A Big Shot Appears

The badly injured short, stout man held his blade to Yuezheng Qiong's neck and threatened, "If you don't come out, I'll kill this little bitch."

Si Ming wasn't buying it. The protagonists in movies and TV dramas dared to obey criminals because they knew they were protected by plot armor, and that the will of the universe would help them snatch life from the jaws of death.

Si Ming didn't dare make that gamble. Those protagonists usually had formidable martial prowess to rely on, or could at least match their opponents blow for blow. If he went out, he would be dead.

If he refused to obey the criminal, the hostage would die. If he obeyed, both he and the hostage would die. The choice was plain as day. Was he supposed to hope the enemy had sound moral character and would keep his word and spare him?

"People who say things like that always die in TV dramas. Are villains all this brainless? She's not even from this country. Saving her would be a favor; not saving her is only natural. Why would I throw my life away to save her? You may have no brains, but you've got eyes, don't you? Take a good look. Who caused the injuries to her hands and legs?"

The short, stout man looked, and sure enough, it was true. As kidnappers, his side had taken care to avoid hurting the hostage as much as possible during the operation. Yet the moment this brat showed up, he had wounded the hostage with an explosion. If things had gone wrong, she could even have died on the spot. His actions made it clear he didn't care whether the hostage lived or died.

"Damn it, which one of us is the villain here?!"

The short, stout man felt the world made no sense. The righteous were even more outrageous than the villains.

"If you won't come out, I'll make sure you can't hide anymore."

The man in blue threw punch after punch, unleashing wave after wave of fist force to destroy the piles of clutter in the warehouse one by one, forcing Si Ming to keep dodging.

"Internal cultivation at level nine or ten. Skilled in fierce, forceful fist techniques and external conditioning. Judging by his footwork, his lightness skill is mediocre..."

As Si Ming dodged, he gauged his opponent's strength. He knew that sooner or later he would have nowhere left to hide at this rate, but unleashing fist force that powerful was bound to consume a great deal of True Qi and stamina. Every bit he could wear the man down counted.

When only two piles of clutter large enough to hide behind remained in the warehouse, the man in blue's gaze sharpened. He paused the rhythm of his successive punches and secretly gathered his internal force. The brat's next route was now plain to see, and he could predict it in advance. There was no need to destroy every last pile of clutter.

First, he let out a breath of stale air to ease the fatigue of repeatedly unleashing fist force at full power. Against an expert, doing this would have been courting death: he had used up half his True Qi in less than three minutes. But against a low-level martial artist who hadn't even reached level four in internal cultivation, half his True Qi was more than enough.

The man in blue drew a sharp breath and thrust both fists forward. This time, instead of combining his fist force, he split it to attack two places: one strike went toward a pile of clutter, while the other targeted the route between the two piles that the brat would have to take. All he had to do was wait for him to walk into the net.

To his surprise, Si Ming didn't do as the man in blue expected. He leaped out in another direction, tossing a round object as he shouted, "Catch!"

Thinking it was another hidden weapon like the one before, the man in blue, once bitten by a snake, hurriedly shielded his vital points with both hands and activated the Sea Tide Body-Protecting Art at full power. It was an external conditioning art tempered using undersea currents.

But after consuming most of his True Qi, he no longer had the strength to maintain a full-body defense. He concentrated all his power at the front, ready to withstand the impact.

"Get down!"

The short, stout man didn't have the same abilities as the man in blue and didn't dare risk his life. He immediately dropped to the floor.

But the expected explosion never came. All they heard was the sound of a heavy object hitting the ground.

What Si Ming had thrown wasn't a grenade at all, but a bearing he had casually picked up from the clutter. Seizing the moment his opponents were distracted, he fired both guns in rapid succession again.

This time, however, neither enemy was hit. Si Ming had aimed at the ropes binding Yuezheng Qiong's legs and the handcuffs securing her hands. With his seemingly divine marksmanship, he used the bullets to sever the ropes and shatter the handcuffs' thin chain, leaving her with only a slight graze.

The moment she was free, Yuezheng Qiong froze. She hadn't expected that to be Si Ming's plan either. But as a fake celebrity who dared impersonate her younger sister and deceive the world, her reaction was swift and ruthless. She immediately circulated her power throughout her body, pushed off with her uninjured leg, and struck the man in blue squarely in the back with one finger.

Young though Yuezheng Qiong was, she possessed level-seven internal cultivation. Her Lineage's secret art, the Guxi Spirit-Shaking Finger, didn't seek victory through external force. Instead, it turned internal force into shock waves that entered the enemy's body and directly damaged the internal organs. It was especially effective against external conditioning arts that had yet to reach the stage of progressing from the outside in.

The man in blue had concentrated all his True Qi at the front, leaving his back wide open. Even if he had used the Sea Tide Body-Protecting Art at full power, he would still have been at a disadvantage against the Guxi Spirit-Shaking Finger. He immediately felt a violent surge of hidden force rush into his body, damaging his internal organs and sending his Qi and blood flowing backward. His ears rang, and he went deaf.

"Wah!" The man in blue spat out a mouthful of blood and stumbled forward. An experienced fighter, he knew that the best thing to do now wasn't to turn and attack Yuezheng Qiong, but to use the momentum to kill the brat with the powerful hidden weapons. He immediately lunged straight at Si Ming.

"Damn it, you're getting your teammate killed!"

Si Ming had only planned to free Yuezheng Qiong and then take the chance to escape. Even with both guns in hand, he didn't think he had any chance of beating an expert with level-ten internal cultivation. He hadn't expected Yuezheng Qiong to be so bold. Her first thought after breaking free wasn't to run, but to attack the enemy, and now she had put him in danger instead.

Is she getting back at me on purpose because I didn't care about her safety just now?

Si Ming had no time to dwell on it. He fired both guns, pouring out a barrage of bullets. But to avoid hurting Yuezheng Qiong, he hadn't loaded the explosive dumdum rounds. Ordinary bullets could only splash a flower of blood from the man in blue's body and sink two centimeters into his flesh. They couldn't inflict a fatal wound.

"Die!"

The distance between them closed in an instant. Shielding his face with one hand, the man in blue clenched the other into a fist and hammered it toward Si Ming's head. If the punch landed squarely, Si Ming's head would burst apart like a watermelon.

Bang!

An unexpected shot rang out. It came from a tricky angle, firing upward from below, past the man in blue's arm and diagonally into his eye socket, penetrating his skull.

Si Ming rolled like a donkey to dodge the attack, which had lost its force. Then he raised his leg to chest height, lowered his head, and blew on his shoe, which now had a large hole in it. A pitch-black psionic gun was hidden inside.

"Don't underestimate height-increasing shoes. You can fit the dignity of an entire Tiny Times in there."

Chapter 33: A Big Shot Appears

This battle was the first time Si Ming had killed a person in either of his two lives, but he didn't feel the slightest urge to vomit. He supposed it was probably because killing the Mighty Rhinoceros Toad had been much more brutal, both in its bloodiness and in the psychological pressure he had endured.

Meanwhile, Yuezheng Qiong quickly subdued the short, stout man. In a fair fight, she would have been no match for him. Even now, with him badly injured, he could still have traded blows with her, who was only lightly wounded. But after he saw a bullet bore an eighth hole through his boss's head, his composure wavered, allowing Yuezheng Qiong to subdue him.

"For saving my life, I should offer myself to you. But little brother, you blew up my hands and legs, and I helped you out in the end too, so let's call it even." Yuezheng Qiong giggled, showing none of the tension of someone who had just escaped a calamity.

Si Ming rolled his eyes. If I hadn't hidden a gun in my shoe, you'd have gotten me killed for sure. But he couldn't be bothered to argue. If she knew how to repay a favor, she would naturally remember it in the future. If she meant to play the rogue, then even if she acknowledged the debt now, she would repay his kindness with enmity later.

Bang! Bang!

Si Ming shot the short, stout man in both knees, making him wail.

Yuezheng Qiong froze and said in an odd tone, "I really couldn't tell, little brother. You're so young, but you're so ruthless. He's already tied up, so why torture him? If you have to vent your hatred, just shoot him dead."

"Who said I wanted to torture him? I did it to keep him alive. The way you handled this was all wrong. You think everything's fine just because you tied him up? What if he has some special way to break free, then suddenly attacks and takes you hostage? Even if he can't do that, what if one of his companions suddenly shows up to rescue him? Crippling him now not only removes any chance of him turning the tables, it also makes him a burden to his companions."

I'm not about to make that clichéd mistake, Si Ming thought. Movies and TV dramas often had scenes where the protagonist had clearly driven the enemy into a corner, only to give the enemy a chance to turn the tables because he wanted information or a heart-to-heart-for example, by leaving a gun hidden under a table. Of course, it could also be the other way around, with the villain driving the protagonist into a corner.

The only difference was that the former's attempt to turn the tables was doomed to fail, injuring the protagonist at most, while the latter would play out the rule that "villains die because they talk too much."

Whenever Si Ming saw such scenes before, he couldn't help wondering, Can't they just break the other person's limbs before talking? All you need to speak is a mouth, anyway.

It was one thing for the righteous not to do that, but even villains somehow developed compassion. They only played at torturing people with branding irons, giving them a chance to escape prison. It was a disgrace to their standing as villains.