When Tong Baitao saw the body flying toward him, he shoved it aside without mercy, letting the corpse tumble across the floor. Brandishing his steel rods, he strode aggressively forward.
Standing at the entrance, Tong Qianjiang suddenly raised a hand and aimed his muzzle at Chen Chuan's head. Though he did not fire, an ominous threat hung in the air.
This was the tacit understanding between the two brothers: while one went on the attack, the other provided covering support.
Meanwhile, atop the redoubt, the spider-like Lao Qi crawled about, deliberately making rustling sounds. He was asserting his presence while biding his time for a chance to strike.
Taking it all in through his sharpened senses, Chen Chuan watched Tong Baitao's figure loom larger before him. He shifted his footing and actively closed the distance, his long saber sweeping upward in an oblique slash.
To remain vigilant against the handgun at range and threats from behind, he did not unleash his full speed, leaving the trajectory of this slash clean and distinct. Yet driven by the mutated tissue inside his body, a surge of jin flowed straight into the blade.
Tong Baitao hurriedly brought both steel rods down to parry the saber. He managed to intercept the blow, but an unbelievable, explosive power erupted from it. His grip shattered instantly; one steel rod flew from his hand, and the other was severed cleanly with a sharp clang!
The flash of the blade did not stop, sweeping straight across his chest. In an instant, it carved a deep fissure through his chest carapace, exposing the inner shell tissue and chest wall beneath.
Had the blade cut any deeper, it would have dealt a crippling blow even if it didn't kill him on the spot. But right then, Chen Chuan sensed movement from above and behind. He snapped the saber back into a wrap-around guard, deflecting a blowdart aimed at the back of his head. In the same motion, he darted forward a rapid step and swung the long saber in a flowing diagonal cut!
Just as he stepped forward, a gunshot rang out. A bullet grazed past the back of his head, even whipping a lock of his hair, yet his gaze did not waver in the slightest.
Forced upward by the earlier shockwave, Tong Baitao's arms were thrown back, his body tilted backward, unable to recover in time. The incoming slash landed squarely against his ribs.
Yet the momentum that should have sheared straight through him breached his hard outer armor only to meet a layered, constricting yielding force. It felt like countless contracting, interlocking muscle fibers biting down, halting the blade's progress and trapping it within.
Chen Chuan's eyes flickered. He realized at once that this wasn't merely the effect of implants, but a form of jin meant to arrest and neutralize sharp blades!
A cunning glint surfaced in Tong Baitao's eyes. Clamping his raised arms down, he combined his limbs with the tightening muscles inside his torso to lock the blade firmly in place.
Though he looked brutish, burly, and overwhelmingly crude, he was far less reckless than his appearance suggested. He had laid a trap: recognizing that Chen Chuan's Xuejun Saber posed the greatest threat, he had chosen to endure an injury specifically to neutralize the weapon.
Having a weapon versus being disarmed made all the difference. With a saber in hand, none of them dared swarm him; without it, how could a kid fighting barehanded hope to stand against men equipped with implants?
Chen Chuan's gaze remained tranquil. An ordinary fighter caught in such a bind would indeed fall into a passive disadvantage, their combat strength plummeting without a weapon. But he was no ordinary fighter.
Letting go of the hilt, he stepped forward. Driven by his jin technique, his body followed the power flow as he thrust a palm toward Tong Baitao's face.
The palm strike did not appear particularly fast, yet as Tong Baitao watched it loom larger in his vision, his pupils shrank, sensing an immense danger.
With a grunt, the clothing across the bulge at his shoulder blades suddenly burst apart. A pair of deformed, elongated extra arms emerged from his back, crossing to block before his face.
Chen Chuan seemed entirely unfazed by the grotesque spectacle. His palm pressed on unabated, and upon contact, a yielding force drove those two arms backward into Tong Baitao's cheeks.
The mutated tissue in his body surged in waves. Had this strike landed cleanly, the penetrating jin would have knocked Tong Baitao senseless and stripped him of his combat capability, even if it failed to shatter his skull outright.
Just as the blow was about to hit home, however, Chen Chuan sensed another threat. Tilting his head aside, he felt a poisoned dart strike his shoulder from above, ricocheting harmlessly off his protective suit.
This brief respite gave Tong Baitao his chance. The two deformed arms from his back grabbed Chen Chuan's arm, while his normal arms wrapped around Chen Chuan's waist, hauling him in close.
Chen Chuan paid no heed to the encroaching jin clamping around him. He raised a knee to check his forward momentum. A flicker crossed his eyes, and he snapped his head back just as a gunshot cracked from Tong Qianjiang's position; a bullet whizzed inches past his face. Using the lean to pry open a sliver of space, he brought his raised foot crashing down hard onto Tong Baitao's ankle joint.
Tong Baitao's face twisted in agony, and his grip involuntarily loosened.
Sinking his stance and twisting his waist, Chen Chuan bodily hoisted Tong Baitao's massive frame into the air and slammed him ruthlessly into the ground, nearly knocking the breath from his lungs. Seizing the opportunity, Chen Chuan grabbed the hilt of the Xuejun Saber, shoved it outward, and then levered it viciously inward!
Tong Baitao shrieked in agony. Behind them, gunshots erupted in rapid succession, but none found their mark—Tong Qianjiang had clearly grown frantic.
Ripping the Xuejun Saber free, Chen Chuan gripped the hilt and raised it high, poised to decapitate Tong Baitao where he lay.
Fang Dawei, who had remained still until now—seemingly because he had not yet recovered after taking his medicine—could hold back no longer. He rushed forward and unleashed a sweeping kick at Chen Chuan.
Chen Chuan twisted his wrist, sweeping the blade upward to sever the incoming leg. Yet upon impact, the edge felt as if it had struck something exceedingly slippery and resilient, sliding harmlessly off the limb.
Noticing this, Chen Chuan flicked his wrist again, hooking the edge inward and bracing the pommel forward against Fang Dawei's chest. Following through with a shoulder check, he sent Fang Dawei flying back.
Without breaking stride, Chen Chuan drew power from his waist to whip the saber around behind him, sending a gleaming arc of light toward the neck of Tong Baitao, who was just scrambling to his feet.
Terrified, Tong Baitao scrambled backward with all four arms and both legs, narrowly evading the edge. Even so, the blade grazed past his collarbone, carving open another bloody furrow.
Chen Chuan was far from finished. Riding the momentum of the backward swing, he flowed forward with the blade, gripping the hilt with both hands and thrusting the saber's tip straight at Tong Baitao's throat!
Tong Qianjiang let out a roar, grabbing a side panel from a shattered crate nearby and hurling it across the distance at Chen Chuan.
Chen Chuan watched coldly and paid it no mind. Under the surging propulsion of his mutated tissue, his entire body coalesced into a unified jin. Stepping forward into a bow stance, he thrust the blade inward. In that split second, the tip felt as if it had pierced through something tough and resilient.
And when the wooden board struck his shoulder, it shattered with a loud crack as if colliding with an invisible force, bursting into a flurry of splinters.
As the wooden fragments rained down, the remaining bandits looked on in horror. Tong Baitao was half-seated on the ground, propped up behind by four trembling arms, his head tilted slightly back. The cold, gleaming long saber was driven clean through his throat and out the back of his skull. His eyes had rolled back, nothing but gurgling rattles coming from his throat as his four arms and body twitched uncontrollably.
Tong Qianjiang's eyes turned bloodshot at the sight. Letting out a crazed roar, he abandoned his guard over the entryway entirely. Raising his gun, he emptied every last round at Chen Chuan in one breath, snatched up a blade, and charged straight at him.
Chen Chuan did not choose to stand there taking fire. The moment Tong Qianjiang pulled the trigger, Chen Chuan yanked the saber free. As a fountain of blood erupted, he had already backstepped out of danger.
Fang Dawei charged at him as well, the two closing in from opposing flanks in a pincer attack.
Watching the two remaining foes, Chen Chuan flicked the blood from his blade and shifted his feet, retreating a few steps toward an area littered with debris.
These were remnants from the shattered crates earlier—empty cans, ropes, scattered tools, and even severed limbs and implanted carapace fragments. Though Fang Dawei and the others had tried to kick some of it aside earlier, there had been no time to clear it properly.
As a result, both men stumbled and tripped as they charged forward, their speed inevitably dropping.
Tong Qianjiang felt a suffocating frenzy. Having seen Tong Baitao die, he wanted nothing more than to butcher Chen Chuan right then and there. Yet held back by the clutter, he roared like a madman, kicking the debris at Chen Chuan with every step he took.
Chen Chuan remained unperturbed, effortlessly batting the debris away with the Xuejun Saber. Watching Tong Qianjiang close in first and swing his blade in a vicious downward chop, Chen Chuan raised the Xuejun Saber slightly and parried with the spine of the blade. The clash sheared a deep notch into Tong Qianjiang's weapon.
In the next breath, Chen Chuan twisted his wrist, guiding the blade like a spear. Parrying the bandit's blade aside, he leaned his torso, loosened his shoulders, and thrust forward with a one-handed grip. With a soft hiss, the blade pierced through the protective suit and sank deep into the abdomen.
Tong Qianjiang froze, his back instinctively arching. Seeing this, Fang Dawei halted mid-stride, frozen in place.
Chen Chuan levered his wrist slightly upward and stepped forward. Tong Qianjiang was forced to clutch the sharp edge with bare hands, rising onto his tiptoes and stumbling backward step after step. After ten paces, he had been shoved all the way back to the redoubt entrance.
Chen Chuan ripped the saber out with a sudden jerk, drawing the hilt before his chest. Then, with a sharp shout, he gripped the hilt with both hands and whipped around in a spinning upward slash. With a clean hiss, Tong Qianjiang's head flew through the air, shooting clean through the redoubt's doorway to bounce onto the open ground outside, while his headless corpse swayed twice and collapsed to the floor.
......
Chapter 89