Chapter Ninety-Eight: Mutual Recognition

“Ah! Ah! Ah!”

The fat man shrieked himself hoarse. It felt as if his whole arm had been hacked off, and that icy, marrow-deep agony made him feel as though he might die on the spot.

His frantic howling drew the attention of people over at the foundation-laying ceremony more than a hundred meters away. A few leaders glanced over, but the distance was too great and the view partly blocked by heavy construction equipment. The brief cries were quickly swallowed by the host’s amplified voice.

“Shall I make you scream again?”

The tip of Zhang Rui’s blade pressed straight against the fat man’s belly. The cold gleam flashed in everyone’s eyes, terrifying him so badly that his whole body trembled. Zhang Rui’s savage counterattack had robbed him of all courage.

“N-no... no! Help me!”

The fat man no longer dared utter even a word of protest against Zhang Rui. Shaking all over, he cried out to Brother Xing and slowly pulled his body backward, but the knife tip followed him step for step, leaving him no chance to dodge. He had already seen Zhang Rui’s speed; no matter where he ran, if Zhang Rui wanted to stab him, he would never get away.

Whoosh!

At that moment, Brother Xing finally struck.

The autumn wind swept by, stirring the dust on the ground. Brother Xing sprang forward in a single bound, borrowing the momentum of his leap to whip out a powerful horizontal kick, striking directly at the back of Zhang Rui’s blade!

Snap!

Zhang Rui reversed the blade and thrust straight toward Brother Xing’s foot, to see who would break first.

The thick sole of the Adidas shoe slammed into the razor-sharp machete edge. With a clang, the blade was knocked to the ground by the force of the kick. Zhang Rui felt a tingling numbness in his hand and could not help but sigh. “At last, I’ve met someone halfway decent in Bohai City. Not bad at all.”

To smack Zhang Rui’s blade to the ground required considerable leg strength. Though the sole of Brother Xing’s shoe was almost cut through, being able to do that was already impressive.

Brother Xing perhaps had not expected that his proudest splitting kick would meet such resistance before finally slamming the blade to the ground. After all, the other man was merely gripping a knife with his wrist, while he was driving out a heavy leg; the weight was not comparable to begin with.

But there was no time to dwell on it. First the fight, questions later. If no one could tell who won, the debate would drag on endlessly.

Then the two men shuffled across the sandy ground and crashed into each other with their fists.

Zhang Rui was now fired up. It was not easy to find a worthy opponent in Bohai, and he was certainly not about to let him go.

He saw Zhang Rui’s right arm lifting high, the muscles near the elbow swelling until they threatened to burst through his clothes. Fingers clenched, he roared downward and smashed a punch straight at Brother Xing’s chest.

Brother Xing was no slouch either. His body trembled violently, one arm crossing his chest in defense, and he actually used the force to deflect Zhang Rui’s heavy punch outward. Zhang Rui’s fist brushed past Brother Xing’s chest and slid away.

It had missed its target.

That was rare in Zhang Rui’s entire career of fighting.

“So he knows a bit of Taiji and Bagua technique after all. To dissolve the wind of such a heavy punch... he’s definitely no ordinary man.”

Zhang Rui had completely underestimated Brother Xing. He had never imagined that such a hidden master could exist in a place as small as Bohai.

Whoosh!

Without another word, Brother Xing went on the offensive.

He took a wide sidestep, followed by a quick shuffle, directly leaping out of Zhang Rui’s attack range. In an instant he turned back with a sweeping punch whose angle between upper arm and forearm exceeded one hundred and sixty degrees, carrying a sharp, chilling undercurrent of force.

If that landed, it would be a deadly blow.

The corner of Zhang Rui’s mouth curled. With hundreds of fights behind him, he had already read his opponent’s footwork. If the first exchange had been his underestimation, then in this round he would not let himself miss again.

Boom!

Zhang Rui did not retreat but advanced instead. Facing the heavy sweeping punch, he suddenly twisted his waist, then unleashed a concealed and blindingly fast hooking kick. It came in from low to high, aiming straight for Brother Xing’s neck.

Brother Xing was tall and powerfully built, fierce enough but a little slow to react. Faced with Zhang Rui’s sudden hook kick, he merely tried to lean aside and dodge.

But Zhang Rui’s long leg clung to him like a viper, relentless and unyielding, striking for the neck. His ankle turned, and he slapped the two-hundred-jin Brother Xing flat to the ground. Brother Xing’s body crashed heavily onto a dirt mound three meters away, sending up a cloud of dust. Only when he tried to move again did he realize his neck had been sprained, and he no longer dared make the slightest motion.

This was Zhang Rui’s killing strike: not enough to take the opponent’s life, but enough to strip away all ability to resist and force surrender.

Seeing this, Wei Yong, who had just been standing some distance away with folded arms, enjoying the show, could not help swallowing hard. He had never imagined Zhang Rui to be this formidable, able to bring down even Tian Xing, the closed-door disciple of Bagua Sect, and with such ease.

Only then did Wei Yong begin to sway as he held his waist and slowly shuffled toward the portable site office, muttering as if to no one in particular, “Damn it, I ran too fast and pulled something in my leg. Hurts like hell.”

Zhang Rui pressed a foot against Brother Xing’s chest, pinning him to the ground, but did not continue applying force. “You lost.”

Lying there like a toppled Buddha, Brother Xing twisted his mouth and shouted, “Damn it! Where the hell did you come from?”

There were only so many formidable figures in Bohai. Tian Xing knew them all and had crossed hands with them before, yet he had never lost so quickly or so miserably, never been stamped into the ground and left unable to move.

Still, he did not feel especially disgraced. Victory crowns the king; defeat makes the bandit. That was an immutable rule. As a peripheral disciple of Shaolin and a closed-door trainee of the Bagua Sect, he would not resort to the shameless struggle of a gangster. Losing was losing. In this world, there were simply too many strong people.

“Since you lost, are you still planning to occupy this square?”

With a cigarette handed over by Li Liang between his lips, Zhang Rui took a drag, then bent down and put the cigarette to the mouth of Tian Xing, who was lying on the ground.

“That’s not for me to decide. You can talk to my big brother.”

Tian Xing was not like the other petty hoodlums. He valued brotherhood and would not scream curses at someone’s ancestors in a fit of rage, but he truly did not have the authority to make decisions on this project.

“Who’s your big brother?”

Zhang Rui asked.

“Xie Tianhua.”

The moment the words left Tian Xing’s mouth, Li Liang’s legs nearly gave out.

For someone like Li Liang, a small-time thug who had never made it anywhere, Xie Tianhua was a godlike existence, unquestionably one of the top ten gang bosses in Bohai City. No wonder his underlings were so arrogant; hearing that it was Xie Tianhua explained everything.

Zhang Rui had heard Xie Tianhua’s name six years ago, but back then it was not especially resounding. After a moment of thought, he let go of Tian Xing and said, “Tell him my name is Zhang Rui. I want this square.”

“There are many things that can’t be solved just by being good at fighting.”

Tian Xing exhaled a plume of smoke, brushed the dust from his clothes, and fixed Zhang Rui with a steady look. In a low voice he said, “Still, I respect your skill and courage. We’re the general contractor on this project, and we also have to hire trucks to haul the earth ourselves. If you have them, we can use all of yours.”