The man looked haggard and skeletal, with thinning hair and sunken eye sockets—the typical appearance of a junkie in the Walled City who used “white powder.”
At this moment, he was desperately fleeing through the dark, cramped alleyways between buildings. Beneath his feet came wet smacking sounds as he unknowingly crushed countless greasy rats scurrying past. Several dark-faced thugs carrying machetes chased after him from behind, their murderous shouting as uncreative as always after all these years—“Hey kid stop running motherfucker you’re dead do you hear me stop right there hey!”
At the fork ahead, he turned sharply into an area crowded with noisy dog-meat stalls. Dozens of small hotpots were densely packed across the courtyard, while filthy tables overflowed with overturned beer bottles and leftover bones. Summoning every ounce of strength, the man charged recklessly forward, flipping several tables in one go. The entire place erupted into chaos as people screamed and cursed, instantly shoving and fighting until everything became one tangled mess!
The dark-faced thugs plunged into the crowd like dumplings tossed into boiling soup, immediately swallowed by the surging tide of people! After struggling for quite some time, they finally crawled out of the crowd in miserable condition—only to discover the man had vanished without a trace.
“Fuck!” cursed one vicious thug with a fashionable slicked-back hairstyle and a scar across his face.
“Brother Xiao Ma, what do we do?” the others asked.
“What the fuck do you mean what do we do? A bunch of useless trash! Split up and find him!”
……
The man who had narrowly escaped death continued running desperately, the darkness of the alley ahead seeming endless. But he knew that if he could just get out of the Gaau Lung Walled City territory through here, he would be safe for the moment.
Suddenly, from the darkness came a sharp scratch! as a small light flared to life.
The man stopped dead in his tracks. His eyes widened in terror, cold sweat instantly soaking his back.
His legs trembled violently as he stared at the long blade embedded sideways into the wall—the razor-sharp edge was only a step away from his throat. Had he stopped even half a second later, he would have impaled himself straight onto it and lost his head!
The person who had struck the match leaned casually against the wall. Tilting his head, he lit a cigarette and leisurely exhaled a cloud of smoke upward.
The faint firelight illuminated his cold, sharply defined profile and his relaxed expression.
The man dropped to his knees with a thud. “B-B-Boss Liu Yi…”
Xia Liu Yi lowered his head and flicked cigarette ash onto the hilt of another blade at his waist that had not yet been unsheathed. Lazily, he asked, “Still gonna run?”
“N-no! N-not running anymore! I-I know I was wrong! Boss Liu Yi…”
“Good that you know,” Xia Liu Yi replied, lazily lifting his chin. “Pull it out.”
Shaking all over, the man crawled up and tried several times before finally wrenching the deeply embedded blade free from the wall with a squelch. Holding it in both hands, he respectfully returned it to Xia Liu Yi.
“Carry it,” Xia Liu Yi said, straightening up with the cigarette dangling from his lips. “Be good. I’ll take you back to celebrate Children’s Day.”
The moment the man heard those final words, his legs gave out beneath him and he collapsed to the ground again, wailing loudly. “Boss Liu Yi, I know I was wrong! Spare me! Spare me, aaaaah!”
Xia Liu Yi had already walked far ahead with light, easy steps. Without saying a single word, he merely waved one hand casually like he was beckoning a dog.
Crying hysterically, the man scrambled after him in terror… while still carrying that gleaming long blade for him.
Futile Devices Scans 
Leave a comment