In the chaos of people moving through the corridor, Yan Xiaodao fell for several moments into a sense of unreality, as though everything around him were an illusion. Corridors branched in several directions toward dressing rooms, restrooms, restaurants, and bars. Any of them could conceal one or two living people. He could not tell which direction he should search for Ling He.
The yellow-haired killer staggered out of the box behind him as well. He was injured but not fatally, and the metal claw attacked viciously from the rear once again.
The blow nearly came down on the back of Yan Xiaodao’s skull. He had actually forgotten his own safety and neglected to defend himself. The Young Master Ling who had entrusted his entire fortune and life into Yan’s hands, the Ling He who would probably be hacked apart without Yan there as his human shield—where was he?…
A compact, astonishingly fast figure shot from the shadows of the corridor, practically flying. A kick in midair knocked aside the metal-clawed hand that was about to strike Yan Xiaodao, making the yellow-haired mercenary howl in pain.
The killer was immediately tangled up in Yang Xifeng’s fists and feet, clearly never expecting this unimpressive skinny monkey to be such a capable fighter too.
Yan Xiaodao showed not the slightest gratitude when he saw Yang Xifeng. Instead, he roared at him, “Where’s Ling He?!”
Yang Xifeng knocked the man away, utterly baffled by the question. “Wasn’t he with you, Boss?”
It felt as though a basin of cold water had been poured over Yan Xiaodao’s head. Even his hair seemed ready to freeze as the chill flooded his heart.
Eyes blood-red, Yan Xiaodao cursed, “Bastard! You couldn’t even keep track of one person?!”
Yang Xifeng felt genuinely wronged and miserable. Once again he reflected that working under his boss meant being treated worse than a dog.
Yan Xiaodao’s furious curse had plainly been directed at himself.
A wall lamp cast an isolated circle of haughty yellow light, making the dark-red velvet curtains around it seem even more sinister and shadowed—perfectly suited to the murderous atmosphere of death at that moment.
A pair of rough hands tore at Ling He’s shoulders and dragged him by the hair into the box before throwing him onto the floor.
At the instant the killer planted a knee against his chest, Ling He looked straight into those glass-marble eyes and cut directly into the man’s mind with a question. “You’re not one of You Haodong’s or Qi Baoshan’s men. Who paid you to kill me?”
Unfortunately, the yellow-haired man either spoke Chinese badly or could not understand it at all. Ling He therefore lost an excellent opportunity to pry open his mouth, interrogate him, verbally tear him apart, and exercise that tongue of his. This only proved that opponents really did need to share a language. Those coarse, clawlike hands closed around Ling He’s throat and slowly squeezed all the oxygen out of his chest. Soon, they would strangle him to death.
A strange fragrance filled the air—sweet, cloying, yet harsh enough to sting the nose. The man wore gloves. Suddenly, he pulled from inside his clothes a syringe slightly thicker than an ordinary one. A vicious gleam flashed in his eyes as he drove it toward the pulse beating in Ling He’s neck.
Ling He suddenly caught the syringe just before it pierced his flesh, his fingers equally precise and powerful. The needle veered aside and stabbed directly into the hollow between his collarbones! The man sneered and shoved hard on the plunger, trying to force whatever was inside into him.
Pain and convulsions slowly shook Ling He’s upper body. His face flushed a brittle red as he began falling into extreme oxygen deprivation.
That strange smell made him widen his eyes at his attacker in the moment between life and death. With sheer force of will, he clamped down desperately on the killer’s fingers, refusing to let the contents of the syringe enter his bloodstream…
The killer, unwilling to waste time, backhanded him across the face.
The slap was brutally hard. Half-suffocated, Ling He was nearly struck senseless. His gaze lost focus and his pupils slowly dilated. The silver needle drove savagely into his neck. His body jerked violently on reflex, his mouth opening as though desperately trying to pull in air while his chest rose and fell in choking spasms.
At the same instant that part of the liquid was forced inside, Ling He suddenly reached out and snapped the needle off with his fingers.
His swollen throat no longer allowed him to breathe…
His chest felt as though countless silver needles were invading it, plunging him into violent pain…
Within Ling He’s slowly fading final awareness, he understood that this was what suffocation looked like. On the verge of death, his head tilted to one side. His long, narrow eyes still stubbornly preserved enough vision to watch Yan Xiaodao’s figure crash through that circle of light and smoke and reach him. Was it a hallucination?…
After the first instant of blankness, Yan Xiaodao’s gaze rapidly fell upon the box next to theirs more than ten meters away. That box was unnaturally quiet, its velvet curtain still closed. Apparently, no guests had been seen running in or out of it.
Was this the trick that had misled him—a blind spot precisely because it was right beneath his nose?
Yan Xiaodao suddenly understood and rushed over to yank aside the velvet curtain. The door had somehow been locked from the inside.
With one brutal slash, he split the wooden panel around the lock. The wood was not particularly sturdy and tore open under the blade. Yan reached through and turned the latch from inside.
Ling He lay stretched across the floor. When he saw Yan enter, an unhurried smile appeared on his face, as though he had always known Yan would come. The smile was serene and beautiful, except for the two thin lines of blood running from his forehead and nose, slightly marring the otherwise flawless picture.
Yan Xiaodao slashed horizontally toward the killer’s windpipe. The man bent sharply backward in terror and barely avoided it. Yan’s blade instead punched deep through the wall of the box. He had used every ounce of strength. He was genuinely furious…
The second killer had also dyed his hair a mottled yellow-white. At first glance, the two men looked almost like twins, both with angular, rugged, aggressively masculine faces that were difficult to forget.
When Yan Xiaodao kicked him out of the box and sent him stumbling miserably to the floor, the man was still confused. The target was obviously almost dead. How had he still possessed the strength to snap off the needle? And with such fast, precise technique—how had he done it?
Unfortunately, the man would never get the chance to discuss his curiosity with Mr. Yan.
He staggered back to his feet and hesitated for half a second: continue fighting and try once more to kill the target, or retreat immediately and run for his life?
The next instant, he witnessed a terrifying sight that he would never forget for the rest of his life.
Yan Xiaodao walked coldly out of the box. There was not a single unnecessary expression on his face, only killing intent that promised to skin and strip the flesh from his opponent’s bones.
Yan Xiaodao swept open his suit jacket, throwing the front panels behind him, then bent forward in a very unusual posture and slipped both arms backward out of the sleeves. At the same time, he flung the entire jacket forward, sending it across his opponent’s face and field of vision.
The movement flowed in one continuous motion without the slightest hesitation. Behind the shadow of the flying jacket came the blade his opponent could never anticipate in time.
When that broad steel combat blade appeared again, Killer Number Two could not even understand what he was seeing. Where had the blade originally been hidden? Where had Yan drawn it from? How had it suddenly arrived directly in front of him, carrying with it the solemn presence of death?
Even the guests who happened to turn and catch a startled glimpse from the surrounding corridor never truly saw the blade. All they saw was a black suit jacket flying through the air and a streak of white light flashing past.
The white light passed too swiftly to grasp, like a fierce dragon crossing the river.
Fear reflected in the brightness of the blade. With one strike, the combat blade severed tendon and bone, pressure pumping blood from the body in a jet that struck the ceiling and wall…
The man instantly lost his entire right arm.
His scream no longer sounded human, but even that came with a strange delay because the blade had moved too fast. A line opening in the flesh, blood bursting free, the arm falling, and finally the sensation of pain reaching the central nervous system—the sequence unfolded like one smooth, elegant long take, each moment following the next, more than enough to break the victim’s mind after forcing him to witness every stage in slow motion.
Not a drop of blood clung to the blade.
Yan Xiaodao put the weapon away and calmly slipped back into his jacket. Still, no one had seen him wield the blade.
The first killer had remained trapped in combat with Yang Xifeng. He witnessed that terrifying scene as well and let out a howl.
The two men simultaneously turned and fled down the corridor. With brutal simplicity, they smashed through a glass window and jumped onto the deck seven or eight meters below. Then, astonishingly, they vaulted the ship’s rail and threw themselves into the ocean.
Yan Xiaodao failed to catch them. He could only watch as the pair escaped into the sea and vanished almost instantly among the raging waves. He had no idea whether this was some bizarre method of escape or whether, after failing their mission, they had simply lost the will to live and tragically gone to feed the sharks.
The guests who had remained in the corridor screamed. All anyone finally saw were blood spatters across the wall and one bloody severed arm lying on the floor. Without those traces as proof, everything had happened so quickly that it might have been another illusion onstage.
Alarms began blaring.
Yan Xiaodao immediately realized that the killers had escaped and deliberately left the mess behind for him to take the blame.
He told Yang Xifeng, “Destroy the evidence. Don’t leave it here.”
Yang Xifeng had spent years running around after his boss and was accustomed to doing the dirty cleanup work. Without changing expression or heartbeat, he picked up the severed arm, climbed through the window they had just smashed, and jumped onto the deck. Under cover of the dark, windy night, Yang Xifeng swung the bloody arm in a broad circle and hurled it into the sea as fish food.
Only those few moments had passed when Yan Xiaodao returned to the box. Ling He was still lying on the floor, his face now turning bluish.
All ten of Ling He’s fingers were clawed against the floor. His nails had scraped countless white marks across it, leaving behind a horrifying record of how violently he had struggled.
“What’s wrong?”
“Ling He?!”
“…”
“…You can’t breathe?!”
A blue-gray cast covered Ling He’s face. His formerly white porcelain skin had turned the color of Yue celadon, even showing fine, cracked-looking patterns. Dense capillaries stood out beneath the surface, particularly around his forehead, temples, and neck. His lips were parted, yet he obviously could not draw breath. His body slowly curled in on itself under the pain.
Elio’s Notes: Yue ware is an early Chinese ceramic tradition famous for its translucent green celadon glaze.
Two needle punctures were visible near Ling He’s collarbones. A broken piece of needle still protruded from one of them.
Yan Xiaodao pulled out the broken needle and immediately caught an odd smell in the air. It was not an extremely lethal poison such as potassium cyanide, but a strong tar scent mixed with the sweetness of chocolate. He knew those smells.
“What the hell happened to him, Boss?” Yang Xifeng rushed in after cleaning up the scene and immediately recoiled from the smell with a disgusted face. “What the hell is that? Somebody been ‘skating’ in this room?”
“Skating” was underworld slang for taking crystal meth.
“No. There’s only a tiny amount of ‘ice’ mixed into it…” Yan Xiaodao fought desperately to suppress the tremor in his emotions. “That man injected him with high-purity nicotine.”
It was an unusual way to kill someone without leaving obvious traces, and even saved the killer the trouble of disposing of the body. If Ling He died like this, investigators would find what looked like a scene where “some rich second-generation kid got carried away at a pleasure venue aboard a cruise ship and died of a drug overdose.” There would be no knife wounds or gunshots, hardly even any blood.
But Ling He did not want to die. With an extraordinarily stubborn will to survive, he clawed at his chest trying to breathe, then seized Yan Xiaodao’s arm, nails digging deeply into his flesh. Yan understood that the drilling pain in his own arm was only an echo of the agony Ling He was enduring now.
Yan Xiaodao tore open Ling He’s formal jacket, then ripped open his shirt, stripping away everything that might constrict his chest.
He slapped Ling He’s face several times. Seeing that it was not enough, he dropped to one knee in front of him, placed both hands together over that snow-white chest already turning blue, and pressed down hard.
He continued chest compressions without stopping. After thirty, he suddenly released him, bent over while kneeling in front of Ling He, pinched the man’s chin upward, and sealed his mouth over Ling He’s.
Yang Xifeng still could not quite understand. If someone wanted to kill him, wouldn’t they inject crystal meth? Why inject nicotine?
Yan Xiaodao remembered that one night in their room, Ling He had told him he was allergic to nicotine.
Injecting crystal meth would not necessarily kill a person, but a syringe of high-purity nicotine was enough to kill Ling He. From the broken needle alone, there was no way to tell how much had actually entered him.
Ling He’s eyes were empty. He had stopped breathing on his own. His throat, windpipe, and lungs seemed blocked by something.
That was what the most serious allergic reactions could look like. Swelling of the airway could lead to suffocation. Without help, it could be fatal.
Ling He’s lips were soft, cold, lifeless, without breath. Yan Xiaodao released his head and once again pressed down hard on his chest with both hands. Another thirty compressions, acting as a human pacemaker…
Yang Xifeng could do nothing but stare. He thought his boss was using a frightening amount of force. He was genuinely afraid Young Master Ling’s not particularly broad or muscular chest would cave in. Even if they managed to save him, several ribs might end up broken.
Yang Xifeng had never seen his boss like this either.
From his position, Yang could not see Yan Xiaodao’s expression. Yan simply remained there on one knee, moving from chest to mouth, from lips back to chest, and then mouth to mouth again… Yan Xiaodao was relentless, utterly unwilling to accept fate, as though he intended to skin Ling He on the spot, tear open his chest, tangle with his tongue, and harass the man awake through sheer stubborn force—dragging every one of his three souls and seven spirits back into his body whether they wanted to return or not.
Elio’s Notes: “Three souls and seven spirits” refers to a traditional Chinese conception of the human soul as having multiple spiritual components. Here it is used figuratively for dragging every last part of Ling He’s life and consciousness back.
I went through all this trouble to save you. You dare die?!
The streak of blood from Ling He’s nose had smeared across Yan Xiaodao’s lips. The vivid smell of blood made him feel sick.
When he bent down once more and covered Ling He’s mouth to force air inside, real warmth finally emerged from those cold, unreal lips, as though Ling He had breathed back at him. When Yan Xiaodao tried to pull away, a thin strand of saliva still connected the corners of their mouths.
The man held in Yan’s palms coughed once from deep inside his lungs. A streak of light passed through the deepest black of his eyes like a meteor falling across the night sky, igniting a warm campfire somewhere on a vast grassland. That fragile flame struggled into life against the darkness until it finally illuminated Yan Xiaodao’s eyes, which had already fallen into an abyss of blackness.
Only then did Yan Xiaodao’s hands tremble. A strange, flustered flush abruptly rose into his eyes, burning hot.
Diluted traces of blood stained both men’s lips the same color. They stared blankly at each other.
Yan Xiaodao released his head and continued pressing his chest several more times, forcing a series of agonizing coughs and gasps from Ling He’s lungs. Ling He opened his mouth, looking as though he had staggered through time from some ancient wilderness to reach him at last, calmly and trustingly searching for this one solid source of warmth. His lips formed the word: “Xiaodao…”