Reckless

Meng Chao had a plan now. Calmly, he said, "Manager Shen, since we can't determine who broke it, according to the rules, we bear responsibility and are willing to compensate half the price difference."

"Half?"

As though he had heard a joke, Shen Rongfa snorted through his nostrils. "Kid, you haven't even gotten into college yet, but you sure talk big. After that fall, its quality has dropped by at least two grades. The price difference is over two hundred thousand; half of that is a hundred thousand. Plenty of people can toil for a whole year without earning a hundred thousand, yet with you, it's just a light, casual sentence?"

He glanced at the two bodyguards.

The two bodyguards chuckled darkly.

Meng Yishan grabbed his son. "A Chao, stay out of this. This is Dad's business."

"Dad, you've worked hard all these years. Now that your son is back, your most important job is to enjoy life properly."

Meng Chao stepped forward and stood before his father, staring at Shen Rongfa. "Everyone knows whether my dad broke it. I can't be bothered wasting breath or time. Settle the account, and we're done."

Once the account was settled, he would immediately take the entire harvesting team away. There were plenty of opportunities to make money outside; why get tangled up with a scumbag named Shen?

"What do you mean?"

The teenager's composed expression enraged Shen Rongfa. Like a pufferfish surfacing from the water, his fat face puffed up. "I have witnesses. Just because there's no surveillance footage, you think you can deny it? Besides, if your dad hadn't tried to forcefully buy the Spirit Transformation Nerve Ball and I hadn't agreed, then he started tugging and pulling at it—how would it have broken?"

After a pause, Shen Rongfa wore the expression of someone who had swallowed a fly, as though arguing with Meng Chao was beneath his dignity.

He turned back to Meng Yishan. "Old Meng, if you still want to make a living in this circle, you need to know the harvesters' rules. You first got greedy and tried to keep the material for yourself, then broke it and refused to take responsibility—if these two things get out, forget about working here. You won't find work anywhere else either."

Meng Yishan shuddered. "I wanted to pay for it and buy it!"

"Then buy it. Didn't I already agree to knock twenty thousand off for you?"

Shen Rongfa suddenly changed his expression, smiling warmly. "We already agreed: sign a three-year Level Two Contract, and you can take the item away immediately—we go way back, after all!"

Meng Yishan looked at the pitch-black Spirit Transformation Nerve Ball.

If it had been in perfect condition, two hundred and eighty thousand really was not expensive.

But in its current condition, even if it were refined into spinal nerve regeneration medicine, the medicinal effect would be greatly reduced. Could it still immediately heal his son's injury?

"What are you still thinking about? The longer you hesitate, the longer the Spirit Transformation Nerve Ball stays exposed to the air, and the worse its effects become."

Shen Rongfa's eyes rolled. "How about this? Sign with me for two more years, and I'll advance you another eighty thousand. Use it to buy your son more supplements. Maybe he'll even make the honor roll!"

Those words struck straight at Meng Yishan's weak spot.

He thought of his son lying in a hospital bed after being injured last year, tossing and turning.

He thought of three years ago, when his son had just been admitted to a key high school. The boy had run before him and his wife, pretending he had done poorly on the exam. When they comforted him, the brat suddenly pulled out his admission letter and flaunted it, making the two of them chase him with brooms in fury.

And even further back, he remembered how his son had trained like a madman for the family's future. When rich children trained for one hour, he trained for two, for three. Even when his muscles cramped, he found a towel to bite down on himself, refusing to let them hear his groans.

"...Stop talking."

Meng Yishan gritted his teeth. "Advance me a hundred thousand, and I'll sign!"

"A hundred thousand it is!" Shen Rongfa beamed and hurriedly handed over the tablet he had prepared long ago. "They're all standard terms. No need to read them closely. Just press your fingerprint here and sign your name."

Before the old father could take it, his son snatched it away.

"What is this?"

Meng Chao swept it with a glance, and his pupils shrank to pinpoints. "A Level Two Hazardous Resource Recycling Operator employment contract!"

Pain!

It hurt!

His head hurt so badly!

The words "Level Two Contract" were like an Incendiary Bomb, igniting his mind and showing him several nightmare-like scenes amid roaring flames.

He remembered!

In his previous life, his mother had been burned by a Ghost Eye Golden Winged Flame Beetle. To earn the enormous medical fees, his father had signed a "Level Two Contract" with Shen Rongfa and gone to harvest high-risk monsters that were highly poisonous, intensely corrosive, prone to corpse transformation, and carried explosion risks.

Unexpectedly, an accident happened during one operation, and his father was severely injured too.

When Meng Chao wanted to claim his father's medical insurance to pay for treatment, he discovered that Shen Rongfa, that bastard, claimed to deduct his father's wages every month to pay for special insurance for high-risk occupations. In reality, he had only paid for ordinary insurance, stuffing the difference into his own pockets!

That had been the darkest moment of the Meng Family's previous life.

Meng Chao went to settle accounts with Shen Rongfa, but the man hid everywhere. When he sued "Jiuxin," he discovered that the contract itself had been tampered with. Many clauses were extremely unfavorable to the employee, making the lawsuit incredibly difficult.

This incident thoroughly disillusioned his younger sister with the judicial system. She said things like, "The law only protects the rich. Poor people can only rely on themselves, and only by stopping at nothing can they survive in this cruel Otherworld."

It had been an immensely important catalyst in her becoming the Black Night Witch.

Meng Chao's eyes turned completely red.

The tablet crackled in his grip.

Shen Rongfa glared. "You dare snatch my stuff?"

Crack!

Before the words had even faded, the tablet was crushed to powder in Meng Chao's hand.

Fragments shot in all directions, sparks flew everywhere, and several sharp components buried themselves deeply in his palm.

"Meng Yishan, your son is utterly lawless!" Shen Rongfa roared.

With a Transcendent brother-in-law, he usually strutted through the company sideways. The harvesters in his grip had to watch their breathing around him. When had he ever seen such a foolhardy young punk?

Pointing at Meng Chao, he shrieked, "Throw this brat out!"

The two bodyguards pounced like wolves and tigers.

Meng Yishan had seen these two bodyguards beat five harvesters from another company until their faces were swollen and bruised over a dispute for materials.

He immediately stepped forward. "You dare!"

The two bodyguards shoved him. He staggered back four or five steps and fell to the ground.

"Dad!"

His father sitting on the ground overlapped with the image from his previous life of him lying mutilated and incomplete on a hospital bed.

Meng Chao's head buzzed, and his vision turned blood-red.

The two bodyguards swung their Electric Batons down at his shoulders.

"Get the hell away from me!"

Meng Chao roared. The Expert Level Wild Bull Technique exploded forth. His body first contracted, then swelled, while a roar burst from his chest like an enraged rhinoceros.

Bang!

The first bodyguard was struck squarely in the chest and sent sprawling onto his back, spraying blood wildly.

Crackle!

The second bodyguard jabbed his Electric Baton into Meng Chao's shoulder, but Meng Chao, consumed by fury, did not notice at all. He took a huge step forward, slammed into him, then heaved, sending the bodyguard flying twenty or thirty meters. His bones were nearly shattered from the fall; how could he possibly get back up?

Meng Chao had been shocked until his hair stood on end. Every bone in his body crackled, and savage fury surged across his face.

"Fire Seed, exchange for Ripple Force and raise it to Expert Level!" he snarled viciously in his heart.

All manner of details immediately surfaced in his mind, surging into his flesh and nerve endings like Stormy Waves.

He took his first step toward Shen Rongfa.

Monstrous strength rose from the ground, rolling from his calves all the way to his waist and hips. His legs were like two pile drivers, brutally hammering the ground.

He took his second step.

An endless stream of power traveled from his chest into both arms, trembling all the way to his fingertips. The muscles throughout his body became towering waves, driving an incomparably violent tsunami into his burning palm.

In only three steps, he stood before Shen Rongfa, looking down at him with a ferocious face.

Shen Rongfa was frightened into a ball, his features shrinking around his nostrils as they trembled. "We can talk..."

"Talk to your ancestors!"

The future version of Ripple Force, Expert Level—fuck you!

Meng Chao's right arm carved through the air like a whip, his palm like red-hot steel as it lashed toward Shen Rongfa's fat face.

Smack!

The first slap alone made everyone present shrink their necks, their own cheeks aching.

Shen Rongfa's two-hundred-and-fifty-pound body spun three times like a top from the blow, and half his face nearly caught fire.

Smack! Smack!

Two consecutive slaps corrected Shen's position, swelling his head into a trembling braised pig's head.

Smack! Smack! Smack! Smack! Smack! Smack!

Meng Chao struck with both hands, a chain of lightning-fast blows. His slaps fell like a violent storm, making everyone's teeth ache and balls tighten. Yet he controlled his strength precisely, refusing to knock Shen Rongfa unconscious, beating him until foam poured from his mouth and he wished he were dead, without even the strength to cry for his father and mother.

After delivering one thoroughly satisfying round of Ripple Force, Meng Chao's anger still had not faded. He retreated two steps, the laces of his rubber work boots snapping apart, then swung up his leg and drove one kick deep into Shen Rongfa's lower abdomen, treating him like a football and sending him flying more than ten meters.

Bang!

Shen Rongfa slammed into the side of a refrigerated truck, making it sway three times.

The man collapsed like mud, his expression half vacant and half agonized. A wet, fishy-smelling patch spread continuously between his legs.

"A Chao!"

Only then did the harvesters awaken as if from a dream.

They looked at Meng Chao as if he were a Doomsday Rank vicious beast.

Meng Yishan pounced at his son and hugged him tightly. "Enough! Do you want to eat prison food?"

Meng Chao took several deep breaths and gradually calmed down.

"Dad, are you all right?" He carefully examined his father.

"Of course I'm all right." Meng Yishan forced out a smile that looked worse than crying. "But what about you?"

The harvesters also sighed one after another. Young people were too impulsive. Throwing a punch was easy, but how could one pull it back?

"That was reckless."

Meng Chao himself felt somewhat annoyed. "If I really wanted to deal with Shen, why not wait for a dark and windy night? There'd be any number of ways to cook him up. Forget it, what's done is done. How about I go give him a few more kicks and get it out of my system today? Next time, I'll definitely stay calm and always remember my identity—I'm a gentle and refined high school student!"

Having made up his mind, he flexed his fingers and walked toward Shen Rongfa.

Shen Rongfa was vomiting and shitting himself, blood gushing from his nostrils. Seeing Meng Chao still coming toward him, he screamed like a eunuch gone mad.

Meng Yishan and the old brothers hurriedly stopped him. "A Chao, are you crazy? Do you want to kill him?"

"Dad, I was wrong. I'll change, I'll definitely change next time. Just let me kick him three more times today, only three times! Or two, if that won't work. One is fine too. The last kick—next time I definitely won't kick him again, I promise!"

Meng Chao played tug-of-war with his father. Seven or eight burly men could not hold back a single one of him.

"Stop!"

Just then, a pale, beardless man with the look of a cauliflower snake hurried over, his face dark and gloomy.

Behind him stood a towering, powerfully built man completely shrouded in a cloak soaked through with monster blood.

"Manager Gu, Tiger Lord!"

The many harvesters' expressions changed drastically.