Stranger Danger

Crack crack crack!

The moment Ye Qing finished his sentence, his wounds began healing at a visible rate. His deformed shoulder blades abruptly regained its normal shape, his broken arm abruptly popped back into position, and every other wound on his body disappeared like they never happened.

“Hm… that Strange Artifact you have really is quite something,” Fang Nianshui commented with a cold chuckle. “But you didn’t think you’re going to live just because your wounds are healed, did you?”

Before he even finished speaking, Fang Nianshui leaped into the air and brought down his saber with both hands. The overhead chop was fast and fierce, brutal and ruthless. Ye Qing could even hear what sounded like a tiger's roar from the man's form. He had no doubt that the attack would cut him in half if he allowed it to land.

It was about what he expected from the Five Tigers Door Breaking Saber. Ruthless and fierce, its practitioners were advised to execute its techniques with all-encompassing hatred and violence in mind. They must crush their foes like a bloody executioner would exterminate one's family to the nine generations.

Ye Qing did not avoid the deadly strike, however. He merely crossed his saber across his chest and waited for the inevitable clash.

Clang! There was a terrific impact as metal struck metal, but instead of blowing Ye Qing away, Fang Nianshui discovered in disbelief that he was the one who was blown away instead!

“Impossible… how do you have so much strength?”

It took Fang Nianshui a few steps to regain his footing after he landed on the ground. He was also bleeding from his palm and losing feeling in his saber arm. It was no wonder the man was shocked. He was an adept Reforged who had already begun to replace the qi in his dantian with true qi and was on his way to become a Qi Invoker. His strength was far greater than your average adept Reforged and equal to at least two fiery stallions. However, Ye Qing had still blown him away almost casually. The gap between their strength was like night and day!

While Fang Nianshui was still recovering from his shock, Ye Qing bent his knees slightly, circulated his vigor, and kicked off the ground so hard that a small pit was left behind. His saber was already in mid-swing to split Fang Nianshui in half.

Not having anticipated Ye Qing’s speed in the slightest, Fang Nianshui could only cross his saber in front of himself just like Ye Qing had done earlier and hope that it would be enough to weather the blow.

Boom!

A mighty boom shook the world as Fang Nianshui sank all the way to his knees. His arms were completely numb as well.

“Again!”

Ye Qing was nowhere spent despite the powerful attack. Muscles and veins writhing disturbingly like a can of worms, and blood simmering like red hot lava underneath his skin, he could have whaled away at Fang Nianshui at least dozens more times before he finally needed to catch his breath.

Another boom ensued as metal clashed against metal, but this time it was mixed with the sound of breaking bones. Fang Nianshui sank even deeper into the ground.

“Bastard!” Fang Nianshui let out an enraged scream before sweeping his saber at Ye Qing. At the same time, five tiger-like silhouettes appeared out of nowhere and jumped the young man from multiple directions.

Ye Qing didn’t dodge though. He continued to bring his saber down on Fang Nianshui’s head with unwavering determination. What did skill matter when he possessed enough strength to break it all?

Three of the five silhouettes were crushed into bits when they clashed against Ye Qing’s saber, but two managed to land on his arm and leg and bleed him. On the other hand, Fang Nianshui had managed to block his strike a third time. This would seem like a win for the hunter if not for the violent force behind Ye Qing's saber pouring into his body like tidewater, shattering his arm bones and squeezing his internal organs tight.

“Pwack!”

Fang Nianshui abruptly spat out a mouthful of blood mixed with pieces of raw flesh. Face as pale as a sheet, he shot Ye Qing a baleful glare while uttering, “Even… even if you’re an adept Reforged, there’s no way you can be this strong!”

“Huh? Haven’t I told you before? I’m not just ‘any’ person. I have had godly strength since I was a babe!”

Although Ye Qing was talking, he hadn’t forgotten to move his hands. Again and again, he swung at Fang Nianshui’s head like he would hack the conniving assassin into itsy bitsy pieces. He might not know any saber technique, but he had overwhelming strength and vigor. If one overhead swing wasn’t enough to kill Fang Nianshui, then five would do it. If five overhead swings still wasn’t enough, then twenty would do it.

“You think you’ve won just because you have godly strength, brat? I’ll show you my true power right now!” Fang Nianshui roared. As soon as he said this, he threw out a fiery red talisman that burst into flames and descended on top of Ye Qing like a net.

“That's not goint to do anything!” declared Ye Qing with a disdainful snort. The fire talisman might look deadly, but it was only effective against Strangers who were afraid of fire. As for him, well, one swing of the saber was all he needed to cut the curtain of flames into two.

Unbeknownst to Ye Qing, a golden light had washed over Fang Nianshui’s saber while he was dealing with the fire talisman. The next second, the hunter swung his saber at Ye Qing’s descending blade and—Crack!—snapped it like a twig.

“Five Tigers Sever The Soul”

That wasn’t the end of Fang Nianshui’s counterattack. When the hunter brought his saber down again, Ye Qing felt as if an attack was coming from his left, right, front, back and center with deadly power at the same time. Moreover, the roar of the five tigers possessed a mind-bending quality that seemed intent on terrifying the victim with brute force, violence and bloodthirst.

Caught off guard and without a weapon, there was just no way Ye Qing could block the attack no matter what. He had no choice but to hug his head, protect his vitals as well as he could, and roll away from Fang Nianshui.

Ye Qing was fast, but the saber energies were even faster. They left five deep gashes on his body and spilled blood everywhere. The wound across his chest especially was so long and deep that one could vaguely glimpse his wriggling innards and beating heart.

“Hahahaha! So what if you have godly strength? You’re still going to die!” Fang Nianshui burst out laughing even as he spat out another mouthful of blood. All of his anger and frustration had been swept clean with this singular success.

The fire talisman he threw earlier was just a distraction. It was to buy himself enough time to empower his saber with an edge talisman. As its name might suggest, the function of the edge talisman was to provide any weapon a fine, cutting edge. It was why he was able to break Ye Qing’s saber in one hit.

Without his saber, how could Ye Qing possibly beat him?

Of course, the talismans weren’t cheap, and Fang Nianshui could not help but wince every time he thought about them. Still, it was worth it if he could obtain Ye Qing’s Strange Artifact in return.

Whatever the Strange Artifact might be, it had transformed Ye Qing from a helpless man to an adept Reforged in a matter of days. Not only that, his strength was unnatural even for an adept Reforged. Fang Nianshui was sure that it was all thanks to the Strange Artifact. If he could obtain it, he would surely grow so much more powerful and reach unprecedented heights.

“Cough cough…. I’ll admit that godly strength isn’t that useful!” Ye Qing let out a couple violent coughs before continuing, “But a powerful vigor and an exorbitant amount of vitality? Now that’s a different story altogether.”

Ye Qing’s extraordinary strength and physique had never been his greatest advantage. It was his awe-inspiring vigor, or to put it more accurately, the incredible power hidden within his blood.

The next moment, a tremendous amount of vitality flowed out of Ye Qing’s blood and flowed into the open wound across his chest. Then, the wound began wriggling and healing right before Fang Nianshui’s eyes. In just the span of a couple breaths, every wound on Ye Qing’s body vanished like they were never there, leaving not even a tiny scar behind.

“Impossible…” Fang Nianshui blurted in disbelief. He was starting to think that the situation was spiraling out of his control.

“Alright then. It’s my turn now!” Ye Qing declared before rushing toward Fang Nianshui like a tiger.

“Argh! So what if you have an astounding amount of vigor? I’m still going to kill you in the end!”

Fang Nianshui let out a crazed howl before executing an extremely telegraphed overhead swing. It looked like he had lost his mind to panic and wanted nothing more but to cut the young man in half. However, he changed his technique at the last moment and aimed a stab at Ye Qing’s heart instead.

Ye Qing shifted his feet slightly before pushing forward. Fang Nianshui's saber skewered him like a hot knife through butter, but it missed his heart with just milimeters to spare. There was enough pain that he had to stifle a groan, but Ye Qing soldiered on and plunged his broken saber into Fang Nianshui’s stomach.

For a second, the hunter stared at Ye Qing as if he couldn’t believe what just happened. Then, he let out another crazed howl and gripped the hilt of his saber with both hands. “There is no way! There is no way I cannot kill the likes of you!”

Unfortunately for Fang Nianshui, Ye Qing was able to grab the saber embedded in his chest before he could do anything. His tremendous strength prevented the hunter from twisting the hilt even a little. Not about to allow Fang Nianshui any more funny ideas, Ye Qing leaned back a little and gave him the headbutt of his life. At the same time, he pushed his broken saber another inch deeper into Fang Nianshui's stomach.

Something neither Ye Qing nor Fang Nianshui expected happened then. Like sharks who caught the scent of blood, Ye Qing’s blood abruptly came alive and filled him with irresistible bloodlust. His eyes had turned crimson before he knew it.

Fang Nianshui had just recovered from his shock when he met Ye Qing’s eyes. He flinched in horror when he realized that it was crimson red, cold, merciless, and full of hunger.

“You—”

Stunned beyond words, Fang Nianshui tried to pull away only to feel a sudden, unnatural weakness taking hold of him. It took him a second to realize that he was losing blood. When he looked down, he saw that Ye Qing’s entire arm had turned bright red from all the blood flowing out of his body and into Ye Qing.

“Stranger… you’re a Stranger! You’re not human! You can’t kill me, you can’t… kill…”

The more blood he lost, the more Fang Nianshui felt like a plant that was losing all of its moisture to a desert. His consciousness grew blurrier and blurrier until it was no more.

Thump!

When the final drop of blood had been sucked out of Fang Nianshui’s body, the hunter collapsed on the ground with a loud thump, dry and lifeless.

Buzz…

A terrifying presence erupted from Ye Qing’s body then. Sometimes it was as unrestrained as a wild beast, and sometimes it shivered like someone was trying to wrestle it under control. Not only that, Ye Qing’s eyes remained red, cold, and full of hunger after the consumption. There wasn’t a shred of human emotion of rationality to be seen within his eyes.

A long, long time later, Ye Qing shuddered once before he slowly regained his consciousness. The unnatural redness in his eyes gradually faded away.

“That was too close…” exclaimed Ye Qing with lingering trepidation while wiping away the beads of sweat on his forehead.

There was a moment there where he could've lost himself to the ecstasy of accelerated power and succumbed to primal hunger and bloodlust. Had he lost his mind, he would’ve been entirely possessed by the desire to kill more people and devour even more blood.

Luckily, his willpower was just strong enough for him to resist the urge and come back as himself. Otherwise, the consequences would’ve been unimaginable.

“I must say this power feels incredible though!” Ye Qing clenched his fist and caused the air around it to pop. A hint of intoxication flashed across his features as he basked in the terrifying current of power running through his body.

The most obvious benefit he derived from this battle was his vigor increasing by at least half of its previous sum. He had acquired more power devouring the sum of Fang Nianshui’s vigor than all the dragon-serpent runes he had refined combined. He was about half a fierce stallion stronger than before as well.

Ye Qing was certain that his strength and vigor were greater than that of a late-stage Qi Invoker. His vigor in particular should rival that of a Channel Augmentor. Barring exceptional circumstances, there was literally no adept Reforged in the world he couldn’t trounce like a babe!

“It’s too bad gaining power via absorbing blood has its side effects even though it’s super fast. I should use it as little as possible in the future,” Ye Qing told himself.

I’m a warrior with strong willpower. I shan’t cultivate my power using such questionable means… unless my enemies insist on delivering themselves to my doorstep, of course.

“First things first, I should deal with Fang Nianshui’s corpse. It would be troublesome if someone finds me like this!”

Ye Qing stopped daydreaming and crossed his arms for a moment, thinking. Then, he began rifling through the hunter’s pockets.