Leader

Missing was unimaginable, but losing track of his target was incomprehensible. His reputation of felling his opponent once he drew his weapon suddenly became a punch line.

“I knew you were here. I was aware of your presence the entire time.” Ming Feizhen’s tone was devoid of any emotion. “Maybe there is a method of avoiding my detection, but you certainly don’t know it. I can sense you as if I have you in the palm of my hand. You’re delusional in thinking you can catch me for sure as soon as you strike.”

The inability to explain the anticlimactic outcome left Vivianite enraged. The harder he thought about it, the more he mentally trapped himself. Fiends’ Genesis would have to show him courtesy, yet the death god said to seal anyone’s fate in one slash was now relegated to a role as insignificant as the old men covering their heads.

Vivianite’s biggest loss against Hong Jiu was losing his signature weapon. If he couldn’t retrieve it, he couldn’t prove nor continue bearing the Vivianite title; Six Blades wouldn’t welcome him back, either. Aside from that, he was still able to fight just fine and still had the same skills prior. You win some and you lose some. He didn’t lose his confidence just because he lost once. Losing 30% of his internal energy in the duel was nothing compared to Hong Jiu’s injuries, not to mention his own damage was recoverable. Moreover, internal energy was never his specialty; his specialty was assassination.

When it came to assassination, nobody in the building could’ve held a candle to him. He felt insulted when he heard the group refer to themselves as assassins and talk about assassinating someone. At the same time, that help him overcome his trauma of defeat.

Vivianite cloaked himself in energy as he bared his fangs once he regained his confidence and restarted his search for his target. Still, he couldn’t locate his target. Howbeit, he persuaded himself that there was no way someone could move without whilst concealing their presence to the point of invisibility, not to mention someone who couldn’t access their internal energy. Thus, he utilised his ocular technique to finally pick up a mobile silhouette.

“That’s not me.”

Vivianite saw his foe standing less than three metres away from, holding onto his broadsword. For a moment, Vivianite questioned if he was qualified to call himself an assassin when his foe demonstrated prowess far more befitting of an assassin.

“This is,” Ming Feizhen raised his weapon parallel to the floor, “how an assassin ought to be.”

The three balls of varying colours that Ming Feizhen held out in his spare hand had Vivianite stunned as he just realised that Ming Feizhen pinched them from him without him even realising it. Humiliation flourished in Vivianite’s mind.

“Red signifies a bloody battle. Blue signifies foregone conclusion. Green signifies to stay away. You have a habit of using the balls in reverse, however.”

Green smoke coiled towards heaven. The colour of the smoke was but a smokescreen for the odour to work its magic.

“Stay away!” exclaimed Vivianite.

“I was waiting for that.” Ming Feizhen raised his hand, somehow opening a big hole in the door and killing the person behind it before fading out of fields of perceptions again.

It was the combination of quick direction and level changes that created the impression Ming Feizhen was disappearing. Anyone who had practiced the motions for a few years could’ve performed them as proficiently as him, but even the likes of Vivianite would need time to piece all the manoeuvres together and make sense of their purpose, let alone when he was busy trying to figure out how Ming Feizhen was dropping people effortlessly. From Vivianite’s perspective, he could only imagine an assassin who’d killed innumerable people moving so fluidly.

While Vivianite was musing, his three assistants had perished before him. Before he could even think about telling his assistants to back off, he heard, “Six Blades operate alone, but you require help since you’re injured. It’s not wrong… but it disqualifies you from being League of Assassins’ number one.”

What do you know? Without backup? You expect me to learn from that solo idiot? What good is anything if you’re dead?

“So be it if you die. You expect a good ending as an assassin?”

The anger of being read like an open book took away Vivianite’s composure, leading to him thinking that his target was an enemy, not a conversation partner, so why bother responding? He charged at his target fast enough to generate whistling winds, sure he would finally succeed this time.

“Still too slow.”

Vivianite’s blade cut thin air again.

“You were a few inches off to the right compared to last time.”

Vivianite unleashed a torrent of slashes, reasoning it’d take away Ming Feizhen’s hopes of counterattacking, but he never made contact.

“The more you try to be fast, the slower you end up.”

Ming Feizhen’s voice entered Vivianite’s ears as slow as footsteps and as soft as a disillusioned master teaching his disciple who was full of openings.

“If you want your attack to be undetectable, you need to pay more attention to how you mould internal energy, or are you incapable of attacking without giving yourself away because you’re using a different weapon?”

Failing to catch his target on three occasions was a worse feeling than failing an assassination. They had been going at it for a while, yet Vivianite had yet to catch a clear image of his opponent’s face.

“What’s the matter? Can’t see me?‘

Vivianite heard Ming Feizhen’s only a few steps away from his left side, but his consecutive misses warned him that his perfected techniques wouldn’t work against his foe. The leader could also tell that there was a gap between them that Vivianite couldn’t close. Ming Feizhen wasn’t significantly stronger than Vivianite; Ming Feizhen just knew what was coming and was ready every time. Needless to say, Vivianite had grown aware of the fact, too.

Vivianite focused all his strength into his right arm and swung, hoping to overcome skill with overwhelming might. Alas, his wrist stung only half way through the movement. The sound of his blade landing on the ground and his wrist tendon snapping off the bone hit his ears at the same time. He looked up in shock at his bored opponent.

“Did you think that’d work?” Ming Feizhen flicked the blood off the blade that was still warm. “Just because you’re trying to overcome technique with brute force, doesn’t mean you should abandon protecting your arm. Did your teacher never teach you this?”

While it didn’t require much strength for one to sever a tendon as a counter, it required them to know precisely the volume of energy their target utilised at all times whilst putting themselves in the line of fire without slow judgement. The difficulty was compounded due to the nature of Vivianite’s concealed style.

If there was ever a need for proof that Ming Feizhen couldn’t utilise his internal energy, then this risky strategy was proof of it. That also meant that he could only attack when his opponent was weakened. As long as Vivianite could deceive Ming Feizhen into believing he was weakened, then there was an opening to exploit, such as now!

“You’re an assassin.”

Vivianite started bleeding from a body part he had yet to cover in true qi, forcing him to switch from attempting a sneak attack to using his true qi for defence. As a result of the sudden change in direction, though, his back was no longer shielded. The pain of a cold blade penetrating his back made him lose control of his true qi, effectively cancelling out his armour.

Speaking from overhead, Ming Feizhen chided, “Why would you think of absorbing damage to counter?”

Nobody was more perplexed about how a supposed-to-be examinee, who was devoid of internal energy, dominated League of Assassins’ top assassin without breaking a sweat or giving the assassin a single chance than the assassin himself.

Vivianite’s instincts warned him to crawl away, but the pain of having his qi armour pierced still incapacitated him, so he could only wait for Ming Feizhen to come close. The sense of powerlessness gradually shaved away at his will to fight. Even when he went up against Lady Bai and Redsnow, he never felt this sense of helplessness. No matter what technique, methods, strategies, assassination techniques, whatever it happened to be, his opponent predicted it and dismantled it faster than he could impose his will. It was as if… he was fighting himself.

“You’re… You’re…”

“You don’t need to know who I am. There are a number of things I want to say to you, though.” Ming Feizhen removed Vivianite’s mask. Instead of commenting on the handsome assassin’s young age, Ming Feizhen fiddled with the mask as he reproached, “You’re too impatient. You’re brash, impatient, hubristic and overzealous for success. You have no respect for anyone since you’ve reached a feared level. You’re a good fighter, but the priority for an assassin is their mental cultivation, not the process of hiding, waiting and striking. Can you see my attacks when I perform them in front of you? Have you considered defence?”

Vivianite had a moment of enlightenment, the knowledge to surpass his current self.

“There’s no point.” Ming Feizhen shook his head when he saw Vivianite ruminating. “While it’s not easy to realise it, it’s even harder to do. It’s pointless for me to point it out to you. If you were several times more talented than you are and were willing to dedicate ten years to training, you might be qualified to challenge me… From the look in your eyes, you must’ve thought of someone, but that person isn’t you, is it?”

This is unfair! I just grasped an advanced concept! I can’t die here! I can’t die yet!

“Impossible…” Vivianite uttered in a raspy voice. “You lost all your internal energy… You…”

“I admitted to that.”

When Ming Feizhen smiled, Vivianite noticed Ming Feizhen was around his age.

“But it’s not the first time I’ve been without internal energy.” Ming Feizhen’s smile was that of one reminiscing the past. “I killed a tougher opponent than you when I was unable to utilise internal energy. If you think you’re tough to kill, you’re putting yourself on a pedal much higher than you’re qualified for.”

“Don’t kill me… Don’t kill me… I’ll tell you everything I know.” The man referred to in the pugilistic world as the death god spilled all the beans on Six Blades without even first waiting for Ming Feizhen to agree to his proposal. He disclosed the history of their formation, the unique traits of every member, all their rendezvous points, their oral codes, bans, rules… He didn’t withhold any information. Once he rain out of content, he continued racking his brains for more.

Ming Feizhen snorted under his breath. “Sounds like you’ve looked me up.”

“Don’t kill me…”

“You know I don’t like to kill, specially after I’ve gained something, right?”

“Don’t kill me!”

Ming Feizhen could tell Vivianite had lost an excessive amount of blood based off the latter’s heavy breathing and was close to passing out. “I have a question.”

Vivianite squinted.

Ming Feizhen smiled. “You’re Vivianite, correct?”

Vivianite couldn’t understand why he was asked the question when the answer was obvious. Nonetheless, he nodded.

“Hmm, so I have the right person. I heard you hurt my junior brother.”

The appearance of the person to hand Vivianite his first defeat in the pugilistic world came to the front of his mind. Perhaps it was impossible for him to forget due to how deeply the result was imprinted in his mind; for a point in time, he forgot he and Hong Jiu were one a piece each.

“Makes things easy since you remember.” Ming Feizhen got his answer from the look in Vivianite’s eyes. He got up with a smile and continued, “Although you did a sloppy job of learning the technique, I never taught it to Second, so he didn’t know how to defend against it. Thankfully, he had seen my blade techniques, so he still remembers a fragment of the mental cultivation, or he’d have perished when he defended your attack.”

So that’s why he survived…

Hong Jiu was the first person to be hit with the technique and not meet his demise on the spot, which Vivianite couldn’t understand how. His initial mindless theory was that Hong Jiu was just tough enough to not be split in two. But now that he learnt Hong Jiu happened to understand the technique, a myriad of new questions spawned. For one, what did, “I never taught it to Second” mean? The inability to find answers drove him mad.

“You’re right about me. I, indeed, don’t like to kill people if they offer me something useful. That said, that is under the condition that they don’t hurt people around me.”

Vivianite saw the blade in Ming Feizhen’s hand leave behind a silver trail as it travelled downwards and then blood pouring down. It took a second for it to dawn on him that the blade had just been pulled out from his back; however, it happened so fast that he never saw the process. Vivianite would be able to mould energy a brief while after the blade was pulled out from him, so even an idiot would know why Ming Feizhen pulled the blade out.

No! No! No!

“… I can’t die. I can’t die… I… I am…” His voice wasn’t loud, but Vivianite repeated himself tirelessly in the loudest voice possible.

“I don’t care who you are.” A silver light flitted from one side of Ming Feizhen’s eyes to the other. “Don’t touch my second brother.”

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