Chapter 118: Professional!
Chen Xiao was gasping for breath. He raised a hand to fiercely wipe the blood from his eyes, propped himself up on the ground with one arm, and managed to lift his head, staring at the red-haired fellow. "The Club! Heh, the Club!!!"
A trace of hatred flickered in his eyes.
The Club! It was the Club again!! These bastards had finally tracked him down after all!
"Chen Xiao, my orders are not to kill you." The red-haired man lowered his hand, looking down at Chen Xiao with contempt. "However, I must remind you that the operatives executing missions for our Club are not as gentle as the Relief Society's field agents. When encountering situations, we are granted full discretion. For instance, I could break every bone in your body, and as long as I leave you with a single breath to drag you back, my mission is complete."
The red-haired man licked his lips. "I heard you've taken down quite a few powerful metahumans lately. Qiu Yun from the Black Knights, and that freak Yaksha—you've crossed paths with both of them... Hmph, what a pity. Seeing you up close today, you're nothing more than an utterly inexperienced rookie."
A rookie... Hmph!
A cold, resolute smile crept up the corner of Chen Xiao's mouth.
His eyes tracked the red-haired man's footsteps. Watching him walk toward him step by step, Chen Xiao's gaze grew increasingly bizarre as he desperately calculated in his mind...
Finally, the red-haired man looked down with a gaze bordering on disdain at Chen Xiao, who was struggling to prop up his body, and reached into his coat with one hand to pull something out...
The moment he saw this object, Chen Xiao's gaze involuntarily shifted.
Could this be... a collar?
That's right. It was precisely the kind of collar one might put around a pet dog's neck, except that it was made of metal, dotted with several small indicator lights, and partially covered with a strange metallic film...
More importantly, what sent a jolt through Chen Xiao's heart was that he had seen this exact kind of collar before!
It was precisely that night when that pair of eccentric top-hat-wearing brothers had rushed into the coffee shop and presented a bizarre commission. The collar they produced was an exact match!!
"Put it on obediently, little rookie. You'll make a rather fine prey." The red-haired man held the collar in one hand, stepping closer to Chen Xiao.
At that exact moment, Chen Xiao suddenly mustered every ounce of strength left in his body and took a fierce, deep breath! Then, he abruptly straightened his torso, dropping to his knees. He clenched his hands together into a tight fist!
In that instant, the muscles across Chen Xiao's face twisted. Veins bulged and strained as every single muscle in both of his arms instantly tensed to their absolute limit. A look of fierce determination flashed through his eyes, and with a sudden, explosive roar from the depths of his throat!
He drove his locked fists downward like a pile driver—not aimed at the red-haired fellow in front of him, but straight into the ground!
Boom!!!
Chen Xiao poured virtually every drop of his remaining strength into that punch, unleashing all his power in a single fraction of a second. Moreover, he incorporated the explosive force-generation technique taught to him by Old Tian in his short-hit boxing style, allowing him to release his entire reservoir of power simultaneously!
A metahuman with B-grade strength possessed an upper limit of up to ten tons of force. Concentrating all of it into his doubled fists, he slammed them ruthlessly into the pavement!
Ten tons of impact force struck the earth, instantly unleashing a deafening roar. Simultaneously, a shattering crack echoed as the surface of the road splintered apart!
Just like a pile driver on a construction site—when a pile driver operates, anyone standing nearby will feel the ground tremble as if in an earthquake!
And right now, Chen Xiao unleashing his B-grade strength to the absolute maximum was even more violent than a pile driver!
The red-haired man, who had already closed the distance to Chen Xiao, instantly felt a violent shake beneath his feet and staggered involuntarily—a completely natural reflex. Seizing this moment amid his roar, Chen Xiao leveraged the rebound force of that punch against the earth and violently catapulted his entire body upward!
He seemed to have calculated the exact direction the red-haired man would lean while stumbling, and as he sprung up, his body hurtled directly toward that angle in a fraction of a second!
The red-haired man's reactions were exceptionally swift. Seeing Chen Xiao closing in right before his eyes, his gaze hardened in a rush. He extended five fingers, their tips sharp as metallic blades, and slashed viciously toward Chen Xiao's neck! Having lost his balance, he was now too late to evade using his speed, and he knew all too well what the consequences would be if a B-grade strength powerhouse managed to close in on him!
Faced with this critical juncture, he made an instant decision: he would rather kill Chen Xiao outright!
As those five sharp blades brushed against the side of his neck, Chen Xiao twisted his torso. With a sickening squelch, all five blades plunged deep into the side of his collarbone! Blood spurted instantly, staining Chen Xiao's neck and half his face crimson!
The blades sank straight down to their base, nearly puncturing a hole clean through Chen Xiao's shoulder!
Yet, while Chen Xiao's face contorted in extreme agony, a ferocious, sneering grin broke through the pain!
At such close range, the red-haired man caught the sneer in Chen Xiao's eyes, and a sudden chill ran down his spine! Such a smile carried a trace of madness, a trace of hatred, and absolute, unyielding resolve!
Chen Xiao was clearly trembling all over from the sheer agony, yet he willingly let those blade-like nails pierce straight through his body. Then, he performed a maneuver no one could have possibly anticipated...
A violent twist of his torso!!
The red-haired man instantly guessed what this punk was trying to do! He was completely out of his mind!!
He immediately tried to yank his hand back, but as Chen Xiao ruthlessly twisted his body...
A series of grinding, teeth-setting screeches echoed out...
This was unmistakably the sound of razor-sharp blades scraping forcefully across human bone! The sharp metal nails had pierced through Chen Xiao's body, but under his forced, massive twisting motion, the immense torque jammed the flat edges of the metal tightly against the underside of his collarbone!
It was wedged in so tightly it refused to budge!
Needless to say, the surrounding flesh and muscle were thoroughly shredded into a bloody pulp!
And then, Chen Xiao made yet another completely unimaginable offensive move!
He did not raise his hand to throw a punch!
On one hand, his shoulder had been pierced, and such severe trauma instantly rendered one of his arms completely useless. On the other hand... even if his shoulder hadn't been impaled, his fists were no longer usable at this moment anyway!
That earthquake-inducing punch—a pile driver operating at the absolute limit of B-grade strength, hammering ten tons of weight into the ground—had produced one direct consequence: Chen Xiao's fists had practically been blown apart by the force!
After all, he was flesh and blood. Although he was a strength-type metahuman, Chen Xiao lacked Tyrannosaurus's ability to harden his body into stone. Tyrannosaurus's petrification allowed him to fully exert his strength without restraint, but Chen Xiao fell far short of that.
For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction; the amount of force you strike out with is precisely the amount of force your own body must endure! Chen Xiao lacked the ability to turn his physique into impenetrable steel, and therefore...
At this very moment, the bones in his fists had shattered. His palms and fingers were reduced to a bloody, mangled mess!
Thus, his method of attack was not with his fists, but with his... head!
His collarbone had locked the red-haired man's hand firmly in place. After the twist, the two of them were pressed almost flush against one another, and Chen Xiao's eyes burned with a nearly manic murderous intent!
It was genuine murderous intent!!
The red-haired man's heart skipped a beat: This brat is going all out! Does he want to kill me?!
Chen Xiao delivered a ferocious headbutt, using his own forehead as a weapon, smashing it directly toward the red-haired man's skull!
Terror gripped the red-haired man's heart! His own physical strength was nowhere near that of his opponent. If he were struck squarely in the head by a B-grade strength metahuman, his skull would undoubtedly burst open like a rotten watermelon!!
Dodge! He had to dodge!
Are you kidding me?! As a proud elite of the Club, I cannot die at the hands of such a little rookie!!
The red-haired man opened his other hand and shoved desperately against Chen Xiao's head while violently leaning his body backward.
Whoosh!
A fierce gust of wind brushed past the tip of his nose. The sheer velocity and force of the strike left the red-haired man with lingering fear. Damn it, has this kid completely lost his mind?! How could he generate such terrifying force from a simple headbutt?
Yet the next instant, a piercing, agonizing pain erupted from his fingers!!
He fell for it!!
That was the red-haired man's very first thought!
He truly had fallen for it!
Chen Xiao's headbutt wasn't actually aimed at his forehead. After a mere feint, he had slammed his head mercilessly down onto the hand the red-haired man had wedged into his shoulder! Chen Xiao had calculated very clearly: the opponent's nails were metalized, and heaven knew if he could break them, but his hand bones certainly could!
The heavy headbutt smashed into the back of the red-haired man's hand, instantly shattering several of his metacarpal bones. The red-haired man let out a miserable screech, and driven by some sudden surge of adrenaline—much like a cat whose tail had been stepped on—his body violently contorted.
Swish!
The five sharp blades jammed beneath Chen Xiao's collarbone were forcefully yanked out by his desperate struggle! Only, Chen Xiao's collarbone had been completely severed in the process!!
The moment he broke free, the red-haired man scrambled backward in a frantic retreat, pulling back seven or eight paces in a single breath. Seeing that Chen Xiao didn't give chase and instead slumped limply to the ground, he finally let out a panicked sigh of relief.
Yet when he looked at his hand, a sudden surge of blinding rage exploded within him!
I... actually got injured by a mere rookie?!
One of the red-haired man's hands was practically crippled. His metahuman ability was the metalization of skeletal extensions—simply put, skeletal extensions included his fingernails... but it did not allow his entire skeletal structure to undergo metalization. Therefore, Chen Xiao's brutal smash had instantly pulverized the bones in his hand, leaving them broken and twisted. Consequently, the metal-blade-like nails on those five fingers had warped as well.
Much like a knife handle bending and twisting out of shape, the blade itself could no longer remain straight.
"Dammit! Bastard!" The red-haired man cursed viciously, taking a rapid breath. The extended metal blades on his injured hand quickly retracted.
Instead, he raised his other, uninjured hand... his left hand, spreading his five fingers wide, pointing them straight at Chen Xiao as he snarled, "Such a ruthless little punk! You really do have a vicious streak in you! Hmph!!"
Chen Xiao sat on the ground, still glaring defiantly at his opponent. Panting heavily, he sneered, "Vicious? Bah!"
He spat out a mouthful of blood-tinged saliva and coldly retorted, "If you hadn't screwed me over with that energy-shielding device, I would have killed you ages ago!"
"Chen Xiao!! Chen Xiao!!"
Yaya cried out in tears from the side. She watched as Chen Xiao was injured, but under the suppressive effect of the energy-shielding field, Yaya's sole metahuman ability—electromagnetism—was completely neutralized and unusable.
More than a dozen of the red-haired man's accomplices had already intercepted Yaya and pushed her aside. No matter how desperately Yaya screamed now, she couldn't break through.
"What a ruthless kid."
Chen Wei sat inside the car, holding a pair of binoculars and watching the unfolding battle in the distance. A faint smile suddenly touched her lips as she turned her head to look at Tu, who sat in the front seat. "Uncle Tu, I suddenly feel like this kid isn't entirely unlike him... Just looking at the viciousness he showed when fighting that guy just now, he really does resemble Godfather back in the day. I've heard that whenever Godfather fought for his life, he always ended up covered in injuries, but it was precisely that ruthless tenacity that helped him conquer his opponents time and time again."
Tu remained silent, staring coldly into the distance.
After driving away, the car they were in had quickly circled back and parked in a grove of trees directly across from this road, roughly a hundred meters away.
After a moment, Tu spoke indifferently: "He's far inferior to the boss. Ruthless as the boss may be, he still knows how to employ tactics. Whereas this brat understands nothing of killing techniques; he's merely throwing his life away out of sheer desperation."
"That Chen Xiao doesn't look so good," Chen Wei sighed, frowning. "Uncle Tu... that red-haired fellow seems rather bizarre... Could he be a monster? What kind of weapon is he using when he gets hurt? It's just like Wolverine."
"He's a human, not a monster." Tu replied coldly, "They are human too..." His voice dropped a fraction lower: "I encountered people like this many years ago, in Africa... Back then, I didn't yet know the boss."
"You... you've encountered monsters like this?" Chen Wei raised an eyebrow.
Tu still said nothing, merely fixing his cold gaze on the distance.
Every action, every subtle movement, every footstep in the duel between Chen Xiao and the red-haired man had been calmly observed by Tu.
"Uncle Tu, can you... can you save that kid? That red-haired guy looks extremely formidable and fierce... Can you?"
Before Chen Wei could finish, Tu slowly lowered the binoculars and finally turned his head to glance at Chen Wei. At this moment, the grey, indifferent look in Tu's eyes had vanished, replaced by what looked like two faint, burning flames of ice!
Clearly fire, yet chillingly, terrifyingly cold!
"Miss, I don't save people. I only kill them."
Dropping those cold words, Tu abruptly twisted the car door open and slowly stepped out.
"Stay in the car and don't come down."
"Uncle Tu! You... be careful!"
Chen Wei couldn't help but call out. She harbored a certain wariness toward that red-haired fellow and his abilities... even though she deeply understood Tu's strength, having always believed in her heart that Tu was an invincible existence in this world.
Yet... the people on the other side seemed like monsters!
Tu turned his head and gave Chen Wei a calm look.
"Miss, please trust the professionals."
With that, Tu stepped out of the small grove and strode toward the opposite side. He reached into his left armpit and drew a pistol—a weapon with a peculiar design, clearly modified.
Tu's eyes were filled with chilling murderous intent, yet his expression remained calm... even carrying a hint of casual leisure!
Indeed, leisure!
Yet this leisure resembled the demeanor of a beast—a leopard!
Much like a leopard hunting on the African plains, strolling casually across the wilderness, its relaxed movements actually concealed an instinctive, continuous self-adjustment with every step it took.
He walked neither fast nor slow, his gaze fixed steadily into the distance while his hands kept moving: drawing the weapon, chambering a round, and making rapid adjustments.
His fingers moved with lightning speed, yet every action was meticulously detailed and orderly, graceful as a dance, even carrying a hint of gentleness.
Finally, gripping the gun with the muzzle pointed toward the ground and his eyes completely indifferent, this battle-hardened black man looked precisely like a cold-blooded butcher!
Yet as he walked step by step, it was as if he weren't heading toward a bloody affair, but rather like a dancer standing upon a stage belonging solely to him, strolling leisurely and dancing gracefully...
Like an elegant butcher holding a bloody cleaver, stepping to the rhythm of a dance as he crossed a blood-soaked jungle...
When he completed his ninth step, he stood squarely in the middle of the road, and then he slowly raised the muzzle of his gun...
At this moment, a bizarre smile even surfaced on the stern face of this black man...
Perhaps this could hardly be called a "smile," but rather some indescribable emotion.
Then, he pulled the trigger...
Bang! Bang bang! Bang bang bang!!
Six gunshots erupted almost in the exact same fraction of a second! It was hard to imagine a pistol firing with such astonishing rapidity! As Tu slowly walked forward, the red-haired man had already spotted this strange, suited stranger. And when the black man's pistol rose to point directly at him, a sudden sense of the absurd washed over the red-haired man.
A gun?
Bullets?
What a joke!!
Metahumans aren't afraid of firearms! With his speed, could bullets hope to hit him? Ridiculous!!
His speed reached a C-grade critical threshold! Though it fell just a fraction short of B-grade sonic velocity, that kind of speed was more than enough for him to dodge bullets easily!
Bullets cannot deal with the vast majority of metahumans—this was a universally acknowledged axiom in the metahuman world!!
Therefore, the moment Tu pulled the trigger, the red-haired man moved!
His speed was indeed blindingly fast. With a violent twist of his body, he forcefully shifted sideways by several feet! Almost simultaneously, the first bullet arrived!
He dodged the bullet effortlessly, it whistling past the left side of his body without even grazing a hair on him!
However, the ease of dodging that first bullet vanished instantly the very next microsecond!
For as he sidestepped, the second bullet landed precisely on the trajectory of his evasive maneuver!
This time, a cold sweat broke out on the red-haired man, but relying on his formidable speed-based ability, he forced his body into another impossible twist, snapping his waist to dodge away! This time, the bullet grazed right past the tip of his nose!
Yet the third bullet seemed to have anticipated his dodging maneuver entirely, striking directly along the trajectory of his evasion path!!
At that moment, the red-haired man nearly thought he was hallucinating!!
How could this be possible?!!
This was no longer a matter of simply dodging with speed... He felt an illusory sensation wash over him! No matter how fast his speed, the bullet fired by his opponent acted like a blade waiting right along the trajectory of his escape route, patiently waiting for him to actively crash into it!!
Fortunately!
He still had his metahuman ability!
The blades on his left hand slashed out viciously! Clang!
A cascade of sparks burst from his elongated fingernails! The bullet struck dead-center against his blade!
Yet following right behind, the fourth bullet was one he could no longer evade!!
Though they were simply fast-flying projectiles, the person firing them seemed like an exquisite master artist who had calculated every single trajectory to the absolute limit of precision!
Though they were bullets flashing past in an instant, in that delicate microsecond, the paths of those projectiles seemed to weave together into an inescapable net!!
The bullet trajectories completely sealed off every direction, calculation, and route the red-haired man could possibly use to dodge!!
Finally...
Thud, thud, thud!!
Amidst the red-haired man's look of fierce reluctance, his body violently jerked airborne as three bullets struck him squarely: respectively in the left shoulder, the waist, and the right leg!
The kinetic impact of the rounds threw his body into the air before he crashed heavily onto the ground like a dead fish, completely unable to right himself!
Tu watched coldly as his opponent collapsed, then resumed his steady stride forward. As he walked, he rapidly disassembled the pistol and stowed it away, then gently stripped off his suit jacket and wound it layer by layer around his left arm.
And then, Chen Xiao witnessed a scene he would never forget for the rest of his life!
He remembered someone once saying that the universally accepted axioms of the metahuman world were:
First, ordinary firearms are ineffective against the vast majority of metahumans.
Second, in combat, metahumans hold an overwhelming advantage over ordinary non-metahumans—especially combat-type metahumans!
Yet today, the scene playing out before his eyes completely shattered both of those axioms!!
The scene unfolding was this:
The black man slowly walked forward, arriving directly before the red-haired man. The red-haired man suddenly lunged violently upward from the ground; although his movements lacked their previous agility due to his bullet wounds, his speed remained lightning-fast!!
His left hand opened, and five sharp blades slashed viciously downward!
The two of them had been extremely close, separated by a distance of only about two body lengths! At such point-blank range, combined with the red-haired man's razor-sharp reflexes...
And yet, he missed completely!
The black man's speed was not particularly fast—or rather, he had never intended to rely on full-throttle speed to dodge.
His movement was simple to the point of absurdity!
Facing the razor-sharp blades slashing toward his face, he simply executed a basic squat. Yet this seemingly simple movement effortlessly slipped him underneath the arc of the opponent's blades! Though the edge of the blade grazed past his left arm...
He seemed to have anticipated even that. The thick layers of his suit jacket were wrapped densely around his left arm; the residual momentum of the blade merely sliced through the thick layers of cloth, cutting through the jacket and the shirt underneath before running out of power entirely, failing to scratch so much as a millimeter of his skin!
Then, the black man executed three fluid motions!
A step forward!
A torso twist!
A punch!!!
Chen Xiao saw every single one of these three movements with absolute clarity. The black man's speed did not appear exceptionally fast, but his execution was flowing to the extreme. The transition between every movement was tightly knit to the absolute limit, without the slightest hint of hesitation or stagnation, and not a single shred of energy was wasted!!
He moved like a precision-engineered instrument, maximizing efficiency in every action and every fraction of force!
The target of his punch was neither the opponent's head, face, chest, nor abdomen—any of the vital areas...
Instead, it was... the armpit!!
Precisely the armpit!
The red-haired man's swinging attack had created one single flaw—a momentary gap and an indefensible blind spot during the split-second his arm was raised, exposing his armpit for barely the blink of an eye!
Yet, that fleeting, momentary opening was precisely the one captured by this black man named Tu!!
Thud!
A muffled impact rang out as the fist drove straight into the red-haired man's armpit! The red-haired man jerked upward like a fish once more, crashing heavily onto the earth this time with such finality that he couldn't twitch, let alone pull himself back up!!
"You... you..." The red-haired man stared at this fellow as if gazing upon a ghost!
He was one hundred percent certain that his opponent was an ordinary human! An ordinary human devoid of any metahuman abilities whatsoever!!
Yet, how was that possible?!!
He wanted to struggle, but his body stubbornly refused to obey... Moreover, the target of the attack hadn't been a vital organ! It had been... his armpit?!
What in the world? In the middle of a life-and-death combat, who attacks their enemy's armpit?
"Stop struggling. Even for metahumans, the human body's anatomical structure remains the same." Tu's voice was utterly calm. "There is a cluster of nerves beneath the armpit; a heavy blunt impact there induces temporary physical paralysis."
Red-haired man: "............"
Tu looked down coldly at the red-haired man before him, his strange, indifferent gaze lingering for a moment on the razor-sharp, blade-like nails of the opponent's left hand, observing their honed edges...
"Fast speed, fine weapons, but..." Tu's voice remained glacial. "Trash technique! Without technique, no matter how good a weapon you're given, you're still nothing more than waste."
The red-haired man seemed unable to speak, but his lips were trembling slightly.
Impossible! How could this be?!
An ordinary human, relying solely on ordinary firearms and some basic physical techniques, had managed to defeat me?!
Struggling, the red-haired man choked out, "You... you're human! You're just an ordinary human being!"
Upon hearing this, Tu frowned slightly, a strange, somewhat disdainful look crossing his eyes:
"Human? Hmph, and what are you—not human?"