No Peaceful Life

No Peaceful Life

Hong Mo left, departing the hometown where he had lived for twenty years and been away from for another ten. Perhaps many years later, when those neighbors had grown old, they would recall that a rare family bearing the surname Hong had once lived there.

Hong was an exceptionally rare surname. At least, Hong Mo did not know many people with it. Every year when they visited relatives, they were actually only visiting friends his parents were close to. There really were no blood relatives. He had not cared about such things as a child, and Hong Mo had no mood to care about them now.

Taking Lingyin with him, Hong Mo left Mianyang. If news of his escape got out, people might come to investigate his old home before long.

Chongqing was a prosperous city.

Hong Mo settled down in the city with Lingyin. He had not spent much of the hundreds of thousands he had gotten from robbing that fat man last time. After staying in a hotel for several days, Hong Mo finally rented an apartment in a residential complex.

After ten years, Hong Mo once again lived a peaceful and stable life. No one here knew about his past, nor would anyone deliberately ask about it. No one usually came to verify his real identity either. In the eyes of these neighbors, Hong Mo was a rather amiable young man.

Lingyin was sent to Little Garden Kindergarten. After two days there, she complained to Hong Mo that the snot-nosed kids inside were either especially childish or especially precocious.

When Hong Mo asked what had happened, he learned that the "boss" of her class had confessed to Hong Lingyin, declaring that Lingyin was his "girl."

Hong Mo was momentarily speechless, then laughed. How old was that little brat? What had he himself been doing when he was six or seven? Hong Mo did not take it to heart and rubbed Lingyin's hair. Like a kitten, Lingyin closed her eyes contentedly.

Every so often, Hong Mo had to take Lingyin out for a day, because Lingyin's little bats needed to feed. Hong Mo had Lingyin command the bats to attack people directly. Of course, they would not kill anyone, but anemia for a while was inevitable.

Rumors of vampires gradually began to spread through nearby cities. Although no one had seen one, there were indeed many victims. Fortunately, no one had died because of it.

Hong Mo had no choice. These little bats were closely connected to Lingyin, and Hong Mo was happy to let Lingyin have a concealed weapon. However, this made Lingyin ninety percent similar to that little vampire from the Scarlet Devil Mansion. And when he thought of Hong Mo's name—Hong Mo, Scarlet Devil—wasn't that just Scarlet Devil?

There were more and more superpowered people around the world, and even their clothing had become increasingly distinctive. These three-dimensional superpowered people dressed better and looked even "cooler" than the protagonists in two-dimensional anime.

For convenience, Hong Mo directly bought several Phyllis?Belle cosplay outfits. They had practically become Lingyin's everyday clothes.

After another outing to let the little bats feed, Hong Mo led Lingyin out of an alley. The alley was not actually secluded, but it was fine as long as everyone inside had passed out. By the time Hong Mo came out, dozens of people were already lying on the ground inside.

"Stop! Don't move! Put your hands up!" Just as Hong Mo reached the alley entrance, a pleasant female voice rang out. Her tone, however, was far from pleasant.

Hong Mo turned around and saw a woman in plain clothes pointing a gun at him. Judging from her condition, she did not seem to be doing very well.

Heh~~~!

Hong Mo suddenly understood. He had not expected one of the people who had been drained to be a police officer. Moreover, this officer could resist the sedative component in the bats' saliva and had not completely passed out.

What a pity. Sorry, but a handgun like yours posed no threat to me. Hong Mo smiled faintly and flashed to the side of the female plainclothes officer. A light chop of his hand, and the resolute policewoman went limp and fell to the ground.

"Dad, is this okay? Will it expose us?" Through her studies during this period, Lingyin had also gained a solid understanding of common knowledge in this world.

"It's fine. She's just a minor policewoman. We won't come to this city again." Holding Lingyin's hand, Hong Mo left. Not long afterward, passersby entered the alley, screamed, called 110, and then called 120.

Hong Mo had thought the matter would end there, but that little policewoman was not an ordinary policewoman. Just from her ability to resist the bats' sedative saliva, it was clear that she was not an ordinary person.

Hong Mo did not know that he had already been noticed. People from the National Superpower Special Security Department already knew of his existence. His current identity was "vampire." And all of this stemmed from the policewoman called Tang Qianqian.

After getting into a taxi and telling the driver their destination, Hong Mo closed his eyes.

"Dad, is this the right road?" Lingyin suddenly shook Hong Mo. After going out so many times and always taking taxis home, Lingyin had become familiar with this stretch of road. This was clearly not their usual route.

"Driver, where are you going?" Hong Mo asked.

"Oh, there was a car accident on Zhaoyang Road, so we can't get through. I'm taking another route," the taxi driver answered.

"Is that so?"

"Yes. A taxi driver friend of mine just told me." The driver freed one hand and pointed at the earpiece by his ear.

It looked perfectly normal, yet Hong Mo felt uneasy. What was this inexplicable feeling?

"Pull over. We'll get out here."

"Oh, sure." The driver readily agreed, yet did not stop.

"Driver." Hong Mo's tone turned cold. There was no response. Hong Mo reached toward the driver in front with his right hand. Electricity began to surge between his fingers.

"Behave yourself. You're under arrest, vampire." A fist the size of a casserole pot blocked Hong Mo's right hand. It was like grabbing an iron plate, and Hong Mo's fingers went numb with pain.

Just as Hong Mo was about to continue his attack, a wire mesh suddenly rose up, separating the driver's cabin from the back. The man who was clearly not a taxi driver even turned around and gave Hong Mo the middle finger.

"You little punk, a vampire still dares to cause trouble in China?"

Hong Mo ignored him and viciously kicked the car door. With a booming impact, the car shook twice, but the door did not open.

"Don't waste your effort. Do you think this is an ordinary taxi?"

"Lingyin, curl up." Hong Mo ignored the driver. After Lingyin lay facedown on the seat, Hong Mo grabbed the wire mesh in front of him. A powerful current burst forth. The entire taxi erupted in a blaze of brilliant electric light.

Ordinary taxi or not, he would smash it by force.

The ruined taxi skidded along the road for some distance, turned a corner, and charged straight toward a heavy truck. The driver in front frantically spun the steering wheel, but it was clearly useless. The steering wheel had already been destroyed.

The heavy truck on the other side was evidently stunned as well. It changed direction and drove toward the roadside, but after a thunderous collision, the entire front end of the taxi was wedged beneath the truck's chassis.

The truck driver was fine and immediately jumped out of the cab. Nearby vehicles and pedestrians also gathered around. Watching the excitement had always been a national pastime.

"Ah, how tragic. They probably won't survive," some passersby sighed repeatedly upon seeing the taxi's miserable state.

But at that moment, dull thudding sounds came from the taxi trapped beneath the heavy truck. With a loud crash, a car door was flung out from under the chassis, and the driver revealed half his head.

"Damn, that guy's still not dead? What a lucky bastard." After a blond-haired young man nervously approached, he discovered that the taxi driver's entire lower body was trapped in the car, with a metal bar piercing his lower abdomen.

Hong Mo shook his head and looked at Lingyin in his arms.

"Are you hurt?"

"No, just a little dizzy," Lingyin replied.

"That's good. It's just an aftereffect of the violent impact. It'll pass soon," Hong Mo said, then smashed his fist viciously into the car door.

Thud!

The entire taxi shook, yet the door still did not open. By then, the onlookers had noticed that no one inside the taxi was dead—neither the driver nor the passengers in the back.

"Save them! Are you people just going to stand there and watch?" A girl in red shouted as she stepped forward to help pry open the door.

"Oh, right, save them, save them." They might have enjoyed a spectacle, but they were kind-hearted after all. Once they realized no one had died, prompted by the girl, they hurriedly began trying to rescue the people inside.

"You can't open the door. The people in the back are criminals," the driver suddenly said just as everyone was about to act.

Criminals? Everyone stopped. They could not afford to bear the charge of releasing criminals.

"Criminals aren't people? You're disregarding human lives!" The girl was the only one who did not stop. She pointed at the driver and cursed him before resuming her struggle with the door.

"What's wrong with this door? Why won't it open?" The girl braced one foot against the car and pulled the handle backward with all her strength. Then another dull boom rang out. Her hand slipped, and she fell backward.

"See? I told you. The ones in the back are criminals—a vicious vampire, and a very powerful one. You'd better not crowd around here," the driver continued explaining.

Vampire!

The people nearby froze. These days, superpowered individuals were everywhere, but the creatures from old legends had never truly appeared before. Besides, weren't vampires creatures of Western legend? Why would one show up here?

Hong Mo withdrew his right fist. Bright red blood slowly dripped from it. That fierce punch had already exceeded the limit of what his body could withstand.

"Dad, this." Lingyin handed Hong Mo a coin.

Hong Mo took the coin with an awkward smile. In his haste, he had actually forgotten about it. His strongest attack was the electromagnetic cannon, after all. Yet he had tried to imitate that "taxi driver" and smash the door with his bare hand.