Steve Chapter 874: We know your 'True Identity' now! (Patreon)

Once the thing in Fang Mo’s hand became clear, it wasn’t just the policewoman who froze; even Father Anderson paused briefly in surprise.

“Is that… an atomic bomb?”

He narrowed his eyes, still gripping his bloody bayonet swords. Despite being a Vatican operative specialized in dealing with the undead, Father Anderson was no fool; he recognized the radiation symbol.

“T-That’s way too dangerous!”

The policewoman looked genuinely terrified. “H-how did you even get your hands on something like that?!”

“I got it from Nippon,”

Fang Mo said casually, shrugging. “Everyone knows the Vatican’s Pope envies the Japanese Emperor. In Japan, ‘little boys’ can literally fall from the sky. They even made it into a film genre—calls it ‘tenkō-kei’ (heaven-sent) elements…”

“That is not what ‘heaven-sent’ romance is about!!!”

the policewoman shouted, exasperated.

“I said ‘tenkō-kei elements’,”

Fang Mo corrected her with a faint smile. “And isn’t Uranium-235 considered an element?”

“I—uh…”

The policewoman just stood there, stunned.

“Hmph, quit bluffing!”

At that point, Father Anderson snapped out of his shock. “So you stole a nuke casing from who knows where, and you think that alone is going to scare me?!”

With that, he started marching toward Fang Mo again. Having been toyed with multiple times, his aura was more terrifying than ever. Eyes bulging, teeth bared, both bayonets dripping with blood, he looked like a demon that had crawled straight out of hell, intent on killing every living thing in his path.

“Dude…”

Fang Mo raised the “Little Boy” again in warning. “You really don’t care if you die?”

“Die?”

Something snapped in Father Anderson’s head at that remark. Grinning wide, he revealed unnervingly pristine teeth. Even though he was smiling, it looked downright monstrous.
“You think that matters to me? You know who I am?”

“The Jesus-killer?”

Fang Mo guessed, tilting his head.

“We’re Iscariot—Judas Iscariot!”

Anderson’s voice was fervent, almost frenzied, as though he were the most devout believer in the world. “We hold dagger and poison in our right, thirty silver coins and rope in our left. We are apostles yet not apostles, believers yet not believers, traitors yet not traitors. Ours is to humble ourselves before the Lord’s mercy… and to purge any who defy Him.”

“…Wait, why are you reciting poetry now?”

Fang Mo interrupted. “Is this your new jam, ‘The Killing-of-Jesus Song?’”

“By night’s dark we draw our daggers. After dinner we swallow poison. As death’s soldiers we rise, death’s disciples, death’s assassins!”

Anderson ignored him, voice growing wilder by the second. “When the time is right, we toss our thirty coins at God’s feet, hang ourselves with rope, so that we may all descend to hell as one—only then can we battle all seven million, four hundred fifty thousand, nine hundred and twenty-six devils of the underworld!”

As he spat that final line, Anderson broke from his brisk walk into a full-on sprint.

“Hey, hey, hold on—”

Fang Mo tried to speak, but Anderson’s arms snapped forward again. Two more swords sliced through the air like beams of light, smashing right into the nuke in Fang Mo’s hands.

“Cut the crap, heretic!!”

Anderson let out a deranged laugh, whipping out two fresh bayonet swords. “Did you really think I’d fall for that? If it’s really a nuke, so be it… we can all burn in hell together! I’ll just kill you a thousand more times down there!!!”

Clang! Crash!

The enormous force behind the swords split open the thick bomb casing. A bunch of metal components spilled out: wiring, reflective plates, and even a few chunks of dull-gray metal.

The moment those pieces hit the floor, some invisible, spine-tingling presence rippled through the air around them.

“Th-this is…”

The policewoman was the closest to those chunks of metal. Almost instantly, her mind went blank, and a terrifying sense of danger crashed over her. Every inch of her skin crawled like it was being pricked by needles, and her hair stood on end.

“Mm!?”

Anderson noticed something was off, too, but he simply ignored the metal on the ground and charged Fang Mo again. Crossing his swords, he aimed them squarely at Fang Mo’s throat.

“What the— You seriously going to jab that?!”

Fang Mo’s surprise was genuine.

That “Little Boy” was the real thing, taken from the One-Punch Man dimension when his partner, drunk off his ass, tried using a nuke as fireworks. Fang Mo had snagged it before it could go off. But he’d never expected Anderson to be so insane, actively attacking him despite a nuclear bomb.

Fortunately, an A-bomb doesn’t detonate the same way conventional explosives do—you can’t just stab it and set it off. As his partner had explained, nuclear weapons rely on implosive charges and critical mass. Several pieces of subcritical uranium must be slammed together at high speed to trigger a chain reaction, releasing nuclear energy. A simple slash to the bombshell wouldn’t automatically blow everyone sky-high.

“Diiieee!!!”

Anderson paid no attention to Fang Mo’s words. Channeling all his strength, he brought his bayonet down. Too bad for him—he and Fang Mo were on completely different levels. No matter how “blessed” Anderson’s blades were, they were still mere hunks of metal, which couldn’t possibly pierce Fang Mo’s defenses—not to mention the specialized armor he was wearing.

With a crisp crack, both swords snapped on impact.

“Dude, I was just messing with you…”

Fang Mo sighed, calmly lifting the loose chunks of uranium off the ground and slipping them back into his bag. “Why so serious?”

“Raaaah!!”

Letting out a furious snarl, Anderson yanked out another bayonet. His towering frame spun with shocking speed. Leveraging the powerful momentum, he drove the blade up at Fang Mo’s left eye.

“Don’t go poking me in the eye!”

Fang Mo instinctively tilted his head aside.

Failing that, Anderson immediately ducked low into a crouch, another blade sliding from his sleeve. Gripping its hilt with both hands, he lunged upward like he was going for a ‘Thousand Years of Death’ strike, aiming right between Fang Mo’s legs.

“Hey!! Don’t mess with my tool!!!”

This time, Fang Mo genuinely snapped. A cold sensation shot through his lower body. Without thinking, he lashed out, delivering a brutal kick. It was so powerful that the shockwave practically vacuumed the air around them, and Anderson’s body froze in midair for a split second. Then he was flung backward like a ragdoll.

The force warped the priest’s bulky frame. His chest and stomach collapsed inward; his abdomen looked like it had been flattened into a pancake. Hurtling like a cannonball, he blasted through one wall, then another, wrecking who knows how many rooms. Finally, he flew right out of the building, crashing down in the front yard with a huge splash of blood.

“Holy… crap.”

The policewoman on the floor stared, jaw slack, utterly dumbfounded. But in the very next second, she felt a wave of agony.

Squish.

Someone yanked a sword out of her back, wrenching it free with a wet sound.

“Ow…”

She let out a small moan of pain.

“Hang in there,”

Fang Mo said from behind her. “I gotta pull them all out.”

“Wait, you—”

She tried to protest, but before she could finish, Fang Mo gave another hard tug. Another bayonet slid out, dragging fresh pain across her body.

“Ah— c-can’t you do it more gently?!”

“?”

Fang Mo frowned. “Why’re you whining so loudly just from me pulling a sword out? Relax.”

“You—!!”

Grinding her teeth, she forced herself to bear it. One by one, the blades came free, and she fell silent. Thanks to her upper-tier vampire regeneration, her wounds started to close relatively quickly.

“Master…”

At that moment, the policewoman looked toward Alucard’s severed head on the ground. She gently picked it up, cradling it with a mournful expression. Vampire or not, she still had strong emotional ties to her sire.

“Don’t worry about him—he’s still alive,”
Fang Mo assured her. “Guy’s tougher than a turtle. He’ll be fine.”

“Eh? R-really?”

She blinked, unsure whether to believe him.

“All right, quit playin’,”

Fang Mo addressed the air around them. “If you don’t show up soon, she’s gonna start crying.”

“Kukuku…”

A low chuckle echoed through the hall. Moments later, a cacophony of screeching bats and swirling mist flooded in from outside, merging into a familiar shape—Alucard.

“Master!!”

Seeing that, the policewoman’s face lit up in relief.

“Looks like you’re safe.”

Alucard took in the wrecked corridor, then turned to peer out the window at the crater in the courtyard. “He was an impressive opponent. Too bad he’s about to die.”

“Yeah, he’s a dead man walking now,”

Fang Mo commented, picking up a spare bayonet and casually pointing it at the downed priest. “I hadn’t planned to kill him, but he went and stabbed me in my best asset. So I guess I owe him a little payback… By the way, do you think killing a priest counts as a ‘promotion’ in the afterlife?”

“No idea,”

Alucard replied in an unusually pensive tone.

“Probably depends on the circumstances.”

Fang Mo gave it a moment’s thought. “If he used his ‘tool’ on any little boys in life, maybe he’ll get demoted. Otherwise, he gets promoted.”

“What… bizarre nonsense are you spewing?”

Alucard glanced over at Fang Mo, clearly perplexed. “Those words don’t seem to follow any language structure I know. You sure that’s English?”

“Huh, you caught on?”

Fang Mo blinked, slightly impressed. Not many people noticed the “memetic contamination” from his weird brand of “translation.”

“Enough chatter,”

Alucard said, dropping the subject. He looked out at Anderson. “Give him a swift end. It’s a final courtesy to a worthy enemy.”

“Sure thing.”

Fang Mo nodded. He wound up his arm to throw the bayonet.

But just then, a woman’s voice rang out behind them, rapid footsteps pounding along the floor. “Stop!!”

“Huh?”

Fang Mo turned to see Integra running in, slightly out of breath.

“He’s a Vatican operative. We can’t just kill him,”
she urged quickly. “Our government won’t be able to negotiate with the Church if we do. We’ll trigger a huge international incident.”

“That’s your problem, not mine.”

Fang Mo shrugged and raised the blade again.

“Wait!”

Integra shouted again, face grim. She locked eyes with Fang Mo. “We’ve investigated thoroughly… we know your true identity now!”

“Oh?”

Fang Mo arched an eyebrow. “My ‘true identity’? Go on.”

“You’re a jiangshi, aren’t you?”

Integra declared in a firm voice. “Walter analyzed all your behaviors and traits. You can’t eat human food, you’re some sort of undead with superhuman strength and durability. You can summon fire, leaving scorched earth in your wake. Plus all those peculiar ‘Asian’ habits of yours. It leads to only one conclusion—you’re the highest-grade jiangshi, known as a ‘Ba’.”

“Huh…”

Fang Mo scratched his head, briefly at a loss for words.