Chapter 212 — Ghosts Knocking at the Window at Midnight
The Blossom Guardian · Page 2 of 2
"It means I'm a bit stronger than your average special forces soldier!" Black Panther said. "That little Miss Song on the team is only at the middle Yellow Rank!"
"Oh, oh..." Zhong Yongliang was utterly lost in the fog. "Brother Black Panther, how did you suddenly become so strong?"
Before, when Brother Black Panther had been beaten black and blue by Wei Zhao, he had seemed rather weak. But now, by his own account, even Qiu Lingshan of the team was no match for him—and judging by the agility he had just displayed, he did not seem to be lying.
His strength must have suddenly shot up, then. If only he had been this formidable back when he fought Wei Zhao, Zhong Yongliang thought with some regret.
"Hmph. In my younger days, I was once taken into a mysterious martial sect. The sect possessed a most formidable martial arts manual, one chapter of which involved burning away one's own lifespan to elevate one's strength to its utmost limit!" Black Panther made no attempt to hide it. "But because I broke the sect's rules, I was expelled. When I left, I copied out that chapter on rapidly boosting one's own strength..."
Zhong Yongliang heard this and could make neither head nor tail of it, but he nodded all the same. He was no fool: "Then this so-called method of rapidly boosting one's strength—it has its flaws, doesn't it?"
"It does. Not just flaws—enormous ones. First, it costs you five years of your lifespan! Second, the strength you gain this way lasts only about a month; after that you become an ordinary person again, and your principal meridians are damaged besides—you can never practice martial arts again for the rest of your life!" Panther said. "But weighed against the punishment I'm facing, that sacrifice is worth it!"
The reason Panther had to flee was that he knew full well the trouble he had landed himself in this time was no small matter! Illegal possession of firearms, picking quarrels and provoking trouble, intentional injury—and on top of that, there were prior offenses on file at the police station from before all this, dragged out into the light along with the rest. He reckoned that with the combined punishment for his several crimes, he faced at least ten years or more behind bars. Panther simply could not afford to wait, and so he had resorted to desperate measures!
Ten years in prison—for a man as addicted to comfort and pleasure as Panther, he would sooner be dead! There were two things he meant to do after escaping. One was to find Wei Zhao and settle the score! That bastard had not only landed him in the lockup, but half his face still had not healed, and the wound where the gun had blown his hand open still throbbed with pain—this was nothing short of the greatest humiliation Panther had suffered since he first came up in the world!
"Oh... Brother Panther, so you came here to..." Zhong Yongliang asked cautiously. After all, Brother Panther's going to prison had everything to do with him; if he had not summoned him, he would never have come to this. So Zhong Yongliang was very careful, afraid that Brother Panther might vent his anger on him.