## Chapter 80: Brute Force Meets Finesse
The brute didn't speak. He just roared.
The sound was a physical thing, a wave of hot, beer-soaked breath that hit Li Chang'an's face a second before the man himself did. He was a mountain of scarred muscle and cheap leather, his spiked iron gauntlets each the size of a cooking pot. Where he'd crashed through the wall, dust still hung in the air like a phantom.
His first charge was less a martial technique and more a landslide. Cobblestones shattered under his boots, not from any refined stomp, but from the sheer, stupid weight of him. He swung. It wasn't a punch; it was a demolition ball on a fleshy chain.
Li Chang'an didn't block. He flowed.
He let the air of the punch press against his chest, feeling its trajectory, its ugly, overwhelming intent. His new-born understanding—the [Thousand Variations Combat Form]—stirred in his mind. It wasn't a fixed style. It was a language of motion, and this brute was screaming in guttural, single-syllable words.
Crude. Direct. All forward momentum. No consideration for recovery.
Li Chang'an sidestepped, not a full evasion, but a subtle shift. The spiked fist grazed his tunic, and he hooked a hand around the brute's thick wrist. He didn't try to stop the force. That would snap his own arm. Instead, he guided it, adding a slight downward vector of his own.
The brute's own power, now misdirected, slammed his fist into the ground. A crater erupted. Chunks of stone peppered Li Chang'an's legs.
The brute blinked, pulled his fist free, and looked from the crater to Li Chang'an. A slow, confused grin split his bearded face. "Tickles!" he bellowed, and came again.
This time, it was a barrage. Wild, looping haymakers and brutal, chest-level slams. The air whistled and cracked. Li Chang'an became a ghost in the storm. He weaved, parried with glancing touches, let a gauntlet skim so close it ruffled his hair. Each near-miss was a lesson. His [Heaven-Defying Comprehension] devoured the data.
He saw the rhythm in the chaos. The brute inhaled sharply through his nose before each major exertion, his massive chest swelling like a bellows. He held that breath for the power, then expelled it in a grunt on impact. A crude, instinctual power-locking technique. Effective for a burst. Catastrophic for stamina.
The weakness isn't in his guard, Li Chang'an realized, dancing back from a swing that would have taken his head off. It's in the pauses. The gulps of air between the storms. His heart is a frantic drum trying to feed those slabs of muscle.
Li Chang'an stopped purely defending.
As the next thunderous right hook came in, he didn't slip away. He stepped in. His left forearm met the brute's wrist from the inside, not blocking, but riding the force, his body turning like a door on a hinge. At the same moment, his right palm, fingers tight, shot forward like a piston into the exposed armpit.
There was a wet, muffled pop. Not a break, but a deep, nerve-jangling shock.
The brute's roar choked off into a pained gasp. His left side spasmed, the arm going momentarily slack. Li Chang'an didn't let up. He was a vortex now, drawing the brute's remaining momentum into his own dance. He used the man's lurching weight to spin him, swept a leg behind a knee, and as the giant staggered, Li Chang'an delivered a precise, whip-crack elbow to the back of the brute's shoulder joint.
This sound was different. A thick, grating crunch, like a tree branch torn from its socket.
The brute crashed to one knee, his right arm now hanging at a sickening, impossible angle. Dislocated. Clean.
Silence, for a heartbeat. The only sounds were the brute's ragged, wet breathing and the distant drip of water from a broken pipe.
Li Chang'an stood ready, his own breath steady, his hands stinging from the impacts he'd redirected. The fight was over.
Then, the brute started laughing.
It was a low, bubbling sound, rising from his chest into a full, manic cackle. He threw his head back, tears of pain or mirth streaking through the grime on his face. "Hah! Good! Good hit, little rabbit!"
Li Chang'an's eyes narrowed. This wasn't the rage of a defeated man. This was the glee of a gambler who'd just seen his opponent take the bait.
"You fight good," the brute wheezed, grinning up at him with bloody teeth. "Slippery. Smart. The Grandmaster will like you. Wants smart ones."
A cold trickle, unrelated to the night air, traced down Li Chang'an's spine. "The Grandmaster's hunt. For something ancient."
"He hunts for many things," the brute chuckled, cradling his useless arm. "I just hunt for noise. For a good, loud distraction."
Distraction.
The word hung in the air, and with it, Li Chang'an's world suddenly sharpened, expanding beyond the broken wall and the kneeling giant. He stopped listening with his ears and started feeling with the part of him that understood the flow of energy, the subtle currents of a fight.
They were there. All around him.
Not one. Not two. Multiple presences, coiled tight and lethal, perched on rooftops, nestled in dark alleys, standing calmly at both ends of the narrow street. He hadn't sensed them in the fury of the brawl, in the focus required to dismantle the brute. They'd used the thunder to mask their silent approach.
The brute saw the understanding dawn on Li Chang'an's face. His grin widened. "Took you long enough. The squad's all here."
As if on cue, a figure detached itself from the shadows of a rooftop opposite, standing silhouetted against the hazy moon. Then another. And another. Below, at the north end of the street, two hunters stepped into the dim light of a lone, flickering gas lamp. At the south end, three more.
No more wild rogues or single-minded brutes. These moved with a synchronized, predatory grace. Their auras were cold, focused, and interlocked—a net woven from killing intent, now drawn tight around a single point.
Him.
The brute, his job done, let out a final, pained sigh of satisfaction. "Happy hunting, boys."
Li Chang'an stood alone in the center of the street, the walls of the trap solidifying with every quiet footfall, every glint of drawn steel in the darkness. The first trial of the night was over.
The real hunt had just begun.
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