Before he could finish, Cheng Shi stepped forward two paces, gave the man a teasing once-over from head to toe, and scoffed: "Everyone's belongings are checked before entering the prison. How could you possibly still have anything in your pockets?"
Cheng Shi's challenge left the man speechless. His expression shifted, but a vicious look quickly surfaced on his face.
"Clever, aren't you? Too bad it's already too late! Attack!"
The instant the words left his mouth, the stocky man snapped his own left ankle with a single kick, and with his other foot freed from the chain, he lunged upward. Using his waist to power his legs, his entire body whipped horizontally through the air like a staff, his right leg lashing out at Cheng Shi's skull.
The tall, thin man beside him struck simultaneously, violently wrenching both arms. Ignoring the excruciating agony of his wrist bones shattering, he ripped both hands free, then used his still-bound legs as a pivot point and spun his entire body in a wild rotation, driving a headbutt straight at the point-blank Cheng Shi.
This was a preditated ambush. Their timing was impeccable, and the ferocity of their self-sacrificing attacks was nothing short of extraordinary. Had there actually been a wounded garrison knight standing here, the blow might well have landed.
But unfortunately, they were dealing with Cheng Shi.
When Cheng Shi was on the scene, the one with the preditated plan wasn't these four prisoners—it was this fake garrison knight.
That step forward just now? Deliberate.
As a Priest who frequently treated the wounded, he had long since noticed the injuries on their wrists and ankles. He also knew that in a prison where talents were sealed, the only way to break free of the shackles was to sever your own limbs. So he'd anticipated their move.
But then why did he step closer?
Because he... wanted to shake them down.
These four teammates had almost certainly been exposed and imprisoned because of his and Big Cat's disappearance. In a sense, he was responsible for landing them in jail.
Screwing over your teammates once was bad enough. To then turn around and ask the people you'd screwed for favors? Cheng Shi's conscience wouldn't allow it.
So he decided to screw them over a second ti.
A negative tis a negative equals a positive. Screw them twice and it cancels out. Plus, they'd just attacked him—so from the moral high ground, he could righteously pass judgnt on them!
After all, this was Order's turf!
Praise Order!
And so Cheng Shi moved—but he'd overlooked one thing: soone was far faster than him.
Yu Mu!
The instant Cheng Shi's teammates launched their attack, the tree-servant had already loosed his Sudden Dusk arrows. The whistling of wind-splitting shafts scread past Cheng Shi's face, on a collision course with both attackers.
The tall, thin man and the stocky man were both startled, but mid-attack and fully committed, they had neither the timing nor the strength to dodge. The wounded knight before them hadn't been reached yet, but the arrows were already upon them. Their faces went white, and both n simply resigned themselves to fate.
But just then—clang—a powerful, withered hand materialized before them, snatching the screaming arrow out of the air and halting the point barely an inch from their chests.
The arrow had stopped. The n had not.
Their all-out blows carried irreversible montum. Two impacts thudded against the armored knight standing before them. They'd expected their devastating strikes to at least worsen his injuries and knock him down, if not kill him outright. They were sorely mistaken.
The knight didn't budge an inch.
Not only that—the hand that had caught the arrow mid-flight was his.
All four went pale with shock, staring at the withered arm that looked like an ancient vine, hearts pounding.
Decay!
This was actually a follower of Decay—wait. He was no knight!
Realization struck the tall, thin man like lightning. He twisted his bent body to look up, and when he saw the blood-sared face at close range, his expression changed yet again. "It's you!" he cried.
"Yeah, it's . Is this how you treat a teammate who ca to rescue you?" Cheng Shi scoffed, casually tossing aside the thorned arrow of withered vine, shaking out his hand, and tucking the arm that surged with terrifying Decay power behind his back.
He had saved his teammates, and the ans by which he'd done so was the Faded authority that Decay had bestowed upon him.
The authority's accompanying Faded Majesty effect allowed him to borrow a portion of the authority's power to strengthen himself whenever he was struck by a blasphemous attack from his own faith. He'd deliberately extended his hand into the arrow's path monts earlier to test this very effect, then snatched the arrow out of the air.
As for how a Priest could react so quickly—naturally, it was because Cheng Shi was no longer a Priest. He was neither Clown nor Fate Weaver. Right now, he was a Hero of Today.
Back when he'd scattered that rain of dice, he had already completed the Oracle Act and was ready to strike. Yu Mu's arrival had spared him the trouble—and just now, he'd used Yu Mu's shot to covertly test Faded's effects.
One couldn't call it "strong." The word "strong" would, in a sense, be a blasphemy against a true divine authority.
If he had to sum up this arm in four words, it would be: absolutely flawless.
No weaknesses. Strength at full marks. Attack at full marks. Defense at full marks. The only shortcoming was that speed hadn't been enhanced.
But that made sense. Decay's will was about rot—making one arm as impervious as a ten-thousand-year-old vine was already an enormous boon for Cheng Shi.
Most importantly, when this arm ca into contact with external Decay power, it could use Faded's force to effortlessly... decay that foreign Decay away.
So what had just happened was Decay decaying Decay.
After Cheng Shi's little performance, the four prisoners found themselves in an exceedingly awkward position.
The man was clearly a heavyweight. While technically they'd been imprisoned because he'd abandoned the trial on his own, he hadn't directly hard them—so they could only chalk it up to being outmatched.
And just now, this heavyweight had saved their lives. Sure, they could see his twisted sense of amusent in all of this, but a heavyweight's twisted amusent could hardly be called that—it was more like... sharing joy with the common folk.
So all four of them froze in place.
The two who hadn't attacked were rely wearing complicated, embarrassed expressions. But the two who'd broken their own limbs to launch the assault—one dangling from the fra with blood gushing from his leg, the other sprawled face-first on the ground with blood streaming from his cracked skull—their faces were black as ink, their bodies trembling, not daring to utter a word.
"Still want to fight?"
Cheng Shi posed the considerate question, and it plunged the entire scene into dead silence.
"..."
"Then let's talk compensation, shall we? You two are the masterminds, you two are the accomplices. All four of you tried to kill , yet I saved your lives instead. One attempt, one rescue—by my count, you owe
two lives. Did I calculate wrong?"
"..."
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