Fate Play (3)

The jet-black hunting knife that had been blasted away plunged into the blue bricks of the underground mall.

"...I'm with the Secret Party too. We're on the same side. The fog here interfered with my judgment."

After identifying himself, the blond man offered that explanation and did not further defend himself. He did not even fully sort out and explain the sequence of events.

This was not Pride. After falling into a disadvantage, he had neither the grounds nor the need to be proud. He knew that anyone with reservations only needed a single excuse to believe him, while those unwilling to believe him would not be swayed no matter how much he said.

His hair had been tousled by the gusts stirred up by the successive blows, revealing heterochromatic eyes of icy blue and dark gold. His features were handsome and sharply defined, yet his overall appearance made him seem like an evil ghost reluctant to leave the mortal world.

Bullshit... Lu Mingfei glanced at a patch of azure fog behind him and hesitated before deciding not to fight here any longer.

It was not because he was wary of the Secret Party. The advantage of ignorance was fearlessness; he knew only a little about the Secret Party and was nowhere near terrified of it.

He simply did not want to fight one against two.

"Are you Caesar's relative?" Lu Mingfei turned and left, heading toward the subway entrance through the hellish cold wind.

His body was a little overheated, and the cold wind felt just right.

The handsome blond man did not directly answer. "Pazzi Gattuso, the Gattuso Family's... secretary. We met at the hearing not long ago, Mr. Lu."

Why were all these foreigners so damn good at Chinese?

Lu Mingfei paused, confused, but did not turn back to respond.

This Pazzi's combat ability was clearly superior to Caesar's. He could even be said to be far stronger than Caesar when Caesar was not using Blood Rage to burn himself up. Yet in the Gattuso Family, he was merely a secretary.

Wasn't it said that, in the hybrid world, bloodline was more or less equivalent to excellence and combat ability?

Did the Gattuso Family not value bloodline strength? Did they care about distinctions between legitimate and illegitimate heirs instead?

Or was it that, in the hybrid world... secretary was actually a highly prestigious position?

Watching Lu Mingfei's back gradually vanish into the fog, Pazzi thoughtfully walked over to his hunting knife, Augustus.

Second by second, he remained on guard—on guard against someone.

"Come out."

"And please stop following me. Sometimes you talk too loudly when you're on the phone." Pazzi did not look back, his tone flat and bland.

After a while, rustling sounds finally came from around him.

A tall, burly figure emerged from the fog beside the entrance of a luxury store, chewing gum from who knew where. His voice carried a hint of mockery.

"Hehehe, he noticed me while he was fighting you. I wonder whether you were a beat too slow or a beat too fast, huh? Mr. Pazzi, you got beaten pretty badly, didn't you?"

"You thought you had shaken me off earlier, didn't you?"

The muscular man in the KFC headpiece slowly emerged from the blue fog. As he passed Pazzi, he bumped his shoulder, then kept exclaiming, "Damn, damn, that's insane," while feeling the human-shaped crater in the wall.

Pazzi lowered his eyes. "..."

"I was a beat too slow," he admitted honestly.

Only those familiar with him would understand that he had already entered a highly alert defensive stance. Every muscle in his body had been strengthened by dragon blood.

"I never thought I had shaken off your pursuit. Things I'm not certain of always need to be confirmed." Pazzi paced around the hunting knife.

Mr. KFC folded his arms. "Honesty is a rare virtue. I thought you were another guy with Caesar's smug streak. Aren't you curious why I deliberately came closer while you two were fighting?"

He rubbed his hands with ill intent. "You should actually thank me. I waited in the shadows for so long, but you never came over to say thanks. Relax—neither you nor I are thieves today."

"Thank you. I'm a little curious." Pazzi paused. "But not especially curious. For an already injured person like me, I doubt that would be good news."

Objectively speaking, he had indeed been helped. There was never such a thing as a free lunch. Besides, from any angle, Mr. KFC was definitely not on his side.

Mr. KFC directly ignored Pazzi's tactful refusal and gave his answer anyway. "Because he has something he wants to do even more. Although I don't know exactly what his situation is, troublesome people like you—who are a bit of an eyesore and can sometimes be as slippery as loaches—are better left... for me to handle."

"Actually, I'm rather curious why you aren't hurrying off to protect your Caesar and are instead wandering around here. You're slacking off a little, aren't you? Not like the good boy said to stand behind the Gattuso acting head."

"Are you going to make a move here? And your reason is?" Pazzi studied the old acquaintance before him, guessing at the man's true identity at Cassell College.

They did not even qualify as ordinary friends, but Pazzi automatically classified Mr. KFC as an old acquaintance.

In his eyes, old acquaintances naturally overlapped very little with friends. Things as fantastical as friends were something he almost never had, though he did have a few people he knew well.

They had only met once. They had cooperated once because their escape routes happened to be the same, but they both roughly understood what the other was. It was the mutual awareness of beasts tempered through blood and fire on the dark side of this world.

"Talking so much crap is a bad habit. A reason is... a reason my ass. You couldn't come up with a reason when you launched that surprise attack either." Mr. KFC bent down to warm up, stretching his legs from side to side.

"So you're standing up for someone?" Pazzi nodded in understanding. At this point, he would not claim that he was the one who had suffered the loss. No one would listen, and no one would sympathize.

That was how the world worked. Reason did not always get through... and since he had been the one to strike first, he had no grounds to argue anyway. There was no way out for him.

Standing up for someone was a simple yet widespread reason to fight. Who in this world did not have one or two people they cherished?

"Then, obedient child who only pretends to obey, Mr. Pazzi of the Gattuso Family, the second arranged duel is about to begin. Do you have anything to say before it officially starts?" Cracks spread through the blue bricks beneath Mr. KFC's feet under the unbearable strain. His Golden Eyes lit up, his skin taking on a bronze-like outer sheen. As his body grew taller, his entire presence became like a raging flood and savage beast.

Word Spirit: Bronze Throne.

It was unquestionably a high-tier Word Spirit. It could temporarily bring the user's bones, skin, muscles, and more to strength approaching that of a dragon. On the Word Spirit cycle, it ranked only two places below Jun Yan, the lowest-ranked high-risk Word Spirit. It was stable and practical.

Its side effect was that frequent use required taking extra calcium supplements.

"Let me think."

After pondering for a moment, Pazzi raised the arm that was temporarily unusable. "Give me fifteen minutes. You don't happen to... enjoy bullying disabled people, do you?"

"I happen to, actually."

Mr. KFC, whose wicked grin never faded, and the increasingly impassive Pazzi looked at each other for a moment.

Then they looked away, and the atmosphere congealed.

Pazzi helplessly lowered his head and sighed.

He pulled Augustus from the ground, turned without hesitation, and ran.

Mr. KFC sprang after him like a cannonball.

One chased, one fled.

The first subway marathon of the night had begun.