The group quickly arrived at the mountaintop.

What surprised Jiang Hao slightly was that there was a dirt pit at the summit, two meters deep and two meters wide.

The soil inside was damp, and the edges were surrounded by freshly turned wet earth. It was obvious the pit had been dug not long ago.

A faint smile touched Jiang Hao’s lips. He hadn’t expected this bunch to be so thoughtful—they had even dug his grave for him.

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“Kid, this pit is your final resting place.” The bald man looked at Jiang Hao, pointed at the pit, and said with a gloomy expression, “I’ll give you one last minute to think it over. Of course, if you agree now, you still have to leave two fingers behind.”

Ring, ring, ring!

Before the time was up, the bald man’s phone rang.

He answered it. “Young Master Wan.”

“Is that brat still being stubborn?”

“Yes!”

“Stop dragging it out. Just do him already. Remember—make it clean and neat. Don’t leave any traces behind!”

“Don’t worry, Young Master Wan. When I, Qiangzi, handle something, when have I ever let you down?”

After saying that, the bald man hung up.

“Kid, there’s a road to heaven and you refuse to take it, while you insist on barging into hell when there’s no gate.” The bald man stared at Jiang Hao and continued, “Are you jumping in yourself, or do you want us to do it for you?”

Jiang Hao couldn’t help but laugh, a trace of helplessness in that smile. “I never wanted to kill anyone. Why do you people insist on forcing me?”

“Fing Hell, you’re about to die and you still dare talk big?” The driver was furious and stepped forward, about to make a move on Jiang Hao.

But the moment he reached Jiang Hao’s front, before he could even raise his hand, a cold flash suddenly sliced across his throat. Blood sprayed out, and a horrifying gash opened across his neck.

His windpipe had been cut open in an instant.

Thud.

His body tipped sideways and dropped neatly into the two-meter-deep pit beside him.

He clutched at the wound on his neck, trying to stop the bleeding, but the cut was too large. Even with both hands pressed over it, blood still gushed out like a fountain. As more and more blood poured from him, his eyes rolled white. He twitched for a while, then stopped breathing.

“You had a blade hidden on you, you little shit. So you came prepared.” Seeing his brother killed, the ugly man flew into a rage and instinctively assumed Jiang Hao had been hiding a razor blade.

In reality, the weapon Jiang Hao had used was only a wooden thorn he had snapped off a tree.

Now that he had stepped into the Half-Step Transcendent Realm, let alone a wooden thorn—even a playing card would be enough for him to slit a person’s throat.

The ugly man raised the knife in his hand and lunged at Jiang Hao. But before he could get close, his throat was slit open the same way. His body tilted, and like the driver, he fell straight into the pit.

Seeing two of his men die, the bald man showed little fear. Instead, he sneered darkly. “Didn’t expect you to be hiding your strength, brat. You’ve got some tricks. But that’s all. Those two were weaklings to begin with. Killing them doesn’t amount to much.”

Then he signaled to the burly man beside him. “Drain this bastard’s blood. Let him enjoy what it feels like to wait for death.”

After receiving the order, the burly man walked toward Jiang Hao. As he moved, he drew a tri-edged military spike from his waist, bloodthirsty excitement flickering in his eyes.

Jiang Hao still stood unmoving, looking at the approaching burly man as if he were already dead.

When he reached Jiang Hao, the burly man lifted the triangular spike and drove it straight at Jiang Hao’s abdomen.

Just as the spike was about to sink into his stomach, Jiang Hao moved. He reached out and grabbed the blade body with one hand.

“What an arrogant fool,” the bald man sneered inwardly.

The burly man thought the same. In his eyes, Jiang Hao was courting death by trying to catch his weapon barehanded.

But in the next second, both men were struck dumb.

Once the spike was caught in Jiang Hao’s hand, it could not move forward even the slightest bit. No matter how hard the burly man pushed, even when he used every ounce of strength he had and threw the weight of his two-hundred-plus-pound body forward with it, the spike still would not advance a single fraction.

The two of them were instantly horrified.

They knew exactly how much force was behind that thrust. This was not something an ordinary human being could stop with one hand. And the tri-edged spike was razor-sharp on all three sides, yet Jiang Hao’s palm hadn’t even been cut.

This wasn’t human.

Only now did they finally realize it.

Jiang Hao’s calmness and cooperation from beginning to end had not been because he was a fool, nor had it been an act. It was because he truly possessed absolute strength.

The fools had been them all along. From start to finish, they had strutted around like lofty hunters, never imagining that they themselves were the lambs about to be slaughtered.

That bastard Wan Zhiming hadn’t even figured out what kind of person they were dealing with before blindly making a move!

The bald man couldn’t help cursing Wan Zhiming in his heart.

But what was the point of cursing now? Wan Zhiming wasn’t going to come running up the mountain and die in his place.

“Big brother, this is all a misunderstanding! We have no grudge between us. This was all Young Master Wan’s—no, Wan Zhiming’s—that dog’s instigation! We can talk this out.”

The bald man instantly dropped his cold, superior attitude. Facing Jiang Hao, he bent at the waist and forced out a smile, his posture lowered to the extreme.

But it was already too late.

When Jiang Hao didn’t act, he let things be. Once he did, he killed.

And they had forced this on him.

With a slight twist of his right hand, still gripping the military spike, Jiang Hao unleashed a terrifying force that spun the weapon around a full one hundred and eighty degrees and drove it toward the burly man’s abdomen.

Veins bulged across the burly man’s body as he fought with everything he had to stop it, but the force transmitted through the spike was overwhelming. His resistance was utterly useless.

Shhk!

The spike plunged into the burly man’s abdomen, sinking all the way to the handle.

“Ah!”

The burly man let out a miserable scream.

Blood poured from the wound along the spike like floodwater through an opened gate. He tried to clamp his hands over it, but no matter how he pressed, he couldn’t stop it.

“You’re vicious…”

After saying that in terror while pointing at Jiang Hao, he turned and ran without caring about the wound in his belly.

But after staggering just two steps, he collapsed to the ground. His eyes rolled white, his body curled up like a shrimp, his features twisted in agony. The ferocious expression he’d worn moments ago was gone, replaced by raw pain.

The bald man beside him was already trembling all over, terror written across his face. The moment he saw Jiang Hao’s icy gaze turn toward him, he dropped to his knees with a thud and kowtowed frantically.

“Young Master Jiang! Master Jiang! Please spare me! If you let me live, all my money, all my assets can be yours! I can even help you deal with Young Master Wan!”

“If people don’t provoke me, I won’t provoke them. But if someone wants to kill me, then I will kill them,” Jiang Hao said coldly.

Then he flicked the wooden thorn in his hand with his finger.

Shhk!

The thorn shot into the bald man’s forehead, pierced straight through the back of his skull, then continued on and struck a tree five meters behind him—one as thick as a man’s thigh—burying itself inside and leaving behind only a tiny pinhole. It was obvious just how terrifying that flick had been.

The bald man didn’t even get to make a sound before he fell stiffly backward, dead.

Jiang Hao kicked both the bald man and the burly man into the pit.

A pit two meters wide was more than enough to hold four bodies.

With his bare hands, he uprooted a tree and used it as a shovel. Three sweeping motions later, all the dirt piled beside the pit had been shoveled back in.

After cleaning away the bloodstains around the area, he headed down the mountain.

After killing the bald man and the other three, Jiang Hao wasn’t afraid the matter would be exposed.

As for why he hadn’t gone after Wan Zhiming and killed him too, the reason was simple.

Though he was an assassin who had killed countless people, he was not a butcher who killed for pleasure.

When he killed, there was usually a bounty attached.

Meaningless killing disgusted him.

But if someone harbored the intent to kill him, then that person had to die.

At the very least, Wan Zhiming hadn’t directly expressed any intention of killing him earlier.

And he was certain that once those men vanished, Wan Zhiming would never dare call the police.

As the saying went, those with guilty consciences were the ones most afraid of ghosts.

If he called the police, wouldn’t he just be exposing his own actions? He wasn’t that stupid.

With those four buried on the mountaintop behind the mountain, Wan Zhiming wouldn’t discover the bodies anytime soon.

…

By the time Jiang Hao got back down to the civilian house at the foot of the mountain, Little Xu had already woken up from his faint. He was swaying on his feet, barely able to stand.

When he saw Jiang Hao come down unharmed, delight flickered across his face. “Where did those people go? They didn’t make things hard for you, did they?”

“They left,” Jiang Hao answered simply.

“But…”

Little Xu was suspicious, but since Jiang Hao had said so, it wasn’t easy for him to keep pressing.

“Let’s go.” Jiang Hao didn’t want to explain anything more to him.

Little Xu nodded. “The car’s parked in the open lot ahead.”

The two got into the car. After driving for about a kilometer, Little Xu pulled out his phone. “There’s a signal now. Let’s call the police. Those bastards are lawless—they have to be punished by the law.”

“No need to call the police,” Jiang Hao said.

“Why?” Little Xu looked utterly confused.

“They’ve already been punished.”

After saying that, Jiang Hao reclined his seat and lay back with his eyes closed, resting.

Little Xu was baffled. Didn’t you just say they left? If they left, then what punishment had they received?

But seeing Jiang Hao’s expression, it was obvious he had no intention of continuing the conversation, so after thinking it over, Little Xu dropped the subject.

“Don’t tell Uncle Feng about what happened just now,” Jiang Hao instructed without opening his eyes. “The Feng and Wan families are already split over the broken engagement. If you tell Uncle Feng about this now, it’ll only deepen that rift. It won’t benefit either side.”

Little Xu hesitated for a moment, then still nodded.

“Should I take you back now?” he asked, changing the subject.

“I’m not going back yet. Take me to Puyang Road.”

Although Little Xu was puzzled about why Jiang Hao wanted to go to Puyang Road, after thinking about it, he decided not to ask.

He had once been a reconnaissance special forces soldier. By all rights, he should have been exceptionally good at reading people and judging them.

But Jiang Hao gave him a feeling of unfathomable mystery, as though he were wrapped in a layer of fog that made it impossible to see what lay beneath.

And that gave him an instinctive sense of awe toward Jiang Hao.