Apotheosis Begins with Tai Chi

The man behind the door took the box and fell silent for a moment.

Li Zhong didn’t say a word. He could clearly hear a series of rustling sounds from behind the door: the tearing of black cloth, the scraping of a seal, the snapping of a small lock, and the opening and closing of a wooden box.

”Lord Xing, if everything is in order, I’ll be on my way.”

Through the crack in the door, Li Zhong vaguely saw the man tuck the wooden box into his robes. Clearly, there was nothing wrong with its contents. He felt a sense of relief and prepared to take his leave.

”Hold on.”

The door was pulled open a little wider from the inside.

A large hand with abnormally long, thick fingers covered in calluses—as if encased in iron—slowly reached out.

The five fingers spread, then clamped down.

Li Zhong felt a weight descend on his shoulder as if a block of iron had been placed on it, and his back couldn’t help but slump slightly.

”Lord Xing? What are you...?”

A look of surprise crossed Li Zhong’s face.

This was far from his first visit. In the past, he had always just slipped the Silver Notes through the crack in the door and left. The man had never spoken to him, let alone made such an ’intimate’ gesture.

”You’ve gone to a lot of trouble for me these past few days. There’s something I want to say, from the bottom of my heart.”

The man’s voice from behind the door was gravelly, carrying a strange quality that seemed to bore right through the eardrums.

”...Go on, sir.”

Li Zhong nodded and subconsciously leaned a little closer.

”I’ve already said it...”

The man uttered the half-sentence nonchalantly.

Before his voice had even faded, the hand resting on Li Zhong’s shoulder twisted its wrist. The five long, thick fingers suddenly spread open and, like a Dragon Claw, seized the back of Li Zhong’s neck and yanked him forward...

The power that erupted in that instant was terrifying!

Li Zhong was completely unable to resist. His upper body pitched forward violently... his mind couldn’t even process what was happening. He had no time to scream, no time to even blink.

”SQUELCH! CRACK!”

The man’s other hand shot out from behind the door, ramming straight into Li Zhong’s forward-lurching chest.

In the dim yellow light, the hand shimmered with a faint, blackish-red luster, as if it were soaked in a slurry of blood-mixed mercury.

In the next instant, the sounds of tearing flesh and shattering bone rang out in such quick succession that the moment between them was negligible.

That second hand had chiseled straight into Li Zhong’s chest. With a violent jerk, it tore back out, ripping away a torrent of thick gore mixed with fragments of his heart and lungs.

Li Zhong’s body went completely stiff. He didn’t even manage a grunt before all signs of life were extinguished.

The man behind the door dragged him directly into the courtyard and tossed him casually onto the ground.

After the courtyard gate closed, Chen Cheng silently emerged from the corner of a dark alley in the distance. His steps were as if he were treading on air, making not a single sound. He walked to the outside of the courtyard, avoided the pool of blood on the ground, and stood with his back against the wall.

「Inside the courtyard.」

The stench of blood spread, overwhelming all other smells.

A man ambled out from the inner room.

He was gaunt, his shoulder blades jutting out like two sharp corners from beneath his old cotton-padded jacket. His face was a crisscross of deep lines, and his eye sockets were unnaturally deep. When he looked at people, he didn’t raise his eyelids, only letting his dim, lifeless eyes dart about within their sockets.

He stopped under the eaves at the edge of the courtyard, glanced at the corpse on the ground, and then at the fur-clad brute who had just ripped out a heart with his bare hands.

The brute was crouched with his back to the light. His clean hand quickly frisked the corpse, soon pulling out a Money Bag that he tucked into his own robes.

Strings of gore still dripped from the hand that had done the deed. He reached out, intending to wipe it on the corpse, but his movement paused. He pulled his hand back, slowly raising it before his eyes to examine... and admire it.

Finally, he actually stuck his fingers into his mouth one by one and sucked them clean.

”SMACK.”

The last suck was loud and resonant.

He licked his lips as if wanting more, smearing them with bloody froth. Then he turned his head and grinned at the man under the eaves, revealing bits of flesh stuck between his teeth and in his beard.

The man under the eaves remained impassive, as if long accustomed to such scenes.

”Slice off a couple pieces to go with some wine?”

The fur-clad brute slowly rose to his feet. He was tall and powerfully built, with broad shoulders and a thick waist. His neck was as wide as his head, his face was a mass of sagging, brutish flesh, and his beard exploded from his face in a tangled mess.

The moment he stood up, the corpse on the ground seemed to shrink in comparison.

”Shouldn’t you have something raw and crunchy to go with wine? The Heart’s been smashed to a pulp, what the hell is there left to eat!”

The man under the eaves curled his lip.

”Besides, the final payment is settled. What are we still doing in this shithole? We should pack up and get the hell out of here tonight...”

”We’ll go our separate ways. Don’t try to persuade me again!”

The fur-clad brute’s gaze turned cold, his tone carrying an unyielding hardness that permitted no argument.

”Old Zou was my sworn brother. During the famine back then, if he hadn’t pulled me out of a pile of corpses and stuffed a piece of warm meat in my mouth, there would be no Xing Xiong today!”

The fur-clad brute paused, then continued, speaking almost word by word.

”I will not let him die without knowing why!”

”Fine, fine, do whatever you want...”

The man under the eaves extended a gaunt hand and demanded in a low voice,

”Hand over the goods, give me my half, and I’ll leave immediately.”

”Share with your grandma!”

Xing Xiong grinned, spraying bloody froth and bits of flesh directly onto the other man’s hands and body.

”You son of a bitch! Xing Xiong! Have you no fucking shame? We agreed to split it fifty-fifty...”

A vicious glint flashed in the hollow, dim eyes of the man under the eaves. His left hand reached into his robes while his right hand felt for his lower back.

”Heh, Liu the Crooked, you tired of living?”

Xing Xiong gave a scornful laugh. He slowly raised his hands, the muscles in his arms suddenly bulging as the Blood Qi throughout his body began to boil in an instant.

Even from several paces away, Liu the Crooked could feel the excessively strong fluctuations of Blood Qi from within Xing Xiong’s body. It felt like standing at the mouth of a furnace, being licked by constantly erupting tongues of flame.

”Watch closely!”

Xing Xiong activated some kind of Cultivation Technique, and his ten abnormally long, thick fingers began to tense one by one.

His knuckles scraped together, producing the sharp screech of metal grinding on metal, like someone scraping a blade hard against a whetstone. His skin once again took on that strange luster, as if it were soaked in a slurry of blood-red mercury.