Chapter 5 — Formidable Foes Strike

With a catlike spring, Teng Xuanji darted nimbly and swiftly into the inner room. Beneath the bed he flipped his hand and grabbed—five fruit knives in each hand. Buying fruit knives was a simple matter in any city. He wiped both hands along his trouser legs, and the ten knives slid into the sheaths strapped to his legs.

"Thud!"

Without warning, the bricks and tiles above Teng Xuanji's head burst violently apart, and a terrifying figure dropped from the sky like some prehistoric monster.

"In close combat with this monster Dolgotorov, my odds of winning are not high. And once he ties me down, if Sun Ze shoots again, I'm dead for certain." Teng Xuanji's expression changed. He kicked off the ground, moving like a clumsy elephant, yet bizarrely sliding several meters backward. Then, with hands and feet driving hard like a tiger, he leaped and was already in the courtyard.

As a master of Xingyi, Teng Xuanji's speed was already extremely great.

Bursting from the house into the courtyard, he met the chill of the early morning full in the face—but the bullets came with it.

"Pfft."

A bullet, as if it had calculated the very speed and direction of Teng Xuanji's leap, came straight to intercept him. Teng Xuanji, long prepared, answered with a backhanded throw of his knife.

The cold face of the throwing knife glittered with metallic sheen. It crossed several meters of space with pinpoint precision and struck the bullet. "Clang!" The bullet was split apart and sent ricocheting aside.

"Pfft."

But at that same instant, another bullet had already arrived.

In sheer power, Teng Xuanji's throwing knives surpassed ordinary bullets. But in rate of fire, by the time he threw one knife, a professionally modified firearm could already have fired several rounds.

"Hmph." Teng Xuanji twisted his body in midair, his whole frame like a swimming dragon. The bullet struck his right arm, and in that instant his right arm was like taut ox sinew; at the same time the arm bent and twisted, as if several cords of sinew were rebounding and spinning along it.

A powerful spiraling force was generated.

"Pfft."

The spiral inner force, like a jetted needle, collided with the bullet's head, sharply reducing its penetrating power. At the same time, as the bullet bored into the muscle, it was firmly caught by the powerful muscle.

"Hmph." In almost the same instant, the bullet was squeezed out by the muscle and fell to the ground. The crisp sound of the bullet striking the concrete made the marksman Sun Ze smile, and brought a faint smile to the face of the Body-Crusher Dolgotorov, who had just come out of the house.

One man stood at the courtyard gate; the other at the door of the house.

The two of them looked at Teng Xuanji with smiles.

And Teng Xuanji stood beneath the peach tree beside the courtyard, his face calm as water.

"Lone Wolf of the Flying Knives, truly worthy of being the superhuman who wiped out the Red Organization single-handed. I fired two shots in a row just now, and all they did was wound your right arm slightly. Your control over your muscles is beyond mine. I salute you, I salute you." The marksman Sun Ze was a youth who looked handsome and refined.

Yet those eyes were cold and sinister, like a venomous snake in the chill depths of the Amazon.

Teng Xuanji knew very well that this Sun Ze was a master of Baguazhang, one of the three great internal martial arts, and that his true age should be about his own; he too had long since cultivated inner force. Paired with firearms, he was an angel of death who struck terror into countless hearts.

"Wolf, you are a strong man. I, Dolgotorov, salute you. You should just kill yourself," the white man, huge as a polar bear, said in a low voice.

Teng Xuanji's gaze swept over the bullet on the ground. There were still traces of blood on it.

Teng Xuanji sighed inwardly. Though he was only one step from the Grandmaster realm, and his muscle control had reached an extremely high level, he still could not easily withstand these specially made bullets. That bullet had in fact affected his right arm, and his strength was diminished.

"From the way your body resists bullets, you must have reached the peak of the internal schools—just one step from the Grandmaster realm, I'd say." Sun Ze sighed. "What a pity. Another internal master is about to die." With the two of them joining forces, they already had the upper hand; now that Teng Xuanji was wounded, their victory was all the more certain.

"Wolf, we are both students of the internal arts. I respect you. Kill yourself. Die with some dignity," Sun Ze said.

In fierce battles between superhuman masters like them, heads bursting open or bodies torn to pieces were only to be expected. Letting Teng Xuanji die with some dignity was a small mercy on these two men's part.

"Kill myself?" Teng Xuanji's gaze was like a blade as it swept over the two of them. "What a joke. Who lives and who dies is not yet certain. My life is right here—if you have the skill, come and take it!"