Unrivaled Dragon King: God of War’s Revenge

The Shadow Assassins Strike

"Ten... ten billion?"

The auctioneer suffocated on his own saliva. He dropped his gavel. It struck the podium with a dead thump, but in the quiet room it was like a gunshot.

The entire hall was frozen. The rich merchants, the pompous heirs, the pretty ladies in their evening dresses--they all gazed up at the man in the grey coat as though he had a second head. The ten billion was sufficient to purchase a small nation. Alex had just exchanged it with one box of grass.

"Going once..." the auctioneer stammered, his voice shaking so much that the microphone was vibrating. "Going twice..."

"Wait."

The voice, a harsh, cold cutting-blade, cut through the air like a rusty saw-blade.

An old man was standing slowly in the back row. He was dressed in an old fashioned grey robe that seemed to be totally out of place among the tuxedos and designer suits. He himself was long haired and stringy with white hair, and had cloudy dead-fish eyes.

He didn't look rich. He didn't look powerful. But as soon as he rose, there was a heaviness of the air in the room. It became hard to breathe. The lamps fluttered threateningly.

This was a Cultivator. A real one.

"Young man," the old man said. His voice was weird, it sounding as though he was whispering in the ear of Alex, when he was fifty feet across the big hall. I am the Elder Crow, in the Iron Fist Sect. That Spirit Grass will aid in my growing. Give back thy bid and I will save thy life.

The crowd gasped. The Iron Fist Sect! It was a mythological secret clan. The government themselves were afraid of them. They were monsters that were able to punch through steel walls.

He is dead, somebody whispered in front of the row. "You don't say no to Elder Crow. One of the senators was found dead by him the previous year because he looked at him.

The old man grinned wickedly, and liked his terrorization. He raised one of his fingers and pointed it to Alex.

"Kneel."

BOOM!

A wave of force crashed down on Alex and was invisible. It was his Spirit Pressure, which consisted of crushing the mind of a normal human being and forcing them to give in. The unoccupied seat beside Alex burst into splinters. The marble floor beneath the feet of Alex broke in a spider-webbing.

The crowd screamed and scrambled away, with their heads covered, alarmed at the force of which they could see nothing.

But Alex didn't move. He didn't blink. He did not even knock the tea over the table in front of him.

He slowly turned his head. He stared at the old man with disinterest.

"Spare my life?" Alex asked.

He stood up.

ROAR!

Alex didn't use a technique. He didn't shout. He merely gave a small part of his Dragon Aura.

It wasn't a wave. It was a tsunami.

The glass windows of the auction house broke at once, scattering the glass over the road. The great crystal chandeliers swung and chinked like the wind chimes in a hurricane.

The fiendish smile on Elder Crow disappeared at once. His eyes protruded out of his sockets. He had the sensation of a mountain caving in on him.

"PFFT!"

Elder Crow gagged a stream of blood and fell on his knees. He stared at Alex with sheer, uncontaminated horror and his pretence had been taken over by a sense of having just kicked a plate of iron.

"You... you are..." old Crow wheezed, and the blood ran down his chin on to his grey robe. "A Grandmaster? No... higher?"

Sit down, Alex said, in a cold voice. "And shut up."

Elder Crow dared not reason. He banged his forehead against the floor, and fell prostrate in all his fear, and could make himself move no more.

The auctioneer, whom Alex was hiding under his podium, trembling like a leaf, looked up at him.

Wrap it, wrap it, Alex said, glancing at his watch. "I'm in a hurry."

Ten Minutes Later: The VIP Parking Lot.

Alex passed out of the exit, carrying with him a little wooden box of old sandalwood. The Seven-Leaf Spirit Grass was inside. It was the first and the only thing of the world that could rescue Sarah.

The night was quiet. Too quiet.

The crickets were chirping no more. The wind had stopped blowing. The streetlights flared and went dead and the parking lot was engulfed in complete darkness.

Alex stopped walking. He was in the middle of the deserted lot, and stood, motionless.

Alex ran to the open air, but no one was there. "I can smell the rot on you."

HISS.

Three shadows broke off out of the shadow in a van close by. They did not walk, but moved across the asphalt. They had been bound up in black bandages, and their eyes had a green sickly glow.

Shadow Assassins. Creatures of dark magic.

The Master greets you well, the middle assassin hissed. Its voice was sandpaper rubbing against each other.

SWISH!

They struck without giving any warning.

They were fast. Faster than bullets. Three green-poison-covered jagged daggers plunged in the direction of the heart of Alex, his throat, and his eyes all at the same time.

Alex didn't dodge. He punched.

His fist was striking the chest of the middle assassin at the speed of sound. It ought to have broken the ribs of the creature and thrown it to the air.

WHOOSH.

The fist of Alex went up through the body of the assassin.

It was like punching smoke. There was no solid mass.

The assassin laughed. "Fool! The shadows cannot be touched by anything physical!

He slashed at Alex's arm. The grey coat was cut through with the dagger. There was a stinging sensation on the skin of Alex.

Poison.

Alex sprang aside and separated himself and the creatures. The three shadows round him laughing. They were ghosts. Untouchable. Immunible to ordinary martial arts.

Surrender, you wretch, hiss the assassin, licking up the blood on his sword. Your power does you no good here. We shall suck your blood out drop by drop.

Alex examined the wound on his arm. The wound had already healed, and that it was his Dragon Blood that counterfeited the effect of the poison in knitting the skin together in bubbles of golden light.

"Useless?" Alex whispered.

He closed his eyes. He took a deep breath.

As he opened them his eyes had become slits running up and down. Like a reptile. Like a dragon.

"You are shadows," Alex said. What is the thing that fears most of all?

He raised his right hand. There came a golden flame in his palm. It wasn't normal fire. It was the pure and concentrated Yang energy. The "Dragon Fire."

The assassins ceased laughing. They shrieked. The sacred light on the hand of Alex seared their delicate eyes.

"Light," Alex said.

BOOM!

He punched the air. In his fist was thrown up a giant column of golden fire that made the black parking lot noon.

The fire did not go over them. It incinerated them.

"AHHHHH!"

The two assassins on the right and left were shot away. They had not even time to turn to ashes. They simply stopped being, having disappeared in the world by the sheer force of Yang.

The assassin in the middle--the leader--made an attempt to escape. He melded into the earth, attempting to blend into the cracks of the asphalt.

Alex stomped his foot.

CRACK!

The golden fire flew through the crevices on the ground, in pursuit of the shadow.

With one half of his body burnt off the assassin screamed as he was pushed out of the concrete. He crawled to the sewer hole, and his green eyes died.

Alex approached the man and stepped on his chest. This was not his time to get through the foot. The shadow had been reduced to solid by the fire.

"Who is the Master?" Alex cursed, and his voice shook the earth. "Where is he hiding?"

The assassin turned his eyes to Alex. He was smiling, and his face was melting. A gruesome, skeletal smile.

It does not matter," the assassin gurgled. "You... represent... power. But the Master... symbolizes... inevitability.

He screaming lifted a burnt finger and pointed to the wooden box Alex was holding in his left hand.

Had you inspected the merchandise, Dragon King? he wheezed. "We didn't come to kill you. We came to distract you."

Alex's heart stopped.

He gazed down at the box of sandalwood. An icy necrotic energy emanated out of it.

You are too late, said the murderer. The poison... was inside already.

The killer melted away into black dust and flew away in the wind.

Alex tore the box top off.

It contained the Seven-Leaf Spirit Grass. It was the bright, shining emerald green.

But looking on Alex saw a black vein stretch over the leaves. It was a living infection, which made the sacred medicine a withered, rotting black sludge in his very presence.

It was ruined.

Dead was the only remedy to Sarah.

The poor boy Alex sank to his knees in the deserted parking-lot. The box dropped in his numb hands.

"NO!" Alex roared.

The window of all the cars in the lot shattered with his scream.

The cry which echoed round the city was a scream of pure, torturous hopelessness on the part of a God who had just discovered that he could do nothing to save that which was dear to him.