Chapter 3 Shadow's Grip

The steel wire bit into my throat with the cruel, burning friction of a thousand paper cuts. It severed my air supply instantly, crushing my windpipe against my spine. 

A novice would have panicked. A desperate man would have clawed at his neck, slicing his own fingers to the bone while the noose only grew tighter. I was neither. I was an assassin who had survived forty years in the Unorthodox factions. Panic was a luxury for dead men. 

I didn't reach for the wire. Instead, I threw my entire body weight backward, slamming my spine directly into my attacker’s chest. 

The sudden shift created a fraction of an inch of slack. I sucked in a miserable, ragged hiss of air. 

"Still fighting like a cornered rat, Seven," Jang Mu-Rak whispered. His breath, reeking of cheap rice wine and chewing tobacco, was hot against my ear. 

He planted his knee into the small of my back, trying to use my own momentum to snap my spine. He was stronger than me. In this twenty-five-year-old, starved body, my physical strength was pitiful. I had no Qi in my dantian to reinforce my muscles. I was a mortal fighting a martial artist in the Qi Condensation stage. 

Crack. My ribs groaned under the pressure. I tasted bile and copper. 

"The Hall Master said you vanished," Mu-Rak sneered, twisting his wrists to tighten the garrote again. "Said you took the guild’s silver and ran. But look at you. Playing street savior for a beggar girl in the mud. How pathetic."

My vision blurred, the edges of the dark alley bleeding into a starry blackness. The rain hitting my face felt distant, like it was happening to someone else. 

I needed to break his grip. If I had my old cultivation, I would have reversed the flow of my Qi, creating a concussive burst to shatter his ribs. But I had nothing. Only my physical body and forty years of muscle memory.

I dropped my center of gravity entirely, forcing my knees to buckle. As I plummeted toward the mud, Mu-Rak was dragged forward, thrown off balance. 

In that split second of weightlessness, I grabbed his right forearm with both hands. I didn't pull. I twisted violently, against the natural rotation of the joint, while simultaneously driving the crown of my head backward into his nose. 

Mu-Rak cursed, his grip faltering just enough. 

I didn't hesitate. I jammed my right thumb into the meat of my own left palm, forcing my left shoulder out of its socket. The agonizing dislocation narrowed my shoulders just enough to slip my head out of the steel loop. 

I hit the mud, gasping for air like a drowning man dragged to the shore. 

"You crazy bastard," Mu-Rak snarled. He was clutching his face, blood pouring freely from his shattered nose, mixing with the rain. 

He drew a short, jagged dagger from his belt. The blade was coated in a dull, greenish paste. Nightshade extract. One scratch, and my heart would stop in ten seconds. 

[Hostile Entity Detected: Jang Mu-Rak]

[Alignment: Unorthodox Assassin]

[Warning: Killing this target will result in Neutral Karma. Host's current physical state cannot guarantee survival.]

[Recommended Action: Flee]

Flee. The word tasted like ash in my mouth. Jin Mu-Kang did not run from fights. But the glowing blue text wasn't wrong. My left arm hung uselessly at my side, my throat was bleeding, and my lungs were on fire. I couldn't fight him. Not yet.

I scooped up a handful of loose mud and gravel with my good hand and flung it directly at his eyes. 

As Mu-Rak flinched, raising his arm to block the debris, I kicked hard off the cobblestones. I didn't run down the main street. I threw myself into the narrow, claustrophobic gap between two rotting wooden shacks. 

"Run, Seven!" Mu-Rak's voice echoed behind me, laced with a dark, mocking laughter. "I'll give you till morning! Make the hunt interesting!"

I didn't look back. I sprinted through the labyrinth of the Beggar District, my bare feet slipping on the slick,pgarbage-strewn stones. My chest heaved with every step, the cold air burning my bruised windpipe. I navigated by memory, weaving through alleys I hadn't seen in over a decade. 

Finally, I collapsed under the sagging eaves of an abandoned shrine. The roof was half-caved in, smelling of mildew and old incense, but the overhang kept the pouring rain off my shivering body. 

I slumped against the damp wooden pillar, my breathing ragged. 

First things first. The arm. 

I grabbed my limp left wrist with my right hand. I wedged my left elbow against the wooden pillar. I closed my eyes, took a shallow breath, and twisted my torso violently to the right while pulling the arm. 

A blinding white flash of agony exploded behind my eyes. I bit down on my own tongue to keep from screaming, tasting fresh blood. Sweat beaded on my forehead, instantly chilling in the cold wind. My shoulder throbbed with a dull, heavy ache, but the joint was back in place. 

I let my head fall back against the wood, shivering uncontrollably. 

I was weak. Unbelievably, disgustingly weak. 

I focused my mind inward, looking for the familiar pool of dark, icy Qi that used to reside in my dantian. There was nothing. The well was completely dry. Regression had stripped me of decades of martial arts mastery. I was back at the starting line. 

But I had something else. 

I focused on the strange energy in my mind, and the blue window materialized in the dark. 

[System Status]

[Host: Jin Mu-Kang]

[Cultivation: Mortal]

[Karma Balance: 5]

[Existence Stability: 85%]

Five Karma. The points I earned for stopping those thugs from beating the beggar girl. 

In my past life, I cultivated by drawing in the ambient spiritual energy of the world, filtering it through the Shadow Hall's breathing techniques. It was a slow, agonizing process. But this system... it claimed I could convert Karma directly into power.

Convert. I thought the command. 

[Convert 5 Karma to Spiritual Energy?]

[Yes / No]