“Brat, how dare you…”
Brother Quan, the leader who had earlier tried to “borrow a blade,” let out a roar half startled and half furious. The lackeys beside him seemed to be jolted awake by the sound, and immediately raised the weapons in their hands.
But the leader’s gaze remained fixed on the longsword in Feng Xue’s hand.
Those who scraped by in the junkyard always had to have some discernment to survive. The reason he had come to provoke Feng Xue was because he could tell that this sword was definitely not some treasure one could casually pick up in a junkyard. Add to that the fact that there was no trace of modification on Feng Xue’s body, and he had naturally taken him for one of those city folk who had read a few novels and then come to the junkyard seeking adventure. He had never imagined this little brat would strike so decisively.
No, not decisively!
The thug leader’s cybernetic eye rapidly replayed the scene from moments ago. He clearly saw Feng Xue’s raw, unpracticed sword stroke.
“The sword must be too sharp. This brat merely swung it at random, and it slit Green Hair’s throat.” Brother Quan made his judgment in an instant, the greed in his eyes growing thicker. Looking at Feng Xue, who still appeared “stunned,” he immediately waved his hand—
“Open fire!”
One cheap homemade firearm after another spat sparks, bullets tearing through the air as they sprayed toward Feng Xue. Such shoddy ammunition could not even penetrate the subdermal armor of the previous version, let alone the current one.
Feng Xue remained silent. In his mind, the information streams of the Hell Sword and the Heavenly Martial Killing Dao flowed past like cold creek water. The killing intent he had suppressed boiled up once more in that instant. Though his movements were still rough, his will to kill the enemy was utterly pure.
The sword in his hand was both familiar and strange. It was clearly the first time he had held it, yet it seemed like an extension of his arm. The unity of man and sword brought by the Hell Sword stood in stark contradiction to the awkwardness of a first-time grip, but against these inferior bullets, it was already enough.
The neural reflexes granted by the Phantom Dragon Soul Type III were more than sufficient to easily capture bullets that had not even reached the speed of sound. After ignoring the portion that could not touch him, he gently raised the sword’s edge.
“Pa!”
“Pa!”
“Pa!”
Bullets were knocked down one after another with ease. No, it should not even be called knocked down—the bullets had “just so happened” to crash into the sturdy body of the sword. Because the alignment of the blade was not even proper, he had not managed to cut the bullets apart.
“Fuck!” Brother Quan’s none-too-excellent assistant AI nearly crashed from this display of being both absurdly strong and embarrassingly unskilled①, but that only made Brother Quan all the more determined to kill him.
This kid looked completely unmodified, yet was showing such outrageous performance. The only possibility was that he had installed some insanely powerful cyberware plug-in, but the kid himself had absolutely no experience using it. Otherwise, even if he had practiced for just two days, with AI calibration he would never make such a beginner’s mistake as failing to align the blade.
A person like this was simply not someone the junk district could raise. In fact, even the streets above could not raise someone like this! He had to be the second generation of some building district or tower district family, fitted with a new toy and down here to test his blade!
“Rich kid!”
The label rapidly took shape in Brother Quan’s mind, then transformed into a thick killing intent. Not because he hated the rich, but because he knew very well that in the eyes of rich people, scavengers like them from the junk district did not count as human at all.
At this point, even if he knelt and begged for mercy, he would inevitably be unable to escape death. Even if he successfully fled, the kid would not even need to say a word; as long as word leaked out, there would be crowds of people eager to curry favor, scrambling to kill him first.
The fixers and gang forces in the residential district were not something the junk district could compare to. No—before even that, the boss of his own gang might hand him over first!
But conversely, as long as he killed this kid here, the junkyard would be the best possible grave. There would be no shortage of scavengers jumping out to share the risk. As long as he took away the most valuable cyberware plug-ins, that ninety-percent-new corpse would immediately be divided up by those hyenas.
By the time the great figure who had lost his son traced things here, he would have already changed who knew how many faces!
The dark wisdom of the underworld sorted his thoughts out in an instant. Brother Quan raised his right arm, making as if to throw a punch. Feng Xue immediately raised his sword to meet it, but in that very instant, Feng Xue suddenly caught a faint hum.
Thanks to having seen enough cyberware in Old Man Jiang’s shop, Feng Xue understood the source of that sound almost instantly. Without the slightest hesitation, he directly activated Rocket Headbutt. As he abruptly twisted his head, his entire body forcibly dragged out a string of afterimages in a ridiculous posture.
And in the next instant, a pale blue pulse beam had already shattered those afterimages. Seeing his trump card miss, Brother Quan hurriedly turned his wrist, but compared to his reaction, Feng Xue—who possessed three seconds of sonic-speed displacement—had already carved out a semicircle!
At this moment, there was no need for any technique. Feng Xue merely raised the longsword, and then kept shaking his head!
…Three seconds later…
Feng Xue twisted his neck somewhat uncomfortably. Around him lay nothing but corpses cut apart from the chest.
“Huff…”
Though his first battle had not been particularly graceful, it had been easy enough. Compared to before, when he had played every trump card he had and still been forced into a prolonged fight, this time Feng Xue had only used up one Rocket Headbutt—and even that had been a waste caused by his overreaction.
The stench of organs mingled with a rust-like smell and began to spread. Feng Xue, however, felt not the slightest nausea. Instead, he felt a perverse sense of comfort, as though he had vented all the pent-up frustration in his chest. Although he now felt somewhat empty, it was still better than keeping every emotion bottled up inside.
“Huff…”
Exhaling the foul breath in his chest, Feng Xue withdrew the longsword inch by inch back into his left arm. Then he crouched down, grabbed Brother Quan’s right arm, and revealed a disdainful expression—
“To think such good parts were assembled into this kind of trash. How has the guy who made this cyberware not been beaten to death?”
That was what he said, but he still chopped down with his palm. The palm blade, unified with sword intent, was as sharp as a real blade, directly severing the arm at the root. He removed the excess cable interfaces and casually tossed it into the backpack behind him.
Today was Tuesday, the second day after trash day. If one searched carefully, there should still be plenty of valuable junk to find. But Feng Xue had already lost any desire to dig around in piles of trash. He merely walked silently out of this spawn point.
The earlier gunshots had already drawn quite a bit of attention. When Feng Xue walked out from around the corner, pairs of gazes, many of them malicious, immediately locked onto him.
They clearly knew a battle had just occurred. They clearly knew that this clean, spotless youth walking out from an area where gunfire had erupted could not be simple. Yet the hyenas still surrounded him.
It was not that they did not know how to read the situation, but that Feng Xue was simply far too tempting.
Under cybernetic-eye scans, his skin could easily be identified as original tissue, without the slightest trace of hardship or labor. A rich person like this smelled of wealth from head to toe.
Add in a little bit of hatred toward the rich, and this group of desperadoes, who gambled with their lives every day, could not help baring their fangs.
“So, in a junkyard, the thing there’s never a shortage of really is trash.”
Feng Xue, still somewhat immersed in the confusion and emptiness after slaughter, gave rise to a bit of tension. Stimulated by the domineering will contained within the Heavenly Martial Killing Dao, he seemed to have found a way to fill that emptiness.
“For now, I’ll just kill first and think later!”
Note ①: Being able to block bullets in advance means he is much faster than them. In that situation, the optimal solution is to dodge. As for cutting bullets… I know many people say that splitting a bullet just means making more holes in your body… but that is not actually the case. After a bullet strikes a blade and splits, it will deflect to both sides, so as long as you do not cut it very close to your body, it will basically fly past on either side. You can look at our own competitions for this—there are events where sniper rifles are used to shoot daggers, producing “one bullet, two holes.” With just a few centimeters of distance, the bullet fragments separate quite far, and the more evenly it is split, the farther apart they go. But if your technique is poor and you only shave off a small piece, then there will be problems.
As for being both strong and unskilled, it is because cutting a bullet is superior to blocking it with the body of the sword.
Assuming you do not dodge, cutting the bullet can effectively reduce the impact you receive. But if you block with the sword body, your arm/weapon has to bear all of the bullet’s kinetic energy. Leaving aside whether or not it damages the weapon, your body will first have to endure the impact.
The protagonist can predict where the bullet will land in advance and has enough time to block it with his sword. That is the strong part.
But he cannot even align the blade properly, which shows he truly has no experience in this area. That is the unskilled part.
Incidentally, the so-called blade alignment refers to having the direction of the blade edge match the direction of the slash/thrust. That way, whether chopping, cleaving, or stabbing, one can ensure the action is clean and efficient, reducing resistance while also lowering wear on the weapon.
Many kendo immortals and dojo obsessives pursue proper blade alignment like mad, but in fact it is only a basic skill. Emphasizing this either means they are too lazy to teach anything real, or that they are the same sort as the “rice immortals.”
Of course, there are also brats who only know this one term and keep it on their lips to show off their professionalism.