Rainy Night (2)

This stretch of Green Mountain Road was already close to Green Dragon Pier. Streetlights lined the road now, and it was no longer as dark as the earlier sections.

The drizzle that had followed them all the way had gradually weakened. Under the neon-colored streetlights, everything seemed hazy and dreamlike.

The instant the taxi stopped, Yang Chu opened his eyes and saw a vicious gaze fixed on him through the rearview mirror.

With a soft click, the taxi driver named Lin Guoyu suddenly unfastened his seat belt, threw open the door, and slipped outside.

After getting out, he leaned half his body back into the car, reached up to pull open the sun visor above the windshield, and took out a thirty-centimeter boning knife.

His movements were extremely practiced.

"Get out."

Holding the knife, veins bulging on his forehead, Lin Guoyu's mild-mannered face twisted as he pointed at Yang Chu in the back seat and roared.

Sitting in the back of the taxi, Yang Chu could see through the rain-speckled window that the layer of gentleness Lin Guoyu had been pretending to wear had vanished completely.

But he felt neither worry nor fear. Ever since this body's subconscious had disappeared, he had realized that he no longer experienced certain emotions triggered by stress responses.

Earlier, when he had awakened in that dilapidated warehouse and kicked a punk to death, his heart had remained utterly calm. Seeing a corpse had not made him physically nauseated, and even flagging down a car on the road had not frightened him much.

It was the same now.

"Help! Help—"

At that moment, banging and cries rose from inside the taxi's trunk again.

The voice sounded like that of a young woman.

"Shut the hell up, you bitch!"

Lin Guoyu, who had been pointing the boning knife at Yang Chu, seemed to be driven mad by the repeated crying. He rushed to the rear of the taxi in a few strides and viciously kicked the trunk.

"Get out!"

After kicking the trunk, Lin Guoyu yanked open the rear door, raised his knife at Yang Chu in the back seat, and practically jumped as he shouted.

Yang Chu said nothing. He merely raised both hands to show he was no threat, then slowly shifted his body and stepped out of the back seat.

"Die!"

The moment Yang Chu got out of the taxi, Lin Guoyu's eyes turned bloodshot. With a crazed expression, he swung the boning knife at Yang Chu.

Clearly, the moment Yang Chu heard the cry for help from the trunk, Lin Guoyu had decided to kill him.

Perhaps because of his profession, he had not wanted to kill Yang Chu inside the taxi. He had waited for him to get out instead.

Standing beside the taxi's rear door, Yang Chu faced Lin Guoyu's swinging knife with the calm of an uninvolved bystander.

When the boning knife came close to his face, he suddenly lowered himself, dodging the blade. Then his curled body violently unfolded, and he slammed forward.

With a dull thud, the crisp sound of the boning knife hitting the ground followed.

Yang Chu swayed where he stood and lightly rolled his shoulder.

He could clearly feel slight tears in his shoulder blades, arms, thighs, and abdominal muscles from the impact. Since his conscious mind had taken control of his body, whenever he willed himself to explode with full force, his strength often exceeded that of an ordinary person by a wide margin.

Lin Guoyu, meanwhile, was sent flying two or three meters before crashing heavily onto the ground. His chest had caved in slightly, and bloody bubbles kept spilling from his nose and mouth. He was clearly beyond saving.

Even so, Lin Guoyu's viciousness did not lessen in the slightest. Instead, he stared venomously at Yang Chu and cursed indistinctly, "You damned bastard, I told you I wouldn't take you, but you insisted on getting in my car. I'll chop you to death, chop you to—"

"Is Hong Kong Island this rough these days too?!"

Yang Chu glanced at Lin Guoyu, who was lying on the ground and gradually falling silent, his expression turning strange.

Since transmigrating into this body and coming back to life, he had killed two people in a row.

That made him uncertain about the identity he had taken over, or perhaps this entire world.

However, judging from Lin Guoyu's behavior before and after, the man was clearly not normal. He might well have suffered from some sort of mental illness.

In truth, Yang Chu had not intended to kill anyone. It had all been self-defense. But even though he could now control the body's motor functions, against a knife-wielding attacker, he could only respond with his greatest strength.

And without the restraints of the subconscious, every use of maximum strength was an overload burst that disregarded the risk of injury.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

Banging and pounding sounded from inside the taxi's trunk again.

Yang Chu turned and walked to the rear of the taxi, then opened the trunk.

"Ah, help! Don't—"

The moment the trunk opened, terrified cries rang out.

Inside lay a girl with her hands and feet tied. She looked like a student, wearing a shirt and short skirt. A strip of burlap still hung from the corner of her mouth, clearly meant to gag her, though she had somehow managed to free herself from it.

The instant the trunk opened, the girl was clearly terrified. Her body trembled slightly, and her face was filled with fear.

But after seeing Yang Chu clearly, her cries abruptly stopped. Her tear-filled eyes widened as though she wanted to make out his face.

After seeing the girl in the trunk, Yang Chu roughly understood the situation.

Taxi driver Lin Guoyu had kidnapped a girl for some unknown reason and hidden her in the trunk.

That was why he had kept refusing to take Yang Chu. Only after hearing that Yang Chu intended to report him had he reluctantly agreed, likely afraid that something would be exposed.

Once Yang Chu heard the cries for help from the trunk, Lin Guoyu realized his crimes had been discovered. Deciding to go all the way, he had tried to silence Yang Chu.

But Lin Guoyu had not expected Yang Chu to be capable of killing him instead.

"Does that mean he might not have been a first-time offender?"

The thought flashed through Yang Chu's mind, but he did not dwell on it.

He looked at the ropes binding the girl, then turned and walked to the ground beside the car. He picked up the fallen boning knife and returned to the trunk.

Seeing the knife in Yang Chu's hand, the girl in the trunk visibly shrank back in fear.

Yang Chu grabbed the rope binding her hands and feet. Ignoring her faint, trembling struggle, he cut through it with a sharp snap of the boning knife.

The girl looked at her newly freed hands and feet, then struggled out of the trunk.

Perhaps because she had been tied up for too long and the blood had not been circulating properly, she stumbled after crawling out.

Yang Chu stood to one side without any intention of helping her up, nor did he want to say much. He casually tossed away the boning knife and walked down the road ahead of the taxi.

From where the taxi had stopped, he could faintly see the lights of buildings near Green Dragon Pier. It should not have been far.

He was not walking quickly. His injured left foot, along with the worsening weakness and exhaustion after another burst of strength, slowed him down.

For an ordinary person, after suffering abuse, beatings, and repeated bursts beyond the body's limits, the subconscious would instinctively produce all sorts of urges to slacken and stop.

But although Yang Chu's conscious mind could receive the body's negative feedback, he could still ignore those warning signals like someone operating a machine and keep walking forward with determination.

After climbing out of the trunk, the girl stood up with some difficulty. Looking at the deserted road around her, she was briefly at a loss.

Then she caught sight of Lin Guoyu's body lying not far from the taxi. Overwhelming terror surged up again, and with a scream, she ran after Yang Chu's retreating figure.

Thud—

Yang Chu, who had been limping slowly down Green Mountain Road, suddenly swayed and collapsed onto the road.

The girl, more than ten meters behind him, was startled. Looking at Yang Chu lying on the ground, her expression became hesitant.

She had followed Yang Chu for five or six hundred meters and had long noticed how weak he was from his unsteady gait.

Only after quite a while did the girl cautiously approach to within a meter of him. Half fearful and half worried, she called out, "Hey, what's wrong with you?"

Yang Chu lay there with his eyes half-closed, completely motionless.

The girl looked around. Though she could faintly see lights in the distance and even vaguely hear the mournful blare of ship horns, the streets around her were shrouded in misty rain and completely empty. This was not a place she knew at all.

Perhaps because Lin Guoyu's kidnapping had frightened her so badly, she felt as though evil men might spring out from the darkness around her at any moment.

Hugging her arms to her chest, the girl edged closer to Yang Chu and bent slightly, calling in a tearful voice, "Hey, are you okay or not? Don't scare me!"

Yang Chu lay silently on the ground for nearly half a minute. Then he suddenly opened his eyes.

"Ah—"

Seeing Yang Chu suddenly open his eyes, the girl jumped back two steps in fright.

"Help... me... up!"

Yang Chu looked at the girl, who seemed like a startled rabbit, and spoke with difficulty.

His physical condition had worsened steadily along the way. There was the pain, fatigue, hunger, and injuries from twice pushing his body beyond its limits, but there was also the fact that Yang Chu had to constantly control and maintain all of the body's major systems.

For a person's consciousness to completely replace the subconscious instincts that biological evolution had developed over millions of years and that came naturally from birth was no easy task.

Even merely maintaining the functions of all the body's major systems was an extremely complex and difficult undertaking.

Yang Chu's consciousness could barely afford to be distracted. While controlling his motor system to walk, his internal systems had fallen into disorder several times, bringing his body close to crashing.

The girl standing nearby was somewhat frightened by Yang Chu's gaze, but she still moved to his side and slowly helped him to his feet.

"You can turn around."

Once he was standing, Yang Chu rested one hand on the girl's shoulder and spoke slowly.

"You want to..."

Before the girl could finish, her pretty face, already washed clean of makeup by the rain, suddenly reddened. She hurriedly turned away.

Yang Chu pulled down the zipper of his pants, and the sound of rushing water followed.

Hearing it, the girl's face reddened nearly to her ears. If Yang Chu had not been too unsteady to stand on his own, she would have wanted nothing more than to run far away.

"Thanks!"

When the sound stopped, Yang Chu let out a soft breath and said to the girl, "I'll need you to help me walk a little farther."

"I should be thanking you for saving me."

Lowering her head, Liang Xiuxin supported Yang Chu as they walked forward. Perhaps because of the awkward moment just now, or perhaps because she could sense that Yang Chu meant her no harm, her tension eased slightly. She suddenly said, "My name is Liang Xiuxin. What's yours?"

But after asking, the girl seemed to realize she might have asked something she should not have. She hurriedly explained in alarm, "You... you don't have to tell me. I don't know anything, and I won't say anything."

As Liang Xiuxin followed Yang Chu along the road, she had already been guessing at his identity.

He was obviously seriously injured and terribly weak, yet he had been able to kill the taxi driver who had kidnapped her and save her.

Afterward, he had neither called the police nor waited for help. Without saying a word, he had simply left.

He was like one of those formidable figures from the movies.

Mysterious and powerful.

In this helpless situation, she was afraid of him, yet could not stop herself from wanting to stay close.

"You can call me Yang Chu."

Only after what seemed like a long while did Yang Chu suddenly answer.

He did not know this body's name or identity. He had only vaguely heard those people in the warehouse mention something about "Black Fish Zai," but Black Fish Zai was already completely dead. Using his former name seemed appropriate.

"Mm."

Liang Xiuxin replied quietly. She still had many questions and wanted to say more, but seeing Yang Chu's lips pressed tightly together and his silence, she forced herself to hold back.

What she had experienced that night was simply a nightmare for a seventeen-year-old girl.

At ten o'clock the previous night, after attending her middle school graduation dinner for teachers, she had taken a taxi home.

But after the car had been driving for a little over ten minutes, the perverted driver pulled out a knife, threatened her, tied her hands and feet, and locked her in the trunk.

Along the way afterward, Liang Xiuxin had been terrified beyond measure, not knowing what she was going to face.

Later, she heard someone stop the taxi and get in. She had used all her strength to work the cloth strip from her mouth loose and shouted for help.

In the end, she really had been saved.

But whenever she thought of that perverted driver, she could not stop herself from shuddering.

"Help me buy some things."

Just as Liang Xiuxin's thoughts were in turmoil, Yang Chu's voice suddenly pulled her back.

She hurriedly turned her head and followed his gaze. Buildings had gradually begun appearing along both sides of the road, and beneath an old building some fifty or sixty meters away, a twenty-four-hour convenience store was still open.

"Buy... buy what?"

Liang Xiuxin glanced at Yang Chu. Seeing his face growing increasingly pale and even his lips turning bluish-purple, she asked nervously.

"Water, food. Candy would be best, if they have any."

Yang Chu released Liang Xiuxin's support, tossed his wallet to her, and slowly sat down beside the road.

Liang Xiuxin caught the wallet and stood there blankly, staring at Yang Chu. Seeing that he had already closed his eyes, she suddenly seemed to make up her mind and ran toward the convenience store.

Less than five minutes later, Liang Xiuxin came running back with a large plastic bag in her hand and gave the things to Yang Chu.

Yang Chu did not check how much she had spent. He simply stuffed the wallet into his clothes. Opening the plastic bag, he found that Liang Xiuxin had bought quite a few things. Besides several bottles of mineral water and bread, there was a bag of white sugar, gauze, adhesive bandages, and a bottle of Wong To Yick medicinal liniment.

Without a word, Yang Chu tore open the bag of white sugar, poured some into his mouth, took several gulps of mineral water, then closed his eyes again.

Liang Xiuxin stood there awkwardly beside him, watching Yang Chu. She had no idea what she was thinking.

About five or six minutes later, Yang Chu finally opened his eyes again and slowly rose from the ground.

"We're even now!"

Yang Chu took a deep breath and waved at Liang Xiuxin. "Aren't you going to make a phone call and let your family know you're safe?"

"Ah?!"

It seemed only then, after Yang Chu reminded her, that Liang Xiuxin remembered. She turned and hurried back toward the convenience store.

Yang Chu watched Liang Xiuxin's small figure run away. In the distance, he saw a clerk standing outside the convenience store, apparently having come out curiously to watch after Liang Xiuxin bought her things.

Yang Chu did not care. He merely stood where he was and looked up at the sky.

At some point, the rain that had fallen all night had stopped. The eastern horizon was turning pale, and an occasional seagull swept overhead.

Yang Chu picked up the plastic bag and turned, disappearing into the rising morning mist.