Chapter 5: Rapid Pursuit

Words : 2219 Updated : Jan 8th, 2026

Salvatore Casson slid sideways half a meter in a blur and cracked his palm across Liam Lapwood's face. Hidden in that slap was the cold, venomous force of the Poison Shadow Technique. Liam shrieked. Pain needled through his whole body. He sprang half a meter off the ground and stared at Salvatore, horrified. Salvatore asked coolly, "Talk. Who sent you?" Liam jabbed a finger at him, about to curse, when a savage pain tore through his abdomen. He screamed, toppled over, and curled on the floor with tears coming out from the agony. Salvatore said in a chill voice, "One more chance. Who told you to do this?" It felt like torture. Liam writhed, dying and coming back, and finally broke. "I'll talk! Young Master Hauk had people find me. He told me to keep going to your place and scare your parents." Salvatore narrowed his eyes. "Harry Hauk?" Cold sweat beaded on Liam's brow. He nodded. "Yeah. Harry Hauk." Salvatore kicked him in the face. Somehow the pain vanished. Liam scrambled up, eyes full of terror, retreating again and again. Salvatore said evenly, "You lot, go kneel by the door. Without my order, you don't get up." Humiliation burned Liam. He glared and blustered, "Kid, I'm Liam Lapwood. I wasn't scared into growing up, I-" Salvatore snapped his fingers. At the sound, Liam's head split with pain, and he screamed again. Paulina Yare and Liam's lackeys stood there, stunned. What was this? Magic? After a few screams, Liam scurried to the door and knelt. Salvatore snapped his fingers again, and Liam's headache vanished. Liam stared at him in terror. His voice shook. "Salvatore, what did you do to me?" "Just a little trick," Salvatore said coldly. "If you don't listen, I can make you wish you were dead." That icy gaze sent a shiver through Liam. He ducked his head without thinking. Seeing Liam kneel, the lackeys sank to their knees behind him, trembling. Paulina Yare grabbed Salvatore's arm and whispered, "Salvatore, Liam Lapwood's nephew works at the station. Don't offend him too much." "Mom, don't worry," Salvatore said evenly. "We don't pick fights, but we don't fear them." With them kneeling, he went back into the yard to practice the second foundational step of the Flying Immortal Step: the Flex Step. The Flex Step moved forward and backward, driving the feet and leg muscles together. One flex, one draw, and he could blink across a short distance. He had already drilled the lateral step. It had opened many minor meridians and strengthened his muscles and bones, making the Flex Step practice much smoother. In under an hour, he could move forward a meter and back a meter without bending his knees or lifting his legs. Then he combined the lateral step with the Flex Step. His body slipped left, right, forward, and back like a wraith. It looked uncanny. By then night had fallen. Paulina had finished dinner, and the family finally ate a proper meal together. After dinner, Salvatore practiced the Lunge Step and the micro-step. The Lunge Step harnessed leg power. Used with the lateral and flex steps, it produced larger, faster displacement. Since the Lunge Step needed space, he wandered to a graveyard at the east end of the village. At night, no one went near a place like that. It was deathly quiet. He stretched his legs wide, taut like bowstrings, and ran by the graves like lightning, darting left, right, surging forward, cutting back, a ghostly shadow in the dark. Not long after, Caleb, heading home from work, caught sight of Salvatore's figure. His eyes bulged. "Holy crap!" he yelped, then bolted home and fell seriously ill. From then on, rumors of a haunting in the graveyard spread. No one dared pass by at night. After finishing the Lunge Step, he worked on the micro-step. It meant shifting by tiny distances-centimeters at most, millimeters at least. In a real fight, those tiny shifts often decided life and death. Once he mastered the micro-step, he fused all four basics and took the first true step of the Flying Immortal Step. A phantom flickered in the air three times. In a tenth of a second, he appeared at three different spots within ten meters. Finishing that first step, the Immortal Energy in his body stirred awake and coursed through his limbs and bones. It felt indescribably good. Before long, Liam Lapwood's knees burned from kneeling. He gritted his teeth, stood, and ran off, dialing his phone as he went. "Master, Salvatore Casson isn't dead!" Master Brandon Gurnil, the Hauk family's steward, was lying on the sofa with his eyes closed, enjoying himself. Hearing that Salvatore wasn't dead, he froze, shoved the woman beside him away, and snapped, face dark with shock, "Bullshit! If a man's organs were dug out and he got thrown into a ravine, how could he be alive?" "It's really him!" Liam whispered. "And the kid is strong. He hit me a few times, and I nearly died from the pain! Master, send people, please. I can't take him!" Brandon's mood was gone. He hitched up his pants, called the security company, then jogged off to find Harry Hauk. Highland Manor had been bought by the Hauk family just half a month earlier. Its former owner had been a billionaire who had operated there for years. Harry Hauk had just seen a few guests off. With several deals closed, a faint smile lingered. Seeing Brandon rush over, he frowned slightly. "What's got you running?" Brandon caught his breath. "Young Master, Salvatore Casson isn't dead." Harry Hauk froze. His first reaction was disbelief, followed by a surge of irritation. He snapped, "Nonsense. How could he still be alive?" Brandon repeated Liam's words and added, "I called the security company. They ran into Salvatore and got injured." Harry's expression shifted, unsettled. How could a man live without his heart, liver, spleen, and kidneys? That was impossible. Brandon thought fast. "Young Master, true or not, we should send people to check. He's your biggest threat. We need to remove him as soon as possible." Harry's eyes narrowed. "If it really is him, that's not a bad thing. After that big shot in Yandell received his blood, he became ten years younger. He said as long as he gets this blood once a year, the Hauk family can have whatever we want." Brandon jolted, then his eyes spun and he came up with something vicious. "Young Master, I'll bring in Kenneth Ferdinando. He's one of Yanos's top experts. With him, whether Salvatore is man or ghost, we won't need to fear. I'll contact Liam Lapwood and have him grab Salvatore's parents, force the kid to come to us. Then we'll lock him up and keep him supplying blood to that lord in Yandell long-term." Harry lit up, laughing. "Good! Get on it right away!" Salvatore had just mastered the third step of the Flying Immortal Step when a roar from his father carried to him from a kilometer away. He stiffened. One stride took him twenty meters. He covered more than a thousand meters in a dozen seconds. A group of masked men burst into his home. Two pinned Nixon Casson, and two others yanked a sack over his head. Paulina Yare screamed and tried to stop them. A burly man swung and knocked her down with a vicious punch. She hit the floor and spat blood, unable to speak, and they bagged her head too. They dragged the couple to a car, and the driver stomped on the gas and roared off. From afar, Salvatore saw it. His hair bristled. Fire seemed ready to shoot from his eyes. "You're all dead!" His roar, like a tiger's and like spring thunder cracking, made the people in the car shudder. The driver pressed harder on the gas. Two SUVs tore away, kicking up a long plume of dust. Immortal Energy boiled through Salvatore. He drove the Lunge Step hard and sprinted after them. Each stride carried him more than ten meters, and he kept closing the gap. Once they cleared the village and hit the highway, the driver saw Salvatore in the rearview. His eyes went wide. "Someone's chasing us!" he screamed. Liam Lapwood sat in the passenger seat. He turned to look and saw a figure flying under the streetlights, still gaining. His scalp crawled. "Speed up, hit the damn gas!" he yelled.

Chapter 5: Rapid Pursuit

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