Section 31: Kidnapping

After that strange game, Cao Dongfeng no longer actively bothered Jiaming. They only occasionally encountered each other at school, and Jiaming could always feel those resentful eyes lingering on him, a feeling that made him very uncomfortable.

It was late autumn in October, with cotton-like clouds drifting by and the landscape a sea of gold. As the three walked home from school, plane tree leaves fluttered down. In this season, Shasha seemed much quieter too. In fact, recently she hadn't been as violent and overbearing as before. If others didn't provoke her like Cao Dongfeng did, she could be quite demure. Ever since returning from the martial arts competition during the summer break, she had been engrossed in romance novels, occasionally lending good ones to Lingjing to share, claiming they were for Lingjing's tactical reference.

The two girls each harbored their own little thoughts, but they never imagined that Jiaming had already mentally categorized them as a couple. Whenever the three were together, if the two girls whispered to each other, their cheeks would flush. Jiaming thought to himself how good their relationship was, but girls, as a species, were truly hard to understand.

On the fifth day of the ninth lunar month that year, which was October 28th, Shasha turned fifteen. Jiaming and Lingjing, her good friends, were still there to accompany her for her birthday. Shasha's father couldn't even make it due to some business. It was said that gang warfare in Jianghai City had been fierce recently. If one were to seek the reason, it might even be attributed to Jiaming. The battle caused by Marilyn and her mother had resulted in the deaths of dozens of people, even prominent political figure Tang Jingyao was killed in it. With guns and bombs, it later led to the most severe crackdown on gangs in Jianghai City's history.

This crackdown lasted for nearly half a year. By now, the storm had passed, and various gang forces had shrunk. After some smaller gangs were uprooted as examples, the vacuum created became a target for everyone to compete for. As one of Jianghai City's three major gangs, the Sand Bamboo Gang naturally couldn't fall behind. These days, after school, Jiaming could always see some pretentious gangsters following Shasha around. Naturally, these were people sent by Liu Zheng to secretly protect his daughter.

Although they put on an indifferent front, both Jiaming and Lingjing could see that she cared a little. The three of them, as usual, spent most of the day playing at the Liu family's villa. In the afternoon, Lingjing's mother called, asking them to come back for dinner and to celebrate Shasha's birthday. When they entered the house, the usually stubborn girl, who was as tough as a boy, already had red eyes. During dinner, Father Ye mentioned that Shasha could just have dinner there regularly. At this, Shasha's tears began to fall.

"Uh, so I'll have two child brides then?"

Seeing Shasha start to cry, Jiaming interjected. This was a joke they were used to saying at the Ye family's house, but it was the first time the usually kind-hearted Jiaming had said it. The Ye couple laughed in unison, while Lingjing lightly huffed and, with a blush, playfully hit him. Shasha immediately stopped crying, jumped off her chair, and chased after him. This time, Jiaming's escape skills didn't last long. After running about ten laps around the small outdoor arena, he was still tackled to the ground by Shasha and beaten soundly. However, this at least stopped her from crying.

Then, an incident occurred the day after Shasha's birthday.

That day after school, Lingjing stayed at school to help the teacher sort some documents. Jiaming and Shasha left first, planning to wait for her outside the school gate. They had only been standing at a small stall outside the campus for a while when two vans suddenly sped over and surrounded them.

The people secretly protecting them on both sides immediately prepared to rush forward, but they were blocked by the suddenly appearing vans. Several people with black hoods over their heads rushed out of the cars and began dragging Shasha towards the vehicles.

If he were to act now, he could disembowel these guys, but... there were too many people...

Purely in terms of strength, Jiaming and Shasha combined couldn't possibly overpower several adults. With his mind racing, Jiaming desperately held onto Shasha's hand, and then he too was thrown into the van.

The van sped away. In a moment, the two children's hands were bound, their mouths gagged with cloth, and their eyes covered. However, while his hands were being tied, Jiaming had already hidden a razor blade in his hand, making it easy to free himself. Lying in the van, Jiaming carefully felt the direction of the van's travel. Frightened, Shasha pressed herself tightly against him, struggling desperately and making muffled cries.

"Damn it, Brother Feng instructed them to tie up three people."

"How can we tie up three people with only two? Should we stop the car and just grab any kid to satisfy them? What Brother Feng? Just a half-grown kid. I only listen to Brother Hao. Brother Hao ordered us to grab one. If this boy hadn't held on so tightly, I wouldn't have grabbed him." The man said, kicking Jiaming.

It was Cao Dongfeng again. So, the Cao father and son were going to defect to the Linghai Gang, or were they planning to go independent? Jiaming thought to himself. Since he had fallen out with Cao Dongfeng, he had roughly investigated the background of the father and son. Within the Sand Bamboo Gang, Cao Jinghao had always considered himself a founding member. After some of the old members died, he considered himself second only to the top in the Sand Bamboo Gang, harboring ambitions to surpass the leader. It was just that this person did have some capabilities, with some of his connections reaching overseas. Jiaming hadn't taken it too seriously at first, and also, being alone, investigating thoroughly would be very troublesome. Who knew that before he could truly figure things out, the other party would make a move first.

Jiaming was intimately familiar with this city. The vehicle's final stopping point should be a lumber mill in the western suburbs of the city. A moment later, Jiaming and Shasha were carried down separately. Their blindfolds were removed, and the cloth in their mouths confirmed it was the wood processing plant from his memory. Piles of lumber were stacked all around. They were currently in a small central square, next to a row of single-story tiled sheds and a two-story small building. A group of people stood nearby, looking at the two children on the ground, primarily at Shasha.

"Little niece, it's been a while. How have you been recently?"

The leader was a slightly plump middle-aged man. Shasha looked at him coldly, "I knew it was you, Cao Jinghao! Be careful, my dad will come looking for me soon!"

"Haha, it's precisely because I'm afraid your dad will come looking for you that I've invited niece Huaisha here to help put in a good word for me. Oh, and this little boy, he looks like the boy from your trio, what's his name. Right, and there's a girl too?"

As he asked this, Cao Dongfeng, standing beside him, added, "Yes, where is Ye Lingjing? Why didn't you bring her too?"

"We only saw these two children together outside the school gate. Since Liu Huaisha matched the photo, we made our move."

"Hmph, Cao Dongfeng." Although tied to the ground, Huaisha was still fierce. "You toad still haven't given up on wanting to eat swan meat? Look at you, even a real toad wouldn't like you!"

"If you keep yapping, woman, I'll rape you." A flash of anger appeared in Cao Dongfeng's eyes. "I may not be worthy of Ye Lingjing, but I'm at least better than this kid! Hmph, Lingjing didn't come, but you did. That's fine, that's fine. If I don't kill you, I won't be named Cao!"

"Jiaming, don't be scared." Shasha trembled all over. Hearing the threat of rape, she didn't dare to speak too loudly, but she still remembered to encourage Jiaming.

"Mm, I'm fine." Jiaming nodded, his gaze wandering somewhat distractedly around. Two figures in a small bamboo shed opposite caught his attention. One, holding a bamboo sword, was a Japanese old man who looked to be in his fifties, wearing that Japanese samurai attire. The other was a young girl, sitting on the ground in a loose red kimono. She looked to be around Jiaming and Lingjing's age. The entire person looked like a finely carved porcelain doll. Sitting there motionlessly, she was like an ice mountain of a thousand years.

The old man was saying something loudly. When he received no reply, he hit the girl hard on the body with the bamboo sword. Jiaming could tell it was a forceful, unsparing blow, yet the girl only swayed slightly, her expression unchanged. Only in her eyes did a trace of pain flash.

The elder was speaking in Japanese, which others couldn't understand, but Jiaming did. He said, "I've given you two days, and you still won't speak... Fine, if you don't speak tomorrow, hmph, don't blame me for ruining your life!"

That girl... Jiaming searched his memory for similar faces. It turned out that in his life, eight years later, he had seen her as an adult, and that was the only time. This girl, in a room where she was said to have lived for eight years without stepping out, had cut her own wrist. Blood flowed, staining it into a vast, unparalleled cherry blossom petal. At that time, she was also wearing a vibrant kimono, elegant and neat, her gaze as calm as ice.

At that time, he had marveled that Japanese people were indeed perverse. A girl who looked incredibly beautiful could commit suicide so calmly. Even he, who had undergone countless training, could not maintain such an expression at the moment of death, let alone commit suicide.

Thinking about it now, eight years... if his appearance in this world hadn't caused such a strong butterfly effect, then she must have experienced something here back then. Recalling it, that Japanese family's surname was Tsukichi, and they practiced a very magical branch of ninjutsu, Chiying Qianhuan.

Her name was... Kaoru.

Chapter Thirty-One: Kidnapping.

Chapter Thirty-One: Kidnapping.