Republic of China: From Street Performer to War God in a Chaotic Era

Nanshi, the backyard of the Caobang (Grass Transport Gang) branch.

In a sunless room that never sees sunlight, there is a perpetual stench of cheap incense and rotting raw meat.

Greyhound, dressed in a drab gray jacket, stared at his four men lying on the ground with a livid expression.

Especially that scarred-faced guy.

His sternum caved in completely, his right knee was shattered into pieces, he was barely breathing, and it was clear he wouldn't survive.

"Brother Dog, that little brat is weird, really weird..."

A younger brother next to him with a broken leg was twitching in pain, his teeth chattering.

"His hands and feet are like they're made of iron; he crippled Scarface in one move."

Greyhound didn't speak, but a sinister glint flashed in his triangular eyes.

He crouched down, placed two fingers on Scarface's broken ribs, and applied a little pressure.

"ah."

Scarface let out a scream and immediately fainted.

"The bone fracture was smooth, indicating it was broken by a strange force."

Greyhound stood up and washed his hands in the basin of water beside him.

"Without developing integrated internal strength, can you really smash a person's bones to dust with just external hard skills?"

Greyhound had spent half his life in Nanshi and knew all too well that the martial arts world of Tianjin was treacherous and rife with scoundrels.

But he couldn't understand how that little actor from the Fuju Troupe, who was always hungry and only knew how to play with a few broken bamboo sticks, could suddenly possess such terrifying skills overnight.

"This is a tough one; we can't confront it head-on."

The greyhound squinted and turned to look at the deepest part of the room.

There is a three-foot-tall black wooden shrine there.

There were no statues of gods in the shrine, only a blank memorial tablet covered with a red cloth.

In front of the memorial tablet were several rough porcelain bowls, filled with bloody raw eggs and a few pieces of rotten raw meat with bones.

This is the "guardian deity" he worships... Grandpa Gray.

The guardian spirits of Northeast China are said to be five major deities: "Hu, Huang, Bai, Liu, and Hui." The "Hui" deity refers to a rat that has become a spirit.

The Grey Fairy is most skilled at amassing wealth, transporting goods, and using bewitching techniques, but she is also extremely greedy, bloodthirsty, and petty.

Back then, Greyhound gained his evil skills by offering fresh blood and flesh to this evil spirit every day, which enabled him to climb to the position of Red Pole in the Canal Gang.

"Someone come here!"

The greyhound's voice was somber.

"Go to the accounting office and get twenty silver dollars. Go to the meat market and buy a live sheep and two live chickens."

"Tonight, I'm going to ask Grandpa Gray to make the trip in person."

Twenty silver dollars in Tianjin in 1925 could buy six or seven hundred catties of good white flour. An ordinary family couldn't save that much money in a year.

But for the sake of the land deed to Fujuban, worth several hundred silver dollars, and even more so to kill Lu Guan, who made him uneasy, Greyhound gritted his teeth and went all out.

……

It was midnight.

The backyard of the Fuju Opera House.

Although the snowstorm has stopped, the weather after the snow melts is colder than when it was snowing.

Lu Guan and the old blind man slept on two broken wooden beds backstage.

Even with the "Qi and Blood Cleansing" as a foundation, the repeated exhaustion caused Lu Guan to fall asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow.

"Swish, swish..."

After some time, a scraping sound came from backstage.

It looked like some kind of claw was slowly scratching at the wooden door.

Lu Guan was sleeping soundly, but the "Eight Extremes Master" shadow puppet that was placed close to his body trembled slightly at that moment.

A sliver of blood seeped from the gunshot wound in the shadow puppet's chest, scalding Lu Guan's chest.

"Whoosh."

Lu Guan suddenly opened his eyes, slowed his breathing, and listened quietly to the sounds around him.

"Squeak, hee hee hee..."

The sound, which sounded like a mouse squeaking or an old woman's sinister laugh, crept in through the crack in the door.

Immediately afterwards, a fishy, ​​foul odor filled the air.

It was a dead rat, mixed with the smell of moldy incense ash.

Something's not right.

Lu Guan felt his head sink and began to see double images.

His blood seemed to slow down, his hands and feet felt cold, and an uncontrollable sense of irritability rose in his heart.

Bewitching!

"Blind Grandpa".

Lu Guan realized something was wrong and abruptly turned to look to the side.

Suddenly, the old blind man stood up straight.

His cloudy, blind eyes rolled back, a stiff smile playing on his lips. He tiptoed, like a marionette, step by step toward the crossbeam used for hanging backstage.

On the crossbeam above his head, a knotted, tattered straw rope had appeared out of nowhere.

"That monster is courting death."

Lu Guan felt a surge of anger.

He bit his tongue, and the intense pain, accompanied by a surge of vital energy, instantly dispelled most of the gloomy, dark energy in his mind.

Qi and blood are like a furnace, most effective against yin evil!

He rolled out of bed, rushed to the old blind man's side in three quick steps, grabbed his shoulder, and pulled him back forcefully.

"Thump."

The old blind man fell to the ground, gasped sharply, coughed violently, and his eyes regained their clarity.

"Young...Young Master, what's wrong? I feel a tightness around my neck..."

The old blind man touched his neck, where a red mark had appeared out of nowhere, and trembled with fear.

"Don't make a sound, hide behind the stage prop."

Lu Guan shoved the old blind man behind the old camphor wood opera box, then turned around and stared intently at the closed wooden door.

"Clang!"

The wooden door, which was originally locked tightly, was suddenly flung open by a gust of evil wind.

A gust of black wind swept the remaining snow from the ground into the house, and the flame of the kerosene lamp instantly turned eerie green and flickered violently.

With the help of the light, Lu Guan finally saw what was at the door.

It was a huge gray rat, about half the height of a person.

It stands upright like a human.

Its fur was glossy and smooth, but the hair on its head had all fallen out, revealing a scalp covered in sores.

His eyes, no bigger than mung beans, were fixed on Lu Guan, and blood was still dripping from the corner of his mouth.

"Hehehe, such vigorous energy and blood. Very nourishing...very nourishing indeed..."

This is the "Grey Fairy" that Greyhound worships!

It had been fed on live prey by the greyhound, and tonight it had come to take Lu Guan's life as payment.

"A beast who pretends to be a sage."

Lu Guan's muscles were tense.

With a sudden stomp of his foot, he used the Shadow Step technique and charged forward like an arrow released from a bow.

So what if I don't have any strength techniques? With my current strength, I can tear you apart!

"Bang."

Lu Guan delivered a powerful punch, slamming it hard into the giant rat's head.

However, a bizarre scene unfolded.

The giant rat, half the height of a person, didn't dodge or flinch, and was punched squarely in the face by Lu Guan.

But Lu Guan felt as if he had hit a flimsy, tattered piece of cotton, completely unaffected.

With a "poof," the giant rat in front of them turned into a cloud of gray mist and dissipated into the air.

"Hallucination?"

Lu Guan was startled, and then a chill ran down his spine.

"Sizzle."

His cotton-padded coat was instantly torn apart, and five deep, bone-revealing bloodstains appeared on his back, the blood instantly staining his clothes red.

"Hehehe, little brat, your meager skills aren't even enough to touch my true form..."

Eerie laughter echoed from all directions.

Lu Guan turned his head sharply and found that the giant rat had appeared behind him at some point, with his flesh and blood still hanging on its claws.

"This evil spirit can create illusions; what you see with your naked eye is not its true form."

Lu Guan felt a chill run down his spine, and the sharp pain in his back instantly brought him to his senses.

This thing is no ordinary wild animal.

It is a demon that has received incense offerings and gained sentience.

Without developing the "true strength" or "fist intent" of martial arts, ordinary physical attacks have little effect on it.

"Whoosh."

Having succeeded in his attack, the gray fairy did not covet the opportunity. He transformed into a gray shadow and once again merged into the surrounding darkness.

It was toying with Lu Guan, trying to slowly drain his energy and vitality like a cat playing with a mouse.

"Young Master, it's a greyhound; its stench is unmistakable."

Although the old blind man hiding behind the opera box couldn't see, his nose was extremely sensitive, and he shouted anxiously.

"This beast fears the most intense and yang things. Although your blood and energy are strong, you haven't developed true strength and can't harm its core."

"Extremely masculine and vigorous..."

Lu Guan's eyes darkened.

He suddenly reached into his robes and grabbed the shadow puppet of "Master of Eight Extremes" carved from the skin of a tiger with piercing eyes and a white forehead.

"Since my fists can't hit you, then let something that can hit you take your place."

Lu Guan ripped the white cloth curtain off the offering table, and with a flick of his hand, the curtain was hung between the two pillars with a "whoosh".

"Blind man, play the violin!" Lu Guan roared.

Although the old blind man was terrified, his professional instincts, honed from a lifetime working in the opera troupe, made him instantly pull out his erhu from his pocket.

With a flick of the wrist, the music suddenly tore through the night sky.

"Squeak, yah..."

As soon as the zither music started, Lu Guan swiftly grabbed the three bamboo sticks of the shadow puppet with both hands.

"Hey!"

A loud shout.

The shadow puppet of a warrior, exuding a tragic aura, suddenly pressed against the white cloth.

The moment the white cloth was attached to the shadow puppet, a terrifying aura, like a tiger awakening, swept outwards from the center of the curtain.

"boom."

The lights inside the room flickered violently, their normal orange hue forced down by the malevolent energy.

The "Grey Fairy," who had been lurking in the darkness preparing to launch another sneak attack, suddenly let out a scream.

"grumble."

In its eyes, the white cloth was no longer a lifeless shadow puppet, but a king of beasts covered in blood, staring at it.

The tiger is the king of beasts, and its skin is naturally imbued with the power to ward off evil spirits.

Moreover, this shadow puppet also carries the fearless fist spirit of a Bajiquan master who died tragically in battle.

"Die!"

Ignoring the pain in his back, Lu Guan moved his hands with lightning speed.

Handle the pole and lift the rod.

On the white cloth, the shadow puppet of a warrior suddenly pounced like a tiger, its figure so fast it blurred, and with a "fierce tiger climbing the mountain" move, it slammed down hard into a certain place in mid-air through the curtain.

"Bang."

"what……"

With a mournful cry, a cloud of foul-smelling black blood exploded out of thin air.

The giant rat, which had originally concealed its true form, was forced to reveal its true form by the phantom, which was a mixture of tiger's ferocity and fist intent, and crashed heavily into the corner of the wall.

A large piece of its chest fur was torn off, revealing its bare white bones.

It couldn't understand how an ordinary person who hadn't even mastered internal strength could possess such a terrifying weapon.

Without the slightest hesitation, it tumbled and crawled through the broken window, turning into a wisp of gray smoke as it escaped into the snowy night.

"call……"

Watching the evil spirit escape, Lu Guan's tense nerves finally relaxed.

His hands went limp, and the shadow puppet of the warrior slipped off the curtain.

Lu Guan looked down and his heart sank.

The shadow puppet, which was originally lifelike and exuded a fierce aura, has now become dull and lifeless, and the color of the leather surface has turned grayish.

The blood around the bullet hole in his chest had completely dried up, as if something had been drained away.

"Young Master, are you alright?"

The old blind man groped his way over, and upon smelling the stench of blood throughout the room, his voice trembled with anxiety.

"I'm fine, just some minor cuts and bruises."

Lu Guan tore off a clean strip of cloth and hastily used it to stop the bleeding from the wound on his back.

He stared at the dim shadow puppet in his hand and sighed.

Although we managed to drive away the Grey Immortal tonight using the evil aura of the shadow puppets, this is by no means a long-term solution.

The shadow puppet's spirit is damaged. If the Grey Immortal recovers from his injuries and comes back, or if the Grey Dog uses some other insidious methods, what will he use to defend himself?

"Blind Grandpa,"

Lu Guan thought for a moment and then said.

"You're right, physical blows can't kill these ethereal evil spirits."

"Only by cultivating true internal energy, making one's blood and qi as bright as the blazing sun, and unleashing a punch that can shatter the souls of evil spirits, can one truly establish oneself in this chaotic world."

"It seems that the true transmission of Ming Jin (a martial arts technique) is urgently needed."

Lu Guan put the dim shadow puppet back into his arms and looked up at the sky outside the window, which was already turning a pale white.

The progress bar of the stage of creation in his mind is currently only [4/10].

Six more performances to be a resounding success.

There are also six more perfect performances that will thrill the audience.

"Blind man, pack up your tools."

Lu Guan suddenly stood up, ignoring the pain in his back.

"It's dawn, let's go to the overpass."

"Today, I won't leave until I've given six stellar performances!"