CLANG! The house rang to the din of clashing steel. Lu Shengnan, who was earlier dumbstruck with surprise when I rushed upstairs, came up and rejoined us. She was just up the landing on the second story, just in time to see Lin Feng skipping back. His whip lunged forward from within his pouch to meet the woman’s dagger that peeked with a cold gleam from her sleeves.

With her face covered, her eyes, looking oddly similar to Huang Li and Cao Xuedong, reflected neither compassion nor remorse. The right sleeve of her clothing flapped emptily without a forearm, but the tiny dagger gleamed from inside, aiming straight for Lin Feng’s throat.

The tip of Lin Feng’s whip came with intense force and fury. It snapped at the dagger thrusting at him and deflected it and Lin Feng immediately yanked at the whip, withdrawing it. The force sent the woman in black lurching from the force of her stroke being parried hard. But I knew better than to idle! Before she regained her balance, I muttered the incantations for the sword telekinesis magic. The ordinary sword, the first one Father gave me, took into the air, emitting a raucous hum like a grunting beast searching for a prey. It was the first time Lu Shengnan witnessed me using sword telekinesis and an astonished her yelped a shocked “Ah?!”. This somehow distracted the woman in black, allowing me time to direct my flying sword at her. I thrust my finger at the woman and it stabbed straight at her head!

The woman lifted her dagger and it struck with my flying sword, eliciting more sounds of gnashing steel. The flying sword drew back after the first clash and arced around. The woman fell back from the blow. No amount of speed would do her any good now; with her steps now wobbling and unsteady, she finally crashed to the floor. My Spirit Wolves pounced on her and sank their teeth into her, biting her hard and preventing her from escaping. Blood began underneath her instantly.

To our amazement, the woman in black hardly screamed or groaned as if she was not feeling any pain!

Realizing my chance, I aimed my finger, still gripped in the Seal of the Sword, at the woman, directing my flying sword at her heart. The weapon wheeled around and came down with a steely ring at the woman now being ripped apart by my Wolves, tearing through the air with a deadly whistle!

The woman watched my sword coming down and in her eyes, a gleam of defiance flashed furiously. She convulsed and rolled violently, shaking off the Spirit Wolves with a sudden burst of strength, finally making an unmistakable grunt for the first time!

With the agility of a predatory panther, she dove aside, twisting her body and swinging the dagger that was fixed in place of her missing right forearm at the flying sword, hitting it sideways. Lin Feng lunged, eager not to give her any chance for respite. She raised her left hand in anticipation of Lin Feng’s punch only to fall for his feint instead! Lin Feng’s brands of martial art were usually three-tenths of handwork and the rest being legwork. The punch was only a fake for the woman to not notice his kick coming right after at her calf.

The blow was aimed towards her tibia. The woman instinctively drew back her leg while trying to evade with a backward-skip sideways. I was controlling my sword back to me when I saw her maneuver. I snatched the sword from the air and brandished it straight at her throat!

Everything happened too quickly; I was upon her just when she had barely escaped Lin Feng’s gambit and the woman could only raise her dagger to defend herself. With a metallic clank, the two steels met and another punch from Lin Feng to her left came at the same time. Seeing the punch coming straight for her left ribs, the woman desperately tried to push away my sword with brute force, hoping that this would give her the split-second opening to duck. But having learned all the techniques of swordsmanship from Father’s “Hai’s Mystic Arts” booklet, I could guess what she was trying to do. At the exact moment when she tried to shove my weapon off, I pushed it down hard with all my weight on her dagger before I spun my sword around the dagger, pivoting a quick half-circle that bought me the chance to attack from below and I stabbed with my sword, feeling it plunging through the flesh of her right leg.

Lin Feng’s punch came almost an instant later, slamming into her left ribs with a deep and dull bang. But instead of wincing or writhing with pain, the woman, with scarcely even a second of hesitation, took a right step forward and sprang, the knife attached to her right elbow flashing lethally as it came at my throat.

But the relentless and unforgiving Lin Feng was already on the move; right before the woman’s entire weight fell on her right foot, he charged again with another punch aiming for her left ribs, effectively forcing the woman to surrender her initiative of the fight. She retreated backward when she realized Lin Feng coming, withdrawing the dagger and readied herself into a steadied stance to defend against Lin Feng with her left arm. With Lin Feng’s ploy paying off, it was my turn to lunge. I wave the tip of my sword with an upward swipe and the simple but ordinary sword, imbued with my inner powers that rendered it as keen as the sharpest sword, tore through the sinews at the woman’s right shoulder, slicing off her arm cleanly with a disgusting swish that followed with a fountain of blood spattering the floor. The last time, Big Sister had cut off the prosthesis that was her right forearm and this time, I had lopped off an entire arm of hers!

At the same time, Lin Feng flung away the arm that was defending against his punch and dove into her abdomen! A punch followed just as quickly, burrowing into her stomach with a flat thud, sending her crashing to the ground with her severed arm lying in a pool of blood at the exact spot where she was standing before.

Such were the finer points in true combat, where everything had only taken place in matters of seconds. It was only in the end when Lu Shengnan realized that it was a human arm waddling morbidly in blood, she shrieked a shrill “ARGHH!” just before Lin Feng and I could silence her with a sharp and fierce “Shut up”.

The teamwork between Lin Feng and I could only be described as “impeccable”. The woman could only defend herself under our barrage of fists and steel and she hardly had any chance to begin with.

The woman in black was lying on the ground, as motionless as dead cadavers after she crashed into a wall following Lin Feng’s final stroke. The unconscious her had her left hand clutching the ugly and soggy wound on her right shoulder that was still churning out blood. Lin Feng rushed forward and crouch down, reaching down a hand to remove the woman’s face mask. Suddenly, her eyes blinked open, her gaze still cold and placid even with her traumatic injury. Lin Feng’s fingers were at a mere hair’s breadth from pulling off the face mask and she somersaulted to the back from her lying position on the ground, leaping gracefully through the opened window and vanished. With a blast of expletives, Lin Feng hurried to the windowsill and looked around and he saw only a dark shadowy figure flitting away before melting into the pitch-black darkness outside.

Twenty minutes later, at half-past three in the small hours of the morning.

Lin Feng and I sat opposite each other with the severed arm sitting on the coffee table in between. We had removed the sleeve sheared from the woman’s clothing and found a blade attached to the stub of the missing forearm. It was still dripping blood and the arm was fresh with bite marks—the handiwork of my faithful Spirit Wolves, but we could see that the arm was fair, supple, and lean. If not for the deadly knife attached to its end, it would have been nothing more than the severed arm of a young and fair lady.

Lu Shengnan sat on our flanks, cowering on another sofa, eyeing us with fear and doubt. The looks on our faces must have been furious especially right after a fight and the glimpse of me using sword telekinesis and the gory, blood-filled scene of the cloven arm flying in the air must have unsettled her, so she chose to keep a safe distance from us.

But it hardly mattered to Lin Feng and I, whose attentions were trained upon the severed arm. Lin Feng looked at it, saying, “From the size of this arm, it’s a wonder that the woman has such great strength. And I don’t know if you’ve noticed, she doesn’t know any wushu techniques.” I stared at Lin Feng, not saying anything, tacitly indicating him to go on.

“She was not fighting according to any style of any Chinese wushu schools when we were fighting her just now. Each and every move of hers were instinctive and uncoordinated. She has only speed and brute strength. Nothing else. I had overestimated her when we fought her the last time at the hotel. I thought she possesses greater skill and experience than me in combat. Now I am certain. We were only caught off-guard at that time hence she has had the jump on us then. This hitwoman in black is not as powerful as we initially believed.”

I nodded my understanding. “So, what do you think?” Lin Feng asked, “Do you think she’s the Huang Li we saw yesterday?” “I don’t know. Her stare’s the same as Huang Li’s and Cao Xuedong’s. But there is all to it. I’m still unsure.”

Lin Feng paused, pondering quietly. He suddenly turned to Lu Shengnan. “Tell us, Shengnan.” The sudden addressing of her caught her unawares that she jolted with shock before she cast a terrified look at us from the other side of the coffee table. “You know Huang Li more than we do,” Lin Feng uttered, “Do you think the hitwoman just now was Huang Li in disguise?”

Lu Shengnan paused with a perplexed expression on her face. Then she thought for a moment before she shook her head in the end, saying, “I don’t think so. The woman’s size looks slightly larger than Huang Li’s.”

Lin Feng and I traded a long look and we both sighed. Heavily and morosely.