The cave where Wuchang and the others had made camp stood close to the southern edge of the Pillar Forest. This stretch had only just been scoured by an orbital warship's guns: whole cannibal camps had been wiped out, and the wave-gnawed, mottled beach had been turned into a field of black glass — all of it rock melted by the ship's cannon.
After being cleaned by the light-energy ship cannon, this beach had become a dead zone. Nothing living could possibly be here — not for at least the next six months.
Yet tonight something was off. In the dead of night, of all things, footsteps had come. The sound drew closer and closer, and everyone in the cave went on alert — but before anyone could douse the mining lamps, the boulder blocking the entrance burst apart with a thunderous crack.
By the flickering light of the mining lamps, Wuchang made out a bare-handed middle-aged man standing in the cave mouth. The man's hair was a mix of black and white; the breathing mask on his face was thick and heavy, of a design Wuchang had never seen before; a snug gray camouflage suit covered his body, and a pair of military boots was on his feet.
"Wuchang, careful — this one won't be easy to handle." Lane, a man of wide experience, spoke up to warn him. "If I'm not mistaken, every piece of gear on this man is top-grade military stock out of Bayonet. Look at the pack on his back — that's made from dragon hide produced over in Fallen Star..."
Lane had pitched his voice very low, but even so it had not escaped the middle-aged man's ears. Lane's knowledge clearly startled the stranger; the last thing he had expected was that anyone on Huang'e would recognize top-grade Bayonet gear.
"Sharp eyes! So you're no ordinary miners, are you?" The man's hoarse voice was like a rasping file, grating on everyone's nerves.
"A sonic attack?" The moment Boss Pan heard that strange tonal quality, he shouted right out, "Who are you? An Outlier? Or a battlefield cheat?"
Boss Pan's one sentence left the middle-aged man stunned. He stared, dumbfounded, for a full ten seconds. "Damn. What kind of miners are you? You know top-grade military gear and you can see through my identity?"
"Heh. 'Battlefield cheat' gives me too much credit. I'm nothing but an Outlier."
At that one sentence, Boss Pan's and Lane's faces changed drastically. In suddenly respectful voices they said, "With a status as high as yours, sir, surely you won't make things hard for us poor refugees. Please, sir, spare us."
The middle-aged man tipped his head back, looked at the sky, and considered for a moment. Then he said, "Sorry. I have a reason I must kill you. Accept it." With that, his left fist shot out like lightning, straight for Boss Pan's heart.
No one had expected the stranger to strike suddenly, or so fast. Boss Pan had no time whatsoever to react. Luckily Wuchang was there: he shoved Pan aside and threw himself forward, catching the incoming fist on his guard.
When the fist slammed into his arms, Wuchang felt as though a charging rhino had run him down. He staggered back four or five steps — thud, thud, thud — and nearly went sprawling.
"Not bad. You people keep surprising me. Not only do you have sharp eyes, you've got real skill. I hit you with seventy percent of my strength, and your bones didn't break and you're still standing steady?"
"A waste. A real waste. I truly do not want a promising young one to die at my hands..." Before the words were out, the middle-aged man lashed out a side kick, his right leg snapping at Wuchang's skull like wind.
With a punch and a kick coming that fast, Wuchang had no way to dodge; he could only block stubbornly with all the strength in his arms. Now he did not dare hold anything back. Dragon-Tiger strength flooded into his arms, and in an instant they were hard as iron.
One kick sent Wuchang flying like a kite with its string cut. He crashed hard into a stone pillar seven or eight meters away, and bright red blood immediately trickled from the corner of his mouth.
The stranger had kicked Wuchang flying, yet the confusion in his eyes only deepened. He suddenly had the feeling that he had not just kicked an arm but an alloy keel; the rebound had left his right foot throbbing.
Wuchang swallowed the mouthful of blood, and his eyes went colder and colder. From that one punch and one kick he had already taken the attacker's measure: a fourth-dan martial artist, roughly on par with Ye Tian. Wuchang was no match for him, but neither could the man crush him to death with ease.
The only thing left to worry about now is this bullshit "Outlier" business. Unfortunately his master Lane had never taught him anything about that angle. Wuchang was utterly unfamiliar with this Outlier business.
Backing off at the first sign of trouble was not in Wuchang's nature, least of all now, when there was nowhere left to retreat. When enemies meet on a narrow road, the brave win. Wuchang steeled himself and went all in.
Dragon-Tiger Rush was, after all, an ancient martial art handed down for a thousand years. It trained a person's finesse to a fine edge, and internal martial arts were built for drawn-out fights. The stranger across from him clearly belonged to the hard, forceful school — his boxing was close to the hand-to-hand techniques used by modern armies. Against an enemy like that, Wuchang could only rely on his footwork to drag the fight out until the man dropped dead of exhaustion.
Sure enough, once Wuchang truly unleashed the exquisite footwork of Dragon-Tiger Rush, the mysterious middle-aged man suddenly found he was not facing a man at all, but a ghost — a vengeful spirit.
That uncanny body traced impossible arcs, slipping past punches that came like lightning, while the Triple Nail Fist struck out treacherously from one inconceivable angle after another. Armpits, elbows, knee joints, the back of the head, and so on and on — every weak point a person could imagine was a target of Wuchang's sneak attacks.
In Lane's eyes and the others', Wuchang now looked more like a gust of wind — a whirlwind that broke every law of physics, a hurricane that tangled the enemy up tight.
The tangled fight lasted a full fifteen minutes. In that time Wuchang landed six punches and four kicks on the stranger in succession, while the man got in only three punches of his own. Now the stranger was furious. He had never imagined that his own fourth-dan strength could fail to suppress this brat; after trading blows this long, he had long since read Wuchang's level, and at the very most the boy was above second dan and on the verge of breaking through to third.
The brat is clearly weaker than me, yet he's held me off all this time just by leaning on that bizarre footwork. I'm losing way too much face here. At that thought, the middle-aged man suddenly spoke.
"You little bastard, don't get so cocky. Compared to me, you're still... a long... way... off..."
Who knew how he did it, but that sentence carried the same spiritual-sense-piercing effect as before, and stronger than before. The moment the last three words left his mouth, Pike and Eileen were the first to give out; their eyes rolled back and they collapsed unconscious inside the cave.
Lane and Boss Pan were not faring much better. Braced against the rock, they retched and heaved, irritation clawing at them, wanting to throw up but bringing nothing out.
Wuchang was suffering too. That voice was like ten thousand ants crawling over his heart, and now he understood what people meant by a hundred claws raking at the heart.
Wuchang knew how to give ground, but his true nature was ruthless and stubborn. Seeing his friends' lives hanging by a thread, the fury in his heart boiled over, and in that moment only one thing remained in his mind: to go down together with him.
"Fourfold Nail Fist — Tiger Break..."
That was the only phrase left in Wuchang's heart now. His master's old demonstration of the Tiger Break stance replayed in his mind like a slow-motion scene from a film. He still remembered what his master had once said.
"Nail Fist is fierce enough, but it's only the entry-level technique of Dragon-Tiger Rush. A Nail Fist that hasn't reached the Tiger Break realm is garbage..."
Never in his wildest dreams had Wuchang imagined that he would break through to the profound Tiger Break realm here, in this other world. Perhaps he had only caught a first glimpse of the threshold, but even that rudimentary level had left the stranger utterly dumbfounded.
Once the Nail Fist entered the Tiger Break realm, it no longer struck with muscular strength alone — the power of footwork was folded into it as well. A simple example: when Wuchang ran at full speed, the Tiger Break realm could perfectly combine the momentum of his run with the kinetic force in his muscles, so that a single punch carried the faint rumble of wind and thunder.
"Fuck — you've broken through too!" Watching the red-glowing fist hurtle at him, the stranger spotted at a glance the dark red energy clinging to it.
Fast as the Nail Fist was, a fourth-dan martial artist's reactions were faster. The stranger leaned his body to the side, and the punch grazed past his right shoulder, barely evading Wuchang's ferocious strike.
But then something happened that he could never have imagined: he had dodged the punch, but not the mysterious energy on it. The dark red light flashed, flames suddenly leapt up on the stranger's right shoulder, and his expensive Bayonet military fatigues caught fire.
"You're a fire-type Outlier?" After that shout, the stranger did not put out the flames in time. Instead, seizing the moment when Wuchang's stance was unsteady, he landed a vicious side kick.
Only after Wuchang flew backward and slammed into the rock did the stranger start beating at the flames on his shoulder.
By now the stranger's whole attention was on swatting out the fire, and he had completely forgotten his sonic attack. Boss Pan and Lane had recovered their breath.
"Wuchang, get out of here! Don't throw your own life away for us..."
"My good disciple, I, Lane, never imagined that at the very end of my life I would take an Outlier as my disciple. My life's been worth it..."
As he said that, the two of them suddenly lunged for the land vehicles and in an instant activated the Swarm Phalanxes.
"Have you two lost your minds? You want to die together?" Wuchang's question was right on the mark — that was exactly what Boss Pan and Lane had in mind. The radar of both Swarm Phalanxes had already locked onto the stranger; all anyone had to do was press the switch, and fifty mu in every direction would become a sea of fire.
Boss Pan glared at the stranger with a contorted face and bellowed, "You little bastard, aren't you an Outlier? Then let's see you get fifty mu clear in one second! If you can't, enjoy your death..."
Old Lane paid the stranger no mind. Turning his head, he shouted at Wuchang, "What are you standing there for, you little brat? Run! This is as much as we can do for you. Listen to me, and listen well: once you're out, don't be in a hurry to take revenge. Hone your skills, and when you're truly strong, then avenge us all..."
Wuchang's eyes brimmed wet. Fool that he was, even he understood that a weapon like a Phalanx fired at close range meant mutual destruction. The land vehicles were barely ten meters from the stranger now; once they opened fire, no one present would get away.
Wuchang faced an impossible choice. If he stayed, they would all certainly die together; if he turned and ran, he might still have a way to live. Perhaps it really was as Master Lane said — while there's life, there's still hope.
Faced with a choice between life and death, Wuchang truly hesitated.