Chapter 46: Killing Tie Xiong

Cao Yang knew that Liu Yilong couldn't be saved, but he didn't expect him to die so quickly.

He had no grievance or enmity with Liu Yilong and originally had no intention of killing him, but as luck would have it, Liu Yilong crossed his path when Cao Yang was in a foul mood.

He wanted to kill Tie Xiong, yet he had never killed anyone before; Liu Yilong simply happened to be there, serving conveniently as target practice to steel his nerves.

It was often said that life and death in the octagon cage were up to fate, and anyone stepping onto the stage should be prepared to be beaten to death, so he felt very little remorse.

The car stopped at the entrance of the Pearl Nightclub, and Cao Yang, accompanied by Mountain Hawk, went up to Tie Xiong's office on the third floor.

"What is it you want to tell me?" Tie Xiong looked at Cao Yang with a smile.

Cao Yang gazed at him coldly. "I remember when we first met, you forced my sister to kneel and apologize to you."

Tie Xiong was momentarily stunned, then laughed. "Why bring up unpleasant things from the past? In a moment, I'll introduce you to a few friends."

Cao Yang shook his head. "I have no interest in meeting them."

Tie Xiong smiled. "They are interested in meeting you."

"You know what? What I hate most is people forcing me to do things I don't want to do."

Sensing the hostility in Cao Yang's tone, Tie Xiong looked at him coldly. "So I forced you, what of it?"

Knowing that Cao Yang was essentially a dead man, he couldn't be bothered to keep up the act.

"Forcing me comes with a price!"

Cao Yang suddenly struck, reaching for Tie Xiong's neck.

Seeing this, Tie Xiong immediately dodged.

Cao Yang's hand grasped at empty air, and he looked at Tie Xiong with a trace of surprise. "I didn't expect you to have some tricks up your sleeve."

"If I didn't have a few tricks, how could I become the leader of the Hunan Faction!" Tie Xiong said with a sneer, immediately winking at Mountain Hawk to signal him to fetch help quickly.

Although his own martial arts skills were decent, he knew he was definitely no match for Cao Yang.

Catching Tie Xiong's glance, Mountain Hawk snapped back to his senses and sprinted toward the door.

But how could Cao Yang let him escape?

Before Mountain Hawk even reached the doorway, Cao Yang grabbed him by the neck from behind, hoisted his entire body into the air, and then slammed him down headfirst with immense force!

Mountain Hawk's head made violent contact with the concrete floor, half of his skull crushed inward into his neck, killing him instantly.

During the brief moment it took to deal with Mountain Hawk, Tie Xiong had opened a cabinet, pulled out a handgun, aimed it at Cao Yang's back, and pulled the trigger.

Cao Yang sensed the danger a split second beforehand. Swiftly dodging the moment before the gunfire rang out, he leaped a丈 away and evaded the bullet.

"Bang, bang, bang..." Tie Xiong continuously pulled the trigger at Cao Yang.

"Puff." A bloom of red blossomed on Cao Yang's back; in the cramped confines of the office, there were truly few places to hide.

Tie Xiong sneered and kept pulling the trigger, firing three more shots until the magazine was empty.

Regrettably, none of those three shots hit Cao Yang.

Just as he fumbled for a fresh magazine to reload, Cao Yang moved with the blinding speed of a cheetah, leaving behind afterimages. With a ferocious kick to Tie Xiong's abdomen, he sent the two-hundred-pound man flying to crash heavily against the wall.

Without pausing for a second, Cao Yang strode forward, kicked the gun out of Tie Xiong's hand, and locked a hand tightly around his throat.

Feeling the approach of death, Tie Xiong finally felt a twinge of panic.

"Brother Cao Yang, let's talk this out. If you kill me, you won't be able to walk out of Dongguan alive."

While pleading for mercy with his lips, in his heart Tie Xiong cursed Cao Yang as a freak. A normal person who took a bullet would, at the very least, be temporarily incapacitated, yet this guy Cao Yang acted as if nothing had happened despite getting shot, without even a fraction of a delay in his movements.

Cao Yang sneered, "If I want to leave, no one can stop me!"

"I'm not joking with you! The Henan Faction wants you dead. Spare me, and I can protect your life!"

"Not interested. Go to hell!"

Paying no heed to his bluster, Cao Yang's killing intent flared. As his left hand tightened around the neck, Tie Xiong immediately found it difficult to breathe.

Simultaneously, Cao Yang gathered strength in his right fist, bringing his sandbag-sized fist down heavily toward the center of Tie Xiong's face.

"Splash!"

Splattering blood sprayed across Cao Yang's face. With this single punch, he shattered Tie Xiong's nose and mouth, caving in a large portion of his face into a bloody, mangled mess.

"Crack!"

Applying fierce pressure with his left hand, Cao Yang snapped Tie Xiong's neck, ending his life completely.

Wiping the blood from his face, Cao Yang bent down to pick up Tie Xiong's gun and magazine, tucking them inside his coat for self-defense.

Though all of this seemed to take a long time, it actually happened in a flash. From Cao Yang striking down Mountain Hawk to Tie Xiong drawing his gun and getting killed in return, barely a minute had passed in total.

The people downstairs seemed entirely unaware, failing to hear even the gunshots amidst the deafening noise of the nightclub. Even if someone with sharp ears happened to catch the sound, they wouldn't have suspected a thing—after all, this was the Pearl Nightclub; if anyone was firing a gun, it would simply be Brother Xiong teaching someone a lesson.

A boisterous group strode aggressively into the nightclub, wearing gloomy and fierce expressions that marked them clearly as bad news.

The lobby manager, a heavily made-up, brassy woman past her prime, hurriedly and enthusiastically greeted them.

"Are you brothers from the Henan Faction?"

The leader nodded coldly. "Where is Tie Xiong? Where is Cao Yang?"

"Upstairs in the office." Tie Xiong had previously instructed the manager not to block the Henan Faction members if they arrived, but to lead them straight to the third floor.

"I'll take you up."

"No need!" The leading man shoved the female manager aside and marched his crew aggressively toward the third floor.

Just as Cao Yang was preparing to leave, he heard a flurry of dense footsteps. He loaded the magazine into the gun and glanced toward the window.

This was the third floor—not too high for him; he could easily jump.

The Henan Faction members kicked open the door to Tie Xiong's office, stepping inside to find two bloody corpses lying motionless on the floor.

"What's going on here?" They looked at each other in bewilderment, and someone stepped forward to inspect the bodies.

They recognized the heavily battered face as Tie Xiong's, but the other long-haired fellow was a stranger.

Could this be Cao Yang?

Judging by that lean, scrawny frame and wretched appearance, he looked nothing like Cao Yang.

Though they had never met Cao Yang in person, the man who could beat their Second Faction Leader to death with his bare hands certainly wouldn't look like this pathetic wretch.

At that moment, the manager arrived upstairs followed by a crowd of Hunan Faction underlings. Pushing into the room, they saw both Tie Xiong and Mountain Hawk lying in pools of blood.

"Brother Xiong! Brother Xiong!" A group of thugs screamed and threw themselves forward.

"Brother Xiong is dead," one henchman said, turning to look at the manager with terror in his eyes.

The female manager glared with a livid expression at the Henan Faction crowd.

The leader of the Henan Faction opened his mouth, wanting to explain that they had nothing to do with it and that the men were already dead when they arrived.

However, Tie Xiong's subordinates gave them no chance to explain.

"Motherfuckers! Hack them to pieces to avenge Brother Xiong!"

Drawing their blades, the henchmen charged!

The room instantly plunged into a chaotic melee, filled with deafening cries of slaughter. Men fell to the floor one after another, staining the ground red with blood.

Given how aggressively the Henan Faction had barged in with such hostile attitudes, these underlings didn't need to think twice before concluding that they were the ones who had killed Tie Xiong.

After all, these lacklings were somewhat aware that Liu Yilong was dead, giving the Henan Faction both motive and reason. Furthermore, they were caught right at the scene—truly unable to clear their names.

As for Cao Yang... he was completely overlooked.

In their eyes, Cao Yang was merely one of Brother Xiong's minions, a part of the Hunan Faction.