Chapter 770: Blow up into pieces with me, brothers wait for me

"Kill!"

The forty-nine members of the Bloodthirsty Mercenary Troop charged forward, their attitude that of adults about to discipline children. After all, they had the numbers, and they were strong.

However, the moment the clash began, they were utterly dumbfounded. Stunned.

The twenty-nine intelligence agents weren’t just fighting; they were throwing their lives away. They mounted no defense and blocked no attacks. They were trading life for life.

If you slash me, fine. I won’t dodge or parry. But as your blade hits me, mine will hit you. The difference is, when I’m wounded, my Life Totem heals me automatically. When you’re wounded, you stay wounded.

The twenty-nine intelligence agents fought with no desire to live. They knew perfectly well that Shang Tianfeng and the Bloodthirsty Mercenary Troop were here to take their heads. Even with a Life Totem, if your head is severed, you die. Since death was inevitable either way, why not fight to the bitter end?

It is said that the fierce fear the reckless, and the reckless fear those who court death. At this moment, the twenty-nine intelligence agents were precisely those reckless men courting death.

Their strength was already a level higher than the forty-nine mercenaries. This, combined with their suicidal desperation and the mercenaries’ overconfidence, led to a swift and brutal outcome. In the very first exchange, twenty-nine members of the Bloodthirsty Mercenary Troop were wiped out, and that wasn’t even counting the ones Ghost Shadow had dispatched.

"Don’t you dare run!" Shang Tianfeng shrieked, frantically leaping about in pursuit of Ghost Shadow.

Ghost Shadow knew he was no match for Shang Tianfeng, so he didn’t even try to engage. I’m faster than you, and you can’t catch me. I’ll just kill your mercenaries. This tactic infuriated Shang Tianfeng.

"Fine. You kill my mercenaries, and I’ll kill your men," Shang Tianfeng snarled, abandoning his chase of Ghost Shadow and turning on the intelligence agents.

"So you’re picking on the soft ones, are you?" one of the agents yelled, lunging madly at Shang Tianfeng. He threw himself directly onto the blade, allowing it to pierce straight through his chest. Then, he wrapped his arms around Shang Tianfeng in a death grip and bellowed, "Brothers, kill him!"

At this signal, two other agents rushed forward, hacking furiously at Shang Tianfeng. However, Shang Tianfeng was a Fifth Realm Peak War God whose defensive power was as strong as bronze and iron. Despite their best efforts, the two agents couldn’t break through. But they were nothing if not audacious. Since they couldn’t kill him, they settled for shredding his clothes to pieces.

Thus, by the time Shang Tianfeng processed that an agent had committed suicide by lunging onto his blade and was now clinging to him, his clothes were already in tatters. Except for the front, which was shielded by the agent’s body, the back and sides of his attire had been sliced into scraps.

"Get off me!" Shang Tianfeng roared, unleashing a wave of power that sent the clinging agent flying. The man had held on so tightly that the force of the attack snapped both of his arms.

And yet, despite his broken arms and a blade wound through his chest, the agent’s Third Stage Life Totem instantly repaired his body. After being thrown back, he climbed to his feet and charged at Shang Tianfeng once more, yelling, "Brothers, I’m going on ahead! We’ll be brothers again in the next life!"

This time, however, he did not succeed. Shang Tianfeng’s blade met him first, severing his head even as his body crashed into its target.

Seeing this, Ghost Shadow and the remaining twenty-eight agents felt no sorrow. Instead, their frenzy intensified.

"Brothers, you keep killing! I’ll go on ahead!" another agent cried, rushing toward Shang Tianfeng like a moth to a flame. He was trying to buy time for Ghost Shadow and the others to finish off the remaining mercenaries. But when he reached Shang Tianfeng, he was met with a decapitating slash.

"Don’t get too far ahead, brothers! I’m coming!" yet another agent shouted, charging at Shang Tianfeng.

One after another, the intelligence agents hurled themselves fearlessly at Shang Tianfeng’s blade.

What kind of men are these? Are they all insane? Shang Tianfeng thought as he swung his blade again and again, cutting down the agents who were practically throwing their heads at him. He was completely and utterly shaken. So shaken that his scalp tingled.

What kind of master commands such loyalty that these hardened warriors would so fanatically rush to their deaths for him? Shang Tianfeng once again found himself burning with envy and jealousy toward Ye Xiu.

Finally, it was over. All the intelligence agents had been beheaded, and all the mercenaries of the Bloodthirsty Mercenary Troop were dead. In the abandoned factory, only Ghost Shadow and Shang Tianfeng remained.

"You, with the family name Ghost, it’s just the two of us now. Do you dare to fight me?" Shang Tianfeng asked, his face an emotionless mask as he stared at the blood-soaked Ghost Shadow. He had heard the agents call their leader by an honorific and mistakenly assumed ’Ghost’ was his family name.

"My brothers will not have died in vain. You will join them in death!" Ghost Shadow snarled, his eyes sweeping over the corpses of his men. All were decapitated; not a single body was whole. His heart ached as if it were being carved by knives.

In that moment, he made a mad decision. He would take Shang Tianfeng down with him.

"Shang Tianfeng, in this world, aside from the Young Master, only Blood Demon is faster than me when fleeing," Ghost Shadow said, looking at Shang Tianfeng with remarkable calm. "Many people are curious. My strength isn’t that great, so why is my speed so phantom-like?

"Other than the Young Master and myself, no third person in this world knows the answer to that question!

"Today, I’ll make an exception and tell you!"

Shang Tianfeng listened quietly. He was indeed deeply curious about Ghost Shadow’s astonishing speed—a speed so great that he’d had to resort to goading him into a fight. He knew that if Ghost Shadow decided to run, he would never be able to catch him.

"It’s innate!" Ghost Shadow laughed. "Speed is my Innate Ability. Just as some people inherit Special Abilities and others inherit Totems, I inherited speed. But I’m an orphan. I don’t even know who my damn father was, so I have no idea what this ability is called.

"Now, let me tell you something else. Besides speed, I inherited another ability. An ability to perish together with my enemy!"

As he said this, Ghost Shadow looked up at the starry sky, his wistful expression twisting into a ferocious snarl. "We intelligence personnel are not combat specialists. When the Young Master suddenly granted us the strength of Fourth Realm War Gods, we didn’t truly understand how powerful we had become.

"If I had known my twenty-nine brothers could have killed all the mercenaries simply by fighting to the death, I would have used my Innate Ability from the very beginning to take you down with me. If I had done that, my brothers wouldn’t have had to die!"

As Ghost Shadow spoke, Shang Tianfeng suddenly felt his aura skyrocket. A suffocating pressure and a profound sense of crisis washed over him.

Danger! I could die!

Shang Tianfeng’s nerves instantly pulled taut. For a fleeting moment, he wanted to run, but reason told him that with Ghost Shadow’s speed, escape was impossible. His only choice was to fight to the death.

"Bring it on!" Shang Tianfeng roared, gripping his blade with both hands as his fighting spirit surged.

"Die!"

Ghost Shadow vanished.

The next instant, Shang Tianfeng felt a pair of arms wrap around him from behind, holding him in an unbreakable grip.

"Let’s be blown to pieces together! Brothers, wait for me!"

The moment he embraced Shang Tianfeng, Ghost Shadow activated his Innate Ability. By burning his life, his blood, his Martial Prowess—burning everything—he could detonate himself to perish alongside his enemy.

In short: self-destruction.