He picked up the folding knife from the ground and casually flicked it open with a snap.
Under the moonlight, the blade was covered in scratches and had turned yellowish-white, showing how often this cheap folding knife had been sharpened.
"An adult's toy, right?"
Bai Zhou blinked.
With a thump, he dropped to his knees.
The Skinny Man pleaded with a miserable look:
"Big brother, just let me go like you'd let off a fart! Old Zhao and I were only joking around just now!"
"Yeah, yeah!" the Muscular Man nodded like a pecking chicken.
"We know we were wrong!"
—After walking the Night Road too often, you'll eventually run into a ghost!
Where had this brat gotten a gun?!
Although the firearm looked somewhat strange and unfamiliar, judging from the fearless way this brat was acting...
It didn't look fake.
The Skinny Man was the closest. He could even smell the pungent scent of gunpowder on it.
—It was as if this gun had just been fired!
This wasn't some soft persimmon. He was clearly a weight wrapped around a durian.
Not only was he prickly and hard, he also stank!
Faced with their pleas, Bai Zhou shook his head.
"From the looks of it, you don't seem to know what you did wrong..."
They were just afraid.
Yet fear could only produce flattery, not the slightest bit of goodwill.
"Look at me."
The pitch-black muzzle swayed gently in front of the Skinny Man, making his gaze follow it involuntarily.
It was a very simple hypnotic technique.
It was absolutely ineffective against nonhumans, and wouldn't even work against an ordinary person in a normal state.
But against someone like the Skinny Man, whose mind was unstable from being terrified, it worked every time. Bai Zhou could make him do anything.
...Gradually, the Skinny Man's eyes became dull as they followed the swaying muzzle.
"What do you mean by 'last time'?"
"It was..."
Under the Muscular Man's stunned, ghost-seeing expression,
the Skinny Man began answering every question in a dazed, stammering voice.
"Last time, a child..."
"We went to the Black Market... We made a huge profit."
"But we gambled it all away soon after, so..."
"...No one knows about this."
Made a huge profit.
That phrase was rather sensitive to Bai Zhou.
The smile on his face slowly faded.
As expected.
—The one who understands fear best was often the most evil one.
"Ah... W-witchcraft!"
The Skinny Man suddenly came to his senses. He fell onto the ground, then crawled away in terror, his eyes filled with panic.
For a moment just now, he had felt dazed and muddled, as if he had been cursed with Black Magic.
The bizarre, unprecedented experience terrified him.
"You're a ghost!"
But Bai Zhou answered a different question.
"Once upon a time, a Mermaid grew tired of life beneath the sea and wanted to see the legendary warm and beautiful land."
"Filled with wonderful expectations, she paid a tremendous price to reach the land."
Bai Zhou suddenly recalled a story.
"...However, the land was nothing like she had imagined."
"She personally witnessed a fisherman pretending to fall into the water. When his companions swam over to rescue him, he instead took all the gold coins from their pockets, then falsely accused them of pushing him into the water."
"She also saw a richly dressed merchant pour barrel after barrel of pungent black oil into her ocean."
"And so, the disappointed Mermaid, unable to return to the sea, became the Lady of the Lake on land."
"—Guess what happened next?"
"..." The Skinny Man and the Muscular Man shook their heads in unison, not daring to make a sound.
"Congratulations. You guessed correctly."
Bai Zhou nodded approvingly.
"Whenever a woodsman passed by, she would bring out two axes and ask whether the one he'd lost was a golden axe or a silver axe."
In the silent surroundings, Bai Zhou slowly put away the enchanted handgun, "Arbiter-300."
The action made the Skinny Man's eyes brighten with delight, while the White Vest Muscle Man beside him stared at Bai Zhou's back, itching to make a move.
Then Bai Zhou pulled a pitch-black Short Club from behind him.
Moonlight shone on the dark club.
Bai Zhou revealed a brilliant smile and announced the story's ending:
"Then, the Lady of the Lake would use those two axes..."
"—to chop all those greedy and hypocritical humans into mincemeat!"
The dark clouds gradually drifted away.
Tonight's moonlight was exceptionally bright.
"This Blue Star... or perhaps Tinghai, doesn't seem much better than I imagined."
Bai Zhou stepped out of the bushes and left beneath the moonlight with a light stride.
"Still, you can't put it that way."
"...There are good people and bad people everywhere."
Ya walked quietly beside Bai Zhou and answered softly:
"Besides, this is the edge of a forgotten city, the bottom of the bottom."
"When people have nowhere left to go, their moral limits become exceptionally low—or disappear entirely."
"True..." Bai Zhou shook his head and patted the mud from his clothes.
Dealing with those two brothers had been easy, but cleaning up afterward and covering their tracks was troublesome.
Bai Zhou had always been cautious, and he paid particular attention to aftercare.
—But it was also this time
that made Bai Zhou fully realize how much he had changed again overnight.
Two lives had vanished at his hands just like that, yet he hadn't experienced much of a psychological reaction.
Perhaps the matters involving Deputy Han and Section Chief Liu had affected him too deeply.
He still maintained reverence for life itself, but precisely because he revered life, he was especially cold toward those who casually reaped innocent lives.
He could no longer trust the execution efficiency of the so-called Federation Authorities.
Besides, there would always be people in this world who believed that villains lived for a thousand years.
That wouldn't do.
So Bai Zhou thought that since he had encountered them, it must be Heaven's Will.
If he clearly had the ability to act yet did nothing, standing by as they continued to commit evil...
Then how was he any different from an accomplice to the perpetrators?
If Heaven wouldn't punish them, he would.
Who knew? Perhaps this was their "destiny," too.
Finally, Bai Zhou walked another street and found a better base in this abandoned development zone.
It was an unfinished villa roughly five stories tall. Not far behind it was a river, and a road lay a short distance ahead.
Wild grass and reeds grew wildly between them.
"This is the one." Bai Zhou made up his mind.
If he couldn't find a place to stay soon, the sun would be up...
He had even moved into a big villa.
But it wasn't time to rest yet.
Forcing himself to stay alert, Bai Zhou found a large amount of abandoned industrial material inside the villa.
Using discarded electrical wires and shards of glass, he made multiple tripwires and concealed them throughout the corridors and at the stairways.
Connected to the tripwires was row after row of sharp Rusted Rebar.
...Bai Zhou even found several dried-out dead rats.
These were good stuff.
Once ground into powder, they could be combined with small-animal Bone Shards to create a Guardian Ritual.
—However, Bai Zhou's special training hadn't reached this advanced lesson yet, so Ya had to handle it for him.
The abandoned villa slowly became more "complete."
Everything was pitch-black, without any light, making all the arrangements exceptionally well concealed.
Bai Zhou finally felt somewhat safe.
—He'd continue setting things up tomorrow!
If an unwelcome guest hurried into this "Bai Zhou Happy House," they would discover that far too many surprises awaited them inside.
He only hoped that unwelcome guest would be pursuers from the Special Management Department, not some foolish petty thief...
"Tap..."
Bai Zhou climbed the stairs and reached the top-floor room, cleaning the place thoroughly.
—Running for his life had cured his Germaphobia, but not completely.
Although half the top-floor wall was missing and two sides were open to the wind,
that had instead given him the best Overlook View and the most Moonlight.
"Finally, I can rest!"
Spreading his suit on the floor, Bai Zhou lay down directly.
"—There shouldn't be any special training tonight, right?"
"Mm." Ya nodded lightly.
She said softly:
"You've already handed in your Graduation Exam answer sheet."
A Black Ribbon hovered in midair. She sat cross-legged on it, her back to Bai Zhou, who lay on the ground.
The night slowly faded, and the moon sank at an angle.
The Morning Light was faint.
The quiet wind blew from Wind River, sweeping over the wild grass and reeds and carrying the damp fragrance of earth.
It lifted the hem of Ya's clothes.
The wind then mixed in a hint of orange and Coffee.
"You've worked hard... Go to sleep."
She faced the moonlight alone, her voice drifting over.
"I'm here."
One good sleep would make everything better.
Once he woke up,
it would be a new mood and a new world.
Even if new troubles might swarm him again when he woke tomorrow...
That was tomorrow's problem.
You've worked hard today, me.
Please take care of things tomorrow, me!
And so...
Bai Zhou hugged his arms and curled up in the corner of the Broken Wall on the rooftop, slowly closing his heavy eyelids atop the blanket made from his suit.
The unease he had accumulated over the past several days was released like Flood from a breached dam.
An inexplicable shiver ran through his body, followed by waves of exhaustion surging over him.
Dawn was almost here.
Bai Zhou entered the land of dreams.
In a daze,
it should have been a dream,
it must have been an illusion,
he seemed to vaguely see—
With her back to him, Miss Ya, facing the moonlight alone, turned her face toward him. Her iridescent eyes had uncharacteristically softened...
She said:
"Good night, Bai Zhou."
It was a dream, wasn't it?
...So even if he slept in the crude, drafty Haunted House, tomorrow might still be worth looking forward to.
Because being alive meant running onward. It didn't matter if he ran until he was utterly exhausted, so long as he believed there was a reason to keep running.
He might as well look at the moon in the sky and watch the sunlight emerge at the horizon.
The wind called freedom brushed over his head.
And so, in his "dream," Bai Zhou replied hazily:
"Good night."
Good night, Miss Ya.
See you tomorrow.
Before you continue