Tòumíng pushed himself to his feet despite the agony radiating from his broken collarbone, squaring up as best he could with one arm basically useless.
Cupid's voice cut through the pain. "Take off your shoes. Now."
"What? Why?!"
"He relies on hearing, temperature changes in air currents, and vibrations through the floor. If you go barefoot, soft socks on smooth concrete, you remove his ability to track your footsteps accurately. It's not much, but it's an advantage."
Tòumíng didn't hesitate. He kicked off his shoes, leaving him in just the socks he was wearing. The cold concrete immediately soaked through the thin fabric, but Cupid was right—his footsteps were now nearly silent.
Nergui's head tilted slightly, his blank eyes tracking the movement. "Who exactly are you talking to?"
Tòumíng stayed silent, not wanting to give away any information that might help this terrifying blind man.
Nergui's smile faded slightly. The friendly mask slipping to reveal something colder underneath. "The silent treatment. How childish."
He sighed, removed his suit jacket with careful precision, and draped it over a nearby railing. Then he straightened his button-up shirt, rolling up the sleeves to expose surprisingly muscular forearms that contradicted his thin frame.
"I would prefer not to have a duel," Nergui said, his voice carrying genuine regret.
"But it seems inevitable."
He moved.
Not walked. Not ran. Moved in a blur of speed that shouldn't have been possible for someone operating without sight.
Tòumíng barely dodged, throwing himself to the side as the baton whistled through the air where his head had been a fraction of a second earlier.
HE'S FAST. Way too fast.
Tòumíng needed a buff. Needed the edge that Naked Gun provided. His brain scrambled for a movie reference, anything that would activate the title—
"Yeesh! A blind fighter? How original!"
The sarcastic delivery. The reference to every martial arts movie that featured the mystical blind master trope.
NAKED GUN ACTIVATED
One-liner quality: Good (appropriate sarcasm, decent reference)
Speed boost: 2x
Strength boost: 1.1x
Duration: 60 seconds
Not the full power, no strength doubling, but the speed was what mattered against someone this fast.
Tòumíng grinned and sidestepped Nergui's next attack, his enhanced speed making the movement smooth and controlled. He couldn't use the David title, Nergui looked as skinny as Tòumíng despite being taller, so he wouldn't meet the weight and height requirements.
Tòumíng dashed forward, dropped into a slide, and passed under Nergui's guard. As he came up behind the blind man, he rose and threw a punch aimed at the back of Nergui's head.
Nergui ducked, somehow sensing the attack despite it coming from his blind spot—and spun around in a full-body rotation that brought his baton around in a devastating arc.
CRACK.
The weapon connected with Tòumíng's ribs on his right side. More bones shattered. Pain exploded through his torso.
Tòumíng started to fall, his body folding from the impact—
Nergui followed up immediately with a baton jab aimed directly at Tòumíng's throat, the kind of strike that would crush his windpipe and leave him choking.
But Tòumíng fell faster than Nergui anticipated, the broken ribs dropping him lower—and he rolled out of the way, his soft socks sliding across the smooth concrete floor with minimal friction.
Thank god for soft socks and low-friction floors, amirite?
Nergui adjusted instantly, abandoning the baton strike and transitioning into a different attack. His elbow came down in a sharp slice aimed at Tòumíng's jugular, the movement precise and brutal.
Tòumíng dodged again, his enhanced speed barely keeping him ahead of the attacks.
"Protect your neck!" Cupid's voice was urgent. "This guy is using dirty combat Sambo and Cold War Systema! Those Russian martial arts designed for killing, not sport! I don't know shit about defending against it, the host I was with during the Cold War was in America, not the Soviet Union!"
Tòumíng had no idea what Sambo or Systema were, but watching Nergui's movements, the throat strikes, the joint locks, the targeting of vital areas, it looked DIRTY. Every attack was designed to disable or kill. No wasted movement. No sporting techniques.
Tòumíng was fucked if any of these connected properly.
He slid under Nergui again, using his speed advantage to stay mobile, but this time he followed up with a desperate strike of his own, a punch directly to Nergui's groin.
The kind of dirty, unsportsmanlike attack that had worked on every other opponent.
Nergui didn't even flinch. Didn't react. Just kept moving like nothing had happened.
Tòumíng backed up, his eyes wide with disbelief. "OH COME ON! BALL TRAINING?! WHAT ARE YOU, JOHNNY ENGLISH?! BULLSHIT!"
Nergui's smile faded completely. His expression became cold, professional, genuinely offended.
"Crude language? How uncivilized."
Before Tòumíng could process what was happening, Nergui moved with blinding speed.
Something impacted the side of Tòumíng's knee, a precise kick or stomp that hit the joint from exactly the wrong angle.
His leg caved backward. The knee shattered, not just dislocated, but broken, the ligaments tearing, the joint structure collapsing.
Tòumíng looked down in horror and saw Nergui finishing the movement, his foot withdrawing from where it had just destroyed Tòumíng's leg.
The pain hit a second later. Overwhelming. Catastrophic. The kind of injury that ended fights immediately.
Tòumíng screamed, his voice raw and broken, the agony radiating up his entire body.
But even through the pain, even with his leg destroyed, something in him refused to go down.
He grinned, a wild, slightly unhinged expression—and grabbed Nergui's head with both hands before the blind man could retreat.
Then he did something absolutely insane.
He stood on the broken leg—putting his full weight on shattered bone and torn ligaments, the pain so intense his vision went white—and used his good leg to drive a knee strike directly into Nergui's face.
The impact was brutal. Tòumíng's knee connected with Nergui's nose and mouth with all the force his enhanced strength could generate.
Blood exploded. A tooth went flying, Tòumíng saw it arc through the air in slow motion before clattering on the floor.
Nergui staggered backward, clearly disoriented, his blank eyes unable to track what had just happened because pain was interfering with his other senses.
Tòumíng collapsed immediately after the strike, his broken leg giving out completely, but he'd bought himself a few seconds.
His hand slapped against the wall beside him, searching desperately for anything that could help.
Then he heard it. A hollow sound. The wall wasn't solid concrete here—it was drywall or some other thin material.
Meaning there was a room behind it.
While Nergui was still recovering, shaking his head to clear the disorientation, Tòumíng pressed his hand flat against the wall and activated Stone Crusher.
The wall section—approximately one cubic meter—instantly disintegrated into perfectly manageable chunks that fell inward.
Tòumíng dragged himself through the opening, broken leg trailing behind him, and found himself in an observation room.
The kind of room used for watching interrogations through one-way mirrors.
And through that mirror, in the interrogation room beyond, sitting in a metal chair with his hands cuffed, looking exhausted and terrified but alive—
Was Xuān Láng.