Pain

Just now, Chi Li had only managed to send Si Jinyan the address. The driver had shakily called the police, too frightened to speak clearly.

Chi Li could only stall for time as much as possible.

Perhaps those people had noticed Chi Li's intentions. They forced his car away from populated areas, leaving him unable to head toward places with crowds or possible police presence.

They also intensified their firepower. Several windows were shattered, and eventually they hit the tires directly. Chi Li had been prepared and kept the car from overturning, but its speed slowed.

Chi Li was shot in the shoulder. The moment the car slowed, those people climbed out of their vehicles and charged at him.

Chi Li had no weapons on him. There were roughly seven or eight opponents, and he was injured. Though the wound was not severe, his chances of forcing his way out were slim. Perhaps waiting for an opportunity would give him some chance of escape.

Chi Li sat pale-faced in the driver's seat. Their gun barrels were trained on him; the slightest sign of resistance would make them fire immediately.

Chi Li was dragged out, then thrown into one of their vehicles. His eyes were covered and his hands bound. He sensed that he had been transferred onto a spaceship midway through the journey. Perhaps afraid he would lose too much blood, they had also roughly treated his wound.

About two hours later, his blindfold was removed. He was in an abandoned warehouse, vast, dilapidated, and silent.

When he had gotten off the spaceship, Chi Li had heard waves crashing nearby.

Judging by the spaceship's speed, Chi Li guessed he was currently on the coast of the ocean, not far from the Empire's center.

When he was thrown to the ground, his hands and feet were still bound. The man who removed his blindfold grabbed his hair and forced him to lift his face, then checked the photo on his communicator before releasing him.

Another man approached from nearby. He had curly brown hair tied into a small knot at the back of his head. He spoke with the buzz-cut man beside Chi Li in a language that was not from the Empire.

They deliberately made sure Chi Li would not understand, yet he understood every word.

They were notorious desperadoes, a gathering place for assassins. They spoke one of the languages used in that region. By coincidence, Chi Li had carried out related missions before and had a general grasp of several of their common languages, enough to understand a few simple sentences.

Those people clearly had not expected Chi Li to understand them. The information they had received when taking the job showed that Chi Li was an utterly ordinary person.

That was why they were puzzled. The curly-haired man who had entered asked, "Is it him?"

The buzz-cut man checking Chi Li said, "I checked. It's him. He looks exactly the same."

The curly-haired man walked over to Chi Li and patted his face, making him raise his head. His Imperial language was more standard. "What's your name?"

Chi Li pressed his lips tightly together and watched them nervously.

The curly-haired man pressed the muzzle of his gun to Chi Li's temple. "Want to die? I asked what your name is."

The muzzle scraped Chi Li's skin raw at his temple. Chi Li loosened his clenched teeth and said tremblingly, "Chi Li."

The man lowered his gun and said to the buzz-cut man in their language, "Something's off about him."

The buzz-cut man nodded. They had both noticed it at the time.

Ordinary people would not have had the luck to evade their bullets several times, much less the ability and will to hold them off for so long. All of it showed that the person before them did not quite match the information in the file.

The men did not know where the problem lay, but a life spent on the edge of a blade had made them more cautious.

Chi Li lowered his gaze, pretending not to understand them. He knew his identity was already on the verge of being exposed.

As for who had sent these people, Chi Li had a rough guess. Who wanted him dead most here? Who feared Si Jinyan the least? Other than the Emperor, there was no second person.

But they had not acted yet. They probably did not intend to kill him. With that in mind, Chi Li thought and guessed further.

If the Emperor still had reservations about Si Jinyan, or if Chi Li still held value for Si Jinyan and the Emperor wanted to use this to manipulate Si Jinyan, then the Emperor would not take his life immediately. He still had a chance to escape.

But at this moment, Chi Li had not yet realized that the Emperor was a complete lunatic.

The buzz-cut man suddenly turned and looked at Chi Li. He kicked Chi Li in the stomach. Chi Li gave a pained grunt and immediately curled up like a shrimp.

The buzz-cut man asked in an awkward accent, "Are you hiding something?"

Chi Li's lips trembled. He looked completely different from how he had while evading pursuit earlier.

The buzz-cut man planted another foot on Chi Li's injured arm. Chi Li groaned in pain, wearing an expression of helpless submission.

After a moment, the curly-haired man stepped forward to stop the buzz-cut man. "Enough. Don't kill him."

By the time the buzz-cut man removed his foot from Chi Li's arm, cold sweat had already broken out across Chi Li's forehead from the pain.

"Should we tell those people about this?" The buzz-cut man spoke with the curly-haired man as they walked toward the door.

Chi Li could not make out what the curly-haired man said afterward.

At that moment, Chi Li had two choices: find the right chance to escape, or wait for someone to discover him and come rescue him. Either path carried the risk of exposing his identity, and neither was guaranteed to work.

Chi Li had thought the Emperor would use this to threaten Si Jinyan, but not long afterward, a bespectacled man with a rather refined appearance arrived. He carried a crude device no bigger than a medical kit. When he took out a thin, flexible tube with a needle attached, Chi Li's pupils trembled.

Chi Li asked, "What are you trying to do?"

The man smiled, but the gaze behind his lenses was gloomy and lifeless. "We're drawing some pheromones from your gland. Be good, or it'll hurt more."

Forcibly extracting pheromones from a gland was no different from torture. Chi Li thought they had probably gone mad, or perhaps the Emperor had. He remembered what the Emperor had said to Si Jinyan at that banquet: that he would squeeze all of Chi Li's pheromones out and store them, turning Chi Li into a container for extracting pheromones.

Two strong men pinned Chi Li down. Without even administering anesthesia, they drove the needle directly into the gland at the back of his neck, one of the most sensitive and fragile parts of the body.

Chi Li's teeth trembled from the pain. He struggled desperately, only to be held down even more tightly.

"The worst pain hasn't even started." The doctor pushed the needle deeper so he could directly extract the purest pheromones. "You don't want to be forcibly sent into a susceptible period, do you? Relax, or it'll hurt even more."

When the machine's button was pressed, Chi Li felt as though the sensitive, fragile nerves at the back of his neck and inside his brain had been trampled beneath someone's feet, viciously crushed over and over.

At first, Chi Li could still cry out in pain. Before long, even the slightest breath made him suffer more, and only weak gasps came from his mouth.

It was like a knife repeatedly slicing through his gland and nerves.

Chi Li gradually lost consciousness. Everything that surfaced in his mind, everything before his eyes, became a vast blankness.