Chapter Eighty-Nine: Spread

Struck by a solid wooden table weighing at least a hundred catties and hurled with the force of fifty meters per second, the two hulking men were driven into the wall as helplessly as flies swatted against plaster, unable to pry themselves free. The blood pouring from their ruined bodies painted the wall a dreadful red.

To the man who called himself Mad Bull, the model student who had once seemed no more threatening than a chick had become, in an instant, a murderous fiend. And this murderer before him was even more terrifying than the urban legends by a factor of ten, or perhaps nine.

No. Judging by the way he swatted men aside as though they were flies, and by that utterly unmoved expression, he did not even regard them as beings of the same kind.

Realizing this at once, Mad Bull dropped to his knees. “I know where the boss keeps the cash, and I know who matters most to him.”

“Oh.” Liu Tian’s expression did not change. He gave a soft reply and walked past the kneeling man. “And what use is that?”

Mad Bull had not yet understood the meaning of those words. Thinking he had surrendered too quickly and been spared, he was suddenly overcome with excitement and hurriedly tried to rise, only to discover that his body no longer obeyed him.

What?

A sensation of being filled burst up from his abdomen, then surged into his chest, to his mouth; his whole body was packed full, then exploded with a thunderous blast.

Shreds of flesh filled the room in an instant, even piercing through the door Liu Tian had casually left shut.

More often than not, cleverness and stupidity are the same thing. Sometimes cleverness is even worse than stupidity. If you are stupid enough, you will never notice the flaw I left behind.

And if you are clever enough, you should know this: how could a model student come here without leaving any backup plan at all?

Step by step, Liu Tian went on, a wind of unknown origin coiling around him. Man or woman, old or young, all were treated equally with a blade of wind.

Long ago, Liu Tian had already learned to use wind and spirit to distribute his weight evenly through the air. By now, his power had grown several times over, and with a slight change in method, he could naturally unleash wind blades no less sharp than divine weapons.

Yet Liu Tian had never used this move before, for it was obviously not as destructive as a casual punch of his, and its killing power diminished with distance. If one did not keep pouring strength into it, then once it exceeded ten meters, it would simply disperse and vanish.

It might be said to be useless for anything except bullying the weak at close range. But if one was close enough, fists and feet were far more convenient than such tricks.

And yet this time, the lethality of the wind blades clearly remained at its peak. Had Liu Tian broken through once more?

Though he could not directly command these so-called elements, it seemed he could still use them indirectly by such means.

Walking straight toward the room that held the safe, Liu Tian pondered.

The instant he had fully awakened, with a spirit far beyond that of ordinary men, Liu Tian had been able to keenly sense this strange thing attached to all things under heaven and earth, something that did not exist in the world of esoteric martial arts.

He had wondered then what this thing was. Though its essence was the same, it displayed different traits depending on what it attached itself to, and in his spiritual perception it could be clearly distinguished by color—red fire, blue water, black earth, and white sky.

This thing, which Odin called an element, was highly active and filled heaven and earth. Liu Tian could perceive it at will, yet could not make use of it.

Though in terms of raw spiritual power Liu Tian was by no means inferior to Odin, the elements showed different behavior in their hands.

At Odin’s call, the elements were like his arms, like an extension of his body, moving as he pleased and acting as he wished.

Under Liu Tian’s hand, however, the elements were like rocks washed by a torrent, like a stone in a latrine—stubborn and foul. If he merged his spirit into the wind and then used the wind to influence the elements attached to it, that much he could still accomplish.

But if Liu Tian wanted to command them directly, the elements seemed to be in hibernation, utterly unmoving.

Was this the so-called craftsmanship of elements, the wonder of bloodline, the power of authority? Perhaps this bloodline was something akin to spiritual root in the world of cultivation.

As Liu Tian thought about how to cross that boundary, he stepped into the boss’s room.

Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!

The moment Liu Tian entered, more than a dozen gunshots rang out at once. The smoke stirred up by the crude homemade firearms filled the entire room.

“Hah, hah, hah!” Having emptied every last round, Qian Feng’s hands went numb from the recoil. “How dare you look down on our Qian Corporation, you damned monster!”

“Clown, what are you shouting about?”

The wind scattered the smoke, revealing Liu Tian completely unscathed. Before the bullets could even reach his face, they were blocked by the wind barrier encircling him, then slowly dropped to the floor.

It was a little trick Liu Tian had improvised by taking a leaf from Odin’s wind-element shield.

Though he had only caught a fleeting glimpse of that immensely thick defensive shield back then, it did not stop him from grasping the essence of it.

There were no special effects to speak of—only that the faster something moved, the greater the resistance it met. The upper limit of what it could stop was not high, far below Odin’s elemental shield. To Liu Tian, it was probably like erecting a layer of invisible paper around himself as defense.

Still, though it was of little real use, the presence of elements meant that once this wind barrier was formed, Liu Tian did not need to spend any further effort maintaining it. It was enough for frightening people.

With a casual sweep of his gaze, the huge safe and the room’s layout were all brought into clear view. “I see. So you sealed the doors and windows from the inside? No wonder you did not run.”

“Monster, monster!” Faced with power he could never have imagined, Qian Feng utterly collapsed. Tears and snot mingled on his face.

Had Liu Tian not deliberately released an electromagnetic field to disrupt the current and cut off the signal, he would surely have been frantically calling for the police long ago.

“Oh? Broken already? Then this has lost its charm.”

Tilting his head, Liu Tian spoke as two wind blades sprang forth before him. The first cut through the solid wooden table and the firelock held before the chest; the second split Qian Feng clean in two.

“Strange.” Clearly, when the wind blade cleaved through Qian Feng, it met slightly more resistance than with the others. That showed this Boss Qian possessed defense far superior to the rest.

Since such defense could be revealed beneath the wind blade, it was by no means trivial.

Liu Tian, aroused by curiosity, looked closely. The skin of this body bore patterns like tanned hide, and its toughness was no less than leather’s.

Could he be a mixed-blood as well? Did this so-called bloodline give people traits of other creatures?

That was truly not bad. Even a thin trace of blood so slight that I cannot even sense it can still grant a person worthwhile enhancement. Odin’s proud talk of bloodline really does have its uses.

If this were the world of esoteric martial arts, to achieve such a thing one would need either genetic modification or diligent cultivation. Who would have thought that in this world it could be inherited through bloodline?

Without dwelling on it, Liu Tian tore open the steel safe with one hand, took out the roughly three hundred thousand in cash from inside, and placed it into a backpack lying on the solid wooden table.