Chapter 24: Original Sin

No matter how powerful the enemy, so long as he was human and you had a blade in your hand, you could still work yourself up enough to fight desperately.

After all, everyone had one head sitting on two shoulders. Cut him and he would hurt. He would bleed. He would die.

But against someone like A’Ming—someone you could not hack to death, while he could take your head off with a single swing—every weapon embedded in his body looked almost like an ornament decorating him.

Their courage, along with a certain understanding of how the world was supposed to work, collapsed in an instant.

They were only a gang, after all.

A tiny gang in tiny Tiger Head City.

Of course they had desperate men among them, but claiming every last one was fearless in the face of death would have been absurd.

The remaining members of the Hyena Gang broke.

They threw down their weapons and fled screaming, running without direction, caring only about getting farther away from that demon.

Unfortunately, they seemed to have forgotten that besides being impossible to hack to death, the demon was also very fast.

What followed was nothing more than harvesting heads.

That robbed A’Ming of far too much enjoyment. He had hoped these men would cut him a few more times. Watching prey struggle uselessly before him, seeing despair in their eyes and hearing their miserable screams, gave him tremendous spiritual satisfaction.

But there was no helping it.

According to the Blind Man Bei, the people of this gang carried original sin. And if, after Master returned, the inn also took over their human-trafficking business, Master would be displeased.

They also needed to kill the chicken to frighten the monkeys.

So no matter how dull and repetitive the work became, A’Ming had to keep at it.

At least he could treat it as sword practice.

Thrust.

Cleave.

Slice.

Hack.

One gang member after another lost his life to A’Ming’s sword until no living person remained standing in the courtyard.

There were probably a few who had slipped through the net, but that no longer mattered. A’Ming was only one man and could not split himself into multiple bodies to chase them all down.

At least, not yet.

The tip of his sword pushed open a door.

A nauseating stench poured out.

Twenty or thirty barbarian men were huddled in the corners. Every one of them was injured and shackled.

When they saw A’Ming drenched in blood, with several weapons still embedded in his body, some immediately dropped to their knees and begged for mercy. Others trembled violently, muttering to themselves about the Barbarian God and calling him a demon.

A’Ming shook his head, backed out, and opened another door.

This was a side room, probably quarters for the gang members.

Three women who were clearly not barbarians had been tied up inside. Their bodies were covered in wounds. The woman on the far left appeared to be dead already. The other two were barely breathing.

All three were naked.

“Tsk, tsk...”

Obviously, the Hyena Gang served as middlemen in the human trade. With so many grown men gathered in these two courtyards, it would almost have been strange if they had not found ways to amuse themselves.

A’Ming found himself somewhat grateful the Blind Man had not come inside.

If that blind bastard saw this and it stirred up his sense of justice, heaven only knew what methods he would use to torture the Hyena Gang members to death.

Compared with the Blind Man Bei’s methods, A’Ming’s sword at least gave them a quick death.

That was practically supreme mercy.

A’Ming opened another room.

This one did not stink.

More than ten young girls were inside, their clothes still neat and intact. When A’Ming entered, they screamed in terror and huddled together.

The sudden outbreak of war had temporarily severed the trade routes, leaving the Hyena Gang with a considerable amount of unsold merchandise piled up here.

These girls were probably intended for barbarian nobles in the desert, which was why they had been kept in relatively good condition.

A’Ming shook his head and withdrew.

Everything was more or less settled.

The only disappointment was that he had failed to find a single glowing person among the Hyena Gang.

“Don’t pull those decorations out of your body. Just come outside like that.”

The Blind Man Bei’s voice reached him again.

“Are you sick?”

A’Ming shot back.

“Let’s say I am.”

“Fine.”

Since the man had already admitted he was sick, A’Ming felt he ought to be magnanimous.

He crossed the blood-soaked courtyard, pushed open the half-closed gate, and stepped outside.

Then he saw a group of men armed with sabers and spears standing beside the Blind Man Bei’s mule cart.

Closest to the Blind Man Bei stood a tall, red-faced man. He was enormous, perhaps only slightly shorter than Fan Li.

A’Ming’s first reaction was that the Blind Man Bei had been taken hostage.

He immediately rejected the thought himself.

Anyone else might be unable to warn a companion while held hostage, but the Blind Man Bei certainly was not among them. Besides, there was a reason everyone tacitly accepted this blind bastard as their strategist, and it was not merely because being blind made him look the part.

The moment A’Ming appeared, looking like a walking weapons rack, the men beside the mule cart recoiled several steps in fright.

Those wounds.

That dense reek of blood.

The utterly silent headquarters of the Hyena Gang behind him.

None of it could be faked.

The red-faced man stared at A’Ming.

Fear filled his eyes at first.

Then it transformed into fanaticism, like a devoted fan suddenly seeing the idol he had dreamed of meeting day and night.

The intensity of that gaze made even A’Ming frown.

A’Ming was quite certain that even when he sucked up to Master, he had never been this eager.

“I didn’t lie to you, did I?” the Blind Man Bei asked the red-faced man beside him.

“I... no. This humble one naturally believes you, sir.”

The Blind Man Bei smiled.

He reached out and drew a dagger from the red-faced man’s waist.

The man froze for a moment but did not stop him. He had a saber strapped across his back and a dagger at his waist.

The Blind Man Bei gestured for A’Ming to come closer.

A’Ming took two steps forward and stopped before him.

Then, the Blind Man Bei raised the dagger toward A’Ming and stabbed.

Pfft!

The dagger plunged into A’Ming’s chest.

“...”

A’Ming stood motionless.

The Blind Man Bei pulled the dagger back out.

“See that?”

“I... I... I saw it.”

The red-faced man’s complexion seemed to darken one moment and flush even redder the next. Clearly, he was swinging wildly between terror and delight.

“Oh.”

Pfft!

The Blind Man Bei stabbed A’Ming again.

“...”

A’Ming continued standing there without moving.

Sweat was already streaming down the red-faced man’s face.

His subordinates had also begun sweating.

“Serve us well, and one day you can become like this too.

“Endless life.

“An undying body.”

As he spoke, the Blind Man Bei turned his “gaze” around the group.

He was blind.

Yet everyone present suddenly felt as though they were being watched.

“You... may all have the same opportunity.”

Thud!

The red-faced man dropped directly to his knees like the most fanatical of believers.

His men knelt with him.

A’Ming could sense that while the Blind Man Bei had been speaking, he had released his mental power and subjected the group to a mild form of hypnosis.

It was a charlatan’s basic trick for pleasing believers, something akin to artificially manufacturing “charisma.” It made people subconsciously want to believe him and support him, as though everything he said were truth.

The Blind Man Bei pointed toward the courtyard.

“Don’t touch the captives inside. Settle them somewhere safe. Send all money and valuables to the inn.”

“Your subordinate obeys!” the red-faced man immediately answered.

“Have you arranged the meeting with the leader of the Cart Gang?” the Blind Man Bei asked.

“Yes. Judging by the time, he should already be at the inn.”

“Good.”

The Blind Man Bei beckoned to A’Ming, then raised his whip and flicked the mule in front.

A’Ming climbed onto the cart.

The mule cart slowly rolled forward.

Forward.

And farther forward...

Only after leaving the street did the Blind Man Bei explain, “That man just now was the leader of the Brotherhood Gang. His name is Hong Bazi.”

“I guessed.”

“Mm. The Hyena Gang carried original sin, so it had to be destroyed. Their business is something we cannot take over and continue, at least for now. But we still need a group of people under us who can actually get things done.”

“When did you hook up with him?”

“He has some psychological problems. Before I went blind, I was a psychologist. Under the pretext of fortune-telling, I treated him a little, so he trusts me deeply.

“Patients tend to develop a kind of blind worship toward doctors who can cure them.”

“It wasn’t only because you treated him.”

“Mm. Of course not. With a ready-made specimen like you around, too many things become easy.

“From ancient times to the present, whether ordinary people or emperors, generals, and ministers, people have been utterly obsessed with immortality. That obsession outweighs any amount of gold or silver.

“We simply don’t have enough people under us to use right now. I’m even starting to regret sending Fan Li into the desert.

“For now, we’ll use the Brotherhood Gang’s men. We’ll also have money coming in every month. That’s better than desperately trying to keep a single inn afloat.

“So we really ought to thank Young and Dangerous. Which means Master probably won’t object much to collecting protection money.”

“Where are we going next?”

A’Ming asked while pulling the weapons embedded in his body free one by one.

Zhuge Liang had once borrowed arrows with straw boats.

A’Ming had borrowed weapons with his own flesh.

“The Three Gods Society.”

“Your turn this time?”

“Mm.”

“What are you going to do?”

“The believers are innocent. Gullible people have always made up the majority of the world. There’s no need to make things as bloody as you did.

“Once we dispose of a few people at the top, the rest will naturally scatter when the tree falls.”

“And the Cart Gang is being left to the Fourth Lady?”

“She should already be entertaining them by now.”

“What about the officials backing the Hyena Gang? How do we deal with them?”

Every gang had people in officialdom protecting it.

Tiger Head City might be small, but it still had the complete administrative apparatus of a county seat.

“The people in officialdom don’t care who lives or dies beneath them. What they care about is receiving their tribute money.

“For now, we keep paying them as before.

“Once we’ve dealt with and consolidated everything below, we can formulate a new plan.”

“I thought you’d tell me to kill them.”

“There’s no need.

“To use an online game as an analogy, we’re still only in the beginner village.

“Especially people whose bodies glow—there aren’t many of them in Tiger Head City. You could even call them extremely rare.

“But since they have an entire system divided into nine grades, if we get too reckless and provoke someone genuinely formidable, we’ll be the ones getting cleaned up.”

A’Ming said nothing.

But silence itself was a form of agreement.

If only they could become stronger.

“That’s why I sent Liang Cheng and Xue San to accompany Master when he went off as a civilian laborer.

“Have you noticed?

“When Master was unconscious, we were ordinary people.

“During the half year Master remained unconscious, every one of us tried all sorts of methods, but none of us could recover even the slightest trace of our power.

“Then Master woke up.

“All we had to do was awkwardly go over, pledge our loyalty, get sentimental, flatter him a little—and some of our power immediately returned.

“So, what do you think Master is like?”

A’Ming fell into serious thought.

After a while, he answered, “An Oreo.”