The Most Annoying Thing

In the darkness, faint sounds of wind.

This was a small hillside on the outskirts of Jianghai City, surrounded by sparse woods. On the slope stood an old stone pillar, and now a little boy sat beside it, his hands going through dull, monotonous drills.

He sat cross-legged like an old monk, his ten fingers dancing as he formed one Buddhist hand seal after another, training the dexterity of his fingers through the interplay of extreme stillness and motion.

Buddhist hand seals encompass every movement the human hand can make. In this silence, he felt the friction of his fingers against the air, listening to the sound it produced. He didn't know how long passed before he stopped, opened his eyes, and let out a breath.

There was no starlight in the night sky, and the city's glow lay quiet in the distance—the deepest hour of sleep. Yet in his eyes, the outlines of the grass and the forested slope were still visible, made clear through the sound of wind brushing against the earth. For an assassin, this was undoubtedly a dream state.

Starting his training with a body free of impurities, the right direction, a clear mind—in just over three years, he might have achieved a state more ideal than his prime. When the shackles of being an assassin were gone, he could instead become an even more fearsome one. Perhaps that was quite ironic.

His physical strength naturally couldn't match his adult self, but when it came to killing, being a child allowed him to lower everyone's guard. His own assassin's vigilance might have dulled somewhat, but this body's agility was better than before. Still...

"What a monotonous and boring life..."

He let out a helpless smile and murmured to himself.

For a mind that was adult, the world of a child was mostly dull most of the time. Even though he had already decided in his heart that Lingjing and Huaisha were important friends, some of their slightly childish suggestions and decisions left him at a loss between laughter and tears. Yet, having grown used to playing the role of a weakling who echoed others, he subconsciously didn't want to dampen their spirits. He forced himself to act like a child, while the wish to grow up quickly piled higher and higher in his heart.

Perhaps this childish wish was the only thing he had in common with children.

Now, the only things that could keep him interested were probably the breath of freedom and the daily, unrelenting assassin training.

He had been struggling to break free from the assassin's bonds, but when he finally gained control over everything, he found that habit had become second nature. He could only repeat the training that made him an assassin. Of course, he didn't believe this power was only for killing. To live freely in this world, such strength was often necessary. Besides...

Freedom...

Breathing the air around him, only this feeling of being unbound had never bored him even a little. Though spacing out all day might make others think he was stupid.

But what should he do in the future? Shasha's suggestion of becoming a doctor seemed good, but an assassin turned doctor... wouldn't that make him a "Lambs' Doctor"?

In the darkness, he deftly assembled a pile of parts into a gun. At the thought, he smiled faintly. In truth, when he was an assassin, he was a restless one. As an ordinary person again, he was far too easily satisfied.

He finished assembling the pistol, disassembled it, and as he began to reassemble it, a commotion came on the wind—gunfire...

In seconds, he quickly finished assembling the pistol, closed his eyes, and listened carefully to the situation carried by the wind.

About a mile away, in the woods, there was a group of people. Their weapons were pistols and light machine guns, and they were... being hunted...

He suddenly opened his eyes. Although Jianghai City was developing and somewhat chaotic in some respects, China's gun control was always strict. For these people to have submachine guns and still be desperately fleeing, while the pursuers behind them made no sound he could discern—clearly they were using silenced pistols... Had some expert from the mercenary world come here?

The direction they were fleeing was toward him. The distance wasn't far, and there was a chance they might run into him. So, should he avoid them?

After a brief thought, he screwed a silencer onto the gun's muzzle.

Coming out to train was part of his plan. If, having been given a second chance, he still had to avoid these irrelevant people for one reason or another, that would be too boring.

He leaned quietly against the stone pillar, merging with the darkness.

The sound of submachine guns in the woods kept diminishing, showing that the hunted were dwindling. Soon, Jiaming deduced that the pursuer behind them was actually just one person.

Now this was interesting.

Chasing a group with just a pistol—he could do it himself, but whether from an assassin's or a mercenary's perspective, it was far too flashy. Still, in the dark world, there were plenty of madmen like that.

Before long, the hunted few burst out of the forest. To Jiaming's surprise, they were speaking English.

"Go! Go... fuck you—"

Four people emerged from the woods. Ahead were two females, one large and one small. The older one had blonde hair, strikingly visible even in the dark—they seemed to be a mother and daughter. The two men behind them, holding guns, were likely their bodyguards. One of them shouted, stopped, and opened fire wildly into the woods.

In Jiaming's eyes, this guy was brain-dead. He had already run out of the woods. Though it was dark, if you looked closely, you could still make out his silhouette. Inside the woods, nothing was clear. Stopping here was just making himself a target for the one in the trees, wasn't it?

Sure enough, after only two seconds of muzzle flash from the submachine gun, a bullet hit his forehead. The other bodyguard was also shot in the head two seconds later and died. Then, a man in black followed out of the woods like a ghost.

The mother and daughter had only run halfway. The man raised his gun. With a pfft, a bullet buried itself in the grass in front of the blonde woman, right where her next step would have landed. Seeing the grass explode, she let out a low cry, lost her balance, and fell hard to the ground. The little girl ran a few steps, then turned back, crying, "Mommy! Mommy!"

"Run! Run!" The blonde woman pushed the little girl away, struggling to get up herself, but two more pfft, pfft sounds came. Bullets hit the grass between her legs, making her scream in terror. She no longer had the courage to get up.

"Heh, run. Keep running..." The man with the gun let out a sinister laugh, speaking in Chinese. The little girl, seeing her mother couldn't escape, cried and refused to leave. The blonde woman struggled backward, and when her gaze swept to the side, she suddenly froze.

In the darkness, under that broken stone pillar, a faint human outline was visible.

Her bodyguards were all dead. Who was this person? Sitting there without moving—was he a corpse or one of the killer's accomplices...

Fear surged in her heart, and this scene also caught the killer's eye. He turned his head and immediately spotted the ghostly figure sitting by the stone pillar.

For a veteran assassin who had lived through countless life-and-death situations, sensing enemies, danger, and the surrounding environment often came instinctively, even without looking. But this figure before him seemed to have appeared out of nowhere. He had swept his gaze over the area when he first stepped out of the forest, yet he had no read on it at all.

A human body that gave no sense of danger should be a corpse. But how could a corpse evade his sight? Without time to think, he swung his gun around. The instant before he pulled the trigger, a spark flashed ahead of him.

With a pfft, just like the bodyguards he had killed, a bullet entered his brow and exited through the back of his skull, trailing a spray of blood.

His life stopped at that moment of the spark.

"I hate it when people point guns at me..."

A child's voice, in the midst of its changing tone, rang out faintly in the night.