21: Chapter 21 Dancing on the Edge of a Knife

"Checking the water meter. And by the way, sending you all on your way."

A hoarse, icy voice emanated from behind the green-faced, fanged Shura mask, echoing throughout the deathly silent underground casino hall.

The dust filling the air gradually settled.

Nearly a hundred desperadoes from the Blood Axe Gang stared fixedly at the entrance, several of them trembling. After all, that was a thirty-centimeter-thick explosion-proof alloy door that had been blasted right in. This entrance was truly shocking.

"There's no movement outside... Is he alone?"

Someone swallowed hard and stammered.

Everyone looked in unison behind Su Chen. In the empty tunnel, apart from the four guards who were dead or unconscious, there wasn't a single soul from the Public Security Bureau.

No army, no encirclement.

It really was just one person.

After a brief moment of shock and silence, the atmosphere in the hall shifted instantly.

"Damn it! You scared the hell out of me. I thought the Zhenyuan Army had broken in!"

"He dares to crash the Blood Axe Gang's place all by himself? He must have used high-explosive crystals to blow open the door! He doesn't even have a weapon in his hand!"

"It's him! This is the mask drawn on the bounty notice! The boss said whoever takes his head gets a reward of three million star coins!"

Once they confirmed he was alone, their shock quickly transformed into the fury of being provoked and greed for the massive bounty.

Several machine gunners standing in the distance immediately turned their barrels, preparing to pull the triggers.

"Don't shoot! Are you blind, you damn idiot!"

The security chief on the first floor slapped the machine gunner on the head, pointing at the crowded hall and roaring, "The space is too narrow! It's all load-bearing pillars and gambling tables. If the heavy machine gun sweeps through, you'll kill our own men! And if you break the equipment, are you going to pay for it?"

The chief drew the long blade from his waist, pointing it directly at Su Chen at the entrance, "Use melee weapons! Everyone attack together, pile on him and crush him! Go for the kill!"

"Kill!"

"Hack him to death!"

Accompanied by hysterical roars, dozens of Gang elites armed with machetes and iron rods swarmed toward Su Chen from all directions like a pack of wolves smelling blood, vaulting over gambling tables and trampling on chips scattered across the floor.

Charging at the very front were a few Martial Apprentices who had awakened low-level enhancement-type talents. Some had skin that turned a rock-like grayish-white, while others had arms that had thickened, their blood surging, radiating a fierce Aura.

Su Chen stood in place, watching the tide of people rushing toward him, his eyes beneath the mask devoid of any ripples.

"There are too many people. If I maintain Armament Haki to tank them the whole time, my stamina will last five minutes at most."

Su Chen calculated the battle attrition with extreme rationality in his mind.

Although Armament Haki is indestructible, it consumes a tremendous amount of energy. In this air-raid shelter, the real tough nuts are on the second floor; there's no need to waste stamina on these small fry.

"No need for Haki. To kill you all, a pair of eyes is enough."

Su Chen closed his eyes slightly, and when he opened them again, the black Single Tomoe Sharingan suddenly locked into place within his blood-red pupils, then began to rotate at a steady speed.

"Die!"

A bald, burly man charging at the front, holding a thirty-pound thick-backed bone-cleaving knife in both hands, leaped high, using the momentum of his sprint to slash at Su Chen's head.

Su Chen did not retreat.

"Bang!"

A shallow pit instantly appeared in the ground beneath his feet; [Soru] activated!

In the bald man's vision, Su Chen's figure suddenly vanished into thin air. His surefire slash hit nothing but air, and due to the excessive force, his body involuntarily lurched forward.

"Your center of gravity is too high."

The cold voice rang out to the burly man's right.

Before the burly man could even turn his head, he felt a heart-piercing pain in his right wrist.

Su Chen's left hand coiled around his wrist like a serpent, his thumb precisely hooking into a vulnerable joint, and with a gentle flick, he dislocated it.

The burly man's five fingers instantly lost their strength and loosened, causing the thirty-pound thick-backed bone-cleaving knife to fall straight down.

Su Chen extended his right hand and steadily caught the hilt.

Catching the blade, turning, slashing. It was all done in one fluid motion.

A white flash of the blade traced an extremely concise semicircle in mid-air. The burly man's head flew into the sky, and his headless neck erupted with a blood geyser over two meters high, like a fountain.

"Old Seven!"

Two Gang members nearby roared, attacking simultaneously from the left and right with their blades.

Su Chen had never learned any blade techniques or Martial Skills of this world; he didn't even adopt any defensive stance.

But under the extreme dynamic vision of the Sharingan.

The movements of everyone around him—whether running, jumping, or slashing—seemed as if a 0.5x slow-motion button had been pressed.

"The guy on the left, his shoulder muscles have already contracted; the blade's trajectory is off by three inches downward."

"The guy on the right, his footwork is chaotic, his balance is unstable."

His brain provided the analysis results in a thousandth of a second.

Su Chen, gripping the bone-cleaving knife, stepped directly forward to meet their attacks.

He tilted his body slightly, and the machete on the left grazed his cloak. Su Chen twisted his wrist; the heavy bone-cleaving knife not only didn't become a burden but, utilizing momentum, cut into the opponent's arm at an extremely energy-efficient geometric angle, severing the man's tendons, and then followed through to slash his throat.

Just as the person on the right rushed in front of him, Su Chen's left foot had already precisely kicked the side joint of his knee. The man screamed and fell to his knees; Su Chen didn't even look, backhanding the blade, which sank into the man's heart as if cutting through tofu.

"Surround him! Don't give him a chance to breathe!" the security chief shrieked from the back, commanding.

More and more people swarmed up.

Long blades, iron rods, and even poisoned hidden weapons wove into an airtight net of death.

However, Su Chen was like an elusive loach, or perhaps a ghost dancing on the tip of a blade.

Every time he moved, his steps were small, yet he could always perfectly avoid all fatal attacks with the slightest adjustment. Machetes grazed his mask, and iron rods smashed into the afterimages where he had just been standing.

No unnecessary, flashy moves.

No wasted stamina.

Every slash Su Chen made was inevitably accompanied by the dull sound of a blade cutting through flesh.

"Ah! My leg!"

"Help! He's a monster!"

Desperadoes who were crazily shouting a second ago were now clutching their spurting throats, collapsing to the ground in convulsions the next.

This wasn't a fight at all; it was a one-sided slaughter. It was a dimensionality-reduction strike of high-dimensional perception against low-dimensional perception.

Blood continued to bloom in mid-air.

Throughout the casino hall, severed limbs flew, and the sounds of screaming, blades entering flesh, and bones breaking mingled together, playing a hair-raising symphony of death.

"Block him! Shoot him!" someone finally broke down, raising a pistol to aim.

But before the muzzle was even raised, a flash of the blade had already passed, slicing off both the pistol and the hand.

Su Chen wove through the crowd, his breathing still steady.

"Ding! Killed target carrying a faint abyssal Aura, obtained [origin points + 1]."

"Ding! Obtained [origin points + 2]."

In his mind, the System's notifications began to sound densely. But Su Chen found it too noisy and directly muted the sound in his consciousness, leaving only the rapidly jumping numbers in the top right corner of the panel.

Time ticked by, second by second.

Only three minutes.

The opulent casino hall had completely turned into a living hell.

Forty or fifty corpses lay scattered across the floor, along with a dozen seriously injured people whose tendons had been severed, wailing in despair in pools of blood.

The hundred or so Gang elites who had originally been so menacing were now reduced to fewer than thirty.

They retreated to the corners of the hall, their legs trembling uncontrollably. They couldn't even hold their machetes steady, and as their bodies shook, the blades made clattering sounds as they collided.

"Don't... don't kill me..."

A thug with a fleshy face dropped his knife, knelt on the ground with a thud, his crotch soaked, and kowtowed frantically.

Su Chen stopped his footsteps.

He stood in the very center of the hall.

Surrounded by corpses covering the floor.

The oversized black cloak on his body didn't have a single drop of blood on it. Only the bone-cleaving knife he held inverted in his hand—the originally silver-white blade was now completely dark red, and thick blood dripped from the tip onto the carpet, drop by drop.

"Drip."

"Drip."

In this deathly silent casino, the sound of dripping blood was clearly audible.

Su Chen slowly raised his head.

The green-faced, fanged Shura mask showed no expression. But behind the mask's eyeholes, that scarlet Single Tomoe Sharingan emitted a cold gleam that terrified all the survivors to their very core.

"Is it over already?"

The hoarse voice sounded again, carrying a hint of boredom.

Su Chen twisted his wrist and flicked the bone-cleaving knife casually. The blood on the blade sprayed onto the floor, forming a semicircular red line.

He didn't bother with the small fry who were already scared out of their wits and huddled in the corners anymore.

These people no longer even had the courage to draw their blades; killing them would just be a waste of time.

Su Chen stepped through the pools of blood, walking over the mutilated corpses.

He walked unhurriedly toward the end of the hall, toward the wooden spiral staircase leading to the second floor.

Behind the railing on the second floor were the Blood Axe Gang's upper management, who had been watching coldly all along.

"A devil... He's not human at all!"

Watching Su Chen's back as he approached the stairs step by step, the surviving Gang members covered their mouths, their strength to even run away completely drained.

They finally understood that the three million on the bounty notice was not some windfall.

It was blood money.

It was buying their own lives.

Su Chen walked to the spiral staircase and stopped.

He tilted his head slightly, his scarlet Single Tomoe locking onto the four burly figures standing on the staircase landing.

The truly significant opponents had finally appeared.