The Thing I Hate Most

In the darkness, the faint sound of wind.

This was a small hill on the outskirts of Jianghai City, surrounded by sparse woods. An old stone pillar stood atop the hill, and beside it sat a little boy, his hands moving through dull, monotonous exercises.

Sitting cross-legged like an old monk, he continuously formed Buddhist hand seals with dancing fingers, training their agility through the alternation between utter stillness and extreme motion.

Buddhist hand seals encompassed every movement the human hand could make. In the silence, he sensed the sounds created by his fingers cutting through the air. After an unknown amount of time, he finally stopped, opened his eyes, and let out a breath.

There was no starlight in the night sky, and the city's glow rested peacefully in the far distance. This was when people slept most deeply. Yet in his eyes, the outlines of the surrounding grasslands and forest still stood clear, sharpened by the sounds of wind brushing against the earth. For an assassin, this was an absolutely ideal state.

He had begun training with an untainted body, the right direction, and a clear mind. In just over three years, he might already have reached a state more ideal than at his peak. Without the shackles of being an assassin, he could instead become an even more terrifying one. It was rather ironic.

His physical strength naturally could not compare to that of his adult self, but when it came to killing, being a child allowed him to lower everyone's guard. His instinctive wariness of other assassins might have weakened somewhat, but this body's agility was more ideal than before. Still...

"What a monotonous, boring life..."

He smiled helplessly and murmured the words aloud.

To an adult mentality, the world of children was boring most of the time. Though he had already recognized how important Lingjing and Huaisha were to him as friends, their somewhat childish suggestions and decisions sometimes left him unable to laugh or cry. Yet he had grown accustomed to playing the weak, agreeable sort, and instinctively did not want to dampen their enthusiasm. He forced himself to act like a child, while his wish to grow up quickly piled ever higher in his heart.

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

Now, the only things that could continuously hold his interest were perhaps the scent of freedom and the assassin training he persisted with every day.

He had clearly been struggling to break free from the restraints of being an assassin, yet once he truly gained control over everything in his life, he found that habit had become second nature. He could still only repeat the training that made him an assassin. Of course, he did not believe this power could only be used to kill. To live freely in this world, one often needed such strength. Besides...

Freedom...

Breathing in the air around him, this feeling of complete freedom had never made him feel even the slightest bit weary. Though sitting around in a daze all day probably made others think he was stupid.

Still, what should he do in the future? Becoming a doctor, like Shasha had suggested, seemed pretty good. But an assassin becoming a doctor... wouldn't that make him a butcher doctor?

Skillfully assembling a pile of parts into a gun in the darkness, he smiled faintly at the thought. In truth, when he had been an assassin, he had been a restless one. Now that he was an ordinary person again, he was far too easily satisfied.

As he finished assembling the pistol, took it apart, and began assembling it again, a burst of commotion drifted over with the wind. That was... gunfire...

Within seconds, he rapidly finished assembling the pistol, then closed his eyes and listened carefully to the sounds carried on the wind.

About half a kilometer away, in the woods, there was a group of people armed with pistols and light machine guns. They were... being hunted down...

He suddenly opened his eyes. Jianghai City was developing, and some aspects of it were rather chaotic, but China had always maintained strict gun control. These people had submachine guns, yet they were still desperately fleeing. And he could not make out anything about the pursuer behind them. Clearly, the pursuer only had a pistol fitted with a suppressor... Had some expert from the mercenary world come here?

They were fleeing in his direction. They were not far away, and there was a chance they might run into him. So, should he avoid them?

After a brief thought, he screwed a suppressor onto the muzzle.

Coming out to train had been part of his plan. If, after getting another chance at life, he still had to avoid unrelated people for one reason or another, that would be far too boring.

He leaned quietly against the stone pillar, blending into the darkness.

The sounds of submachine guns in the woods steadily diminished. Clearly, fewer and fewer of those being chased remained. Before long, Jiaming determined that there was only one pursuer behind them.

Now this was interesting.

He could also chase down a group of people with a pistol, but whether from an assassin's perspective or a mercenary's, that was far too flamboyant. Still, there were no shortage of such madmen in the dark world.

Before long, the few people being hunted did indeed burst out of the forest. What surprised Jiaming was that they were speaking English.

"Go! Go... fuck you—"

There were four people who ran out of the woods. At the front were two females, one grown and one small. The older woman had a head of blonde hair that stood out even in the darkness. They appeared to be a mother and daughter. The two armed men behind them should have been their bodyguards. One of the men shouted, stopped running, and began spraying the woods wildly with gunfire.

In Jiaming's eyes, this guy was completely brain-dead. He had already run out of the woods. Though it was very dark, anyone looking carefully could still make out his silhouette, while he could see nothing inside the forest. Stopping now was no different from making himself a target for the person in the woods.

Sure enough, after the submachine gun had spat fire for only two seconds, a bullet struck him in the forehead. Two seconds later, the other bodyguard was shot in the head as well. Then, a man in black emerged from the woods like a ghost.

The two females had only made it halfway when the man raised his gun. With a muffled pfft, a bullet buried itself in the grass in front of the blonde woman. Her next step had been about to land there. Seeing the slope burst apart, she let out a soft cry, lost her balance, and fell heavily to the ground. The little girl ran two steps, immediately turned back, and cried, "Mommy! Mommy!"

"Run! Run!" The blonde woman pushed the little girl away and struggled to get back up, but two muffled pfft, pfft sounds rang out. Bullets struck the grass between her legs, making her scream in terror. She no longer seemed to have the courage to rise.

"Heh heh, run. Keep running..." The armed man gave a sinister laugh, but he was speaking Chinese. Seeing that her mother could not escape, the little girl cried and refused to leave. The blonde woman struggled to crawl backward, then suddenly froze when her gaze turned to one side.

In the darkness, a human silhouette faintly appeared beneath the broken stone pillar.

All the bodyguards following her had already been killed. Who was this person? Sitting there without moving, was he dead, or was he with the assassin...

Fear suddenly rose in her heart. The scene had also caught the assassin's attention. He turned his head, immediately spotting the ghostlike figure seated by the stone pillar.

For a veteran assassin who had experienced countless brushes with death, he could often sense where enemies and danger were and what the surrounding environment was like without even looking. Yet this figure seemed to have suddenly appeared before him. The moment he emerged from the forest, he had swept his eyes across the surroundings, but he had felt nothing.

A body that gave off no sense of danger should have been a corpse. But how could a corpse have escaped his notice? Before he had time to think further, he abruptly swung his gun around. Just as he was about to pull the trigger, a spark flashed ahead.

With a muffled pfft, just like the bodyguards he had killed moments before, a bullet entered his brow and burst from the back of his skull in a spray of blood.

His life stopped at the instant the spark flashed.

"I hate it most when someone points a gun at me..."

A child's voice in the midst of changing echoed softly through the night.

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