With the crowd being riled up, more and more attacks came at Marcus from almost every dire - some with sticks aal s, and some with things like eggs, rotten cabbages and tomatoes. Marcus activated his Qi and ran it through the ey of his body, and used his body to tank most of the attacks. Most of these attacks did no damage to him physically, just his clothes and pants, and those that came particurly hard and had a ce to threaten his safety were either blocked or evaded by him. Though the Ferocious Tiger Style was not known for its agile evasion and movement teiques, it made up for this weakness for its practitioners with the grantings of enhanced physical strength, endurance, abilities to sense dahreats and hostile as, and abilities to withstand greater damage, injuries, siess aher ditions. Uhe current circumstances, messy as this situation might be for him, he felt that he was not in any sort of real danger.

  “Back OFF!” Atack of no honor with a shovel came for his back, and Marcus, having sehe attempt, immediately stepped to the side ahe shovel glide through the space without hitting him. And instead, the shovel almost jabbed another man in the leg, who was trying to e at Marcus from the side.

  “Once again! Back off!” With a heavy push on his chest, the young man with a crooked haircut wielding the shovel flew in the air for but a mere sed and nded on a pile of trash on the side of the street. And with a quick sweep of the make-shift fil he took from the first attempted assaint, four wooden sticks and poles aiming at him were shattered to torn pieces and splinters. The three men and one woman wielding these sticks and poles were thrown on their butts and backs by the force, which caused many from the crowd attempting to pile up on Marcus to flind step back - this was clearly a show of the level of force which they were not expeg. This sudden fear aation spread through the rest of the crowd, and almost at the same moment all the attackers stopped what they were doing.

  “I’ll say it once again - ” Marcus looked around with a stern but calm too the stunned crowd: “Back off - and this will go aeacefully.”

  As Marcus took aep towards the dire he was fag, and the mob in front of him all took a step back almost in unison.

  “Now, no more of this - and I’ll leave you to whatever you’re doing.” Marcus lowered the make-shift fil and started walking one small step at a time.

  The crowd around him stopped getting closer to him, seemingly having lost their will to attack or even to just dish out harsh words. But those around and behind still followed him as he walked - it seemed that they were not ready to let him go like this just yet either.

  “Help! Help!” Before Marcus could walk very far, the sound of tw women echoed through the all of a sudden silent streets: “My babies! Those thugs took my babies!”

  “What?!” “Fuckers! Where?!” “Get them! Get them! We o break their fug arms!”

  These pleas for help seemed to have provided a mueeded outlet for the aggression built up in the crowd, and almost all of them started rushing towards the dire the two women poio.

  “What do they look like?” Marcus stopped by the sides of the tw women and asked with haste: “How tall are they? What are they wearing?”

  “About - about this tall, all of the thugs are taller and strohan us, we couldn’t - ” One g woman raised her hand over her head: “And they were wearing dark shirts and gray pants - please, you gotta help us - ”

  “Okay.” Marcus sped towards the dire where the crowd was running to, with his eyes sing through everything in front of him trying to loto the perps who seem like the abductors of childrewo women described.

  “Found them! They’re there! There!” After about half a minute, a young man reag out from a window on the sed storey of a plex on Marcus’ right side poi an alley on the left side of the street he was on.

  Marcus caught the backs of two men before they ran into that alley, and he immediately memorized what they looked like from the back: striped dark blue shirt, and dark gray vas jeans.

  With more Qi flowing into his legs, making his steps and stomps stronger and stronger aually much more powerful and propelling than normal human steps, Marcus sped up like a human-shaped motor vehicle and surpassed the rest of the chasing crowd in a matter of seds.

  The alley was dimly lit, and it was only wide enough for at most three adult men to run side by side. Not far in front of Marcus were three men, one running at the front and two in the back. The one in front had two children tucked in both his arms, and the other two were each carrying one child - which made a total of 4 children. It gave Marcus a moment of shock, as he had no idea that there would be kidhis bold as to grab children off the street right in front of people. sidering how much hatred against child smugglers flowed ihe veins and how some of them literally performed brutal lyngs on alleged kidnappers and smugglers, someone willing and daring to do this in open daylight was more than ued.

  “... Do it!” Seeing that Marcus was gaining ohe man on the left yelled at the man on the right.

  “Shit - Fuck you!” The man on the right cursed and lowered his body, and the moment, while Marcus was still w what he was doing, he flung his right arm in the air and threw the child in it into the air.

  The crowd behind them and Marcus gasped, the child was thrown with quite a force, and within a brief moment, he had already reached a position that was over the height of a three storey building. And below on the ground, there was trash, gss shards from broken windows and alcohol bottles, even se ks of debris from buildings with exposed rebar with sharp tips pointing up into the air. If the boy fell down, he would surely suffer severe injuries, if not death.

  “Fuck!” Marcus took a very quick look at the boy in the air, then immediately sed through the buildings and streets around him. After less than 1 sed, Marcus ged course and ran toward a watermelon stand on the side of the road. The owner of the stand already backed off from the main road, and all he could do at the moment was groan as Marcus used his watermelons as stepping stones. Watery, sweet pulp illed everywhere on the ground when Marcus leapt into the air, leaving the exploded and cracked melons below.

  The young boy let out a muffled scream as he started to fall from the height - there iece of duct tape on his mouth and his hands were also taped together on his back. He could only squirm and struggle, but nothing seemed to be remotely useful to help with his impending fall.

  A big, callused hand came from below just in time to grab the shirt on the front of this young boy, and he felt a gentle support ing from this hand and the arm ected to it. His fall was not broken, but decelerated, and the speed in which the ground lu him became much less terrifying.

  Marcus successfully grabbed onto the boy on his left hand, and his right hand tried to reach for the edge of the handrails on a baly on his right. The force of his and the boy’s fall caused him to leave three dents oal handrail with his fingers. The boy tinued his way down with gradually slower speed. Before long, he stopped falling and ulled up under Marcus’ left arm.

  Many from the crowd cheered as Marcus let go of the handrail and dropped onto the ground with the boy intact. But Marcus just took the tape off the boy’s mouth and arms and handed him to the owner of the watermelon stand: “Take care of him - his mother is looking for him.” The on with his chase of the tree men.