Killing

"Sorry to disturb you. Good evening, Manager Xie."

Manager Xie's lower face was pinned beneath the bedding, leaving him almost unable to breathe!

All he could see was the young man covered in blood, as though he had crawled out of hell, cheerfully greeting him!

Li Wei pulled out the boning knife that had tasted human blood for the first time and casually wiped it on the expensive flannel sheets.

"Delicious roast meat, a soft bed, intoxicating wine, and beautiful women. There are still so many good things in this world waiting for you to enjoy. You don't want to die, do you?"

The boning knife, now without a trace of blood on it, hovered before Manager Xie's forehead!

Manager Xie stared fixedly at the knife, his body trembling uncontrollably. He even felt a warm stream continuously spilling from his lower body!

He nodded frantically, conveying his desperate desire to live.

"Then please don't make a sound. Otherwise, before those security guards hear anything and come running, I guarantee my knife will reach your heart first."

Li Wei's threat sounded casual. As he spoke, he released the hand pinning down the bedding, appearing even more unconcerned.

Manager Xie panted heavily. By the dim night-light, he tried to make out Li Wei's face and identify who this outrageously bold murderer was, but he simply could not see through the coal dust covering his features.

"Tell me, tell me what you want!"

He did not scream. Though his voice stuttered somewhat, surprisingly, he still managed to remain outwardly calm.

Yet the stench of urine that had already spread across the bed exposed him. He was only putting on a brave face, fierce in appearance but weak within.

Li Wei did not care in the slightest. He got straight to the point.

"I want every valuable thing you have in this building."

Hearing such an undisguised, naked demand, Manager Xie secretly breathed a sigh of relief instead.

The more Li Wei acted like he was after money at a time like this, the less dangerous he was. If he had said he wanted nothing, then grimly named some stranger, Manager Xie would truly have believed he was doomed!

"Behind the curtain on the right! There's a hidden compartment with a safe! The code is 141629!"

Yet Li Wei had no intention of letting him do it himself. With astonishing arm strength, he directly dragged Manager Xie, who definitely weighed over two hundred pounds, out of bed. Blood still streamed from the hole in his thigh.

Thick blood stained the pristine cashmere carpet as Manager Xie was dragged before the curtains.

Without needing Li Wei to speak, he obediently pulled aside the curtains, trembling as he expertly opened the hidden compartment in the wall and entered the code one digit at a time!

After a crisp beep, the safe opened. There were only two things inside.

A black briefcase and a gold brick weighing a full thousand grams.

As if afraid Li Wei would be dissatisfied with the haul, Manager Xie even took out the briefcase with trembling hands and opened it before him.

It was packed full of banknotes. Every bill was worth one hundred; there were one hundred bills per bundle, roughly forty or fifty bundles in total!

Seeing this, Li Wei whistled in satisfaction.

Noticing his reaction, Manager Xie felt even more relieved and put on a fawning smile.

But his smile did not even last a second before the sharp boning knife pierced his chest!

His tiny eyes widened in disbelief, filled with unwillingness and questions as they locked onto Li Wei's!

Li Wei merely smiled and curled his fingers in a small wave.

"Good night. You won't have to work so hard anymore."

The fat body collapsed to the floor, that dead-eyed face lying quietly against the blood-soaked cashmere carpet.

Then another familiar message appeared in Li Wei's mind, except the amount was unprecedentedly huge.

[Killed someone who illegally acquired 67.2 million in assets. Experience +672]

[Experience: 694.2/1000]

Though he had not yet reached the level-up threshold, killing this pig had earned him dozens of times more than the four people he had killed previously combined!

Still, seeing the number on his experience counter rise did not stir much emotion in Li Wei. His plan for tonight had never been simply to gain a few hundred experience points.

Carrying the briefcase full of cash and slipping the gold bar into the inner pocket of his jacket, Li Wei easily left the blood-reeking villa.

Outside the barbed-wire fence at the northwest corner of the Coal Mine Field.

After nightfall, the laborers' family members who had knelt there during the day had all gathered here.

As the night deepened, complaints inevitably began to rise.

"That young man isn't playing us, is he? We don't even know his name, and we've already missed tonight's train home. If he doesn't come, we'll just have to stupidly freeze here all night!"

The one-armed man who had spoken privately with Li Wei during the day had clearly anticipated such complaints.

He squatted by the wire fence, smoking a cigarette he normally could not bear to finish in a single day.

"We can't go back anyway. Since we have nowhere else to go, we might as well wait here. Isn't your wife and child waiting for your father's life to keep them alive? Even if this is really a lie, do people like us still care about this little bit of humiliation and deception?"

His words silenced everyone present, because no one could refute them.

But after midnight, the temperature had fallen to its lowest point.

The temperature difference between day and night in this city was enormous. The air was still tolerable during the day, but at night, the cold wind pierced straight to the bone.

The youngest boy was also dressed the most thinly. He wore only a ragged linen shirt, curled up alone against the wire fence, clutching the written note an adult had helped him prepare to his chest, trying to keep from losing too much body heat.

The other adults also wrapped their clothes tightly around themselves. When they had left home that morning, none had expected to spend the night outdoors, so they had made no preparations at all.

The frigid wind howled. Some doubted that Li Wei had lied and wanted to back out, yet none considered leaving just because the cold might make them sick.

In the Afterglow District, after the hundreds of thousands of laborers first opened their eyes to this world, what hardship had they not endured?

Some among them might still have wanted to preserve what little dignity they had left, but none would ever shrink back simply because of hardship.

And it was amid the howling wind.

That a leisurely set of footsteps approached from afar, reaching many ears.

Those who had been curled up beneath the wire fence gradually rose from the ground. The youngest boy, Wang Xiaole, rubbed his dry, aching eyes and, by the afterglow of the mine's night-lights, saw a tall, slender figure approaching against the light.

The young man was covered in blood, yet his expression carried an utterly incongruous ease. A slice of ham, meant to be tucked into a sandwich and brought to some lame girl, hung from his mouth as he chewed it with relish.

When he saw the people outside the wire fence steadily rising to their feet, the young man stretched out his hand and casually opened the briefcase.

"Clatter!"

Bundles of hundred-value banknotes spilled onto the ground.

Other than the wind, everything around them remained silent. But in those pairs of eyes that had once held only numbness, as they looked upon that blood-covered figure.

There was now a spark of life that had never appeared before!