A Scroll of Infinite Glory

Beneath the high wall, the arc of light and its afterimage flashed and disappeared in an instant.

The blood sprayed on the soldiers on the outside was still warm.

Guan Luoyang lowered his body slightly and began to spin rapidly in the direction the blade had been swung.

The momentum of the blade propelled his body, and his body, in turn, amplified the momentum of the blade. He was now like a giant spinning top with a sharp edge, darting left and right, slashing in all directions.

These Qing soldiers were indeed elite troops. If they were allowed to intercept and fire at Guan Luoyang from a distance on flat terrain, it would definitely cause him considerable trouble.

However, they are now too close to Guanluoyang.

As soon as a Qing soldier raised his gun, he realized that a blade had flashed past his arm and he felt a chill on his waist and abdomen.

Some Qing soldiers appeared to have been struck not by the long sword, but by Guan Luoyang's other arm, their bodies bending from the point of impact and crashing onto the others.

Some Qing soldiers, when faced with this fear, lost their composure and fired indiscriminately, disregarding the presence of their comrades.

But when they died, the bullets only exploded into flowers of blood on their comrades and created craters in the walls and the ground, without hitting the blue-faced demon in the slightest.

Although Guan Luoyang's eyes remained calm, once he started moving, he was like a mad tiger unleashed from its cage. His figure and sword shadows spun violently, and in an instant, he had circled the entire courtyard, killing all the remaining Qing soldiers.

The sounds of blood splattering, screams, and heavy objects falling to the ground had not yet ceased.

Guan Luoyang's hearing was sharp enough to detect the rapidly approaching figure even through the sound of the wind behind a wall.

From the garden on the left side of the living room, where the corridor collapsed, to the backyard of the living room, it's no less than sixty steps, with a winding path and artificial hills blocking the way.

Li Piaoling arrived incredibly quickly. He had barely stepped into the area of ​​the backyard of the living room when he heard screams coming from just a wall away. Through the archway, he saw a group of corpses lying on the ground in the courtyard on the right, with the swordsman crouching down.

Guan Luoyang seized the opportunity to grab a gun, turned sideways, pulled back the bolt, and pointed the muzzle at Li Piaoling.

Li Piaoling's scalp tightened, but as he sprinted towards the goal, he maintained the habit of only landing on the balls of his feet. At this moment, he didn't even need to lift his feet again to exert force. As long as he suddenly stomped down with his left heel, his body would suddenly change direction and tilt to the side.

Guan Luoyang didn't chase after Li Piaoling with his gun. Instead, he moved it a little to the other side and fired a shot at Wang Xiongjie, who was still in the courtyard to the left of the living room.

Wang Xiongjie had anticipated and dodged the shot, but the bullet still pierced through two archways and struck the artificial rockery, sending shards of stone flying, which startled Wang Xiongjie.

"This gun is actually that powerful?!"

Wang Xiongjie hesitated for a moment, and Zhu Changshou and Zhuang Chengxian, who were still behind him, also paused slightly.

Then they heard two more gunshots.

Guan Luoyang was by no means a sharpshooter, but his ability to use this new type of firearm forced the three men to retreat.

Zhuang Chengxian was the worst off; he practically rolled over like a donkey, covered in dust, and hid behind the artificial hill.

Guan Luoyang didn't have a chance to fire a fourth time because Li Piaoling smashed half of the arched gate between the backyard of the living room and the right courtyard.

When this house was built, the walls were all made of hollow bricks, which were stacked one on top of another to form boxes. Inside those empty boxes, gravel and sand were filled.

At this moment, Li Piaoling unleashed his full power, smashing down one side of the archway wall. Bricks flew everywhere, and gravel and dust filled the air, instantly obscuring the view within several meters.

His figure was like a crane rushing in, galloping out of the sandstorm. The dust, because he was running so fast, even left trails of floating dust on his shoulders and sleeves.

Guan Luoyang dodged to the side, and the musket in his left hand was knocked away.

This so-called latest model of foreign gun is not a fully automatic rifle after all. When a person with real boxing skills gets close enough, it is no more useful than a fire poker.

Having succeeded in one move, Li Piaoling unleashed a furious, relentless attack with both arms, like a whirlwind.

Guan Luoyang swiftly slashed with his sword, the blade repeatedly colliding with Li Piaoling's arms, only to produce a series of sparks.

As the sparks flew, they illuminated Li Piaoling's weapon: a pair of oriental crutches.

The weapon, the Eastern Crossbow, is actually like a cross that has been vertically split in two.

The two walking sticks each have a short branch on one side that connects vertically to a longer stick.

Li Piaoling's pair of oriental crutches were made of fine iron, about two feet long. He held the short side branch, while the long shaft of the staff rested under his forearm, overlapping perfectly with it, making it both a blocking and striking weapon.

He pressed forward relentlessly, his hands constantly attacking, creating an oppressive atmosphere as if he wanted to seize even the last bit of space between himself and his enemy.

This approach is actually quite unwise.

When people are fighting, if the opponent does not show obvious signs of defeat, then the closer the two people are, the better.

If people are too close, their field of vision will be limited and become narrower, making it difficult to guard against more variables.

Most importantly, if the distance is too close and the offensive and defensive actions with the enemy are too intense, it will become difficult to exert one's own strength.

Human limbs need to travel a certain distance to accelerate in order to deliver a powerful blow.

However, one characteristic of Li Piaoling's boxing style completely overshadowed those drawbacks.

The boxing style he practiced was a branch of Crane Fist, but it was not one of the four famous branches: Zonghe, Feihe, Minghe, and Shihe. Instead, it was a relatively obscure lineage called Yao Chi Shou.

The master who created this style of boxing was skilled in both literature and martial arts. Through practicing Crane Boxing, he discovered the commonalities between boxing and calligraphy.

When a great calligrapher puts pen to paper, the force is exerted only at the tip of the brush, and the distance of the force application is extremely short, yet it can penetrate the paper and reach the wood deeply.

Inspired by this, the master borrowed the essence of calligraphy and combined it with the inch-force technique of Crane Fist. The opening and closing of the brushstrokes and the shaking of the wings allowed the inch-force technique to be applied not only to the fist but also to weapons, wrists, forearms, elbows, shoulders and other parts of the body.

This set of boxing techniques should originally be called the Waving Wings Hand. He was naturally refined, and because in the early stages of practice he had to bare his arms, and the blood and qi stimulated his skin to turn red, and his finger joints to become smooth and lustrous like jade pillars, so he renamed it the Jade Bare Hand.

As a result, the closer Li Piaoling got, the more ferocious his attacks became. With just a slight shift in his arms, he could unleash a series of attacks.

The intensity of their attacks was seven or eight times greater than that of an average boxer.

Guan Luoyang's swordsmanship was actually forced to a standstill by him, giving him a feeling of being restrained at every turn.

This was the first time in six years that he had encountered an opponent of this caliber, and he was determined not to give these people the opportunity to attack him.

We must take down this opponent within the time we gained from those few shots.

As the longsword clashed repeatedly with the double iron crutches, Guan Luoyang's blade suddenly made an unnecessary change.

His blade tip veered outwards by an inch, and he also swayed the blade very quickly.

This action was completely meaningless; it would only make him react a beat slower when defending against the next attack, putting him in an even more precarious situation.

But lanterns hung from the eaves of the courtyard, and in the blink of an eye, the sound of the knife struck a dagger, causing the lanterns to reflect light onto Li Piaoling's eyes.

Li Piaoling narrowed his eyes, his offensive relentless. The glare blurred his vision, but it was fleeting, and everything before him returned to clear. He continued to attack the blue-faced ghost with both arms.

The dark blue mask was completely devoid of any extra patterns. The long sword, wielded rapidly, occasionally swept a glint of light across the mask, revealing only a pair of eyes on the face, which emitted a faint, eerie glow.

The intense clanging of the steel knife against the iron crutch gradually faded into a distant, lingering sound, like the swaying of a wind chime.

Li Piaoling's eyes were somewhat unfocused. He instinctively swung his weapon for the next attack, his fingers loosening and tightening. The iron crutch, which had been pressed tightly against his arms, swung forward a short distance. He gripped the end of the crutch with both hands and attacked outward with the end that had the short branch.

He suddenly raised his hands and used two short iron crutch branches to block the masked man's knife.

The sound of clashing steel abruptly stopped, and Li Piaoling's heart jolted.

"Wait a minute, raising my arms would have my chest completely exposed! Why would I do something like that?!"

It was too late when he realized what was happening.

With his right hand locked by his long sword, the blue-faced demon's left fist shot out with lightning speed, slamming into Li Piaoling's chest with a thud.

Li Piaoling's body arched, his eyes bulged, and his eyeballs instantly became bloodshot. A piece of clothing burst open at the back of his body, and then he flew backward, landing in the backyard of the living room.

A single move can mean the difference between life and death. This expert, who was in a very favorable position, had his heart ruptured and died on the spot.

He died before he could loosen his grip on those iron crutches.

In the last moment of Li Piaoling's consciousness, he remembered where his mistake came from. It stemmed from the Boxer Rebellion's magic tricks and the ability to bewitch people, using suggestions in voice, actions, and eyes to hypnotize them.

Although the two had many changes in their thoughts during the fight, all of this, from the moment Li Piaoling destroyed the air wall until now, had only happened in less than a minute.

Zhuang Chengxian was still hiding behind the artificial hill, not daring to show his face.

Just as Zhu Changshou and Wang Xiongjie were about to rush into the backyard of the living room, they saw Li Piaoling's body crashing down on them.

"How dare you!"

Zhu Changshou kicked Li Piaoling's corpse up and shot back along the same path. His figure was wrapped in a strong wind, following closely behind the corpse, dispersing the dust, and rushed into the courtyard where the masked man was.

boom!

Li Piaoling's body crashed against the wall, and Zhu Changshou suddenly stopped.

The courtyard was filled with blood and corpses, but the masked man was no longer there.

Wang Xiongjie hurriedly went to see Zhuang Chengxian.

They almost thought that the blue-faced demon was going to use the same trick again, to lure them away from the mountain and launch a surprise attack.

But when Wang Xiongjie turned his head to look, he realized that this time he and Zhuang Chengxian were less than ten steps apart. No matter what, the Green-Faced Ghost wouldn't have time to escape from another direction and then rush here to kill people.

Even the mighty "Iron-Toed Fire Dragon," a veteran of countless battles, reacted with a hint of being startled.

Wang Xiongjie pulled Zhuang Chengxian up, his hand never leaving the back of his collar, fearing that if anything happened, he wouldn't have time to dodge.

They walked into the courtyard and looked at the corpses all over it, especially at Li Piaoling's face with its bulging eyes and unseeing death. Their expressions were very unpleasant.

Zhuang Chengxian said, "We are now..."

A blood-stained shadow sprang up behind him, and a blade of light slashed up from between his legs, swept across his entire body, and swept out from above his head.

Wang Xiongjie felt a chill in his palm; his left hand had been severed. He cried out in pain and quickly dodged to the side.

Zhu Changshou strode across half the courtyard in one step, lunged forward, and thrust his palm down like a giant bear standing upright, his hand slapping over Zhuang Chengxian's head.

The body, which Zhuang Chengxian hadn't had time to separate, was slammed to the ground by this tremendous force, and the hand holding the knife behind him didn't have time to dodge either.

The deadly knife was knocked away and embedded deeply in the soil of the courtyard.

Zhu Changshou stepped on the blade first.

Guan Luoyang did not attempt to retrieve the knife. Instead, he suddenly took a large step back, standing about five meters away from Zhu Changshou.

After killing Li Piaoling, he casually took off his mask and threw it outside the house. He then rolled on the ground, rolled to the base of the crumbling wall, and mingled among the corpses, hiding the knife under his body.

The ground was already covered in blood. As he rolled over, he became covered in blood, and he also stopped breathing and slowed his heartbeat.

In the rush, these people simply couldn't tell the difference.

That's when he suddenly lashed out again, slashing Zhuang Chengxian to death.

However, the bald old man's actions were ruthless and decisive, which was quite unexpected. His right forearm was slightly sore from the blow.

Zhu Changshou was bald and beardless, with a burly build and thick eyebrows that were already turning white. When he attacked just now, he was like a ferocious beast, but now that he had calmed down and spoke again, his tone was surprisingly gentle and kind, like that of a kind elder.

"We knew you were young and that you were skilled in martial arts, but we didn't expect your skills to be this good. Your resourcefulness and decisiveness are truly admirable. Don't you think it's a waste for someone like you to be a lone assassin?"

Guan Luoyang's face was also stained with blood, but he didn't have time to wipe it off. He just shook his right hand and said calmly, "It would be a real waste to have come into this world if I didn't kill these scumbags."

As Zhu Changshou looked at the young man before him, the feeling he had when he was reading the case files grew stronger and stronger.

This person is just too out of place.

Having lived to this age, Zhu Changshou could be described as a man who had seen countless people and was determined to eradicate evil. This was not the first time he had seen such people; he had met many rebels with treacherous intentions.

But no matter how those people acted, whether they were spirited or stubbornly resisted, they were all actually shrouded in more or less despair.

Although they wanted to eliminate evil, overthrow the Qing dynasty, and change the world, most of them knew in their hearts that they would never see that day, and even knew that that day might never come.

But the young man in front of me showed no sign of despair. He was not only calm but also confident, as if he didn't know how dangerous the road he was on was. Instead, he felt that he was on a smooth and easy path.

too weird.

Zhu Changshou was old, and when he saw such a strange person, he had no desire to investigate. Instead, he felt inexplicably irritated.

He couldn't quite bring himself to say the things he had originally intended to say to mislead the other person.

The old thief opened his mouth and furrowed his thick eyebrows.

"Then you should die!"

Zhu Changshou slammed forward, his arms jerking up, and all his muscles bulged.

The ground thudded as he stepped on it, as if striking Guan Luoyang's heart heavily.

The burly figure pressed down violently, and the changing light and shadow in the courtyard seemed to make Guan Luoyang's pupils shrink at that moment.

"This is... the pinnacle of tendon training?!"