After browsing the mall, Zhang Hongxing picked a random roadside restaurant and sat down.
It was a Sichuan Noodle Shop that brought out every bit of the numbing heat, spice, aroma, and savory flavor of its food. Zhang Hongxing thoroughly enjoyed his perfectly ordinary bowl of Chongqing Xiaomian.
While Zhang Hongxing ate, nearly all four tables in the little shop filled with customers. Someone sat opposite him, too—a man of about thirty.
The man wore a suit, and his hair was neatly styled and glossy. People dressed like that in roadside noodle shops were usually salesmen.
By then, the man had almost finished his noodles.
He took out his phone, scanned the QR code on the wall beside him, and paid.
Then he stood up and headed outside.
If that had been all there was to it, Zhang Hongxing would not have kept watching him.
What had really caught Zhang Hongxing's attention was a strange smell coming from the man. Curious, he slurped down the rest of his noodles in a few mouthfuls and followed him outside.
Naturally, the man did not notice Zhang Hongxing.
He walked on in silence, his pace a little faster than most people's. Before long, he reached a hotel and charged through its entrance, pulling something from inside his clothes as he ran.
It was a knife, an ordinary fruit knife.
The man's targets were a man and a woman seated in the hotel's lobby bar. When they saw him charging toward them with the fruit knife, both looked alarmed, but they quickly regained their composure.
"Lin Hai, do you know what you're doing?"
The seated man shouted at the man holding the fruit knife. Clearly, they knew each other.
"Wang Fangquan, you bastard! I'm going to stab you to death today!"
"Over a school