Leaving the City

"Closed for the night. Come back tomorrow morning!"

Chu Chongtian called out.

"Who turns away business? Are you crazy?" someone outside shouted. "If you won't serve us, let someone else do it!"

"There's nobody else here, and I'm going to bed." Chu Chongtian replied impatiently.

The voice outside fell silent, as if they had given up.

The next second, a loud crash rang out.

Someone kicked the tightly shut door open.

A dozen or so rowdy men surged inside all at once.

"Good, nobody's here—" The man at the front wore a deerstalker hat. One arm hung in a sling, secured with a wooden splint.

He started to speak, but stopped mid-step.

"Ha, that's him!"

The man in the deerstalker shouted, pointing at Tang Luo.

He would never forget that face for as long as he lived.

He'd caught a fleeting glimpse of it while passing by earlier that day, and immediately remembered the humiliation of having his arm broken and his revolver stolen that day.

He was the one who did the robbing!

Nobody robbed him!

And so he'd brought his men here tonight to get revenge.

Thanks to Jack the Ripper, no one dared walk the streets at night.

Their probing during the day had also shown that Scotland Yard was either unable to maintain order in Small City or simply had no intention of doing so.

Small City belonged to the Ripper Gang now!

"Oh, so you came looking for me."

Tang Luo said.

It seemed the ill-fated connection formed when he'd begged for alms would come to an end tonight.

"Didn't expect this, did you, kid!"

The man in the deerstalker laughed.

"Indeed, I didn't expect anyone to come right to my door and help me earn a little more merit."

Tang Luo replied.

The Ripper Gang had done work for the organization, but since they were a tough gang to deal with, Tang Luo and the others hadn't gone looking for trouble with them.

Now they'd come right to his door...

"When dealing with evildoers like these, the only proper path is to enlighten them. Attack."

As Tang Luo spoke, he drew Ominous and pulled the trigger.

There was no need for chivalrous rules when dealing with wicked villains like these. They could all just open fire.

Gunshots rang out.

The man in the deerstalker's head burst like a watermelon.

Gunfire erupted, echoing through the silent, snowy night.

When it finally stopped, a mass of bodies lay on the ground. Some were still alive and tried to draw the guns they hadn't managed to pull out in time, so Tang Luo finished them off with another shot.

Their final thought before dying was:

How utterly dishonorable! They hadn't even gotten to the part where they traded threats before the shooting started!

"I feel like we're the bad guys."

Chu Chongtian said, sounding a little lost.

Six or seven days ago, he'd still been an ordinary college student.

Now he could shoot people without batting an eye.

Li Liang wasn't as troubled. He'd only held a gun; he hadn't fired one.

The "results" had been "achieved" by Tang Luo, Chu Chongtian, and Zhou Zhenguo, who had recovered after more than half an hour.

"Stay alive first. We can talk about good and evil later."

Zhou Zhenguo patted Chu Chongtian on the shoulder.

He didn't want someone who had grown into a valuable fighter to suddenly lose himself in doubt and become unable to fight.

"Cutting down karma isn't the same as cutting down people. Taking life can be a way to protect life."

Tang Luo said. "There's no need to dwell on it, Chu. This began because of me, so I'll bear all the sin."

The merit, too.

"It's fine."

Chu Chongtian shook his head. "I was just reflecting. It's not like this is the first time."

The reason he'd been reflecting had a lot to do with their surroundings.

A silent, snowy night made it easy to get lost in one's thoughts.

And then there was the dead innkeeper.

Chu Chongtian couldn't help wondering whether, if he faced someone possessed by Jack the Ripper, he could be as merciless as Master Xuanzang and Uncle Zhou.

But, thinking it over, there was no need to worry.

Honestly, if he faced an opponent like that alone, it wouldn't be a question of whether he showed mercy.

If Chu Chongtian managed to survive, that would already be a miracle.

"What should we do with these people?" Zhou Zhenguo asked.

There were a lot of them, and they all had gunshot wounds. They wouldn't be as easy to deal with as the innkeeper's body.

"Perfect. We can say they killed the innkeeper." Tang Luo said. "We're detectives specially hired by Scotland Yard, and we intervened to help. We ought to be rewarded."

Tang Luo decided these men would take the blame.

"Master really is the ruthless one." Chu Chongtian thought to himself.

The difference between people suddenly became clear.

Which temple had raised such a ruthless monk?

The night passed without incident.

Neither the Ripper Gang nor Jack the Ripper appeared again.

The same was true for two days in a row.

Jack the Ripper didn't come after Tang Luo and the others again.

For some reason, the Ripper Gang had also disappeared without a trace.

Tang Luo and the others couldn't be bothered to investigate.

They focused on looking for clues about the dagger.

It was like searching for a needle in a haystack, but still better than doing nothing.

Three days later, Tang Luo and the others heard some news.

Nearly a hundred more people had been killed by Jack the Ripper.

Some had been gathered together, while others had been killed separately in different places.

Their bodies had been discovered one by one.

And the victims weren't just anyone. They were the Ripper Gang, who had been causing trouble under Jack the Ripper's name over the past few days.

No wonder neither had come after Tang Luo and the others again.

Had they been busy killing each other?

The Ripper Gang's destruction naturally had a considerable impact.

Perhaps it was a case of things going too far and then turning around. Some people inexplicably began to worship Jack the Ripper.

They believed he was a cleanser of evil.

They even formed a church around him. Some had already begun preaching, attracting a number of poor people from the lower classes.

At first, Jack the Ripper had killed indiscriminately.

But in these two mass killings, one group had been the wealthy and powerful, and the other had been the gang.

To the poor, both were mountains weighing down on them.

Some were ignorant, while others had ulterior motives.

Some were frightened. A few had even developed Stockholm syndrome.

The fervor surrounding Jack the Ripper...

It was hard not to suspect that he was secretly encouraging it.

After all, he could possess people.

Jack the Ripper had gone from a shadow to a "visible cloud of gloom," hanging over the whole of Small City.

"If this keeps up, he won't even need to possess anyone. He can just send his fanatical followers to kill us."

Zhou Zhenguo said. "Are we going to have to leave Small City and seek refuge somewhere else?"

If things really got that bad, it would be their only option.

Zhou Zhenguo had been through five missions in total. This was his sixth.

Two had ended in failure, and two had been successes.

In one, a big shot had completed the mission alone, so it counted as neither a success nor a failure.

That meant if he failed this mission, it would be his third failure.

With bad luck, he would disappear.

That was the last thing Zhou Zhenguo wanted.

But if there really was nothing they could do, he'd rather take his chances than let Jack the Ripper kill him.

After all, he'd only failed three times. The odds of disappearing probably weren't that high.

Given the situation, Zhou Zhenguo no longer believed even Master Xuanzang could handle it.

Even if he could...

He could probably only protect himself. Trying to protect all of them too would be incredibly difficult.

"Looks like that's our only option." Chu Chongtian thought much the same as Zhou Zhenguo.

This was his first mission. Even if he failed, it wouldn't matter.

He didn't have much desire to risk his life in a desperate fight.

"Then let's leave now."

Li Liang spoke in his lazy, unmotivated voice.

"Let's wait a little longer."

Zhou Zhenguo said.

After all, they'd worked hard for so long, and there was also the question of "mission participation and contribution points," which everyone generally agreed existed and which affected the quality of the final rewards.

Nobody would give up halfway unless they had no other choice.

Zhou Zhenguo had heard several times about people who quit halfway, only for someone else to complete the mission and leave them with nothing.

They should keep fighting as long as they could.

"Should I just leave now, then?" Li Liang asked cautiously.

"Mm, all right." Tang Luo nodded.

After seeing Master Xuanzang give his approval, Li Liang breathed a sigh of relief.

Once he was far from Small City, no matter how formidable Jack the Ripper was, surely he wouldn't chase him beyond the city limits.

In keeping with the principle of seeing a task through to the end, the others rented a carriage and decided to accompany Li Liang out of the city.

It would also let them "scout the route" in advance in case they needed to flee.

Oddly enough, although Jack the Ripper was wreaking havoc and Scotland Yard was struggling even to maintain order, no one had moved their whole family away from Small City.

There was only one carriage on the road out of town: theirs.

For the people of this world, leaving their home behind was probably a difficult choice.

For Tang Luo and the others, who were true outsiders, it was easy.

They didn't even need to pack.

All four of them sat in the carriage's enclosed cabin.

Tang Luo and the others sat inside, while Li Liang drove.

The horses had all been professionally trained, so even a novice like Li Liang could get them moving and stop them.

There was only one road, and they didn't have to worry about meeting another carriage or following one.

Driving it was incredibly easy.

When they passed Count Thorndike's estate, they saw the gates shut tight, with four Scotland Yard inspectors sitting inside them.

They watched the carriage pass.

A bloody murder had taken place at the estate. As the crime scene, it had to be "protected."

There were always people reckless enough to come in and steal things.

Scotland Yard had no choice but to post guards.

With no one else willing to guard a place where people had been murdered, they had to make the long-suffering temporary workers do it.

Looking at them—wait, did they seem happy?

They'd probably pocketed a few benefits on the sly.

You couldn't expect the horses to run without letting them eat, could you?

The carriage rolled past the estate. The inspectors watched it disappear before turning their attention elsewhere.

"...It's snowing again."

Li Liang put on his hat and tightened his clothes.

At some point, the sky began to darken, and gray, goose-feather snowflakes drifted down.

It was the fourth snowfall in just a few days.

In only a few short days, it was as if Small City had entered the depths of winter. Gray snow fell from time to time.

"Wait, this snow's way too heavy!"

After another half hour on the road, Li Liang couldn't take it anymore.

The gray, goose-feather snow gradually turned into a raging blizzard.

Everything before him was a hazy gray, and visibility was less than ten meters.

The temperature was dropping fast, too. Even with gloves on, Li Liang's hands gripping the reins had gone stiff.

It was nearly noon, when the sky should have been at its brightest.

But because of the heavy snow, it was darker than dusk, almost like night.

The two horses whinnied anxiously. They had started at a trot, but their pace was gradually quickening, and as a novice, Li Liang could no longer control the carriage properly.

"Whoa!"

"Whoa!"

Li Liang shouted as he tugged on the reins, but swallowed a mouthful of snow and immediately started retching.

Gray snow in the age of heavy industry.

It was practically poison.

It didn't feel like anything when it landed on the ground or on his body, but when it fell into his mouth—

Li Liang felt as if someone had stuffed his mouth with raw meat, the kind that was still dripping blood.