"I think... we should go..."
After tying up Triangle-eyed's hands and feet as he continued to howl, Zhang Yahan said this. As for Jiaming, he ran out on the pretext of retrieving the other tent. Going by memory, he found the pistol that had fallen beneath the other tent. Amid the raging downpour, Scarface's cries could faintly be heard from below.
Jiaming had already scoped out the area before setting up camp. Beside the tents was a grassy slope. With the rain falling so heavily now, the slope had become slippery, and the runoff below must have turned into a stream. From the sound of it, Scarface had already been submerged in the water. That shot had shattered his right hand but not his legs. Should he fire another shot?
Turning back to look at the faint light inside the tent, he slowly raised the gun and released the safety, only to lower it again a moment later. Forget it. There was no need to make more trouble...
Struggling over with the dismantled tent over his head, Jiaming already had three backpacks on his back. Two were originally theirs, while the other belonged to the two bandits. Besides money, it also contained plenty of biscuits, smoked meat, and the like. When he reached Lingjing, Triangle-eyed, whose hands and feet were tied, was howling miserably with a hideous expression, frightening Lingjing into hiding behind Zhang Yahan. Jiaming immediately pulled out the pistol and shouted, "Stop yelling!"
Perhaps Jiaming did not look intimidating enough at the moment, because Triangle-eyed continued screaming. Zhang Yahan turned around. "You... you found that man's gun?"
"Yeah." Jiaming's hands trembled slightly. "I said stop yelling. Didn't you hear me?"
The man on the ground kept crying out, while Zhang Yahan cautiously held out her hand. "Here, give me the gun... That's not how you use it. The safety is still on..."
"The safety? Where?"
"Here..."
"Where? Here...?"
"Ah, yes, be caref—"
Bang—
After the gunshot, the world immediately fell silent.
All three of them instinctively shrank their necks. Smoke curled from the barrel, while the bullet had grazed Triangle-eyed's neck and shot into the ground. The man who had been howling moments ago suddenly froze stiff, his mouth hanging open as he did not dare make the slightest sound. After a long while, Jiaming muttered, "Uh... accidental discharge..."
"Uh, hehe, it's fine, it's fine... Here, give me the gun. Give me the gun..." Once she had the gun in her hand, Yahan hurriedly switched off the safety and finally felt a little safer. This child was too strange. Any gun that got into his hands would go off by accident.
Now that both guns were in her hands, Yahan felt that everything was under control. She gave up on the idea of leaving, tied Triangle-eyed up even more securely, and only after making sure he could not break free did she take a flashlight with Jiaming and carefully head down to search for the badly injured Scarface.
She carried the pistol, while Triangle-eyed's dagger was given to Jiaming. Following the faint cries, they descended the grassy slope. The water rushed violently here, already forming a stream. But when they drew close, Scarface's cries suddenly stopped. Jiaming abruptly switched off the flashlight. "Be careful. He still has a knife!"
Amid the torrential rain, she could not hear him clearly. Rain streamed wildly across her face, even blurring her vision. "What? You..." Before she could finish, Jiaming suddenly rushed out of the darkness and knocked her aside. As he turned, the large man holding a dagger brushed past her. Without Jiaming's shove, she probably would have been stabbed.
The flashlight fell to the ground, and darkness immediately swallowed the surroundings again. Yahan's body also crashed into the stream. Panicking, she inhaled mouthful after mouthful of water through her nose and mouth. The stream was not actually deep, but she could not swim to begin with, and in her panic, it felt as though she had fallen into a bottomless abyss. She thrashed her limbs desperately, only letting even more rainwater pour into her. In the darkness, everything became a confused jumble of sounds...
She did not know how long it was before someone dragged her directly out of the water. Lying on her back in the grass beside the stream, with rain still pouring down furiously, she had not even caught her breath when two heavy punches landed on her lower abdomen, making her spit out several mouthfuls of water.
"You okay?" The flashlight switched on before her eyes, and Jiaming's face appeared. As she struggled to sit up, she finally clearly heard Scarface groaning in the distance. "You... why did you hit me? What happened to him?"
"I was afraid you'd drown, so... If that hadn't worked, I was going to use the artificial respiration the teacher taught us. As for him..." Jiaming hesitated slightly. At the words "artificial respiration," Yahan involuntarily touched her lips. Then she saw Jiaming wave his hands. "It wasn't my fault. He ran into me himself. I... I slashed around a few times, and the dagger disappeared, so I wanted to come back for the gun..."
Yahan's heart skipped a beat. When she had fallen into the water just now, both the flashlight and pistol had fallen in as well. She hurried over with Jiaming to look for them. Fortunately, they found the pistol quickly. She released the safety, then dared to approach the groaning with Jiaming.
In the beam of the flashlight, Scarface lay on his side beneath a large tree. His right hand bore the gunshot wound, while his left arm had been slashed open deeply enough to expose bone. There was also a wound on his calf, and Jiaming's dagger was embedded in the man's buttock all the way to the hilt.
Slashed around a few times... Yahan looked suspiciously at Jiaming, who was equally dumbfounded, then at Scarface, who was bleeding all over the ground and looked utterly miserable... This child was too absurd. Could he be the reincarnation of some legendary God of Destruction? Their side had been unbelievably lucky...
With such serious injuries, he clearly no longer had the strength to resist. The two of them dragged him up the grassy slope, tied him up, then took some bandages from the backpacks and roughly stopped the bleeding so he would not die.
One of the dismantled tents was set up again, and the barely conscious Scarface was placed inside. As for Triangle-eyed, whose injuries were lighter, he was tied directly to a tree and left in the rain. After finishing all this, Jiaming and Yahan were soaked through. It was still only the middle of the night. Jiaming took off his shirt and pants. After hesitating for a while, Yahan also took off her shirt and pants after switching off the flashlight, hanging them inside the tent. The three of them huddled together and soon fell deeply asleep.
When Yahan woke in the morning, it was still raining. Looking toward the light, she saw that the tent flap had been opened a little. The boy named Jiaming had already gotten dressed and was sitting there, eating while watching the rain. Looking down at herself, she was wearing only a bra, panties, and hiking boots. Her face immediately flushed. When this little boy had woken up earlier, he must have seen everything... She hurriedly put on her half-damp clothes, only then feeling a little more at ease...
After eating some biscuits, Yahan took the pistol to check on the two bandits. Triangle-eyed looked utterly listless as he sat in the rain. Having been drenched by such rain all night, even if he did not die, he would lose half his life. But she did not dare put both bandits inside the tent—if even a child could untie the knots used to bind them, she really could not be sure her own knots were secure enough.
As for Scarface in the tent, he was wounded all over. Even if his ropes were untied, he probably could not run. However, when she saw those injuries, a trace of suspicion suddenly arose in her heart: was all of this too much of a coincidence...
When the two children had been tied up, she had seen it herself. Their hands and feet had been bound tightly, and she would never have been able to break free no matter what. So why could that boy?
When she failed to steal the dagger, he had gotten hold of the gun before anyone else...
When Scarface had been alerted, the boy's gun had accidentally gone off and struck Scarface's right hand...
When Triangle-eyed had lunged at them, he had strangely slipped, and the dagger had gone straight into his thigh...
When Scarface had tried to ambush them in the end, he had pushed her away. When she fell into the water, it seemed she had heard... other than the rain, there had only been Scarface's screams. Was it an illusion? But those three wounds were too coincidental...
If all of this had been the boy's doing... how could that be possible? He was just a child...
Squatting in front of the trembling, groaning Scarface, Yahan's expression shifted uncertainly. After a long while, she finally shook her head helplessly. Maybe she was overthinking things.
Back in the tent, she looked at the two children whispering together. After pondering for a while, she finally voiced some of the displeasure in her heart. "Gu Jiaming, why did you tell them about my family yesterday? Do you know, do you know..."
"Uh." Jiaming froze for a moment, then said, "I... I didn't know... I just said it casually... Sorry..." Lingjing also spoke up beside him. "Yeah, Jiaming didn't mean it. Sister Yahan, don't blame him."
Yahan nodded. She had originally wanted to say, "I was nearly violated because of that sentence." But before the words left her mouth, she suddenly froze: hadn't they let her go precisely because of that sentence? Could this child have known beforehand...
A moment later, she still shook her head. Then she saw the boy's expression stiffen as he looked up. Shortly afterward, strange sounds mixed with the rain. Yahan rushed out of the tent and looked up to see a helicopter moving through the curtain of rain. Someone aboard it was faintly waving at her.
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Before you continue