Chapter 81: Arthur’s First Strike

The jagged mountain pass lay beneath the eerie violet glow of Velmora’s twin purple moons. Thick fog crept across the dirt road, clinging to the ground and swallowing the sounds of the midnight ambush. At the front of the wrecked convoy, Garris and his trade guards stood frozen, watching the mounted raiders close in. They could do little but brace themselves for the slaughter.

But at the rear of the convoy, the situation was very different.

The scarred, heavy-set bandit let out a savage roar as his stallion carried him toward the last carriage. He had almost reached his target. Years of practicing martial arts had left him with considerable strength, and now he poured that power into his arms. The muscles beneath his dark leather harness tightened as energy surged through his meridians and flowed into the iron-plated saber in his hands.

A faint, pale aura spread along the blade.

With a vicious grin, he raised the heavy weapon above his head, his eyes fixed on Arthur.

"Die, you lumbering fool!"

The saber came crashing down, its weight and momentum driving it toward Arthur’s unprotected skull. The strike was vicious enough to split a boulder, and the bandit had no doubt that a mere human head would fare far worse.

Arthur didn’t retreat.

He didn’t duck, dodge, or even shift his weight. His stance remained exactly the same, calm and motionless, as though the incoming attack had nothing to do with him.

He simply raised his right hand.

The movement was so casual that it almost seemed effortless. There was no flashy martial arts technique or dramatic burst of speed. Arthur merely lifted his arm with a precision that felt unnatural, moving so quickly that the eye could barely follow.

His bare hand cut through the cold fog, and his fingers closed around the flat of the descending saber, stopping the Spirit-infused weapon in midair.

CLANG!

The deafening impact echoed through the mountain pass.

It didn’t sound like a blade striking human flesh. It sounded like a massive hydraulic press slamming into a solid steel anvil.

The tremendous force behind the bandit’s downward strike disappeared in an instant, as though the saber had collided with an immovable wall.

The heavy iron blade stopped dead in midair.

Arthur’s arm remained perfectly steady. His elbow didn’t bend, and his feet didn’t sink even a fraction into the dirt. With nothing more than his bare hand, he had halted the entire strike, leaving the saber suspended between the heavens and the earth.

The bandit’s eyes widened in disbelief. His pupils trembled as shock washed over his face.

He had poured every ounce of his energy into that attack, pushing his Body-Refining cultivation to its absolute limit in the Late Stage. He had expected the saber to cleave through bone and flesh without resistance.

Instead, the moment the blade touched Arthur’s bare skin, the pale energy surrounding it shattered.

The energy flickered violently before collapsing into nothingness, as though an invisible force had crushed it out of existence. Arthur’s skin and muscles hadn’t suffered so much as a scratch. Their sheer physical toughness had completely overwhelmed the bandit’s power.

For the first time, genuine terror gripped the rider.

He tightened his grip on the leather-wrapped handle and desperately tried to wrench the saber free.

It was useless.

The weapon wouldn’t move.

Arthur’s fingers remained loosely wrapped around the heavy steel blade, holding it with such effortless ease that he might as well have been gripping a wooden twig.

"W-What...?" The bandit struggled to speak, his voice cracking as terror crept into his eyes. He stared at Arthur’s cold, crimson gaze, unable to comprehend what had just happened.

Before he could make sense of the terrifying difference in their strength, Arthur took a single, unhurried step forward.

His free hand slowly curled into a fist.

There was no fancy martial technique, no complicated breathing method, and no swirling elemental energy gathering around his knuckles. Arthur didn’t even bother to summon an aura.

He simply threw a punch.

His fist shot straight toward the bandit’s chest, carrying the overwhelming force of his monstrous physique.

CRACK-BOOM!

The deafening impact thundered through the narrow mountain pass. It sounded less like a punch and more like a cannon exploding inside a confined cavern.

A powerful shockwave burst outward, sending the thick fog rippling away in every direction. The bandit’s hardened leather armor offered virtually no resistance. It shattered beneath the blow as his sternum broke apart and the force of the impact tore through his chest, destroying his heart in an instant.

The bandit’s upper body crumpled under the devastating force.

He didn’t even have time to scream.

The force of the punch tore the bandit’s lifeless body from the saddle and sent him flying backward like a discarded rag doll. He crashed onto the hard stone road several meters away, bounced once, and rolled across the ground before finally coming to a stop in a spreading pool of blood.

For several heartbeats, complete silence descended upon the Blackwood mountain pass.

Nobody moved.

Even the frightened draft horses seemed to sense that something terrible had happened. They stood motionless in the thick fog, their earlier panic forgotten.

At the front of the convoy, the trade guards had stopped scrambling for safety. They stared toward the rear carriage with their mouths hanging open, unable to believe what they had just witnessed.

Vane and the two remaining mounted bandits were equally stunned. Their confident smirks vanished as they looked at the motionless body of their fallen comrade.

What had just happened was beyond anything they had ever encountered.

The man Arthur had killed wasn’t an ordinary bandit. He was one of their elite scouts, a trained Qi Cultivator armed with a deadly saber infused with Qi. He had unleashed a full-strength attack, putting everything he had into that single strike.

Yet the towering stranger had stopped it with his bare hand.

And then, with nothing more than a single punch, he had killed him.

Arthur had just killed a Body-Refining cultivator with one blow, not even releasing an aura.

The remaining three bandits pulled back on their horses’ reins, and the horses shied away.

Their arrogance was gone, as was the mocking laughter. Half a heartbeat ago, the brigands had seen only a helpless group of people that they could pick off one by one. They had laughed at Garris and his escort, knowing that the caravan did not stand a chance against them.

They were still laughing, in fact, when they realized that Arthur wasn’t even going to try to fight them.

The mercenary’s right hand was dropping, the iron saber falling from it on the ground with a metallic clink. He stood in the middle of the mountain road, his mighty frame outlined by the violet light of Velmora’s twin moons.

His face was inscrutable, his breathing barely perceptible. He could have been tossing an annoying gnat from his person instead of finishing off a living being moments ago.

This was the part when Garris and his bodyguards should have been the happiest men in the world.

They had awoken this morning expecting to die, and only a handful of hours later, they were about to reach the city guards with a living witness to the massacre. If anything, they would be questioned by the authorities instead of the other way around.

The brigands, however, had awoken today determined to get rich by any means and had already imagined how they would spend their share of gold.

Now, for the first time in their lives, they were looking at a man who was beyond their comprehension. A creature that they could neither understand, threaten, or control.

As the realization was dawning on them, an even more unpleasant thought occurred to the bandits.

Perhaps they had just walked into the jaws of a beast, when they were expecting to see a mouse.

Arthur’s aura was still absent, making it impossible to guess what he was thinking. It could have been a trap to lure them in and kill them all off, one by one.