After taking out the four gunmen, Zhao Yuan breathed a sigh of relief.
Among the thugs, those four gunmen had posed the greatest threat to him. If it weren't for the Enchanting Talisman and the Shrinking Earth Talisman, relying solely on his martial arts, even a fighter as skilled as him would have been no match for a bullet.
Just as Zhao Yuan prepared to press his advantage and finish off the remaining thugs, the group of coal miners nearby suddenly erupted.
"Get 'em!"
"Beat the shit out of these bastards!"
"We can't let the kid fight alone! We have to go help him!"
"The kid cured us, he's our savior! These bastards want to hurt our savior, and we won't stand for it!"
Some of the coal miners wielded tools like shovels and spades, others were bare-handed, but most simply picked up lumps of coal from the ground to use as weapons. Howling, they charged forward and joined the fray.
The remaining thugs were instantly surrounded, pinned down, and brutally beaten by the furious coal miners!
These thugs on the Ji Family Brothers' payroll routinely bullied the coal miners. They didn't just beat and curse them; every payday, they would extort the miners, skimming a portion of their blood-and-sweat money.
There wasn't a single coal miner here who didn't hate them.
Previously, they had been forced to swallow their anger and endure. But now, with Zhao Yuan taking the lead, the fires of rebellion and vengeance in their hearts were ignited. They showed no mercy, beating the thugs until they were crying for their parents and begging for forgiveness.
Seeing this, Zhao Yuan held back, letting the coal miners vent their pent-up fury.
He glanced around but found that Master Tie was nowhere in sight.
'Where did that guy run off to?'
Zhao Yuan frowned. He had been so focused on the gunmen that he hadn't noticed Master Tie. Letting him just slip away would be getting off far too lightly.
Just then, the White Cat appeared at Zhao Yuan's feet. It was meowing and tugging at his pant leg with its mouth.
An idea struck Zhao Yuan. "You know where Master Tie is?" he asked. "Are you taking me to him?"
The White Cat meowed twice, as if in answer. It then leaped up and darted toward the three-story building to the side.
Zhao Yuan immediately followed.
He quickly entered the three-story building and, led by the White Cat, arrived outside a room.
The door was shut tight, but through the window facing the hallway, he could see Master Tie inside. The man was holding a desk phone, frantically dialing a number.
He jumped in fright when Zhao Yuan appeared outside the window. But then his eyes fell on the locked iron door and the steel bars covering the window, and he breathed a sigh of relief.
He remembered complaining when the building was first constructed, saying there was no need to install a security door and window bars. The miners, in his eyes, were just pushovers he could bully as he pleased.
But now, he felt that installing them had been an absolutely brilliant decision!
Without them, Zhao Yuan would have likely broken through the window or kicked down the door. But as it was, he refused to believe Zhao Yuan had any way of getting through a locked iron door and a barred window.
Master Tie calmed down. He plopped down in a chair, even propping his feet up on the desk as he listened to the phone ring, waiting for the Ji Family Brothers to answer.
"You're dead meat, kid. Once this call goes through, my bosses will be here with more men in no time. When they arrive, not only you, but that whole rebellious mob of miners—you're all going to die!" Master Tie looked at Zhao Yuan outside the window and burst out laughing, feeling extremely smug.
"You think I can't touch you just because you're in that room?" Zhao Yuan asked with a cold laugh.
"Damn right!" Master Tie said. "I refuse to believe… what, are you gonna fucking break through the wall?"
"You guessed it," Zhao Yuan said with a nod. Then he drew back his arm, focused all his strength into his fist, and punched.
"Heh, still talking tough when you're at death's door. Break the wall? Yeah, right. Go on, I'd like to see you try—"
Before Master Tie could finish his sentence, there was a deafening BOOM. A cloud of stone fragments and dust blasted him in the face. The shock drained the color from his coal-blackened features, and the debris sent a searing, stinging pain through the scrapes on his skin.
Despite the pain, Master Tie didn't scream or cry out. His mouth simply hung open, his expression dazed. He was completely and utterly dumbfounded.
'One punch… and he smashed through the wall?'
Master Tie couldn't believe his eyes.
As the Ji Family Brothers' top enforcer, Master Tie was a capable fighter himself and knew plenty of other tough guys. But he had never seen anyone who could punch clean through a wall.
He was utterly, profoundly terrified.
Zhao Yuan didn't stop with one punch. He immediately threw a second, then a third, widening the hole in the wall.
The White Cat sprang forward, squeezed through the widened hole, and leaped into the room. It landed on the desk and slammed a paw onto the phone, disconnecting the call before it could connect.
Master Tie finally snapped back to his senses, snatching a knife from the desk to slash at the White Cat.
But his speed was no match for the White Cat's.
He had barely grabbed the knife when the White Cat leaped onto his shoulder and sank its teeth into the artery in his neck.
The sharp pain in his neck made Master Tie freeze.
He had already experienced how sharp the White Cat's teeth were. He didn't dare do anything to provoke it, lest it bite straight through his carotid artery.
'To think that I, a respected figure in the underworld, might be killed by a cat. It's too pathetic, too humiliating!'
Seeing that the White Cat had Master Tie subdued, Zhao Yuan stopped what he was doing and commanded, "Open the door."
Punching through a wall wasn't like using a sledgehammer; it was genuinely painful and tiring. Best to conserve energy when he could.
Master Tie certainly didn't want to open the door. But the moment he hesitated, the White Cat biting his neck suddenly clamped down harder.
"AGH—!" Master Tie cried out in pain. Terrified the cat was about to rip his throat out, he stammered, "I'll open it! I'm opening it now!" He scrambled up and unbolted the iron door.
Zhao Yuan strode into the room and picked up the knife from the desk.
Only then did the White Cat release its grip, leaping onto Zhao Yuan's shoulder and fixing Master Tie with a look of utter disdain.
'I was just held hostage and scorned by a fucking animal...'
Master Tie was beyond frustrated, but he didn't dare let it show. All he could do was plaster a sycophantic smile on his face, hoping Zhao Yuan might see that he was already injured and go easy on him.
BRRRING!
Suddenly, the phone on the desk began to ring.