Era of Mist

Chapter 225 -224: Sweeping the Enemies, Seizing Territory

CLANG! CLANG! People outside were ramming the main hall doors. The doors weren’t reinforced or bulletproof, and as the men outside smashed and slammed against them, the lock rattled and groaned, on the verge of giving way.

From the moment Shi Tiexin made his move to the doors being on the verge of collapse, a mere three to five minutes had passed. Normally, no one would have expected an attack under these circumstances.

But in those few minutes, all the men in black were already dead.

Shi Tiexin looked at his hands, then clenched them into fists and strode toward the door.

‘What I want to do now… is max out my Basic Fist Arts progress bar.’

He flexed his arms, suddenly hoisting a heavy table onto his shoulders, and charged toward the door with heavy strides. Stopping three meters from the entrance, Shi Tiexin grabbed the table by its legs. With a powerful swing of his arms, the entire table WHOOSHED through the air as it began to spin, rapidly gaining speed.

CLANG! BANG! CRACK! The doors burst open and a few lower-ranking men in black scrambled inside. They were desperate to both back up their boss and capture the enemy leader—it was their only hope to turn the tables amidst the enemy’s siege.

But the moment the doors flew open, they saw a heavy, long table hurtling toward them with a dull roar.

“Aargh!” “Ugh!” Amidst a chorus of screams, the men crowding the doorway collapsed in droves, many with broken arms and legs. Those behind them surged forward, only to end up in a chaotic pile, trampling one another. Their limbs tangled, and the more they panicked, the harder it was to get back up. They ended up creating a human bottleneck right at the entrance. In such a situation, firearms were severely restricted; a brick would have been more effective.

One man insisted on trying to raise his gun, but a large foot stomped down, snapping his wrist with a sharp CRACK.

Shi Tiexin glanced at the crimson progress bar for his Basic Fist Arts. In just that short time, it had already passed the eighty-mark and was nearing ninety. ‘Alright then,’ he resolved, ‘I’ll max out the Basic Fist Arts today.’

Shaking out his shoulders, Shi Tiexin plowed into the horde like a battle tank, and the crowd immediately erupted in widespread screams.

Inside the hall, Wang Dafu watched with a complicated expression as Shi Tiexin carved a path through the crowd. As they say, no plan survives first contact. His original plan had been good, but many things that happened today had far exceeded his expectations.

In his plan, his ambush team was supposed to show up and quickly take control of the situation. But unexpectedly, the Hongshun Society’s guards had been exceptionally stubborn, preventing his men, who were meant to breach the perimeter quickly, from getting inside.

Similarly, in his grand design, Shi Tiexin was only meant to be a minor distraction, the “feint to the east” in the classic “feint east, attack west” strategy. He had never intended for his top fighter to take on an entire group alone. It was too reckless, too dangerous.

But in reality, this “feint” had single-handedly wiped out all the enemies and had even turned back to support the supposed “main attack.”

‘If it weren’t for Shi Tiexin…’ Wang Dafu broke into a cold sweat just thinking about it. But then he glanced over at the Ouyang brothers and was reminded of the old saying: winners are kings and losers are outlaws. ‘My plan might have had some hiccups,’ he thought, ‘but in the end, I still won.’

“Ah Fa! W-what the hell is going on here? Give me an explanation!” The Squad Leader, his face bruised and swollen, scrambled up from the sidelines, roaring.

Wang Dafu shot the Squad Leader a look, but this time, it lacked the deference he’d shown before.

The operation was a success. The Ouyang brothers were in the bag, and his own power in Tokyo was set to skyrocket. What’s more, he had a powerhouse like Shi Tiexin. As long as he used a warrior like that well—used him *scientifically*—he wouldn’t have to put up with this so-called superior’s attitude ever again.

So Wang Dafu smiled again, but this time it held no respect, only an air of extraordinary self-assurance.

“Do you still need an explanation?” Wang Dafu pointed at the Ouyang brothers. “The Hongshun Society has been taken. That’s what’s going on.”

“Hey! It’s me! Get moving, now!” Elsewhere, Ah Hui, who’d been stunned for a good while, suddenly leaped up like a man possessed. He snatched his phone and bellowed, “Get all our guys and raid Hongshun’s turf immediately! I want it all taken! —Damn it, you heard me right! Now get the fuck to work!!”

The other bosses present saw Ah Hui’s move and also had a sudden moment of clarity, pulling out their phones to issue a flurry of anxious commands. Now that the Hongshun Society was about to collapse, you’d have to be an idiot not to make a land grab right now.

Wang Dafu watched them but didn’t intervene, merely scoffing coldly to himself.

‘That Ah Hui,’ he thought. ‘He hides in the back during a fight, but when it’s time to carve up the spoils and grab territory, no one is more eager. A pity. Mobilizing his men only now? Too late!’

At the very same moment Shi Tiexin had begun his assault, Ah Fei was out on the streets, leading thirty handpicked men lying in wait under the cover of darkness. Thirty men wasn’t a large force, but the targets Shi Tiexin had marked were simple. For the first wave of a land grab, thirty reliable subordinates were far more useful than a hundred who were liable to leak information.

BUZZ. BUZZ. Ah Fei glanced at his vibrating phone. A new message had arrived.

After reading the message, Ah Fei’s face showed a flicker of hesitation. He seemed to struggle for a long moment, weighing his options. Finally, he yelled to the others, “Move out!”

VROOOM—!

All the engines roared to life. A driver nicknamed Hot-Head D led the charge, speeding toward the predetermined targets. These targets—a mix of people and property, workshops and warehouses, office buildings and shops—had been carefully selected by Shi Tiexin after analyzing intelligence from Officer Gao.

In the distance, Officer Gao, dressed in a trench coat, watched the activity on the street. He murmured to himself with a sigh, “I didn’t expect him to actually move against the Ouyang brothers. I just wonder if he can really wipe them out completely.”

The Tokyo night erupted into chaos.

The men deployed by Shi Tiexin were only a small piece of the pie in this carve-up. The lion’s share was in Wang Dafu’s hands. Tonight, including his ambush team, Wang Dafu had mobilized over a thousand men. They fanned out across the city, launching a multi-pronged assault to devour the Hongshun Society’s empire in its entirety.

Wang Dafu had long coveted the Hongshun Society and had already gathered detailed intelligence on all their key personnel, important locations, and critical strongholds. Now that his scheme had succeeded, he immediately dispatched his forces to launch a fiery assault.

The BANG and POP of incessant gunfire filled the air. The citizens of Tokyo hid in their homes, trembling, not daring to even peek outside. They cowered in despair, cursing hysterically, praying for the endless night to pass quickly.

「5:30 the next morning.」 A faint dawn began to etch the eastern sky.

Shi Tiexin emerged at an unhurried pace from the entrance of a nondescript old factory. The previous night, he had swept through all the enemies at the hotel, ensuring Wang Dafu had control of the situation before heading out to support his own men.

This old factory was one of the enemy’s key strongholds.

DRIP. DRIP. Blood dripped from Shi Tiexin’s fists, leaving a trail behind him, but he paid it no mind.

The pseudo-core in his lower abdomen had shrunk from the size of a quail’s egg back to the size of a peanut, but he didn’t care about that either.

Though his hands dripped with blood, very little of it was his own. And though the pseudo-core in his lower abdomen had shrunk, it wasn’t completely depleted, so his cultivation hadn’t regressed from the Second Realm. The core remained perfectly formed, and he knew he could recover quickly with food and nourishment.

These were all necessary costs.

The only question was whether the payoff had been worth the price.