Chapter 095: Life-and-Death Slaughter, Part Two

Chapter 95: Deadly Hunt, Part Two

"What?"

The refined man’s expression suddenly changed. He stared at Mu Feixue in disbelief. "Chu Zangtian of the Chu family in Tin City?"

"Is there another Chu Zangtian in this world?" Mu Feixue glanced at him.

"You—"

The cultured man’s expression became complicated as he looked at Mu Feixue. Suddenly he said loudly, "Have you lost your mind? Do you know what you are doing? This had nothing to do with you in the first place, yet now you insist on getting involved. If Chu Zangtian learns that you plotted against his son behind his back..."

"So what?" Mu Feixue turned to look at him again, cutting him off. "If I had been born twenty years earlier, I really would have wanted to cross hands with this Chu Zangtian and see whether he is truly as terrifying as the rumors say—"

"You are mad. You are truly mad!"

The cultured man looked at Mu Feixue with exasperation. In his eyes, Mu Feixue had truly gone insane, otherwise how could he say such death-defying words?

Chu Zangtian.

That name was taboo.

A taboo throughout the entire Jiangnan region.

No, a taboo throughout all of China.

---

The leader of the bandits, the burly man, was advancing slowly, his expression grave beyond words.

He had a very bad feeling.

At first, he could still hear gunshots now and then, but several minutes had already passed and not a single shot had been fired. More importantly, there had been no reply from his subordinates when he called them on the radio.

In truth, he was furious with the cheap radio he wore. Once they were more than thirty meters apart, the signal weakened; unless he moved closer, it was hard to receive his men’s transmissions. It had not been obvious outside, but as soon as they entered the forest, the flaw became apparent. He cursed nonstop. The shoddy counterfeit goods from China were truly trash, but he did not have the money for better equipment...

Still, before this he had at least occasionally heard shouting from within. Now there was only a crackling hiss, and nothing else.

That gave him an ominous premonition. Especially now, with the forest stretching black and boundless around him and his target nowhere in sight, he felt an inexplicable unease and fear.

Better retreat first.

The big man suddenly stopped, turned around, and prepared to retrace his steps. Losing contact with his companions had also caused him to lose confidence in the chase. Even if he did catch up, with that fellow’s brutal methods, he seemed unlikely to be a match.

But the moment he turned, he froze in terror, his face changing instantly.

A figure stood like a ghost several meters behind him beneath a tree. Through the scattered starlight filtering through the branches, he recognized at a glance that the figure was the very man he had been hunting, Chu Fei.

"What? Not continuing the chase?" Chu Fei looked at the burly man with a faint, unreadable smile.

Every hair on the man’s body stood on end. He swiftly looked left and right, as if searching for his companions, and from his throat came a sharp, eerie cry: a special signal used to summon allies when danger struck.

But the night gave no answer.

"Stop calling. If your team had only six men, then none of them can come help you now," Chu Fei said, still wearing that half-smile.

"You, you killed them?" The burly man stopped calling for help, his face turning even uglier in an instant.

"I’m a merciful person. I only knocked them out for now. But if you refuse to cooperate, then I’m sorry—I can only send all of you to hell together." Chu Fei smiled as he walked up to the man and stopped two meters away.

Sweat had already broken out on the man’s forehead, yet he did not run, nor did he raise the pistol in his hand to fire. He had seen with his own eyes how fast Chu Fei could kill at close range, and he knew clearly that before this man he would not even have the chance to pull the trigger—unless he wanted his other arm broken in that same savage way.

At the thought of the pain of having his bones twisted and broken alive, the burly man felt a chill run down his spine.

"I’m going to ask you a few questions now. You’d better answer carefully. Think before you speak." Chu Fei’s smile vanished all at once, and his voice turned cold.

"If I answer your questions, will you let me go?" A trace of hope appeared on the burly man’s face.

"Do you have any choice now?" Chu Fei suddenly smiled.

The man shook his head and then said straightforwardly, "Ask. I’ll tell you whatever I know. But I have one request."

"You are in no position to make requests," Chu Fei said, shaking his head.

"My request is not for you to let me go. I’m only asking you to give me a clean death at the end—don’t torture me." The burly man looked at Chu Fei with complete seriousness.

Chu Fei was also stunned by this. He had not expected the request to be that, and for a moment he did not know whether to laugh or cry. It seemed this bandit had never expected to leave here alive. He really was direct.

"Fine." Chu Fei nodded. "As long as you answer my questions honestly, I definitely won’t torture you."

"Thank you." The burly man even said it with genuine gratitude, then asked, "Go ahead. I promise I’ll tell you everything I know."

"Your accent doesn’t sound Chinese. You’re from South Vietnam?" Chu Fei nodded and asked the first question.

"Yes. The brothers and I are all from South Vietnam." The burly man nodded.

"Why did you come to kill me? Who hired you?" Chu Fei asked again.

"I don’t know." The man shook his head without hesitation. When he saw Chu Fei’s expression darken, he hurried to explain, "We really don’t know. We took the assassination job from an assassin task platform."

"You’re mercenaries, and you still take assassin jobs?" Chu Fei was not surprised by the answer at all. As modern technology advanced at a rapid pace, even hiring killers had become fully upgraded; very few people posted such jobs directly anymore. Usually they were put up for bounty on specialized platforms.

"Under normal circumstances, of course we wouldn’t take it. But our brothers ran into trouble." The burly man gave a bitter smile.

"Oh?" Chu Fei raised an eyebrow.

"We fled South Vietnam for China for some special reason, and the money on us was almost used up. We were even worried about food. Then we happened to see this job, so we took it on the side to make a little extra..." He was quite direct, saying whatever came to mind.

"Heh—"

"I’m telling the truth. If you don’t believe me, there’s nothing I can do." The burly man stared back at Chu Fei with the attitude of someone with nothing left to fear.

"Fine. Last question: who posted the bounty?" Chu Fei asked.

"No name was signed. I only know it was posted by someone called Mister Jun. I don’t know anything else. But the money on your head is no small sum..." As he spoke, the man looked at Chu Fei with a strange expression.

"Is that so? How much?"

"One hundred million. A full one hundred million Chinese dollars." The man’s voice grew heavy with awe.

"Coughed—" Even Chu Fei was startled by the terrifying figure.

The burly man looked at Chu Fei with a complicated expression and said, "We were drawn in by that terrifying amount, so we decided to risk it. When we saw your file, we even thought the one who posted the job was a fool. But now I know I was wrong. One hundred million to buy your life is still too cheap. I’m beginning to suspect that even the person who wants to kill you doesn’t know how capable you are, otherwise he would never have put up such a reckless bounty."

Chu Fei looked at him speechlessly. This fellow really was telling the truth as he saw it.

Having asked everything he wanted to know, Chu Fei smiled and walked toward the man.

"You’ve asked everything you wanted, and you promised to give me a clean death. You—eh—"

The burly man looked at Chu Fei in terror. Before he could finish speaking, he collapsed to the ground with a dull thud, knocked unconscious by Chu Fei’s punch.

Chu Fei did not kill him. He only knocked out this man and the others as well. This was China; taking lives would inevitably lead to trouble. Of course, Chu Fei also would not let them off so easily...

"A hundred million bounty on my head? Who on earth has such enormous means?"

Recalling the burly man’s words, Chu Fei’s expression turned solemn. He did not doubt the man’s truth at all. At such a moment of life and death, the burly man had no reason to lie. Yet he could not imagine who had put a bounty on him, and at such an outrageous amount.

And it seemed the other party did not know about his other identity.

Chu Fei was puzzled, because he truly could not guess who was behind it. If it had been a bounty of one million, or even several million, Chu Fei would never have cared. In this world of overflowing material desire, money had become increasingly devalued; a few million was really nothing. But one hundred million was entirely different. It would definitely attract the kind of top-tier killers who operated on a global scale.

Damn it!

Who exactly was putting a bounty on him?

Lost in wild thoughts, Chu Fei moved swiftly through the forest and soon reached the grove of bushes where he had previously left Chen Yaxin.

"Hm?"

Seeing the empty thicket, Chu Fei’s expression changed. Chen Yaxin was gone; she had not stayed where he left her.

Could that woman have run off alone?

Just as that thought surfaced, a cold voice suddenly came from behind a clump of bushes to his left.

"Looking for her?"

As the words fell, a gaunt man dressed in black stepped out from behind the brush, holding a young woman hostage. It was the missing Chen Yaxin. A short blade in the man’s hand was pressed across her throat, just as the burly mercenary had held her captive before...

"I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for this to happen. I never thought it would turn out like this..." Chen Yaxin looked at Chu Fei and spoke softly, her face as pale as paper, her voice full of guilt...

Chu Fei gave a bitter smile. Of course he knew she had not done it on purpose, because although the man’s blade had not yet cut through her throat, it had already broken the skin, and a thread of red blood was slowly seeping out.

Chu Fei sighed and quickly withdrew his gaze from Chen Yaxin, shifting it to the gaunt man. At that instant his pupils contracted sharply. Unlike the fierce mercenaries he had seen before, this black-clad man exuded a strong, icy aura...

An assassin.

Chu Fei identified the man’s profession at once: a true professional assassin, one who had already soaked himself in countless pools of blood. Only that could explain the thick, savage, bloodthirsty aura around him.

"How can I get you to let her go?" Chu Fei asked directly, without the slightest hesitation.

"You want her released? Fine. Kill yourself, and I’ll let her go immediately," the black-clad man said with a cold laugh. His short blade pressed harder, and blood at once began to run down Chen Yaxin’s neck, a shocking sight to behold. Yet Chen Yaxin made no sound, though terror had already filled her face to the brim.

[Many people have asked about the location of Kun City, saying the geography is too vague and leaves no room for imagination. I seem to remember mentioning it once before, so I’ll say it again: if we strictly map it onto China, East Sea City is Shanghai. The East Sea region in the story is the area around Shanghai as its center. Kun City, from the opening, is a small city between Shanghai and Suzhou, basically part of the Shanghai outskirts. Tin City in this chapter is Wuxi. Later on, Stone City will be Suzhou, Harbor City will be Hangzhou, and Family City will be Jiading, and so on.]