Chapter Twenty-Two: The Perverse Man

In the distance, a commotion stirred on the street. A scrawny, monkey-like figure, his face flushed with excitement, was brazenly snatching items—not wallets, bank cards, or identification, but women’s bras. With uncanny precision, he targeted his victims, each time reaching for a woman’s chest and pulling out her bra in one deft motion, eliciting shrieks from his victims. His actions were shameless and despicable; now, with a fistful of bras in hand, he tore down the street, laughing wildly. His face radiated a manic exhilaration, and every so often, he would raise a bra to his nose and inhale, wearing a look of utter intoxication.

His swaggering antics incited rage among the women. Clutching their chests, their faces flushed with shame and fury, they chased after the monkey-like thief, intent not just on catching him, but on beating him soundly and reclaiming their stolen possessions.

Wang Fan, in the midst of his meal, cast a hawk-like glance at the thief. With his soul power, now fully refined, and his strengthened vision, Wang Fan instantly discerned that the monkey-like man was, in fact, a cultivator.

Having noticed this, Wang Fan pressed his hat down and calmly continued slurping his noodles. For Wang Fan, trouble already clung to him; it was not the time to draw attention. Keeping a low profile and refraining from interference was the wisest course.

He ate his rice noodles quietly, head lowered. Yet Wang Fan’s reticence did not mean no one would stand up. The owner of the noodle stall—the one Wang Fan had earlier judged as a man of good character—stepped forward. Without hesitation, he darted out from behind his stall, intent on stopping the audacious criminal.

Clad in an apron, the stall owner was a burly man in his thirties with a face full of rough edges. He wielded a kitchen knife as he charged straight toward the thief.

“Who are you?” the monkey-like thief demanded, pausing to inhale from a bra with perverse delight before addressing his challenger.

“Just call me Liu,” the noodle stall owner, Liu Hu, replied with disgust, raising his knife and declaring, “Cultivation isn’t meant for crime. Stealing women’s bras violates privacy laws—it’s disgraceful. As a man, I’m ashamed of your actions.”

“You know nothing. Cultivation exists to fulfill dreams and ambitions. I’ve always wanted to collect women’s bras—every bra they’ve worn, gathered together. Only then can one be a true man,” the thief retorted. “Besides, what I steal is none of your business.”

“Before I became a noodle stall owner, I spent two years in the army. You pervert!” Liu growled angrily.

“Pervert? So be it. People like you will never understand. If you don’t move, I won’t be polite,” the thief sneered, malice flickering across his face as the shouts of his pursuers grew louder behind him.

“Not polite? I’ll show you impoliteness—‘Heaven and Earth Three Purities, Nine Suns Enter the Body!’ Take my blade!” Liu’s face twisted into a fierce expression as he invoked his cultivation technique and struck out. The power behind his attack was immense and terrifying; as the knife swung, a tiger’s roar echoed faintly, the manifestation of the Yellow-rank cultivation method, Tiger’s Roar Technique.

The air rippled with the force, the blade’s gleam flashing through the void in a display that shook the world. Yet, in the thief’s eyes, it was met with mockery. “You think you can stop me with a kitchen knife? You must be dreaming!” he thought, pulling a small knife from his pocket. In that instant, his expression sharpened, the perverse air vanishing as his body seemed to meld with his shadow.

He vanished into the darkness, his form dissolving before Liu’s eyes. Liu’s tiger roar blade struck only empty air, leaving him stunned and bewildered by the inexplicable disappearance. The next moment, pain seared through Liu’s arm; he looked down to see a cold blade embedded in his wrist.

“Your strike was too slow. You can’t keep up with me!” the thief murmured in Liu’s ear, then channeled his energy and slammed a palm into Liu’s chest, sending him sprawling to the ground. The force rattled the pavement, stones leaping into the air.

In less than two moves, Liu was utterly defeated.

“You’re no match for me!” the thief declared, glancing back at the approaching crowd of women with a wicked, perverse grin, preparing to make his escape.

But just then, another figure appeared in his path, head bowed, hat pulled low. It was Wang Fan.

...

Wang Fan stepped forward, risking exposure not out of any overwhelming sense of justice, but because he had noticed the power the perverse thief had wielded—it was not something an ordinary cultivator could muster, but rather the mark of someone with a special physique.

To merge one’s body with shadow—such a technique, Wang Fan thought, could only belong to the inheritance of an assassin, or to those with the Shadow Constitution.

Whether the thief had obtained the assassin’s legacy from the Hall of Inheritance or possessed a special physique, it was reason enough for Wang Fan to act.

If the thief had inherited the assassin’s techniques, Wang Fan intended to interrogate him—he desperately needed such skills to hide himself, to avoid detection by the authorities. If it was the Shadow Constitution, all the better; Wang Fan would use the Devouring Heaven Demon Technique to absorb it.

On the street, Wang Fan slipped one hand into his waistband, the other gripping the brim of his hat. A mysterious smile played on his lips, starlight glimmered in his eyes, and his sword-like brows arched as he strode toward the perverse, monkey-like thief.

“Another idiot with an overblown sense of justice?” the thief sneered, raising an eyebrow and grinning with scorn. “Ordinary people wouldn’t dare to stand in my way, so you must be a cultivator as well.”

“Let me tell you, there’s a wide gap among cultivators. If you don’t want to end up like this guy, step aside,” the thief said mockingly, pointing at Liu, who lay defeated on the ground, waving his arm as if shooing away a fly.

Faced with the thief’s taunts, Liu’s expression was one of deep shame.