Chapter 371: Invincible Arrival

Night.

The moon is full. The fog is thick.

The waning moon hangs in the dense fog; the moonlight is hazy and desolate, enough to break one's heart.

At a certain pier in Dongying, a group of sea bandits and ronin are swaying unsteadily, singing at the top of their lungs.

They had recently completed a "no-capital business" and then spent their time drinking, whoring, and gambling... They felt extremely happy and also extremely relaxed.

Today, the money was almost spent, and they were just about to board the ship to get a good day's rest, then return to battling the sea to kill and plunder once more.

A crew member said groggily, "Damn it, why aren't the lights on on the ship? It's pitch black; did those guys go to sleep so early?"

"Heh heh, didn't we snatch two women a few days ago? We went into the city for some fun, and they weren't idle either."

The Japanese pirate chuckled lewdly, his speech slurred from drinking too much alcohol.

But the leader, Fengmo Heshang, suddenly felt a jolt, an ominous premonition rising faintly within him.

This monk used to belong to a certain temple and was a martial arts prodigy; he had practiced diligently for decades, and his Buddhist martial arts were quite extraordinary, but he was expelled from the temple for raping women.

Resentful, he picked up his Zen Staff one night and, under the cover of darkness, slaughtered all one hundred and twenty-eight monks in the temple, leaving no survivors, and from then on became a bandit. Because his martial arts were peerless, he gradually became the leader of a group of sea pirates.

His original dharma name had long been forgotten, and because he was like a madman when killing, he earned the nickname "Mad Monk."

He felt "Mad Monk" sounded too ugly, so he added the character for "Demon" after "Mad," becoming "Fengmo Heshang." In daily life, anyone who dared to call him "Mad Monk" would immediately have their head smashed in by his sandbag-sized fist, brains splattering everywhere.

Fengmo Heshang looked into the distance and saw the entire ship was dark, all lights extinguished; a faint outline could be seen swaying slightly on the turbulent sea, like a lurking beast.

Fengmo Heshang frowned slightly; he had an ominous premonition in his heart, and the closer he got to the large ship, the more intense it became.

But if he were to turn and flee without knowing what had happened, it would be too cowardly, so he merely circulated his True Qi, ready to escape at any moment.

After boarding the ship, Fengmo Heshang immediately smelled a stench of blood, and then he saw the corpses—corpses split in two, cleaved down the middle by a single blade, clean and neat, with blood and internal organs spilled all over the deck; one could still vaguely discern the look of astonishment on their faces, as if they refused to believe they had died just like that.

"What is going on?"

"Someone ambushed us!?"

The rest of the members saw the corpses and, stimulated by the smell of blood, regained a bit of clarity; some took out modern firearms, some took out samurai swords, a motley collection.

"Ding... ding... ding..." A gust of wind blew, and suddenly a crisp sound of bells rang out. But under the cold moon, it sounded like the mournful cry of a ghost from hell, making one's hair stand on end.

Everyone followed the sound of the bells and saw that, at some point, a lonely figure had appeared on the deck, like a ghost, a ghost that had crawled out of hell.

This ghost was dressed in samurai attire, yet it could not conceal his primal, icy killing intent. A head of messy hair fluttered wildly like flames in the cold moonlight, and in his hand was a samurai sword, with a pair of silver bells hanging from the end of the blade, ringing in the wind.

Fengmo Heshang looked at this person and felt cold sweat pouring down; his entire being was shrouded in immense fear.

He had never seen such a terrifying person.

Never!

The faint light of the cold moon spilled onto the swordsman's face, and Fengmo Heshang vaguely saw two sunken holes on his face.

"Is he blind?" a pirate who hadn't yet sobered up said the two words that should never have been spoken.

Ding~

The bell rang suddenly.

The cold moon remained, but a blade light, more brilliant than the cold moon, flashed by, fast as lightning.

That swordsman still stood on the deck, as if he had never moved at all, from the beginning of time to the future, eternally unchanging, making one doubt if that blade light had just been an illusion.

And the man who had spoken suddenly had blood beads oozing from the center of his brow, a red line extending from his forehead downward, passing through his nose, lips, chin, and neck, finally disappearing into his clothes...

Then the man split into two halves, the left side falling to the left, the right side falling to the right, blood and organs spilling all over the ground from the middle.

"Kill!"

"Slaughter him!!"

After a deathly silence, the sounds of gunfire and swords being drawn rang out in unison.

If it were any other day, these Japanese pirates would have played along with this person, waiting for an opportunity to strike, or more simply, surrendered and knelt down to beg for mercy.

But they had been drinking, and they were drunk, heavily drunk.

People who are drunk often disregard the consequences and lose their sense of proportion. A person five feet tall suddenly feels they are eight feet tall. A person without the strength to truss a chicken will also feel they are a strongman.

Fengmo Heshang did not move.

He was neither mad nor a demon; he just kept sweating coldly.

"Ding... ding... ding..." The bells rang, the blade light flashed continuously, and one corpse after another fell, yet not even a scream was heard. It was only because the blade was too fast, too ruthless, and too decisive.

Just a few seconds later, those who had attacked earlier were all lying on the ground, limbs severed, corpses everywhere, blood flowing across the deck.

The swordsman had already sheathed his blade and "looked" at Fengmo Heshang with his hollow eye sockets, saying coldly, "After daybreak, I want to use this ship to find someone; I wonder if you can handle it."

"I can... I can... I... I definitely can..." Fengmo Heshang trembled all over, his back already soaked with cold sweat. He knew that if he dared to say a single word of refusal, he would immediately be split in two; there would be no other outcome.

The swordsman turned and walked toward the cabin.

Fengmo Heshang, not knowing why, asked, "Who... who exactly are you?"

The swordsman did not stop his pace, only a cold voice came back: "Invincible!"

Fengmo Heshang had already slumped onto the ground, as if paralyzed by fear, muttering to himself, "Invincible, Invincible..."

Perhaps only such a name could be worthy of such an expert.

The person is invincible.

The blade is also invincible.

And just at this moment, Fengmo Heshang discovered there were a few newspapers on the deck, and the headlines on all of them were surprisingly consistent.

"The Sorrow of Great Shanghai, The Duel of Gods and Demons — Tokyo Ribao."

"Legendary peerless martial artist appears in Great Shanghai; who will win, the torrent of Martial Dao or the torrent of technology?"

"Martial Dao Banzai! Martial Dao Banzai!!"

"The novel 'Shenwu zhi Dian', adapted from the Great Shanghai Battle of Gods and Demons, is now being serialized!!"

In an instant, Fengmo Heshang knew the target the swordsman called "Invincible" was going to seek, and his heart was filled with horror, while at the same time, he could not help but feel doubt.

"Can this blind man even read a newspaper?"