Deep into the night, so late that the summer's early morning sunrise had already brought some color to the clouded sky, a group of men, tense and terse, were gambling inside a shoddy teahouse. The clatter of dice and currency against the wooden table blended in with the incessant battering of heavy rain. Outside, on the dilapidated, empty street, the dirt road resembled a mud river.
The gamblers were greasy with sweat, their eyes deeply focused and reddened with fatigue. The hot, stuffy air clung to one's skin. The windows were shut tight to muffle out the sound of the rain, to little avail. They played in grim silence, sparing not a single word more than necessary to keep the game moving. They expressed their losses with grunts and sighs, and celebrated their victories only with bigger bets. Every once in a while, they shifted about in their chairs to relieve some of the tension in their bodies.
Their entire night was spent glued to these chairs.
Finally, at the end of one round, a man's face sunk into his hands. A light chuckle finally escaped from the man's compatriots, the only hint of levity any of them could remember ever since their game began.
The man had gambled away his last dime.
As the poor sod quietly wallowed in his misery, a knock came from the door. The gamblers paid it no heed. An elderly man, hunchbacked by his age, emerged from the kitchen to let the new guests inside.
A group of armed men, 4 of them in total, entered the establishment. The old man's face lit up, and he exchanged pleasantries with the mustached man leading the crew. Clearly, they were no strangers to each other.
The mustached man, whom the man referred to as brother Ru, looked over the room, smirking as he observed the gamblers.
Brother Ru nodded at them. "Nice game you've got going here. But we never got your tax for it, old Gen."
The mood had suddenly shifted. Old Gen's face turned glum and confused, the man's question putting him on the spot.
"I've paid all my dues to little Li. We had an agreement..." The old man prattled out, nervously clutching his sweaty hands.
Brother Ru's hand smacked the old man square in the mouth. The elder fell, knocking over a chair.
The attention of the gamblers was finally drawn to the entrance.
"Little Li got ran out of town weeks ago, old Gen!" Brother Ru explained, picking the man up and raising his hand again. The old man cowered at the sight, unable to muster up a word. "Big Money Yan calls the shots now. Thought you'd sneak in a little coin for yourself in all the confusion, did ya? Well, it doesn't work that way!"
Brother Ru never brought his hand down like old Gen feared. He instead gave the man a shove back into a table. "Get out of here!" He barked at the gamblers, and they all sprung to their feet without delay, grabbing what was theirs and nearly running out of the tea house.
...All except for one. That down on his luck gambler remained in his seat, his face still in his hands.
The skinniest man of the band approached him, a wooden club in hand. "You deaf? Get up!" He called out.
The absence of a response instantly dissipated what little patience the man had down to nothing. He struck the gambler across his back, a meaty thwack briefly overpowering the sound of pouring rain.
It was like the man hadn't even noticed that he had been struck. So the skinny man swung his club again. And again, and again, and again...
The second strike was already enough to provoke a response. Without a word, or so much as a grunt of discomfort, the man slowly rose from his chair even as the other continued to pepper his defenseless back with strikes. In his growing confusion, the skinny man began to aim higher, soon reaching the man's neck, and finally his head.
But when not even the blow to the back of the head had managed to faze the mysterious stranger, all courage left the man's features and he made to flee.
He was struck before he could escape. The gambler swung at him with a similar motion to what one might use to swat a bug, and sent the skinny man practically flying across the tea house, knocking over chairs and tables until he had finally slid up to a wall, groaning in pain.
Another of the gang exclaimed, "Brother Ru! It's a martial artist!"
They all stared at the man who attacked one of their own, a mix of fear and disdain in their eyes. The martial artist in question was remarkably shorter than almost all of the men present, and would have been surpassed even by old Gen in height if only the elder had been in the prime of his youth, or at the very least had shared birth years with the middle aged unlucky gambler. His black hair was cut to a very short crop, as though he had been shaved clean mere weeks ago, and a prominent widow's peak drew two waves across his forehead.
Brother Ru lowered his body. The next moment, he pounced like a wild beast, his sword unsheathed in the blink of an eye, its steel tip flying like a loosened arrow towards the gambler's neck.
There was an unsettling metallic twang as the sword came upon the skin.
Pushed forth by brother Ru's great momentum, the flexible sword bent itself into nearly half a circle. It pressed into the flesh and failed to draw even a drop of blood.
Brother Ru's eyes widened in shock.
The man's hand began to move. Before he could reach brother Ru, the latter bolted backwards in a full sprint. In his retreat, he surrendered his sword, and it bounced off the man's neck like a loaded spring, clattering heavily against the wooden floor.
The gambler's lethargic motion ceased abruptly. He made to put his hands in his pockets, and before he had even done so, brother Ru was already out the door. It took his henchmen a moment to catch up to what was happening, and it seemed insurmountably difficult for them to believe their eyes.
Finally, they screamed and ran. The skinny fellow with the club had made it to his feet, and began to limp away after his brethren as fast as he could.
The man began to walk after him, and it brought out in the skinny thug speed and endurance he never believed himself to be capable of. By the time the gambler had reached the exit, the cripple was already dredging through the dirt outside.
The gambler closed the door to keep out the rain.
Old Gen observed the entire affair, speechless. He didn't know whether to laugh or cry.
"Sir... Sir!" He finally called out to the man, who seemed intent on walking back to his table. "I am grateful for your help, but you need to get out of here. Ru's gang has many martial artists. Big Money Yan is notoriously cruel and violent! There was no need for you to do all this, truly..."
The martial artist stopped and gave him a sideways glare.
Old Gen recoiled upon a new realization, clutching at what few gray hairs remained on his head. "Oh, goodness! I need to escape, too! My old wife doesn't know I'm doing all this, what was I thinking, getting involved with those criminals? It just might stress her to death!"
"I'm not going anywhere," The gambler suddenly barked. "And neither are you, old man!"
Old Gen, startled, began to pale.
The man continued to yell at him. "Go cook me a meal! I'll eat until they've arrived."
"Y-Y-You wish to wait until they come?" Old Gen stuttered in reply. "And what then?"
The gambler, having apparently had enough, turned to face the old man, fury marring his face. "Only way you're getting out of this alive is if you do as I say! Now get to it!"
Old Gen fled into the kitchen, and with shaking hands, warmed up some roasted chicken he had prepared for the night. He returned to the sight of the mysterious martial artist sat back at the gambling table, twirling his dice between his fingers.
"M-May I know the esteemed expert's honorable name? Mao Lian brought you to this game, didn't he?" The old man asked as he set down the tray.
"Tao Geming."
The name meant nothing to old Gen. With the exception of the ruling Royal Sect, his knowledge of the martial arts world had not extended past his neighborhood.
"I wonder how he came to make your acquaintance..." Old Gen muttered.
Tao Geming dove into the small chicken with his bare hands. Within the minute, nothing but bones were left.
"Bring out more!" He barked again. "I haven't eaten in hours."
And so, as the rain died down, as the sun continued to climb, Tao Geming's feast continued in silence.
Whenever the strange guest was preoccupied with eating and had had no use for him, Old Gen nervously paced around the stuffy room, not daring to so much as open the windows to let in some much needed cool air. He was even afraid to stand too near to them.
Finally, they heard a voice from outside.
"Old Gen! Come on out! And bring your friend!"
The old man clutched his hair again. "Ah, it's all over! They're here! They're going to kill us both!"
Tao Geming spat out a fishbone, his chair scraping against the floor as he stood up.
The old man dared not follow him outside; he observed the affair through a thin gap in the door.
By then, the gray clouds had parted, letting through morning sunlight. The dirt road had had just enough time to dry up a little after the rain, the street no longer sharing form and function with a swamp.
A rough crowd had gathered outside, too many to count at a glance, maybe 40, 50 men, all wielding a chaotic assortment of weapons, of wood and steel that came in just about every variety imaginable.
Brother Ru was in the crowd, and he pointed Tao Geming out to the tallest among them, a bald man resting a long club spiked with iron studs on his wide shoulders. "Big brother Yan, that's the guy!"
"You gave my brothers a scare, little man." Big Money Yan's voice boomed with heavy bass. "But since you didn't kill nobody, we can still be friends. How about you work for me?"
Tao Geming kept his hands in his pockets as he approached. "You're not embarrassed at all? Pleading for your life like this in front of all your subordinates?"
The henchmen jeered at Tao Geming. The big man frowned as he heaved his weapon off his shoulders and gripped it with his sausage-like fingers. "If you don't wanna pay with your skills, you'll pay with your life!"
A sharp crack pierced the air as the mountain of meat named Yan took off with frightening speed and brought the heavy weapon down onto the shorter man's head. There was a thud as it made contact, and Tao Geming's feet sunk into the soft earth.
Big Money Yan's face scrunched up. He cringed, having never heard such a disappointing sound in his life, a sound that was missing that exhilarating, that all-too-important crunch of the bone that motivated his martial arts. It felt like he had struck a lump of iron.
As he attempted to lift up his club, he had found himself incapable of the feat. He saw Tao Geming's fingers wrapped around it, and as Yan applied more force in an effort to pull back, he was drawn forward instead.
A pair of fingers flashed in his peripheral vision, jabbing him squarely in the stomach. Big Money Yan, feeling nothing but slight discomfort, thought nothing of the attack as Tao Geming pulled back his hand. Figuring that the man had fumbled his technique and missed a vital pressure point, he once again pulled his weapon...
...Only to find his fingers slipping off the handle, his hands grasping at nothing but air.
As Yan stared in confusion, he began to walk back. Almost immediately he realized that he was doing so involuntarily, and even to the onlookers his gait looked unnatural, as if he was being pulled back by invisible strings.
Some in the crowd called out to their boss. Their voices grew louder as the man's face twisted in pain. His mouth was open, yet no sound came from within. Something beneath the skin began to wiggle and bulge as if trying to escape.
Interrupting a concerned shout, Big Money Yan's back burst open like a water balloon, the blood spilling out in the thinnest of showers, almost like a mist. Miniscule fragments of bone flew out like shrapnel, injuring many.
Four limbs and a head, all that remained of the man, crumbled to the ground. Even the organs were nowhere to be seen.
As the crowd beheld the horrific sight, it was evident that most of them could hardly even understand what it was that their senses had just been assailed by, the scene so stupefying that the shock alone could kill, so thoroughly defiant of common sense that it did not feel appropriate even for one's worst nightmares.
"That's the Invincible Blood Sea!" One of the men screamed at the top of his lungs. The rest of them, too, began to shriek in terror, and parted like a sea of their own, fleeing in every direction.
Tao Geming looked at his handiwork with cold-blooded indifference. Not a drop of gore fell upon his gray tunic. By the time he lifted his eyes up, he couldn't see a soul left on the streets.
Even so, he called out.
"I am the King of Jianghu. Run!"
An enormous internal energy carried his soft voice a vast distance. For every one of the fleeing gangsters, it felt like he was hot on their heels, whispering right into to their ear, and so they ran with renewed vigor, not daring to throw even the briefest of glances behind them.
A piece of gold had fallen from the mangled corpse. After plucking it out of the dirt, Tao Geming put his hands back in his pockets and walked away.
...