Chapter 113: Behind

That thread of coldness was not sharp; after slicing through clothing and piercing the skin, it left a brief window for reaction.

“Behind!”

A large patch of light behind him was blocked; Peter, helpless, cried out in panic—but it was already too late by more than a step. The rusted blade, thick with growth, brought a serrated grinding pain, as if a carpenter’s misaligned wooden saw had been dragged across flesh, turning the wound into an irregular, jagged line that could not be closed.

Couldn’t you use that stool in your hands to do something?

Too late to turn, Kup pressed his body forward, stumbled several steps out of the room, escaping the attack.

He held the hammer in one hand, clutching his lower back as he turned; muscle tension caused even greater pain, as if a rat soaked in seawater were gnawing inside him, salt-grain particles lodged in the wound delivering persistent, lingering irritation.

The strange attacker stood behind the door, directly behind Kup’s former position, drawn by Peter’s cry.

His hunched body twisted—unusually agile for his posture—his spine, never straight since appearing, bent toward Peter, curving sideways at an angle sufficient to snap a normal person’s body in half.

Yet he—or rather, it—was rigid. His spine did not bend in a continuous arc, but in segmented sections, as if several vertebrae had fused together, including the neck.

He did not turn his head in the most natural way to observe; instead, he rotated his entire body, bringing the eyes beneath the torn, stitched fabric to face Peter.

“Lord…”

Even the slowest person could now sense something was wrong. Peter retreated, clutching the wooden stool, but the room was small; he pressed himself against the wall with nowhere left to go.

Kup released his grip on his waist, his damp palm slipping on the hammer handle—he couldn’t tell if it was his own blood or residue from earlier combat. He forced himself not to think about it, gritted his teeth, and moved closer to the hunched figure.

Working on the docks had one drawback: you often suffered minor to moderate injuries—from being slashed by spiky catch, or from distraction while hauling heavy cargo, sometimes even fracturing bones.

But laborers couldn’t rest for such wounds, so in a way, it was a good thing: his accumulated experience with injury kept him from writhing helplessly on the ground from the pain in his lower back.

A man clutching a stool, trembling against the wall, posed no threat. The attacker turned away before Kup could close in, apparently unwilling to waste his strength on Peter first.

Kup silently cursed, pushed off the ground, and charged his opponent, swinging the hammer head in a wide half-circle, its rush of wind howling as it came down.

His eyes locked onto the target—he had to see with his own eyes how this thing moved.

He charged toward the door, brought the hammer head down.

The figure wrapped in cloth made no evasive move, just as before, adjusting the dagger with its curled arm into a bizarre attacking posture.

Kup caught a familiar scent coming from the hunched figure—but not the odor of long-term dust accumulation or lack of water for washing.

It seemed to come from a place that unsettled him—a house, perhaps, or a salted fish curing workshop, a kitchen littered with broken shells and internal organs. The strange odor leaked from the attacker himself, as if from a poorly sealed window.

The smell became especially strong as the hammer head descended; the window opened wide, releasing a scent he seemed to have known in past dreams.

Under the dim light, already indistinct shapes began to warp. The hunched silhouette blocking his view of the lamp stretched, layered, compressed—and vanished before him in a completely incomprehensible form, as if passing through a tiny hole, a crack, or some other breach in the picture.

[Honestly, recently I’ve been using Yeguo Reading to follow novels and update chapters—easy source switching, multiple voice options, works on both Android and iOS.]

He swung again and missed; inertia carried him through the doorway into the room, crashing onto the table.

The unstable table snapped one leg, tilted sideways, and sent his body stumbling toward the foot of the bed.

The oil lamp overturned, spilling its contents and igniting a pool of flame; the searing heat forced him to roll away.

As the fire dimmed, the serrated cutting sensation struck his right shoulder—from the upper edge of the collarbone to the shoulder peak. Intense pain surged with warm fluid; had he not instinctively rolled away from the spilled oil, the blade would have severed his neck.

“Peter!” Kup rolled clear of the attack, gripped the hammer with one hand to block the next thrust.

This deformed creature was stronger than expected; the force pressed the blade against his face, the reddish-brown rust clearly visible—the source of the serrated cut. Blood soaked into it, like a rot spreading over metal.

The belated support came too slow and too half-hearted—it had been noticed. Peter swung the stool with his eyes shut, his motion so clumsy it hardly looked like combat.

Fortunately, he hadn’t used full force. The attacker abandoned the stalemate, leapt back, and repeated his vanishing act—the stool struck Kup’s arm shielding his face with moderate force, producing no clear sound of bone breaking.

Unfortunately, a scream immediately followed, adding to the chaos: the hunched figure appeared behind Peter and drove the dagger deep into his back. The unsuspecting guide collapsed face-first, a large red stain spreading across his clothing.

As if pushing aside an insignificant coffin lid, the attacker gave no further glance at the bloodied victim—perhaps his anatomy didn’t allow it. He raised the dagger and charged Kup again.

Kup, halfway to rising, was slammed back down; the brief respite Peter bought him allowed only enough time to mobilize his injured left arm, gripping the hammer to intercept the dagger—just enough to avoid immediate defeat in this renewed stalemate.

But his defeat was only a matter of time. The pressure on the dagger was nearly equal to what he could exert with both arms unharmed, let alone now, with his wounded hand useless.

Along with the dagger came the face wrapped tightly in cloth. The three bizarre movements clearly had a cost: heavy, rasping breaths and hissing noises emerged beneath the strips, especially pronounced during inhalation. Air rushed through the layers of hardened material—not teeth, but something else—producing a rattle like rocks rolling over bone.

The smell of rust came from his breath, mixed with metallic rust powder from the dagger blown into his nostrils, combined with an unfamiliar sour stench of digested food, forming a scent that was both bloody and strangely familiar.

Kup wanted to curse—but his open mouth could barely manage breath, let alone speech.

He didn’t even know who to curse—the damned village, the bizarre attacker, or Kup himself, the idiot. He should’ve listened to Kraft’s words the first time he missed his swing—shouldn’t have swung blindly, shouldn’t have acted recklessly. The creature’s behavior wasn’t that complicated.

But under the shock of his first real conflict, his first swing at another human, his emotions had swung wildly—who could think straight?

The chance was long gone. In this cramped struggle with no room to maneuver, he was still at a disadvantage, the dagger hovering above his face—could he go to the Heavenly Father to review his lessons now? Probably not. He didn’t believe in that anyway.

…

The firelight flickered slightly again—perhaps from a sway, or something blocking it.

A small leather-booted foot shot out decisively from beneath the bed, kicking the hunched attacker squarely in the face—he had never suspected anyone was hiding in the room.

Let's be honest, the wooden sole of this shoe is extremely sturdy, and since the guy's neck has no flexibility to absorb impact, the force is directly transmitted to his vulnerable cheek, delivering both a psychological shock and a brutal physical blow to someone who had entered unscathed until now.

Yin Feng crawled out from under the bed, raised the package, and prepared to strike him one more hard blow.

Kup felt a sudden lightness in his body and, without thinking, swung his hammer with all his strength toward Yin Feng’s back; a sensation like crushed shell mixed with rock shards shattered beneath the metal.

That’s more like it.