his own arm meeting the blow like a bar of steel. In an exchange of three near-misses and two solid hits, an overwhelming force surged through Xiao Hei’s body. Gritting his teeth, he swung his arm and wrapped it around the man’s elbow and the sleeve of his cassock.

Their arms tore and wrenched at each other, their footwork so heavy it seemed to bloom lotus flowers of dirt with every step, and then a nearby carriage that hadn’t managed to get out of the way was smashed into a whirlwind of splintered wood. Xiao Hei’s body crashed to the ground, tumbling in a clumsy roll, while Lin Zongwu had already surged forward.

On a rooftop off to the side, Yuwen Feidu, who had already heard Xiao Hei’s furious roar, was rolling as he ran, and in a half-kneeling stance suddenly raised his rifle. In his line of sight, an object thrown by Lin Zongwu’s hand came hurtling straight toward him mid-charge — a great circular shape growing larger before his eyes, the wheel from the carriage he and Xiao Hei had just smashed apart, now whistling straight for his position on the roof.

Gritting his teeth, Yuwen Feidu squeezed the trigger mid-leap; the crack of the shot was swallowed by the far greater commotion around it, and the flying wheel tore away nearly half the roof, sending tiles and timber scattering like a crashing wave.

Yuwen Feidu tumbled across the rooftop and fell off the edge, down to the floor below.

Lin Zongwu, roaring, had already charged off toward another part of the battlefield, tearing the entire field of combat apart with the strength of one man alone.

Both sides fought at the peak of their morale, but what caught the Huaxia Army soldiers off guard was that, though the two forces had had no direct engagement over the past decade, Lin Zongwu had chosen, from the very first moment of battle, a fighting style utterly unlike his usual approach.

He hadn’t relied on brute strength to smash through his enemies one by one, as all the collected combat data on him would have predicted. Instead, the moment the Huaxia Army’s masters were dispatched, he began a high-speed offensive utterly mismatched with his massive frame — even the Great Brightness Sect’s own masters had never imagined that a man of his status and standing could push a “strike-and-flee-at-high-speed” tactic to such an extreme degree.

His figure moved like a howling gale, and yet also like some colossal, unstoppable rhinoceros of a beast — and the sheer force and results of every blow he landed were so plain to see on the battlefield that, in a matter of moments, the morale of the many fighters belonging to the Yama King and the Great Brightness Sect climbed to ever more fanatical heights.

A battlefield holding only a few dozen Huaxia Army soldiers was, in the blink of an eye, overrun by hundreds upon hundreds of the enemy.

Lu Xian, commanding the men of the Li family village, had also thrown himself into this frenzied vengeance, his eyes bloodshot, wanting only to seize this opportunity to avenge Li Duanwu — who had been both mentor and father to him.

And more and more people were, at this point, beginning to see the very real possibility of crushing the Huaxia Army on this very day.

What a magnificent feat that would be!

In their eyes, the several clusters of core Huaxia Army members serving as anchor points had begun to withdraw toward the rear. Though the occasional fire-thunderbomb they threw, and the sudden bursts of short-barreled rifle fire, could soak the men charging at the front in blood, far more men were already swarming through like ants — some even having circled around from the rooftops to reach the rear of these Huaxia Army positions. They hadn’t yet found their chance to strike, but how much longer could these surrounded enemies really hold out?

At this moment, no single man could stop Lin Zongwu’s mad rampage; and on the other side of the battlefield, “Feather Blade’s” path had likewise churned up a towering wave of blood, master after master cut down or wounded by Qian Luoning in the encirclement, his figure appearing ghost-like in one place after another as he tried to catch up with Lin Zongwu. But at this moment, Lin Zongwu had chosen to head in the opposite direction from him, clearly in no hurry to let himself be caught.

The tide of the front line surged forward like an overwhelming shadow.

Yuwen Feidu tumbled clumsily off the rooftop; midway down, his hands managed several attempts to slow his fall, and after one roll in the courtyard he scrambled back to his feet. Ahead, in a room, a figure suddenly burst through a window, swooping out like a hawk. Yuwen Feidu stepped back, about to draw his blade and stab the man dead, when a figure beside him rushed forward with a shout — the eagle-claw master hadn’t even landed yet before being slammed back into the room by this newcomer, who, at a glance, turned out to be Ning Ji.

Using the momentum of the collision, Ning Ji twisted his steel blade out of the eagle-claw master’s stomach; his rolling momentum didn’t stop there — he surged straight forward, kicking a martial artist who was about to rush into the room clean off his feet and sending him flying, then whipped around and slammed the door shut with a kick. This whole sequence of moves flowed like water; Yuwen Feidu gave him a thumbs-up. “Nice work!”

Ning Ji turned around. “Give me a gu— damn it—”

Yuwen Feidu had already vanished from sight, springing off something and shooting back up toward the rooftops.

Lin Zongwu was rampaging through a two-story shop that lined the street; when he hit a partition wall, he smashed straight through it like a battering ram, driving forward as though trying to bore a hole clean through the entire battlefield.

On a rooftop across the street, another sniper kept dashing back and forth. From a second-floor window, one stone after another shot up at a steep angle like cannon shells — with Lin Zongwu’s raw power, no ordinary man could have caught such “hidden weapons”; the sniper had to crouch low, dodge, and roll to survive.

But human strength has its limits. However unmatched Lin Zongwu’s inner power might be in the whole world, and though he could down an ordinary master in a single strike, all it took was finding the one moment his strength faltered — and a single shot could end his life. This was the shared conviction of every Huaxia Army sniper.

The sniper sprinted forward, and suddenly, ahead in his line of sight, a figure shot up into the sky, broadsword already slashing down. The sniper rolled out of the way, and as he rose, the broadsword swept back at him — blood sprayed into the air. He fired one shot, and was then struck down hard from the rooftop, falling into the courtyard behind the shop.

Blood poured across the ground.

The man who had suddenly charged out wielding the broadsword was none other than “Mad Tiger” Wang Nantuo. Ever since falling out with Ning Yi — especially after Qin Siyuan’s death at Zhuxian Town — Lin Zongwu and the others had always regarded the Huaxia Army as their most terrifying and unspeakable enemy. In the years since, though there had been no direct confrontation, even as Ning Yi gathered combat data on Lin Zongwu and his men, had not Lin Zongwu and Wang Nantuo, in turn, been quietly probing the situation in the southwest?

This was precisely why, the moment combat began, Wang Nantuo had issued the order to “kill the riflemen first.”

At this moment, countless masters had already overwhelmed the entire Huaxia Army position. Wang Nantuo cut this man down off the rooftop, raised his long blade, and bellowed, “Kill them all—”

Not far off in his line of sight, a Huaxia Army sniper suddenly stopped, raising his rifle toward him. Just then, from within a room, came a shout from the charging Lin Zongwu — “Hah—!” — as he hurled a brick with a thunderous crash!

With a boom, the brick struck the corner of the roof above; tiles exploded outward in every direction, and the sniper, caught in the blast, gritted his teeth and pulled the trigger — and then his face was covered in blood.

That “Hah” from Lin Zongwu was followed almost instantly by a second “Hah,” and by then he had already closed the distance in a flash. Above the battlefield, the great Buddha’s laughter rolled out like a stormy tide: “Hahahahahaha—”

After that burst of laughter, his figure crashed through the entire section of rooftop, bearing down on the wounded rifleman rolling on the ground. Two Huaxia Army masters, Xiao Hei among them, charged in one after the other, dragging the rifleman off the roof together as they fell.

At the front line, Peng Tiangang, waving his broadsword forward, roared: “Ten thousand victories to Master Lin—”

The others rallied their spirits along with him: “Ten thousand victories to Master Lin—!”

Lin Zongwu sank down into the buildings below, still charging madly amid a great commotion, unstoppable by anyone.

This was the majesty of the world’s foremost fighter, unleashed at full strength!

Had the green-forest folk who’d only ever heard such feats told in storytelling houses ever witnessed anything like this?

Blood on their lips, people screamed themselves hoarse.

On Wang Nantuo’s side, he saw masters charging through the courtyard behind the shop, trying to finish off the sniper who had fallen to the ground; and off to the side, a young man had also charged out, his long blade locked in combat with two vicious martial artists — even amid this fighting, he was still trying to protect the fallen rifleman and pull him away. Wang Nantuo let out a roar and swung his blade down!

Not long after, the gravely wounded rifleman pulled the pin from a grenade strapped to his body…

A thunderous explosion.

Rolling smoke and dust engulfed the area.

…

For a moment, the wildly surging enemy had overwhelmed the entire position.

But for a Huaxia Army that had endured three years of grueling war at the Xiaocang River, so long as a group of men managed to stay together, holding formation and mounting a counterattack through complex terrain was not too great a challenge. In fact, as the enemy pressed ever more densely into the surrounding courtyards, weapons like grenades were only becoming more devastatingly effective.

Blood spread everywhere, smoke rolled on, and the Huaxia Army’s ranks pushed forward through the carnage.

Off to the side and rear of the battlefield, Lin Zongwu changed direction, charging toward an eight-man squad serving as an anchor point here. His assault kicked up an enormous commotion; several nearby Huaxia Army masters were still trying to surround and cut him off, but his charge was so ferocious that, in the blink of an eye, another Huaxia Army master blocking his path was smashed aside. Witnessing this display of power, Peng Tiangang and the others felt their spirits soar, shouting at the top of their lungs: “Take this position—!”

The distance to the fighting here was now only a dozen or so zhang; the crowd surged forward, and the commotion from Lin Zongwu’s charge grew ever closer at high speed. Just then, amid the air, a voice that sounded utterly calm suddenly cracked through everything.

“Hey.”

Across the way, Lin Zongwu was in the middle of smashing through a wooden wall. That calm, steady voice didn’t carry across the several li surrounding the old martial yamen the way Lin Zongwu’s showy roars had at the start of the battle — but here, on this stretch of the field, it sank into everyone’s hearts as abruptly as a nail being driven home.

Inside the shop, right before Lin Zongwu’s eyes, a tall figure in a black cloak came at him with a furious punch.

The equally massive Buddha-figure swung his own fist to meet it.

The instant their fists collided, Lin Zongwu felt himself go faintly dazed.

The instant he saw the man’s silhouette, his first thought was that he was seeing Meng Zhutao again, the man he’d fought with such exhilaration the previous night — but the overwhelming force that exploded through the air upon impact, sending massive shockwaves rippling into the ground, was not something the whip-wielding Meng Zhutao could ever have possessed.

An overwhelming, sea-like inner force surged through him, and along with it, memories churned up in his mind — flipping through countless old fragments, one tracing back to a figure from ten, twenty years ago…

The force from the opponent’s fist kept climbing; the two men’s strikes crashed against each other, and the floorboards beneath them, rotted and warped in an instant, gave way. Just as it collapsed toward the ground floor on one side, the punch bearing down on him surged forward like an angry tide, seeming to swallow his entire body whole.

In that instant, before the wrathful Buddha’s eyes, he saw a dragon—

“Nine Manifestations of the Cloud Dragon,” Fang Qifo.

This was the most unpredictable of the Fang brothers, the man who had once fought without restraint at the holy sect’s headquarters…

“Ahh—”

The Buddha’s roar erupted amid the violent clash; those on the battlefield saw the suddenly-unleashed struggle crash straight down through the floorboards, and the two combatants sank down to the ground floor, sweeping away everything around them…

On the battlefield, Peng Tiangang took a step back.

Wind churned, clouds shifted.

An overwhelming killing intent came surging in, from off to one side of everyone’s field of view…

And on this part of the battlefield, the four Huaxia Army squads were still, each in their own position, fighting on with cool composure…

They had fallen into a disadvantageous position, but somehow, it didn’t seem to shake them at all…