'You grow attached to things, even machines.'
Fang Zhen sidestepped and pulled his longspear from its mount on the front of the motorcycle.
He wasn't ready to kill anyone yet, but he was going to give this female Assassin a good thrashing. He needed to teach her a lesson—that you don't ss with other people's property.
Just then, the clone of the black-clad man he had knocked down charged him from behind.
Fang Zhen wielded a weapon in each hand: a longspear in his left and a pistol in his right.
His spearmanship was already well-honed. He spun around, tucking the longspear under his arm and sweeping it horizontally, sending one of the clones staggering back. Simultaneously, his right hand fired the Desert Viper—BANG! BANG! BANG!—three shots in quick succession, all striking the black-clad man's chest.
The bullets struck the clone, and its energy instantly dissipated. Its form grew faint before it solidified into a human-shaped, crystalline bone sculpture and fell to the ground.
Fang Zhen was really in the zone, his style a perfect fusion of two weapons—one cold, one hot.
As he turned to deal with the other clone, sothing completely unexpected happened.
The male Assassin's second clone didn't attack Fang Zhen. Instead, it turned and, to his astonishnt, ran its sword through the female Assassin—the one who had damaged his Jue Ying motorcycle.
The female Assassin seed prepared for it, tilting her neck back as if to welco the blade.
"Pfft!"
With a single thrust, the clone pierced its companion's throat, killing her.
Fang Zhen stared at the clone for half a second longer than he should have.
'What the hell?'
'Are they so ruthless they even kill their own?'
Before he could even determine if this was a case of silencing a witness, the black-clad man's clone quickly pulled back.
Two other male Assassins, who had been shot in the calf and couldn't flee, simultaneously adopted a posture of surrender to death. They tilted their heads back, exposing their vulnerable necks.
The clone's face was a mask of grim resolve, while his comrades' expressions were filled with a religious-like fervor, as if they were about to complete a sacred sacrifice.
The clone was close to the two n; it reached their side in less than a second.
"SHLICK!"
"SHLICK!"
The blackened blade flashed. The necks of the two wounded n were slit, one after the other, the blade sinking a third of the way through and severing their carotid arteries.
An injury like that was impossible to survive.
As they died, the two Night Shadow Family Assassins turned to stare at Fang Zhen, their eyes burning with an unholy fixation, as if searing his face into their minds so they could curse him even in death.
Then they collapsed, their breathing ceasing.
'Shit! Fucking lunatics!'
The corner of Fang Zhen's mouth twitched. His assessnt had been spot on.
'The Night Shadow Family must have so code,' he thought, 'a principle like "death before capture."'
Realizing it couldn't kill Fang Zhen, the male Assassin's clone had simply given up and turned back to silence its own comrades.
It might have looked resolute, even tragically heroic, tinged with the bleakness of a dood protagonist.
But the problem was, Fang Zhen never intended to kill them in the first place!
Fang Zhen had only planned on using a truth serum to get so intel before letting them go.
He hadn't planned on going on a killing spree in this instance; otherwise, he would've started long ago.
The Night Shadow Family mbers had died for nothing, and in doing so, they'd ruined his no-kill achievent. And it was obvious they would bla him for it.
'Fucking lunatics!'
Fang Zhen almost lost it. 'How has a family of psychos like the Night Shadow Family survived this long?'
'An operational doctrine like that has to be costly.'
He glanced at his Jue Ying motorcycle leaking fuel beside him, and a fresh wave of anger surged through him. His gaze fell on the murderous black-clad Assassin, his irritation growing.
Fang Zhen grabbed his Jue Ying, and a white light flashed between his armored arm and the motorcycle's fra.
'Power Mountain Seal!'
"You bastard!" With a surge of strength, he hurled the Jue Ying motorcycle toward the male Assassin six or seven ters away, the one with the injured thigh.
Fang Zhen didn't actually intend to kill the man; he was just venting his anger. Normally, the Jue Ying should have landed a dozen centiters in front of the Assassin without harming him. After all, he had a precision throwing skill. Tossing a heavy object was still tossing, and he knew how to aim.
But while he knew that, the man in black did not.
Seeing the Jue Ying flying toward him, the male Assassin instinctively raised his sword and flicked it upward, trying to deflect the falling motorcycle.
That flick of his sword was a critical mistake. The thin blade scraped against the Jue Ying's tal fra, kicking up a shower of sparks.
And the Jue Ying was leaking fuel.
"WHOOM!"
A fireball erupted, engulfing the male Assassin from head to toe.
"Aaaargh!" The male Assassin let out a horrific scream.
The next mont, the flas ignited the rest of the gasoline in the Jue Ying's tank.
"BOOM!"
With a massive explosion, the Jue Ying blew up, taking the Assassin right next to it along for the ride.
The male Assassin didn't even have ti to scream again before the blast left him critically injured and completely wreathed in flas.
A few seconds later, the male Assassin lay on the ground. His black clothes were gone, and he had been rendered into a charcoal-grilled version of his forr self, his body slowly carbonizing.
As the man carbonized, his uncontrolled clone stood frozen in place. Three or four seconds later, it gradually faded away, leaving behind another crystalline bone sculpture that clattered to the ground.
Fang Zhen watched, his eyebrows twitching.
'Did even the heavens find him too stupid to live?'
'Just how unlucky can one Assassin be?'
'And there goes my no-kill run!'
Beside Fang Zhen, Avera was also stunned silent by the scene.
But she quickly recovered, turning to Fang Zhen with an expression of pure schadenfreude.
"The Night Shadow Family are never taken captive. If they're caught, it's either suicide or they're silenced by their own. They've been indoctrinated with that since they were children."
"But they hold a grudge."
"Whoever causes their mission to fail, forcing them to kill their comrades... well, those deaths get pinned on that person."
"So, congratulations. It looks like the Night Shadow Family has you in their sights now," Avera said.
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