Foolish Mercy

"Bastard!"

Andrew's near-tearful curse suddenly rang out behind Li Qing. "What have you done?!"

Watching the flames rapidly spread across the ship, seeing the blaze about to ignite the fuel tank, he finally instinctively overcame his fear of that "bald madman."

"Didn't I tell you not to smoke on the boat?!"

"This boat... this boat is going to explode because of you!"

"I know."

"This ship is about to explode."

Li Qing shrugged and replied without changing expression, "So?"

"So?" Andrew had an extremely bad feeling.

"Take care, Captain. Farewell!"

As soon as he spoke, Li Qing turned and leaped into the sea.

The flames quickly followed the trail of leaking gasoline and spread all the way to the yacht's fuel tank.

The vast amount of gasoline stored inside exploded in an instant, and a thunderous boom echoed in every direction.

The steel yacht shattered in the blast wave as easily as fragile paper. Flaming masses of gasoline sprayed outward like scattered blossoms, raining a brief, dazzling, and deadly shower of fiery meteors onto the sea.

By then, Li Qing had already escaped safely underwater. He found a spot untouched by burning oil and surfaced.

The flames on the sea burned ever more fiercely. Split in two by the explosion, the yacht slowly sank beneath the waves.

Looking at the apocalyptic scene, Li Qing instead smiled.

"Good. The plan worked."

"But I haven't gotten the experience yet, which means that guy isn't completely dead."

He turned to look at Squalo, who was covered in burns and grievous wounds, lying helplessly in the speedboat's driver's seat.

"Then..."

"Let me 'do him a little favor.'"

With that thought in mind, Li Qing swiftly swam toward the half-dead Squalo.

But at that moment, heart-wrenching cries came from the wrecked yacht behind him, which was about to sink.

"Help! Help me!"

Andrew clung to the yacht's shattered railing, sobbing uncontrollably, his eyes full of fear and despair.

All around him was a sea of fire floating on fuel, while the broken yacht beneath his feet was about to sink amid the flames.

He had nowhere to run and nowhere to hide. He could only laboriously shift his fat body, retreating again and again toward the bow, where there was no hope of survival, driven back by the heat and firelight.

"Oh..."

"So he isn't dead yet."

Li Qing's expression remained utterly indifferent—

From the very beginning, he had never considered protecting Andrew's life.

On one hand, the ship had gone up in flames too quickly. He truly had no time to turn back and take Andrew into the sea with him.

And on the other hand...

He had never regarded Andrew as a "person."

Whether it was Amor and Diavolo from before, or Andrew and Squalo now, everyone in this world, in Li Qing's eyes after awakening his data-based abilities and casting himself as a player character, was not, strictly speaking, someone equal to him, but rather—

NPCs.

NPCs were not people, so he could kill them without hesitation.

People did not remember how many pieces of bread they had eaten. And for a gamer, who would remember how many minions had died in front of them?

"Good luck."

"I still need to finish him off and claim the reward."

Ignoring Andrew's desperate wails, Li Qing continued swimming toward Squalo.

Yet those heart-wrenching pleas for help still echoed across the sea.

"Save me, please... save me!"

"I want to go home."

"God... no, Mom, I want to go home."

This middle-aged fat man, at least forty years old, called for his mother in the most pathetic way.

As the flames and increasingly scorching heat closed in, Li Qing swam farther and farther away, while Andrew's cries grew weaker and weaker.

Then, he stopped screaming in despair.

The world fell quiet. Only the roaring hot wind stirred up by the flames continued to howl over the sea.

"Damn it."

Ripples appeared in Li Qing's calm expression.

"Why are you yelling? You're making so much noise!"

"Fatty, wait until I get back. I'll shut you up!"

He suddenly stopped moving away and turned back toward the yacht that was about to sink.

At this moment, the yacht was already surrounded by a sea of flames.

Li Qing had no other choice but to rely on his pain-immune data-based body and forcibly carve a path through the fire.

The flames devoured his body, causing the health he had left after the battle—barely half—to plummet.

Finally, when his health dropped to only 5%, Li Qing forced his way through the flames, returned to the yacht, and dragged the despairing Andrew, who had been waiting to die, to safety.

"Thank you."

"Thank you, Mr. Baldy!"

Andrew hugged Li Qing's leg and cried out incoherently.

Although he knew full well that this bald man was entirely responsible for what had happened to him today, he also knew that Li Qing had had absolutely no reason to risk his life to save him just now.

For a good person, this would not even count as doing a good deed; he would still have to be held accountable for blowing up the ship and endangering people.

But if such a deed were attributed to Li Qing, this "bald mafia man," it would already be a moving story on the level of instant sainthood.

So Andrew now seemed to have developed Stockholm syndrome. He regarded Li Qing as his savior, as the kind of morally ambiguous, respected underworld hero from the movies.

He sincerely thanked Li Qing, but Li Qing only answered coldly.

"Don't waste time!"

"This ship is about to sink. There's another speedboat over there. Swim over with me, now."

"Yes, yes!"

Andrew nodded gratefully and obediently followed Li Qing toward the speedboat where Squalo was not far away.

As they swam, he suddenly stared blankly at Li Qing's back.

"Huh?"

"Mr. Baldy, why is there a..."

"Green box floating above your head?"

The speedboat Squalo had taken was not far away to begin with. Li Qing and Andrew quickly crossed the short distance of several dozen meters.

And Squalo still seemed not to have awakened from his grievous injuries and unconsciousness.

His entire body was covered in burns that were impossible to distinguish between black and dark red. He lay dazed on the speedboat, which looked like a coffin.

"Still unconscious?"

Li Qing cautiously stopped ten meters away from the speedboat.

After observing for a moment, he turned and instructed Andrew beside him.

"Stay here and don't swim around. I'll call you over once I've confirmed it's safe."

Andrew obediently nodded. Li Qing left him behind and reached the speedboat in just a breath or two.

But at that moment...

Squalo, lying on the boat like an over-grilled dead pig, suddenly opened his eyes, whose eyelids had been burned black and charred.

His eyes overflowed with pain, as well as killing intent as violent as fire and as cold as ice.

"Li Qing, you finally came."

Squalo rasped in a low roar through his ruined throat.

"You shouldn't have given me the chance."

"If you had come over and taken my life right away, I might not have had a chance to resist."

"But you insisted on saving that useless fat man. Not only did you give me time to recover my focus, you also burned through your own 'health' to this extent in that sea of fire."

Looking at the red health bar over Li Qing's head, which was not even at 10%, he struggled to reveal a victorious smile.

"Ha ha ha..."

"Because of your foolish mercy, in the end... in the end, I still won!"

"Go!"

Squalo endured the agonizing pain of his burns and unleashed the last trace of mental energy he could still command.

"This is my last Stand—Impact!"

The giant shark appeared again!

Its enormous twenty-meter-long body instantly emerged above the sea, sending white waves soaring into the sky the moment it appeared.

The next second, that mountain-heavy body would crash down from above onto Li Qing.

Faced with such a wide-ranging attack, like Mount Tai bearing down on him, he had nowhere to escape.

Echoes Act required Sonically Enhanced Wave to successfully mark a target before it could achieve high-speed movement. It was already too late to think of using it now.

"I won. I won."

"I can still make it to the lunch I arranged with Dichano!"

Squalo's eyes widened, an indescribable light gleaming within them.

However, at that moment...

That infuriatingly calm expression appeared on Li Qing's face again.

"Sorry."

"I need to correct you on one point. My foolish mercy was not entirely without reward."

"At the very least..."

"That useless fat man you mentioned is already my 'teammate.'"

As soon as he finished speaking, his body transformed into wind and lightning, dashing rapidly toward Andrew, who was far beyond Impact's attack range.

"Golden Bell Shield!"