Dragon Hermit

The thugs blanked out for a moment, and immediately followed by throwing even more beer bottles at Xia Yan, one of them even stabbed towards the skeleton soldier’s nonexistent gut with a broken bottle.

A series of sharp and clear shattering noises echoed out as the bottles broke into pieces one after the other, and even the broken bottle suffered the same fate. The glass fragments spattered across in all directions just like petals released into the wind by a goddess and ended up scratching a few thugs.

“He’s wearing armor!” A thug cried out in alarm. The word ‘armor’ really made people feel queasy in this era as it sounded pretty impressive.

[Armor? That sounds nice!]

Xia Yan punched out with his fists, and two thugs collapsed to the floor with screams, entirely incapacitated. He swung his arm aside after that, and a thug who couldn’t manage to dodge in time got blown away with a fractured shoulder…

The skeleton soldier’s bones were harder than marble, so there was no chance a human could contend against it. A thug in one punch; some punches, maybe two at a time. Nonetheless, they fell one after the other. In just a few exchanges, five to six of the thugs were down on the floor, moaning in pain, and only baldheaded Wang Gang, Fatty Wang, and the punk remained standing now.

The scene before their eyes had left the trio dumbstruck already. Although they held a beer bottle each in their hands, they didn’t dare to attack Xia Yan as the black-robed man before them did not fear getting hit and threw out frighteningly strong punches. So, fighting with him was no joke as they would just end up miserable like their colleagues.

Xia Yan lifted his left arm and pointed towards the ‘princesses’ at the corner, and all the women there turned silent out of fear. After that, he pointed towards the door, so the women picked up their clothes to cover and hugged them to their chests before bolting out of the room right away.

“W-Who are you? Why have you come to mess with me?” Wang Gang’s voice trembled a bit as even thugs were afraid of death, especially thugs who were accustomed to the lavish lifestyle.

Xia Yan chuckled. The thugs obviously couldn’t hear the laughter, but they could hear the chattering sound from the mouth resulting from the teeth hitting each other.

Xia Yan lifted his hood under the shocked gazes of the thugs, and a skull with a faint blue light flickering in its sockets made its appearance in the dimly lit room.

“Mommy!” A few thugs lying on the floor called for their mothers and crawled away from the skeleton soldier with their hands and feet.

Fatty Wang’s eye rolled back, and he ended up fainting. His head knocked on top of the table. As for the punk, the beer bottle in his hand slipped through his fingers and fell on his foot, yet he still had not realized it.

Wang Gang trembled, and a wet blotch slowly appeared at the crotch of his pants. He had pissed in fear.

Xia Yan undid his belt and allowed the magician’s robe to fling open. The reveal of the skeletal figure under the robe caused another two thugs to immediately faint.

The security guards of the karaoke hub arrived outside at this moment. They just took one glance inside the room after pushing the door open and closed it immediately, not even daring to enter inside. As Xia Yan hadn’t taken off the magician’s robe, they actually hadn’t seen the skeleton soldier and had only seen the back of the magician robe, as well as the skull, but believed it was a baldheaded black-robed man because of the dim lighting. However, they had noticed all the men of Brother Gang lying on the ground, so they knew that this wasn’t a fight they could get involved in.

The skeleton soldier’s lower jaw chattered up and down as it walked over towards Wang Gang, who could only bemoan having a tough mind that prevented him from fainting. However, endless fear had already consumed his entire body.

The skeleton soldier picked up a beer bottle from the table and smashed it at the punk’s knee, following which, the punk fell to the floor while clutching his leg, screaming in pain. After that, the skeleton raised its leg and stamped down on the unconscious fatty’s knee and crushed it, making him wake up from the pain immediately.

The skeleton soldier then skewed its head and laughed noiselessly towards Wang Gang. As a failure in the criminal world, he knew that this was the underline that this monster had set, so he immediately picked a beer bottle up and smashed his left knee with it resolutely.

The skeleton soldier nodded satisfactorily and then wore the hood on again and tied the belt back before turning around to leave the room.

The security guards immediately cleared up a path when they saw him appear and stuck their backs to the walls of the corridor, following which, the skeleton soldier walked past them, leaving behind a host of wailing thugs crying out for their fathers and mothers with fear written all over their faces. Two of the thugs sat on the floor, giggling like idiots, and had most likely gone insane.

Wang Gang sat on the floor while clutching his leg with a glazed expression. This experience had entirely exceeded his imagination, and the appearance of a moving skeleton had utterly toppled his world views.

He suddenly seemed to have awoken to the truth and bawled his eyes out, unable to stop his tears, wailing and crying.

“I’m leaving! I don’t want to stay in this damned Chengdu anymore…”

On the next day, Wang Gang dragged his injured leg and climbed onto the train back to his native town. Thenceforth, the itinerants of Chengdu lost a newly risen thug from their ranks. At the same time, all the other thugs who had seen the skeleton, including Fatty Wang and the punk, also disappeared from Chengdu.

This, however, was a tale for another time.

The skeleton soldier walked through the corridor at a relaxed pace, and Xia Yan recalled the incident in the Music’N’Fun KTV bar where he had encountered Fang Le’er as there was some resemblance between the two bars. However, he shook his head slightly when he recalled Fang Le’er’s abnormal make-up.

The door of the room beside him opened suddenly at this moment and a figure rushed out from within and knocked into the skeleton soldier’s chest, exclaiming in pain because of the hard bones, and that revealed it was a woman

[Could it be that it’s happening again?]

Xia Yan felt stunned, [Why am I running into the same circumstances each time I’ve come to a KTV bar?]

He turned his head right away so that the person who knocked into him couldn’t see the skeleton soldier’s appearance from below. Xia Yan felt that it wasn’t safe to use the hood to conceal the skull and wondered whether to purchase a mask.

“Bang!” The room’s door was knocked open, and two young men rushed out from inside and called out after finding their target, “Yan Xiaoqing, where are you running to now? Come back inside quickly. Sir Feng is still waiting to have a drink with you. As long as you please Sir Feng sufficiently, it will be quite easy for you to become a pop star.”

Saying so, one of them reached out to pull the woman back.

“No! I really can’t drink, and I don’t want to become a pop star, too. Just let me go home!” The woman hid behind the skeleton soldier and sobbed as she replied to the man.

Xia Yan glanced at her and discovered that this woman was the same girl dressed in a school uniform who he had seen at the entrance of the karaoke hub. This Yan Xiaoqing looked quite pretty, and undoubtedly had the makings of a celebrity even without any make-up. Her hair was tied up into an attractive high ponytail.

Her face looked pale because of the fear, so she considered the skeleton soldier as her last hope right now and circled around it to evade the man, dodging all his attempts at grabbing her.

“Yan Xiaoqing, you must know who Sir Feng is. It would have been fine if you had refused to come in the beginning, but since you came here, it won’t be that easy for you to stand up Sir Feng now. Weren’t you a gold-digger looking to live off a man?” The other man who stood at the entrance sneered.

“I didn’t want to come here at all. You were the ones who pulled me into the van forcefully!” Yan Xiaoqing said aggrievedly.

After hearing all this, Xia Yan had already understood the entire matter clearly as it was one of the most common stories seen on TV. [But… This Sir Feng. Where have I heard this name before?]

A man climbed up the stairs at this moment, and when the two men saw who it was, they immediately revealed obsequious smiles on their faces and welcomed the man, “Sir Quan, how come you are here?”

Xia Yan turned around and discovered that the man who arrived was actually Dong Quan.

Gills: A thank you to spectre for taking up the editor/proofreader position cheers!!!