Chapter 8: The Art of the Practice

No one present—not the three bewildered thugs, nor the whimpering leader, Blade—had clearly seen the move. Skylar Vance’s hand, small and delicate, looked utterly frail, yet it had crushed the muscle and bone of Blade’s thick forearm with casual ease. The sound of splintering bone was relentless, a horrifying, staccato crack-crack-crack that merged sickeningly with Blade’s uncontrollable, animalistic shrieks. Under the weak, sputtering light bulb, the scene was an absolute nightmare.

The three remaining thugs were momentarily paralyzed, the terror of the impossible act seizing their minds. It wasn’t until their leader collapsed in a heap, clutching his grotesquely contorted limb, that they snapped back to reality. They caught him just before he hit the dirt floor, staring at his arm, and a collective shiver of profound, paralyzing dread ran through them.

“A-A-Ah, you filthy little bitch! I will not forgive you! Get her! Kill her! KILL HER!” Blade screamed, his face a ghostly white mask of agony and pure hatred. He didn’t care about the robbery anymore; he only wanted vengeance. He spat the command at his subordinates, his eyes bulging with murderous intent.

Spurred by their leader’s fury, the remaining three men finally shook off their fear. Their faces contorted into menacing masks. “You rotten little whore! You’re looking for a swift death!”

Skylar took a single, controlled step back, subtly rotating her wrists. Her body was humming with adrenaline, her hunger now replaced by a familiar, stimulating need for combat. Perfect. The feast had given her the energy; now she needed the exercise. She lifted her chin, a flicker of cold arrogance passing over her exquisite features. “Come at me. All of you.”

Their collective combat skill was too minimal to warrant the effort of taking them down one by one. She could end this in seconds.

Her challenging dismissal—treating their aggressive, hulking presence as little more than a collective punching bag—shattered the men’s remaining self-respect. They charged, roaring, their fists the size of small bowls, fueled by the blind desire to beat the insolent girl into oblivion. The robbery was forgotten; the only mission was to restore their shattered masculinity.

But the moment they closed the distance, Skylar’s slender figure became a blur of lethal grace. She moved like a phantom, sidestepping the first clumsy, windmilling punch with a fraction of an inch to spare. The thugs only saw a flash before their sensory world exploded into pain: a savage, precise blow to the ribs, a shocking strike to the solar plexus, a jarring impact beneath the armpit, and a crushing hit to the bridge of the nose.

“Ugh…” The men retreated instantly, stumbling, clutching various parts of their suddenly agonizing bodies, their minds trying to process the impossibility of the assault. They looked up, expecting to see the girl, but the space before them was empty.

“Over here.”

The voice was soft, devoid of inflection, and chillingly cold—it was the whisper of a vengeful spirit, coming from behind them. They whirled around, panic turning their blood to ice. Before they could fully register her presence, a sharp, surgical pain erupted in the nape of their necks, and they simultaneously sank into unconsciousness.

Their eyes remained wide and staring in the seconds before they hit the floor. Not one of them had seen the movement that felled them. They hadn't even had time to fully turn around.

Now only four figures remained in the room: three unconscious thugs, and their leader, Blade, sitting in a pool of his own terror. He watched the figure of the young girl—a demon draped in cheap cotton—slowly walk toward him. His entire being was frozen. “Y-You… don’t come any closer! This is my territory! If you hurt me, I swear, you will never live a peaceful life again!”

He was trembling so violently that his words were almost unintelligible, yet he still clung to the pathetic fantasy of his gang’s power.

Skylar wondered with cold amusement if the man was hopelessly delusional or simply lacked any survival instinct. “A moment ago,” she murmured, crouching down directly in front of him, her face inches from his, “you promised to carve up my face.”

She picked up the folding knife that had fallen from his grasp. With blinding speed and impossible dexterity, she opened and closed the blade, creating a mesmerizing silver flicker that danced before his eyes. The light caught the ice in her eyes, turning them into chips of lethal glass.

Blade’s eyes went wide. His breathing hitched, then ceased entirely.

And then… he simply fainted.

Skylar stared down at the collapsed thug and sighed, a genuine expression of boredom crossing her face. How utterly anticlimactic. She had been hoping for a proper training session, a moment of real combat to warm up this soft, fifteen-year-old body. Instead, she had encountered four pathetic, ill-trained street rats—barely enough to qualify as a warm-up.

As a top-tier assassin, her training philosophy was predicated on brutal, real-world conflict. Only the constant accumulation of practice—the quick, precise, and lethal application of force—could maximize her physical efficiency.

Her dinner entertainment was over. She gave the cramped room a final, dismissive look. Before stepping out, she paused, her eyes lingering on the figure in the corner—the unconscious youth drenched in blood. An almost imperceptible shift occurred in her mind. It was not kindness, but a cold calculation: she didn't want the trouble of a corpse being found in a shack she was linked to. Besides, he could be an investment.

Changing course, she approached the youth, half-lifted and half-dragged his tall, lanky body out of the alley, and located a small, unassuming clinic.

“Good heavens! Why did you beat him so badly? You children are nothing but trouble! You should be focusing on your studies! What happens when you actually kill someone?” The old, barefoot doctor fussed and grumbled, rushing to grab cotton and iodine to clean the patient’s terrible wounds.

Skylar sat nearby, perfectly silent. She allowed the old man to rant, waiting patiently for the blood to be cleaned away. Only then did she realize the ‘man’ was actually a boy, perhaps sixteen or seventeen. His rough clothes and striking height had initially misled her.

The doctor finished the cleanup, administered some antibiotics, and yawned. “The family needs to watch him closely. Call me if he develops a fever in the middle of the night.”

The family. Skylar stared at the boy and the packet of antibiotics in her hand, feeling an immediate exhaustion with her unrewarding good deed.

The injury to the boy’s head was superficial, and Skylar had no intention of wasting her limited time playing nurse. She walked over, grabbed his chin, and applied a sharp, painful pinch to his philtrum (the area under the nose) to shock him awake.

“Ugh…” The youth groaned, his head swimming, eyes fluttering open to see only a shapeless gray coat and an indistinct face. “W-Who are you?”

“Skylar Vance. The person who saved your life,” she stated simply, concisely. She was not a person who dispensed favors without ensuring they were properly recognized. The boy needed to know the debt.

The youth's pale face registered a complex mix of surprise and confusion. “You saved me? What about Blade and his crew?”

“The one who beat you is called Blade? What is the name of his gang? How many members? What territory do they control?” Skylar deflected, pushing the interrogation she’d missed with the now-fainted thug.

The boy blinked, staring at her with profound suspicion, but something in her cold authority made him answer. “They call themselves the Earth Tiger Gang. Their territory is around the Linjiang Middle School. Members… maybe a hundred or so.”

A hundred people? That’s barely a sophisticated street club. Skylar scoffed internally, completely unimpressed. In her world, a powerful ‘organization’ numbered in the thousands, spanning continents. A hundred thugs was child’s play.

Losing all interest, she tossed the packet of antibiotics onto his chest. She shoved her hands into her pockets and turned to walk away. “The doctor is resting in the back. Find him if you need anything else.”

“Hey…” The youth called out, but Skylar’s figure had already vanished from his sight.

A confusingly dressed girl had appeared from nowhere, asked bizarre, irrelevant questions about a gang, and then disappeared just as quickly. The boy, who usually prided himself on his street smarts, felt utterly bewildered.

Skylar paid him no further mind. The exhaustion of inhabiting a fifteen-year-old body for a full day was catching up to her. She found the nearest clean-looking hotel, rented a small room, and collapsed onto the bed, instantly falling into a deep, troubled sleep.

Her sleep was immediately invaded by a fathomless nightmare: bottomless, freezing seawater; the deafening, bone-shattering BOOM of an explosion that annihilated consciousness; and the visceral, searing agony that lingered in her cells. Even within the dream, the sharp, cold sting of betrayal was the most enduring pain.

She remembered every detail of her life before: thirteen years of loyal servitude to the organization, rising to become the world’s number one elite assassin. Yet, on what was supposed to be her final mission—her chance to retire—she had been sold out by the organization and, more painfully, by that man. She had died in the freezing, lightless depths of the sea.

I was a fool. That organization, and he, would never have allowed me to walk away from that dark world alive.

Morning sunlight filtered weakly through the thin hotel curtains. Skylar’s eyes snapped open. She was drenched in sweat, her limbs heavy and aching, her body still unconsciously remembering the sensation of being ripped apart by the blast. She stumbled into the bathroom, washing away the cold sweat and the lingering trauma under a stream of scalding hot water. The process eased the tremor in her bones, restoring a flicker of color to her ashen face.

She stood before the mirror, examining the reflection of her exquisitely beautiful, delicate young face. A chilling, detached smile stretched her lips. Even in her dreams, her soul refused to rest easy. Her rebirth was not a gift of peace, but a mandate for vengeance. The score was not settled; she had new enemies and old debts to collect.

But first, she looked down at the atrocious, threadbare cotton coat that was her only possession. She needed to rectify her embarrassing image.

She still had time before her appointment with Alan Sterling. She quickly swallowed a bowl of hot soybean milk from a street vendor and headed directly for the largest commercial building in the city, the marketplace.

Unsurprisingly, her peasant attire, combined with her heavy, face-obscuring bangs, ensured that no sales assistant was willing to acknowledge her presence the moment she walked through the doors.