Lin Xun's arrow, marking the true start of the battle, put the ambushers on high alert. As Lin Xun ducked into the back room, the three men still outside the door poured in at once, the two in front instinctively rushing toward the room where he'd disappeared.
It was only then that the men in the rear noticed a second, pitch-black doorway right beside the entrance, and one of them leaned in to peer inside.
"Squelch!"
An arm shot out from the doorway, and a sharp steel blade drove clean through his throat.
The man still outside, about to charge in, saw the knife's tip burst out through his companion's neck and froze, eyes wide. "Everyone, watch out! There's more than one of them!"
"Thud!"
Ning Zhe kicked the body in front of him aside, burst out through the doorway, and drove his knife straight at the man there.
"Get him first!" The two men ahead exchanged a glance, then turned and charged Ning Zhe together.
"Squelch!"
"Squelch!"
Ning Zhe dodged one man's strike, then surged forward like a leopard, grabbed the man's collar, and drove two lightning-fast stabs into his chest.
"Whumph!"
At the same time, a burly man behind him swung a stone axe in a wide arc toward Ning Zhe.
"Thud!"
Hearing the rush of air, Ning Zhe ducked low. The fire axe grazed past just above his head and slammed into the wall beside him, sending up a cloud of dust.
"Swish!"
The lead man, standing in the doorway, saw what Ning Zhe was doing and swung his crossbow toward him at once.
"Tramp, tramp!"
At that same moment, Lin Xun, hearing the sounds of the fight outside, appeared in the doorway of the back room.
"Fwip!"
The lead man, originally aiming for Ning Zhe, tilted his wrist slightly instead and pulled the trigger at Lin Xun.
"Thwip!"
The iron nail, driven by tremendous force, struck Lin Xun's arm, throwing him off balance. His grip loosened, and his arrow flew off course.
Seeing Lin Xun no longer a threat, another man behind him took a running start and slammed into Ning Zhe, knocking him to the ground, then clamped both hands around his throat.
"Whoosh!"
The remaining men outside, seeing the chaos inside, swarmed in all at once, surrounding Ning Zhe and Lin Xun in an instant.
"Thud!"
One man charged in and kicked at Lin Xun's head, but Lin Xun grabbed his leg and pulled him down. His bone knife flew from his hand, and the two of them grappled on the ground, while another man raised his own bone knife and lunged toward Lin Xun.
"Aaargh!!"
With a sudden roar, the chubby young man burst out of the room and slammed his whole body into the man holding the knife.
"Thud!"
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Weighing in at nearly two hundred pounds, the chubby young man sent the man flying backward. He struck the sharp edge of the stone table with his lower back and collapsed to the ground in agony.
"Fatty! Kill him!"
Lin Xun, his throat pinned down, face flushed red, shouted at the chubby young man.
"I... I..." Hearing Lin Xun's shout, the chubby young man bent down and picked up a bone knife off the ground, his hands trembling uncontrollably.
"Do it!" Lin Xun, still wrestling the man's arm, shouted again.
"I can't!!" The chubby young man clutched the knife, his eyes reddening with panic. Even killing rats made his hands shake, and killing a person now was something he simply couldn't bring himself to do. It was exactly why, all those years ago, he hadn't dared go hunting with his brother, and had ended up a sewage worker inside the stronghold instead.
"Tramp, tramp!"
While the chubby young man hesitated, the man he'd knocked down had already scrambled back up and swung his blade at Lin Xun.
"Squelch!"
In that split second, the chubby young man threw himself onto Lin Xun, taking the blow meant for him. Even with a knife in hand, he still couldn't bring himself to strike another man down.
The chubby young man's sudden lunge threw the man grappling with Lin Xun off for just a moment, and Lin Xun seized the chance, yanking the iron nail out of his own arm and driving it twice into the man's neck, then hurled himself at the man who'd just wounded the chubby young man.
Seeing Lin Xun coming at him, the man thrust his knife straight at his chest. At such close range, Lin Xun had no room to dodge, and could only grab the man's wrist and force it down, just barely avoiding a fatal blow.
"Squelch!"
The blade still found flesh, driving brutally into Lin Xun's leg. The man, having landed his strike, quickly stepped back.
With his nerves stretched taut and adrenaline flooding his body, Lin Xun didn't even feel the pain at first, and moved to press the attack, but his left leg suddenly gave out beneath him, his body pitching forward uncontrollably, and in the next instant he saw the man's blade coming straight for his face.
"Thud!"
A heavy thud sounded as the chubby young man, blood soaking his back, slammed the man to the ground. Lin Xun snatched up a knife off the floor and drove it into the man's side.
Once the fight was finally over, Lin Xun and the chubby young man were both soaked in blood, the room thick with the sharp, metallic stench of it.
"Huff, huff!"
Lin Xun gasped for breath, then noticed the open ground beside him held nothing but bodies, no sign of anyone else. He froze. "Where's Brother Zhe?"
"I don't know!" The chubby young man shook his head, dazed, his body trembling as he looked at Lin Xun. "Brother Xun, am I going to die?"
"You just took a knife to the back, you're not dying, damn it. What I don't get is why you..." Lin Xun started to scold him, but the moment he got a proper look at him, he froze.
The chubby young man was still lying on top of the man he'd tackled, but in the very moment he'd knocked the man down, that man had driven his bone knife straight into the chubby young man's stomach.
"I... I..." The chubby young man glanced down once more at the blade lodged in his own belly, and before he could finish his sentence, his eyes rolled back and he passed out.
"Fatty! Fatty!" Lin Xun tried desperately to stand, but the wound in his leg, bleeding freely, made it nearly impossible to move.
Two minutes earlier, once Ning Zhe had been knocked to the ground, two men had closed in on him at once, one of them driving a kick straight at the bridge of his nose.
"Thud!"
As Ning Zhe dodged, the man's foot slammed into the ground instead, and Ning Zhe seized his ankle, driving a knife clean through his shin.
"Aaargh!" The man let out a howl of pain and staggered to the ground, and Ning Zhe, gritting through a knife wound to his own shoulder, surged back up once more.
"Damn it! Fall back!" The lead man, catching sight of the pile of bodies in the moonlight spilling through the doorway, understood at once that this crew was more than they'd bargained for. Back in his bandit days, he'd once been surrounded by troops after raiding one of the stronghold's transport convoys.
The soldiers who'd handled them that day had been an elite unit from inside the stronghold, and in close combat, a single one of them could take on four or five bandits without breaking a sweat. What he was seeing now, the fighting ability of the men in this house seemed no weaker than those professional soldiers, if anything, they struck even harder, with no wasted motion at all. Whenever a blade moved, it went straight for something vital.
Under these circumstances, the lead man might still have had a chance to take Ning Zhe's group down, but the more he weighed it, the more it felt like a losing bet to throw his life away fighting refugees like these.
The one man still left inside, who'd already been wary of Ning Zhe from the start, lost every last bit of fighting spirit at the lead man's call to retreat, and turned to bolt for the door.
"Fatty! Kill him!"
Lin Xun's voice rang out from behind him.
"Flap!"
Hearing Lin Xun and the chubby young man working together, Ning Zhe figured the two of them could handle the remaining pair inside without trouble, and without a second thought charged out through the door, never catching the words that followed right after: "I can't."
Right now, Ning Zhe's purpose was pure and simple: wipe out every last one of the men who'd come. This crew had already come to his door to kill him. If whoever sent them wasn't made to feel real fear, made to understand that coming after him carried a heavy price, this would only bring more trouble down the road.