Great Fear (Part 2)

There were too many people around and too little room to put any force behind it. He only kicked Ronan into a stagger, while Li Xuecheng nearly slipped and fell himself. After finally regaining his balance, he charged forward again.

At that moment, Ronan suddenly turned around.

Strangely enough, the moment their eyes met, Li Xuecheng's heart inexplicably began to pound, and he stopped without meaning to.

Lian Yu had already quieted down. Li Xuecheng's actions had drawn everyone's attention.

What Li Xuecheng was doing was certainly inappropriate, but Ronan was not part of their circle. These rich kids had no obligation to break up the fight. Besides, quite a few of them still harbored resentment over that vial of "True Fate" in the Phantom Flying Car.

Even if there was a 99.9 percent chance it had been Xie Junping's fault, as long as there was even a one-in-a-thousand or one-in-ten-thousand possibility, they could shift their resentment onto Ronan.

Everyone watched coldly. Lian Yu sensed the attitude of these bastards in their circle and found it difficult to step in. Her face was livid as she stood to one side, fuming.

Of course Li Xuecheng knew what his companions thought. He truly intended to go at Ronan again, but for some reason, although Ronan's face was ashen as a corpse's and he looked like he could be blown over by the wind, Li Xuecheng simply could not move when he faced Ronan's eyes. The vicious fury in his heart burned fiercely, yet he could not take a single step.

One or two seconds would have been fine, but three, four, five, six, seven seconds passed, and he still had not moved. What the fuck, was this some duel pose-off?

The bastards around him had clearly noticed something too. A few muffled laughs had already begun to sound.

Li Xuecheng could not save face anymore. In the past, bodyguards or lackeys would naturally have stepped in for this sort of thing. Who the fuck knew he would feel so awful when it came down to him? Humiliated and enraged, he saw Ronan's notebook beneath his feet and simply stomped down on it to vent his frustration, planting his foot squarely in the middle.

The thick notebook instantly caved in. A faint cracking sound came from between its pages.

Across from him, Ronan froze.

Seeing Ronan's expression, Li Xuecheng immediately understood that this kick had truly struck him where it hurt. He felt a surge of satisfaction, and even the strange feeling of dread within him faded considerably.

He pressed down harder, deliberately grinding his heel over the notebook in a circle. At the same time, he drew out his voice in a melodramatic, sing-song tone.

"Ah, sorry about that..."

Li Xuecheng's behavior was crude and beneath him, but since they were on the same side, quite a few people nearby laughed and jeered along. As for how much of it was support and how much was mockery, that was open to interpretation.

With the crowd behind him, Li Xuecheng grew bolder. He raised a hand and pointed at Ronan. "Kid..."

The word had barely left his mouth when his throat suddenly seized up, because he saw Ronan walking toward him.

The entire cabin was only around twenty square meters. With more than ten people crammed inside, it was already unbearably crowded. There were truly only two steps between them.

Li Xuecheng's heart twitched for no reason. Then, at close range, he met Ronan's eyes once again.

Ronan's features were delicate, but his eyes were not beautiful—at least not to Li Xuecheng. Mottled colors seemed to flow within those pupils, bizarre and ever-changing, yet all of them were subdued beneath a cold, icy undertone.

For no reason, Li Xuecheng recalled an exotic specimen he had seen in one of his Diehard Friends' private gardens:

An Aberrant Species that thirsted for blood.

That savage, violent beast was over five meters long, as massive as a mountain. It had been trapped behind layers of electric fencing, its body covered in wounds. Yet when those beastly eyes stared straight at him, Li Xuecheng's legs had still trembled, and his courage had failed him.

Ronan's build naturally could not compare to that enormous Aberrant Species, but the problem was that Li Xuecheng had been separated from the beast by a glass wall harder than steel, along with high-voltage electric fences and other lethal safeguards waiting on standby.

But now, there was nothing...

Nothing at all!

Li Xuecheng's heartbeat accelerated, his pupils dilated, and he opened his mouth to shout. As for what he meant to shout, even he did not know. The problem was that although he had opened his mouth, no sound came out.

Not only that, his tongue, throat, chest, and every muscle in his body stiffened in an instant. It was as though he had fallen into a nightmare—his mind was clear, yet he could not escape no matter what he did.

He could only watch helplessly as Ronan stepped forward, raised an arm, and lightly curled five fingers around his throat...

It was truly only a light touch. He could not feel any force at all. Yet in that instant, the air in his Lungs was rapidly drained away. His nostrils, mouth, even every pore on his body seemed forcibly sealed, as if he had been tightly wrapped in thick, airtight plastic film. No air could leave, no air could enter, and he could not even sweat.

His heartbeat sped up sharply, but the oxygen content in the blood it pumped dropped again and again. The terrible sensation of suffocation, like floodwaters spilling over a broken dike, slowly yet inexorably filled his brain.

Li Xuecheng desperately tried to speak, to breathe, to beg for mercy. He exhausted every ounce of strength in his body, but only his eyes bulged, nearly popping from their sockets. Blood-red color gradually seeped across his vision. His tear glands were stimulated, forcing tears from his eyes, but even they could not wash away that murky hue.

The last scraps of thought in his mind collapsed. Only the purest instinct to survive continued to struggle desperately:

Help, help, somebody save me!

Li Xuecheng did not know it himself, but he was actually making a sound—a thin, strangled noise squeezed from his throat by frozen muscles, a sound that could cut off at any moment.

"Mmgh... mmgh..."

At the same time, his face turned from white to red, from red to purple, then from purple to black. His eyeballs had bulged nearly a centimeter from their sockets, exposing large patches of white, as though the surging Qi and Blood would burst his head open the next instant.

The rich kids in the cabin were all dumbfounded.

They could not understand Li Xuecheng's suffering. All they saw was Ronan walk over, reach out, and seize Li Xuecheng by the throat. The latter had been scared out of his wits and did not resist at all. Ronan looked scholarly and delicate, but his grip was terrifyingly strong. Li Xuecheng looked as though he might pass out from suffocation—or even die on the spot—at any moment.

No one knew why Li Xuecheng was being such a coward, but what chilled them even more was Ronan's ruthlessness. At that moment, everyone believed one thing: Ronan truly meant to strangle him to death.

A few clearer-headed people felt that there was something indescribably awkward about Ronan's movements. It was as if he was exerting force and not exerting force at the same time, completely out of sync with Li Xuecheng's suffering, making the entire scene feel deeply unnatural.

But that was not the most important thing. What truly made their scalps tingle was Ronan's face.

Yes, look at his face. Ronan's face had originally been pale and gray, corpse-like, but now a flush like a drunkard's had spread across it in layers... He was excited, wasn't he? He was excited, wasn't he?

The scene was like an invisible whip lashing at the hearts of everyone around him again and again. Never mind their flesh—their hearts were convulsing in waves.

Murderous pervert! Psycho! He'd hidden it well...

"What are you idiots staring at? Pull him away!"

Lian Yu's shrill voice tore through the nearly congealed fear. As the first person to react, she charged straight into the mass of stiff bodies ahead of her without a care for anything else.

The people in front could not keep their balance, especially those in the first row. How far were they from Ronan? One stumble forward and they would hit him. And that guy was spineless too—he actually let out a terrified scream.

But no matter how unwilling the people in front were, the sudden crush and chaos still shoved them toward Ronan. The weight of seven or eight people piled together was enough to make Ronan stagger, even without anyone fully throwing their weight into it. The hand pressed against Li Xuecheng's throat slipped away.

That sight gave many people courage. Someone in the front simply screamed, "Aahhh!" shut his eyes, spread his arms, and launched into a completely senseless bear hug, intent on clinging to Ronan no matter what. Once there was a first, there was a second. Driven by Conformity Psychology, more than half the people surged forward, and the cabin descended into chaos.

Amid the chaos, Ronan was shoved away, while Li Xuecheng crashed heavily to the floor. He had already fallen unconscious, unaware of anything, though traces of extreme terror still remained on his face.

Things had gotten out of hand!

"Beep! Beep! Beep!" A piercing alarm sounded. The Armed Mechanical Soldier that had been standing around as mere decoration activated instantly, turned, and aimed its Riot Gun at the chaotic crowd.