The air on the suburban street was a razor's edge of silence.
Inside the house, Lin Meng, her father, and her mother were frozen, their terror so absolute it had become a kind of paralysis. They were staring through the blinds at the impossible, featureless, gray-masked figure who stood on their lawn like a statue.
Outside, the tiger, the 800-pound, [Level 5: Blood Vitality] monster, was in a state of primal, animal confusion. Its Level 5 senses, which had just watched it shatter a [Level 4] prodigy, were screaming at it. This thing in the robes, this void, was a threat beyond its comprehension.
The monster's crimson-glowing eyes narrowed. Its feral, mutated instinct had only two options: flee, or annihilate.
And an apex predator never flees.
Lin Hao's cold, inhuman voice, filtered through the mask, had been the final straw. "You don't deserve to live."
It was a challenge. It was a judgment.
The beast's fear, its confusion, all of it was instantly vaporized by a tidal wave of pure, [Level 5] rage.
It didn't roar. It didn't posture.
It exploded.
It launched itself from its crouched position, all 800 pounds of mutated, Qi-infused muscle, a blur of orange-and-black death. Its claws, which had just torn a man's arm off, were extended. Its fangs, which had ripped a car apart, were bared.
It was a pounce designed to obliterate, aimed directly at the masked figure's head.
From inside the house, Lin Meng's mother finally let out the scream she had been holding, a choked, hopeless wail.
The man in the gray mask did not move.
He didn't dodge. He didn't brace. He didn't raise his arms in a block. He didn't even look at the oncoming, 800-pound missile of fangs and claws.
His [Level 7] senses, refined by his High-Grade Gongfa, saw the attack. It was... disappointingly slow.
The beast was a Level 5. He was a Level 7. This wasn't a fight. This was pest control.
As the monster's jaws were inches from his face, so close he could feel the hot, sulfurous, bloody blast of its breath...
Lin Hao raised his right hand.
He didn't make a fist. He didn't use a "Crushing Jade Palm." He didn't even use his new "Iron Muscle Mantra" (which he had already upgraded to Mid-Grade).
He just... flicked his middle finger.
It was a gesture of pure, absolute, contempt. A casual, dismissive flick, as if he were shooing a gnat.
But this "flick" was not mortal.
He didn't even bother with his Gongfa. He just, for a single, focused nanosecond, channel his raw, [Level 7: Viscera Fortification] Qi into that one, single, striking digit.
His finger, for that instant, became the hardest, densest, most absolute object on the planet.
His fingertip, moving with an impossible, contained velocity, connected with the tiger's charging, massive, bone-plated forehead.
POP.
The sound was not a "smash." It was not a "crunch."
It was a small, neat, anticlimactic sound. Like a champagne cork being popped.
The tiger's 800-pound, mid-air, high-velocity pounce stopped.
It didn't just stop. Its forward, kinetic momentum was instantly and violently reversed.
The 800-pound body was blasted backward. It flew, not in a tumble, but in a straight, high-speed line, off the lawn, over the sidewalk, and crashed in a boneless, unmoving heap in the middle of the road.
Its four legs twitched once, a final, reflexive, electrical spasm.
And then it was still.
The crimson, supernatural glow in its eyes extinguished, leaving them dark, glassy, and dead.
In the ringing, impossible silence, Lin Hao, the man in the gray mask, slowly lowered his hand.
Inside the house, Lin Meng, her father, and her mother were all, as one, pressed against the glass. Their mouths were open. Their brains had stopped.
Lin Meng stared at the monster, now a dead, heavy heap on the street. She stared at the man in the mask, who was standing, unbothered, on their lawn.
She looked at the tiger's head.
Even from this distance, in the strobing, red-and-blue emergency lights, she could see it.
Directly in the center of the beast's massive forehead, right between its dead, glassy eyes, was a small, neat, perfectly circular hole.
It was the size of a man's fingertip.
And it was completely, perfectly, bloodless.