Chapter Seven: Ignition

Just as the spinning throwing knife was about to strike Zhou Yu, he moved. He dropped low, then leaped, transforming into a flash of red light that soared into the sky. In that instant, he was on the verge of being engulfed by the dragon’s breath—yet a wave of icy white cold instantly froze the torrent of flame. It was Liu Yueming intervening to help!

The four Japanese were stunned; the Chinese youth, shrouded in a haze of blood, vanished from sight in a blink. Zhou Yu’s speed was beyond comprehension.

With a crisp crack, Zhou Yu smashed the frozen yellow dragon’s breath with his fist, shattering it. Using the recoil, he shot like a red streak toward one of the Japanese. The searing pain coursing through his body had nearly driven Zhou Yu to madness. Kill! Only by slaughtering these detestable foes could he feel any measure of relief, to blunt the agony wracking his flesh.

A scream had barely left the lips when Zhou Yu’s fist struck a Japanese man who had been poised to ambush him. The man’s chest was pierced clean through, but the jolt of pain from such movement and collision nearly caused Zhou Yu to black out. Masters condensed the energy in their bodies into their fists, amplifying their blows to break stone and metal. It was not brute force but the impact of energy itself that clashed against matter.

But Zhou Yu had not reached such mastery. He knew nothing of these techniques. His method was crude: he simply forced energy through his limbs, making direct contact with the ground and the enemy’s body to accelerate himself.

Each leap tore the muscles and bones of his legs under the immense recoil, and the cells within him frantically absorbed energy, dividing and repairing the damaged tissue. The blood mist swirling about him was expelled, damaged cells cast from his body.

With every attack, Zhou Yu’s fists struck flesh and bone without reserve. Others would feel pain—he felt agony tenfold! His right fist was shattered and reborn again and again. The torment was unimaginable, a suffering worse than death itself. No sane man would choose such a path.

Though the vitality of Zhou Yu’s cells was formidable, he was far from able to instantly regenerate lost tissue. After each motion, he needed to rest; he could not move again until the pain subsided.

In the Martial Hall, all the transmigrators had paused, eyes fixed on the youth wreathed in blood-red mist. He stood motionless, and before him, the Japanese man he had pierced through was still trembling, gurgling painfully, blood streaming from nose and mouth, pooling on the ground.

He was a demon from the depths of hell! That thought flashed through the minds of nearly every transmigrator present. The hall was silent as death; the drop of a needle would have sounded like thunder.

With a sudden sound, the blood mist still lingered where he had stood, but Zhou Yu was gone, flashing toward another Japanese adversary.

That Japanese, however, was ready. He raised his katana, blocking Zhou Yu’s attack. Koizumi had once been a samurai. On the technologically advanced Earth, the samurai class had all but vanished, yet a few still carried on the legacy. Before his transmigration, Koizumi had reached the level of “Horse Return,” and his strength had grown even further in this world, nearing the rank of a demon general. Skilled in the way of the sword, he could anticipate Zhou Yu’s line of attack and held his blade in a horizontal guard.

It was too late—Koizumi’s katana blocked Zhou Yu’s path, and Zhou Yu was moving too fast to change direction. Gritting his teeth, he gathered all his energy into the index finger of his right hand and, with a desperate resolve, thrust it toward the blade.

The energy was about to burst his finger apart. The agony was indescribable, as if the nerves of all ten fingers were being scorched. In the blink of an eye, Zhou Yu left only a fading afterimage in the air, a streak of red like an arrow of blood, aimed straight at Koizumi—his index finger the arrowhead.

“Hah!” Seeing Zhou Yu appear before him in a flash, Koizumi shouted, his katana gleaming faintly with a blue light. Koizumi had mastered sword aura! Bathed in its glow, his blade was now a weapon that could cleave iron like clay.

“Stupid Chinese pig! Die!” Koizumi’s face twisted with malice as he roared, the sword aura on his blade surging brighter.

“Japanese really are treacherous. That guy was holding back all along,” a blond man muttered as he approached a medium-sized, powerfully built bald white man beside him.

The bald man’s eyes gleamed with a bloodthirsty light, like a starving panther. “Jack, no matter what, we have to take Koizumi down. That dog wagging its tail for us—its fangs are still too sharp!”

The blond nodded. “Looks like that Chinese boy is finished.”

The blade, wreathed in sword aura, was razor-sharp. It sliced through Zhou Yu’s index finger as if through tofu, severing the first joint before his regeneration could respond.

A savage smile spread across Koizumi’s face. “Stupid Chinese pig, you dare use flesh and bone against my sword imbued with aura?”

Zhou Yu could bear it no longer. The pain of his index finger being sliced through was nothing compared to the agonizing pressure of the energy gathered at the second joint. His entire finger, his whole arm, felt ready to burst. As the blade cut into the second joint, the pent-up energy finally found release. With a spray of blood, it shot out as a crimson arrow from his fingertip.

The red arrow shattered the katana, breaking through the sword aura, and struck Koizumi squarely in the forehead, leaving a clean, translucent hole.

“How...how is this possible?” Koizumi’s sword clattered to the stone floor, his knees buckled, and he fell dead with his head bowed.

Though he had blasted Koizumi apart with a single strike, Zhou Yu’s forward momentum did not stop. He crashed his knee into Koizumi’s corpse, smashing the head into a cloud of bloody mist. The watching transmigrators gasped, some nearly retching, recoiling several steps—the violence was too raw, too gruesome.

Zhou Yu struggled to steady himself, standing motionless as the sunlight fell across his face, turning his blood-soaked skin a golden-red hue that was almost unbearable to behold.

Only Zhou Yu himself knew that he could fight no more. Blood still dripped from his right index finger. His formidable regeneration could not even staunch the bleeding now; he was far beyond his limits.

The bald white man pushed through the crowd toward Zhou Yu. Around where he had stood, five corpses lay scattered—three black men and two Asians—all so shattered that their deaths were even more horrific than Koizumi’s.

No one, black, yellow, or white, dared stand near the bald man; everyone instinctively moved out of his path.

A golden dragon in the sky roared, then turned into a shaft of golden light and shot into the bald man’s body.

The aura emanating from him grew even more intense, almost tangible, pushing those nearby away.

Step by step, he advanced like a lion prepared to fight to the death—his target, Zhou Yu.