Honkai's Thousand Laws, Kidnapping Kiana at the Start

He harbored a secret he dared not confess: compared to mature, older women, he preferred pure and innocent young girls. Chris knew he wasn't a pedophile, nor did he like real-life young girls. He simply yearned for purity, and would even lash out at netizens who made vulgar remarks online.

He wanted to protect a sanctuary of pure hearts, a place for his soul to rest.

Like the guardians of sacred sites in Chinese novels, dedicating their lives to the sanctuaries they protected.

"Why am I thinking so much today?" Realizing his mind was racing, Chris shook his head and turned on his game console to play a casual game.

Perhaps it was his unsettled mood, but he only managed to get second to last place even in the mini-game.

He then opened his computer, went online, and played some Magic: The Gathering with people in the arena, where he was undoubtedly crushed.

Frustrated by his consecutive losses in games, Chris browsed for new manga online.

A manga titled "Divine Land Sword Breaking Record" caught his eye. The manga was entirely in Chinese, and Chris's Chinese wasn't very good, but after years of reading raw content online, he had plenty of instant translation software.

"Qian... what character is this? Qian Yu? No, it should be Qian Jue." That was the problem with instant translation; it couldn't directly translate many obscure characters, especially for works from China, which were even harder to understand.

The manga was short, only a few pages, suggesting it was newly released. However, Chris loved the art style, appreciating its wuxia charm.

After exhausting all his entertainment options, the burning heat in his heart remained unresolved.

Why was that? Was it because he hadn't found the right game?

But he usually detested violent games; pure violence simply disgusted him.

"Let's give it a try."

He muttered to himself.

He opened a game called ATG5, and as he controlled the protagonist mowing down enemies, a smile finally appeared on his face.

Chapter 27: Sister

Comfortable and peaceful, the blackout curtains blocked out the outside world. The birds chirping in the trees at dawn and the honking horns on the distant road were all gone. Chris curled up on the floor mattress, like an infant in swaddling clothes, fast asleep.

The computer screen still flickering on the desk was playing the game. The protagonist, who had almost completely annihilated the city, stood idly, occasionally performing actions under the control of the standby animation.

Beep beep beep—

The piercing alarm clock rang, urging him to get up and prepare for work. But Chris, who had been playing games until almost midnight, was at the peak of his sleepiness. He instinctively reached out, silenced the alarm, and fell back into a deep sleep.

A strong sense of exhaustion enveloped his body, dragging Chris into a deep dream.

It was an absurd dream. The creatures living there were all mushrooms with human-like expressions. Their caps were brightly colored, each one unique. Some mushroom people even styled their mushroom heads into pompadours, looking comical and ridiculous.

But Chris himself felt out of place in this world. As the master of the dream, he wasn't a mushroom unable to move, but a human who could walk freely.

The mushroom people, apart from their large caps and stems, had no extra limbs. He curiously teased the mushrooms by the roadside, watching as they became angry, shy, or directly cursed at him in strange mushroom language due to his teasing.

Chris found it incredibly amusing.

Until he accidentally stepped on a small mushroom.

A small, ugly mushroom turned into a puddle of mud under his foot with a gentle step. The sticky feeling made him feel disgusted. The mushroom, emitting a foul odor, oozed red slime that stuck to his new sneakers.

"So disgusting." Cursing continuously, Chris vigorously wiped his new shoes. However, no matter how much he wiped, the slime on them refused to come off.

"Damn it, damn it!" His emotions intensified, his curses becoming more vulgar, but the slime only adhered more firmly. Until, in his dream, he conjured a cleaver out of thin air. Its sharp blade glinted with white light. Chris raised it high and then brought it down. The blade sliced open the skin of his ankle, and dark, foul-smelling blood sprayed out, mixed with the ambiguous mushroom juice. It flowed down his flesh, bones, and meridians. He chopped off his own foot.

He felt much better this way.

A knock on the door suddenly broke through. Chris, lost in his dream, suddenly woke up. He glanced at his slightly numb foot, relieved that it was just tangled by the game controller's cord.

"Chris, open the door."

His sister's voice came from outside. Chris let out a sigh and responded.

Game equipment was scattered all over the floor, and leftover snacks covered the floor mattress, their grease staining the quilt and clothes.

Click.

The door opened, and the cold air from outside blew in, making Chris shiver. His sister, Corona, frowned, clearly displeased with his slow response. She first surveyed Chris's room, her frown deepening at the sight of the trash and games.

"Chris, I didn't hear you say you had the day off," she said, hands on her hips. She was wearing a thin nightgown, her hair a mess, much like Chris. She had likely also stayed up late.

"Sorry, Sister. Something happened yesterday." Feeling annoyed, he didn't want to recall yesterday's ordeal.

"What happened? Why didn't you tell me!" Unfortunately, Corona wasn't easily fooled. She crossed her arms, staring intently at Chris with a scrutinizing gaze.

His sister's relentless questioning intensified Chris's irritation. His voice gradually rose, "It's none of your business!"

"What do you mean it's none of my business? Ever since Mom and Dad passed away, I've been in charge of this household."

Like two cups of water heated in a microwave, they appeared calm on the surface, but after colliding, they would boil violently.

Chris had only slept three or four hours and hadn't recovered at all. Furthermore, the strange dream had made him emotionally sensitive. He really didn't want to argue with his sister right now.

Unfortunately, Corona thought otherwise. Her brother's behavior clearly indicated he was hiding something. She knew Chris well, and this was completely out of character for him.

With both of their emotions unstable, Corona's voice grew louder.

"Chris, tell me, what exactly happened? I'm in charge here, and I have the right to know!"

"That's my own business. It has nothing to do with you, or this family, do you understand?!"

"Enough, Chris!" Corona interrupted him rudely. Disappointment flickered in her eyes, revealing her emotions. Her voice gradually steadied, a sign of extreme anger. "You've lost your judgment in life by indulging in these virtual things. They've harmed you, they've ruined you."

Filled with anger and suppression, Corona walked directly to Chris's desk and flipped the screen, which was still displaying the game, onto the floor.

The screen flickered and then completely lost its image. The high-spec computer, bought with several months' worth of salary, was directly smashed into a deformed mess. The torn cables sparked with arcs of electricity, as if burning Chris's heart.

A violent emotion surged relentlessly in his chest, his gaze gradually shifting to the baseball bat he kept in the corner.

"Behave yourself, Chris. You're not a child anymore."

After destroying all the messy game consoles in the room, Corona stood before her younger brother. "Now, tell me exactly what happened."

Chaos, impatience, and anger—a tangled mess of negative emotions constantly battered Chris's mind. He lowered his head, looking at his sister, who was much shorter than him.

Her thin sleepwear barely covered her upper body, exposing a large expanse of skin from her collar. Her alluring body was firm and full. Chris, who had been lost in the world of anime characters, realized for the first time that his sister possessed such a side.

He lowered his voice, tinged with intense malice.

"It felt good being played with by those men, didn't it? The people you told me were colleagues, they were actually just playmates you found."

"You call yourself the head of the household, but you're just a whore. I've seen the pills you left in the kitchen so many times, you never even bothered to hide them. You were high with them right in front of me, your own brother?"

"I even locked myself in a small room, giving you all this space, just so I wouldn't have to see your filthy ways."

"But you ruined it! You destroyed what I cherished!"

Chris's eyes turned bloodshot, his right hand already reaching for the baseball bat by the wall.

Chapter Twenty-Eight: Shootout

Bang—!

The baseball bat struck an aluminum can, crushing the empty container into a twisted mess. It then flew high into the air before landing on the ground, only to be run over by a passing car, turning it into a sheet of metal.

An hour had passed since Chris argued with his sister. He was now consumed by intense self-reproach, constantly rubbing the baseball bat in his hands, his emotions still far from calm.

"What is wrong with me? Why did I say those things to my sister?"

Chris questioned himself relentlessly. Beer cans were piled several layers high by the flowerbed. As a shut-in, he almost never drank, but this was the third can he'd downed in just an hour.

Several cigarettes lay scattered on the ground, all recently lit, smoked for a moment, and then extinguished. Chris detested the smell of cigarettes; the acrid, choking aroma always made him feel sick as it passed through his lungs. He couldn't even muster any interest in the 'good cigarettes' that were so popular in this country.

Yet, after taking the first drag, even though he quickly put it out, a few minutes later he subconsciously lit a second one.

This addictive pull tugged at his already precarious mental state, and intense pain gnawed at his heart.

His sister's surprise, anger, fear, and regret—every detail of her expression was etched into Chris's mind. Because of this, Chris felt even worse, as his sister's expressions seemed to confirm his suspicions.

Although he often saw strangers' shoes, Chris always avoided thinking in that direction. After his parents died, his sister had quit her job and endured those difficult times with him. He absolutely refused to believe that his strong sister would degenerate to such a point.

As Chris sat on the flowerbed by the roadside, his mind in turmoil, several police cars rolled through the dust and stopped steadily in front of him.

"Chris, you're under arrest."

The police quickly surrounded Chris, snatched the baseball bat from his hand, and handcuffed him behind his back.

"Under arrest? Why? I didn't break any laws!" Chris struggled, the police's words sounding like a fantasy to him. He had never committed a crime in his life.

"You're accused of murder, and the victim was a young police officer." The leading officer paid him no mind, forcefully dragging him towards the police car.

Even the naive Chris knew that if the police wanted to arrest someone, they needed to provide an arrest warrant. But these officers had not only cuffed him immediately but also directly declared him a criminal. A vague intuition told him that once he got into that police car, his innocence would be impossible to prove.

"I didn't do it, let me go, I'm going to report you." He struggled continuously, and Chris, lacking exercise, managed to break free from the officers' grasp. But the next second, a police baton swung directly towards his head.

Intense pain shot through him, his vision went black, and Chris lost consciousness.

After an unknown amount of time, when Chris woke up again, he felt his hands were securely cuffed. His cheek was pressed against the floor of the vehicle, and the constant jolting made his head ache.

"Yes, the scapegoat has been caught."

The escorting police car was pitch black, and Chris could only hear faint conversations, as if someone was on the phone.

"I understand. Those people from the Fang He Association went too far. That guy was one of Oaxaca State's governor's close associates. Him dying so obscurely on our watch has terrible repercussions."

"That's your business. The reward is 300,000."

"300,000? Are you kidding me? That's not what we agreed on last time. That murdered police officer was..."

Chris didn't dare to move an inch, afraid that the surrounding police would discover he was awake. But his heart was pounding. The young police officer who had died before his eyes yesterday had a significant background, and he had been shot dead obscurely by the local mafia. However, the more pressing issue now was that Chris seemed to have been set up as a scapegoat.

"As long as the matter is settled, adding a bit to the price is fine."

"How much can you add?"

"#####"

"Alright, I understand. The bloodstains were found on that kid's car window, and the cameras were also specially cleaned. As long as they investigate, just send him up."

"If the higher-ups really want to investigate thoroughly, let them. Those rats in the local area are monsters who eat people without spitting out the bones."

Beep—

The call ended. The leading officer had no intention of lowering his voice while on the phone, and the surrounding officers remained indifferent. Many even smiled upon hearing that the price could be increased.

These guys had long colluded with the mafia. Chris's heart sank as he instantly understood his situation. He wasn't the first scapegoat to be pushed out, and he wouldn't be the last.

Restless, mentally broken, an indescribable sense of oppression kept giving Chris strong warnings. But he was, after all, just an ordinary person, and now he didn't even have the strength to resist.

Merely witnessing a shooting and having blood splatter on his car window meant facing death, all to be made a scapegoat.

This damned world.

This damned country.

Cases he saw on the news every day suddenly flashed through his mind. How many of them were pushed to their deaths by demons hidden in the darkness?

If he himself appeared in the news in the next few days, what would his sister do?

Thinking of this, Chris suddenly regretted the harsh words he had said to his sister before running out of the house.

Tap, tap.

Just as Chris was sinking into despair, dense gunfire suddenly erupted. The police car transporting the prisoners became the target, and its sturdy bulletproof glass windows couldn't completely block the gangsters' firepower.

"Aha, you lapdogs of the Fang He Association, good morning!" a strange, sharp voice called out from outside. Chris pressed himself tightly to the ground, not daring to make the slightest move. Even when the police inside the car stepped on him as they walked around, he didn't dare to let out a whimper.

No reason, no excuse, no warning.

The shootout between the police and the gangsters appeared brazenly in this city.

Bang—!

The police car was suddenly impacted. A collision at high speed would lead to a deadly end.

The vehicle rolled, crashed, and burned.

Fortunately, Chris, who had been lying on the ground the entire time, was the least injured person in the entire car.

The police car burned fiercely, with the constant risk of explosion. Chris was already bleeding profusely from his head. He struggled desperately, moving his body, trying to crawl out of the vehicle.

Click.

A gun was cocked.

Chris looked up, and a dark muzzle was pressed against his forehead.