The henchmen finally snapped to their senses, scrambling in a panic to help Gu Yanzu to his feet.
"Brother Zu, are you alright?"
It was a redundant question. Couldn't they see he was gritting his teeth in agony? That sudden kick had broken a bone.
"I haven't killed anyone in eight hundred years!" Quan Ying added in a slow, languid tone. "I don't intend to break that streak today. If you're smart, get out." He paused, then added, "Leave the girl."
Who was he trying to scare?
Others might have mistaken his words for hyperbole, but they didn't know that he really hadn't killed anyone in eight hundred years. In this private room, there were over twenty henchmen, all of them burly. It was baffling how this man could speak with such bravado.
"Damn it!" Gu Yanzu hissed through gritted teeth. "Take the girl and get out of here. Everyone else, get him!"
Gu Yanzu was certain this man surnamed Quan was a dead man walking.
"Go."
A henchman grabbed An Xiaoni by the arm and dragged her toward the door. The girl looked back at Quan Ying with pleading, desperate eyes. The door had only been opened a crack when—
"Bang!"
Quan Ying whipped his hand out, hurling a chair that slammed into the man dragging An Xiaoni. The chair hit the floor with such force that its metal legs buckled, and the man collapsed, clutching his head and howling in pain.
It was utterly ridiculous.
An Xiaoni, terrified, huddled in the corner.
"Screw your mother, kill him!"
Gu Yanzu hobbled to the side as the twenty-plus men prepared to charge as one. Some grabbed chairs, others pulled long blades from behind their backs, and some snatched glass bottles of imported liquor from the tables. They grabbed whatever was within reach. The scene was like something straight out of a low-budget gangster film.
Two against twenty-plus.
Gu Yanzu figured that no matter how good the man was, he would surely be overwhelmed by the sheer volume of punches.
At that moment, Quan Ying flashed a devilish, mocking smile.
What were they waiting for? Strike him down!
Without a word between them, the twenty-plus men surged forward simultaneously.
Suddenly, the bodyguard dropped low and delivered a sweeping leg kick, sending dozens of liquor bottles flying off the table. *Clatter-crash!* The bottles rained down on the heads, faces, and bodies of the men in the front.
It wasn't just the glass that shattered.
The amber liquid of eighteen-year-old Chivas Regal traced sticky ribbons through the air, while the caramel aroma of Black Label whiskey mingled with the sharp scent of fresh blood filling the room.
The tattooed man at the front had the neck of a Hennessy XO bottle jammed into his eye socket; the man in the black shirt behind him was struck in the throat by a flying champagne cork.
Within seconds—before the fight had even truly begun—the crowd was already crumbling. They fell back, clutching their heads, throats, eyes, and noses.
Pathetic!
Quan Ying hadn't even lifted a finger yet.
He leaned forward, causing the remaining, uninjured men to hesitate, their weapons trembling in their hands as they weighed whether to attack.
*Click.* A lighter sparked a blue flame.
He lit the cigarette dangling from his lips, took a deep drag, then pursed his lips and blew a perfectly straight line of smoke directly at them.
His demeanor was incredibly arrogant.
And dashing.
Gu Yanzu found him infuriatingly smug. Just from that one sweep by the bodyguard, he could tell they were formidable. It seemed this group couldn't even take down a mere bodyguard, so he reached for his phone.
He would call in more reinforcements. He refused to believe he couldn't hack this man to pieces.
"Huoji, get the boys over here! A hundred, maybe a hundred-fifty—bring everyone!"
Before Huoji could respond, Gu Yanzu slammed the phone down in a rage. He would kill this man surnamed Quan first. With his father's backing, he could easily get out of prison later. Besides, with so many people here to take the fall, he wouldn't be the one rotting in a cell; he’d just push the blame onto a scapegoat.
"Who was just talking about killing me?" Quan Ying muttered, his lips moving around the cigarette.
Kill him? The very idea was laughable. His life was longer than all of theirs combined.
"Whoever kills him gets ten million! If that's not enough, twenty million!" As soon as Gu Yanzu finished his sentence, a glint of greed lit up the eyes of everyone in the room.
"Twenty million for my life? Hah!" Quan Ying sneered, taking the cigarette from his mouth.
To these thugs who lived by the blade, twenty million was more than they could earn in a lifetime of violence. Suddenly, they lost all fear.
They all lunged toward Quan Ying at once.
An Xiaoni watched from the corner, her heart in her throat.
A long blade swung down; Quan Ying sidestepped, kicked, and sent the attacker kneeling to the ground. The man tried to rise, but he couldn't.
Quan Ying exhaled a cloud of smoke. His arrogance was enough to make their blood boil. And when people get angry, they get reckless.
Blades flashed—left, right, horizontal, vertical—but none of them connected. Quan Ying evaded every strike with surgical precision.
Seeing their attacks failing, one of the blade-wielders went berserk, slashing wildly at the air. Quan Ying retreated step by step, dodging effortlessly. He hadn't even used his hands; he was still holding his cigarette.
Spotting an opening, he landed a heavy kick to the man's stomach, sending him flying backward into several others.
As some fell, others rushed forward.
One man lunged from behind with a knife. Sensing the danger, the bodyguard spun around, caught the man's wrist, and twisted hard. With a sickening *crunch*, the wrist dislocated, and the blade clattered to the floor. The bodyguard followed up with a kick to the chest, sending the man sprawling.
In just a few moments, the room was filled with men howling in agony on the floor.
Quan Ying’s cigarette hadn't even burned down to the filter.
A bunch of incompetent fools.
Gu Yanzu watched, seething. Twenty-plus men couldn't even touch a hair on the man's head.
"You bastard! I'll kill you!" Gu Yanzu, barely standing, picked up a discarded blade and threw it at Quan Ying.
The man side-stepped, and it missed.
Quan Ying then flicked his cigarette with force, hitting Gu Yanzu square in the bridge of the nose. It was the third time in one night he’d been insulted by Quan Ying’s cigarette butt.
The burning embers made him slam his eyes shut in reflex, and in that split second, Quan Ying moved with lightning speed, slapping him face-down onto the floor.
"Is this how you slap women? Is it fun?"
Quan Ying’s eyes were cold.
The bandages wrapped around Gu Yanzu’s head fell off, and the wound on his skull split open. He felt dizzy.
The movements had been fast, cruel, and accurate. Gu Yanzu was too stunned to crawl up from the floor.
"Brother Zu—"
His henchmen stumbled over to help him again.
*Hell!* This man surnamed Quan was even more ferocious than his bodyguard.
The men were terrified; they didn't want to lose their lives here.
"Brother Zu, next time you need someone hacked, I’ll be there, but we can't beat these two. Maybe we should wait until we're better prepared before we try to take them out."
One of the big men spoke, his eyes darting around in sheer terror.
The twenty-plus men lay on the floor, nursing their various injuries, afraid to move another inch.
Gu Yanzu calculated the odds. They would be beaten to a pulp long before Huoji's reinforcements arrived.
"Ten million, transferred in full." Quan Ying walked with effortless grace toward the door of the private room. He remembered his promise to pay Gu Yanzu ten million for the girl.
An Xiaoni gazed at the tall, handsome man.
The bodyguard opened the door, and as Quan Ying stepped out, An Xiaoni hurried to follow, reaching out to grab the hem of his jacket.