Chapter 119: The King of Acting Kings

A gust of wind swept through the village, heavy with the stench of blood and death. In the dim firelight, it illuminated a tableau frozen in place upon the square: three women stood there with their mouths hanging open, petrified, while Yan Luo maintained the flamboyant pose of Jonathan Joestar from JoJo.

The liberated emotions vanished.

Breaking free from his overwhelming sense of triumph, Yan Luo suddenly realized how outrageously suggestive his current pose was. An ordinary person would have felt embarrassed, but he had transcended the limits of humanity. He was utterly remorseless.

His heart remained unmoved.

“Jerry?”

It was as if the three women were seeing this useless idiot for the first time.

“He isn’t dead? Could it be… that he’s become a revenant too? But revenants like me are impervious to blades and bullets!”

Brenda’s thoughts were in turmoil. When Yan Luo had first appeared, terror had surged through her. She had assumed that he, too, had become a revenant. Her hopes of revenge had collapsed; under the power of his family, even if she became a revenant herself, Jerry would certainly be able to control her.

Catherine was once again filled with doubt and astonishment. Could Jerry truly possess some mysterious power?

“Brother, you…?” The smile vanished from the golden-haired sweet girl Jessica’s face. She tilted her head, her eyes filled with disbelief.

“I’m not Jerry,” Yan Luo said.

“Not Jerry? Then who are you?”

Under the program’s disguise, the Yan Luo they saw still possessed the appearance of the golden-haired young man.

With utmost solemnity, Yan Luo said, “I’m actually… Dala Bengba Banderbedi Budobiruweng.”

“Dala Bengba Banderbedi Budobiruweng?”

Jessica: “?”

Brenda: “?”

Jessica: “?”

Three white faces marked by question marks.

“Yes, yes. Dala Bengba Banderbedi Budobiruweng.”

Jessica: “…”

Brenda: “…”

Jessica: “…”

Three utterly bewildered faces.

“What kind of nonsense is that? Jerry, whatever you’re planning, whatever you’ve been hiding, die once more!”

The most hot-tempered of the three, Brenda clenched her right fist and smashed it toward Yan Luo. Her body was like that of the bronze and iron corpses from Eastern zombie legends, possessing immense strength. As her fist tore through the air, it produced sharp explosive cracks.

Even after witnessing such a terrifying punch, Yan Luo neither dodged nor retreated. He met it head-on with his own fist.

Boom!

The two fists collided.

At that instant, a visible shock wave burst from the point of impact. What reached their ears was an even more violent series of snapping and cracking sounds, like timber splitting apart. Under the force transmitted through the ground, the muddy earth beneath their feet sank nearly a foot.

“What?”

Brenda could hardly believe it. Jerry had actually caught her punch?

Only moments ago, even that enormous corpse beast had been smashed to pieces by her in just a few blows.

Catherine and Jessica likewise displayed expressions mingled with suspicion, shock, and astonishment. Had Yan Luo not programmed the Heartless Puppets to absorb only fear and despair, he would surely have harvested a tremendous amount of emotion in an instant.

The two fists remained locked for a full five seconds. At last, Yan Luo could no longer hold his ground. He staggered backward several steps before managing to steady himself.

“Impressive!”

Yan Luo praised her. During his time as a Lower Lifeform, his physical abilities had already reached the human limit. Bruce Lee’s punches had been measured at three hundred and fifty pounds, roughly one hundred and fifty-seven kilograms. The reported weight of Tyson’s punches varied depending on the machine used, the punching distance, and the time spent building momentum. The most reliable figures were the official measurements: four hundred and ninety-eight pounds for a standard heavy punch, or roughly two hundred and twenty-four kilograms.

As a Lower Lifeform, Yan Luo could throw punches of around two hundred kilograms. Now, as a Middle Lifeform, that single punch had carried more than a thousand kilograms of force—a full ton.

And yet he was still weaker in raw strength.

He looked at his right hand. A large patch of skin across the back had split apart from the collision of force against force. His flesh had no energy protection, and he had never trained in external martial arts. Not only had his skin burst open, blood running freely, but his bones had also suffered a few minor cracks.

It hardly mattered.

With the combined advantages of a Middle Lifeform and regenerative genes, such a light injury would heal in less than a minute.

Though she had gained the upper hand in that exchange, Brenda was shaken to the core. Jerry clearly was not a revenant, so why did he possess such terrifying strength? What other abilities was he hiding? Why had he never displayed them before?

Could it be that this man had been acting all along, pretending to be a completely powerless good-for-nothing?

What was the purpose of his deception?

His schemes ran so deep!

Yan Luo opened his right hand, and a weapon suddenly appeared from thin air.

A long, silver-gray steel staff, its surface adorned with iron filings twisted into the shape of a dark, winding dragon.

The Coiling Dragon Staff.

In terms of strength, he was inferior to a revenant. But with a heavy weapon in hand, his destructive power increased tenfold. By using his Guan Yu persona to cheat his way through training, he had already mastered the first nine techniques of the Ten Directions Staff Art.

“Again!”

Yan Luo thrust the staff forward in a move called Pillar Supporting Heaven, driving it straight into the red-haired girl.

Brenda hurriedly raised her left arm to block. The staff’s tip struck her forearm with a sharp crack. Her gaze filled with disbelief. The nether aura of a revenant had seeped into her body and tempered her bones until they were comparable to steel, yet this single thrust had cracked them.

“Horizontal Sweep Across the Six Directions!”

Yan Luo withdrew the staff, then spun, sweeping it sideways with his rotation. In an instant, the Coiling Dragon Staff unfurled like a gigantic fan. Countless staff shadows erupted and surged toward Brenda with overwhelming force.

“Ugh…”

The staff caught Brenda off balance, tearing open the flesh along her ribs. A cry of pain escaped her lips, but Yan Luo did not pause. He followed with a strike called Violent Shock of the Three Powers.

The two-and-a-half-meter iron staff rang with a series of explosive cracks, sparks flashing from its surface as it slammed into the red-haired girl’s chest.

Even though her flesh had absorbed some of the impact, the penetrating shock transmitted through the staff still shook large sections of Brenda’s breastbone until cracks appeared across them. Black corpse blood sprayed from her mouth.

Rrrrip!

Her upper garments were torn apart by the force, disintegrating into fragments that fluttered through the air.

With only three strikes, Yan Luo had severely wounded her.

His physical strength was inferior to that of a revenant, but on one hand, he was wielding a heavy weapon, allowing the power of his entire body to be released through it and multiplying his destructive force. On the other, he could be called a novice martial artist of the staff, while Brenda fought with nothing but instinct.

“Seven-Star连打!”

The sixty-two-pound iron staff struck out again and again. Each blow carried penetrating force, punching through skin that appeared soft and fair but was actually impervious to blades and bullets. After seven strikes, seven bloody holes marked the girl’s naked upper body, stretching from her high breasts to her taut abdomen, arranged precisely in the pattern of the Big Dipper.

“No! Hurry and help Brenda!”

Yan Luo’s sudden outburst after hiding his strength until now had stunned Jessica and Catherine. By the time the two recovered, Brenda was already in grave danger. Even a revenant with such a powerful body had been beaten to this state. Pale with fear, they hurriedly launched their attacks.

“Mummy!”

The mummy doll among the seven voodoo dolls unraveled, the threads composing its body spreading apart. Countless strands grew through the air and instantly bound Yan Luo’s body.

But through his mastery of both outward and inward force, acquired from his staff techniques, Yan Luo unleashed an utterly yielding and fluid power through every pore, snapping the countless threads apart.

Several venomous snakes flew toward his face.

Yan Luo lowered his head and dodged them. The snakes turned back immediately, while more strands of serpent hair shot from Catherine’s head. The snakes rained down like a dense volley of arrows.

The iron staff performed the Five-Element Wheel, sweeping through the air like the Great Sage wielding his golden cudgel. Waves of staff shadows and fierce gusts struck every snake out of the air, killing them all. As they fell to the ground, they transformed into strands of long hair.

“Nine Netherworlds Shattered!”

Yan Luo suddenly let out a thunderous roar and launched himself into the air. The fascia throughout his body stretched taut as his power surged. Gripping the iron staff with both hands, he brought it crashing down from above, producing a thunderous explosion across the open ground.

It was as if Mount Tai had split apart and the Pillar Supporting Heaven had collapsed, the entire mountain bearing down upon them.

Among the Ten Directions Staff Art, this was the most explosive of the first nine techniques. The blow came crashing toward Brenda’s head. Had it struck, even an iron skull would have been shattered.

In the midst of danger, the red-haired girl desperately retreated, managing to spare her head. Yet amid the howling whirlwind, the staff landed squarely against her chest.

Her chest already bore seven bloody holes. With a sharp crack, it was blasted apart, fluids spraying in every direction. Large sections of bone within her body shattered completely, driving splinters into her organs.

“Aaahhh!”

Brenda screamed and collapsed limply to the ground. Even as a revenant, she had not died instantly, but she had completely lost the ability to fight and lay there on the brink of death.

“What?”

Upon witnessing Yan Luo’s savage blow, Catherine and Jessica could not help but inhale sharply. Even though both girls were vicious by nature, their scalps prickled with horror.

“Vampire!”

Another voodoo doll flew toward Yan Luo. The moment this puppet touched a human body, it would devour an enormous quantity of blood and life force. Its method was exceedingly vicious.

Yan Luo merely opened his mouth and spoke a single word:

“Ptooey!”

The sound flew from his lips and transformed directly into a golden bullet. It struck the Vampire’s head, blowing apart the ping-pong-ball-sized skull of the voodoo doll and revealing a tiny human head inside, shrunk to an almost microscopic scale. It fell to the ground.

“What kind of attack is that?”

Yan Luo’s staff techniques had already been shocking enough, considering that they had severely wounded Brenda. Now he had spat out a single word from his mouth—apparently even a Chinese character—and it had transformed into a bullet.

Jessica felt an absurd, inconceivable sensation rise within her.

Was this really her brother?

Was this truly the same brother who had accompanied her almost every day since childhood, a somewhat timid and ordinary man once his illustrious identity had been set aside?

If he was this outstanding, this powerful, why had he never shown it before?

“You overacting bastard!”

Alongside her fear, Jessica felt a surge of fury at having been deceived. She had been acting for so many years, believing that she had fooled her brother, sometimes even secretly congratulating herself on it.

But it turned out that the brother everyone had dismissed as a good-for-nothing was the true king of actors.

I refuse to accept this. I refuse!