Dying with Eyes Open X Do Not Kill the Messenger X Carrying a Lantern into the Latrine

By the time Jiang Ye's voice died away in the tin shack, Bo Tong's head had just stopped rolling.

The head struck the side of an old wooden crate in the corner with a dull thud, then tilted to one side, face up and eyes open.

The killing intent, anger, unwillingness, and terror of that final instant had all frozen deep in those eyes, like a frame paused on a screen, never to move again.

He had died with his eyes wide open!

Iron Wall stood two steps away, his right hand still held in the position it had taken after delivering the slap.

He stared at the head that had rolled into the corner, his Adam's apple bobbing for an instant. He stood as if nailed to the spot, filled with disbelief.

He had thought a slap would be the end of it.

In Meteor City, clashes between gangs had their own limits.

Slapping an envoy was an insult, a show of force, a way of telling the other side, "I'm not afraid of you."

But the line was usually drawn between bodily injury and death. Once crossed, the nature of the matter changed entirely.

Do not kill the messenger!

Those words weren't a rule written down in Meteor City, but any faction with a little sense followed them by unspoken agreement.

Because if you killed the other side's envoy today, they would kill yours tomorrow.

If you crossed that line today, everyone on the other side of it would stop giving you any room tomorrow.

This unspoken rule protected not any one person, but the tenuous channels of communication between all the factions in Meteor City.

And now, Jiang Ye had torn down that channel with his own hands.

Iron Wall's gaze shifted from Bo Tong's head to Jiang Ye.

The twelve-year-old boy was still standing where he had been, his hands hanging at his sides, fingertips pointed down.

Divine Dog: Totality crouched in the shadows at his feet, his black-and-white fur slowly receding into the shadows until only a barely perceptible outline remained.

His expression was calm, as if he had just casually swatted a moth to death.

Iron Wall opened his mouth, wanting to say something, but in the end he couldn't squeeze out a single word.

But he knew why Jiang Ye had done it.

Bo Tong had been too arrogant.

From the moment he entered the shack, he had never once acted like an envoy.

He had crossed his legs on the Rust Remains Alliance's turf, disparaged the camp, invoked Nubia to cow them, and finally said to Jiang Ye's face that the entire Rust Remains Alliance would be destroyed.

That wasn't negotiation. It was an ultimatum delivered in public!

A real threat!

He had completely forgotten that he was merely an envoy, with neither a blade nor soldiers at his disposal. All he had to rely on was the person backing him.

In Meteor City, invoking your backer to intimidate others only worked if you could stand on your own feet.

But Bo Tong hadn't even managed to stand properly. He had looked down his nose at them from beginning to end.

He was the kind of person who carried a lantern into the latrine.

Looking for shit-and death!

Iron Wall turned the phrase over in his mind and, for some reason, found it fitting.

Just then, the door was suddenly shoved open.

Gray Beak rushed in first, still clutching the dagger he hadn't had time to put away. Its edge bore scratches from training.

When he entered, he didn't look at Jiang Ye first. Instead, he instinctively scanned the floor in front of him.

The head was still tilted in the corner, blood spreading from the severed neck across the floor into a small, damp, dark-red patch.

At the sight, Gray Beak came to an abrupt halt.

His pupils contracted, and the tip of his dagger hovered beside his leg for half a second.

Shattered Eye followed close behind.

He was a beat slower than Gray Beak, but when he rushed through the door, his pale-eyed face still bore the taut ferocity of standing guard outside.

But when his gaze landed on the head, the expression on his face froze as if someone had slammed a pause button.

The ferocity hadn't faded before shock surged up.

The two expressions overlapped, making his face look as if it had been pulled in two.

He recognized Bo Tong.

The dark-gray uniform coat was exactly the same as the one he had seen when Bo Tong came in.

But the body wrapped in that coat had collapsed on the floor, its head in the corner, its open eyes facing the shack's ceiling.

"..."

Gray Beak's dagger slipped from his fingers, its tip striking the sheet-metal floor with a clear clang.

Shattered Eye's Adam's apple bobbed, and the fingers gripping the doorframe bent out of shape from the force.

The two exchanged a glance.

They saw the same things in each other's eyes.

Shock, dazed confusion, and an almost instinctive disbelief!

The Dawn Society's envoy had been killed?!

The Dawn Society.

The Dawn Society of the Fifth District, with over a thousand people, three leaders, and twelve standard-bearers.

And now, its envoy had just had his head cut off on the Rust Remains Alliance's turf.

For several seconds, the shack fell silent.

Gray Beak was the first to recover.

His gaze left the head and quickly swept over Iron Wall's expression, then Jiang Ye's posture, before finally settling on the floor beside the head.

The blood hadn't dried yet, which meant the death had occurred very recently-so recently that they hadn't even heard much of a commotion while patrolling outside.

"What happened?"

Gray Beak asked cautiously.

He didn't ask who had killed him, because beside the head, the last traces of Divine Dog: Totality's fading shadow still lingered at Jiang Ye's feet.

He didn't even need to look to know who had done it.

He was asking what had happened.

Iron Wall took a deep breath, suppressing the emotions churning in his chest, and began to speak.

He didn't speak quickly, but he focused on the important points.

Everything Bo Tong had said after entering, from disparaging the shack to invoking the Dawn Society, from the killing intent on his face after that slap to the words about facing Nubia's wrath.

And then Jiang Ye's hand shadow fell, and Divine Dog: Totality leaped out.

He recounted it all exactly as it had happened, without embellishing anything or covering up anything for Jiang Ye.

When Gray Beak finished listening, his fists clenched involuntarily.

First, a wave of anger he couldn't suppress surfaced on his face.

"An envoy?"

"Someone like that can be called an envoy?"

He turned to glance at the head in the corner, its eyes still open in death, and a note of almost vindicated satisfaction entered his voice.

"To stand on someone else's turf and tell them to their faces that you're going to wipe them out... If it were me, I'd want to cut him down too."

Shattered Eye said nothing, but throughout Iron Wall's account, his pale eyes had remained fixed on the head in the corner.

His lips pressed into a line. Only after Iron Wall finished did he look away and turn his gaze back to Jiang Ye.

There was no reproach or fear in his eyes, only a complicated mix of agreement and gravity.

Bo Tong's conduct had indeed shown no regard for them.

If this had been the Rust Bone Gang of the past, with some forty people, cold weapons, and battered guns with fewer than six bullets between them, they could only have swallowed the abuse even if someone cursed them to their faces.

But things were different now.

The Rust Bone Gang had transformed into the Rust Remains Alliance.

A hundred and fifty people, the combined enterprises of three factions, tin shields, Molotov cocktails, tactical divisions of labor, and Jiang Ye holding down the fort.

It was already a major faction they could hold their heads high about.

Granted, it was still weak on the inside, its foundations still thin, and it lagged far behind an established faction like the Dawn Society, which had been rooted here for more than a decade.

But it was no longer something just anyone could mock and threaten at will.

Bo Tong's mistake was that he had judged something new by old standards.

He thought the Rust Remains Alliance was still that shabby gang under Dodge.

But he didn't know that the gang's foundation had already been replaced.

Satisfying as it was, silence eventually fell.

The three stood in the shack as if most of the air had been sucked out, even their breathing slow and heavy.

Iron Wall was the first to lower his head and look at the tips of his boots.

Gray Beak's dagger was still lying on the floor, but he didn't bend down to pick it up.

Shattered Eye looked away from Jiang Ye, toward the gray daylight outside the window.

A bloody fact hung over everyone's heads.

Bo Tong was dead!

The Dawn Society's envoy was dead, and Nubia would never turn a blind eye.

The last time Tie Liao died in District 13, Nubia had already sent an envoy to "invite" Jiang Ye over.

Now that the envoy himself had died here, none of the three dared imagine how fiercely that anger would burn.

Gray Beak was the first to speak of it.

"Alliance leader."

He took half a step forward and stopped three paces in front of Jiang Ye, lowering his head slightly.

"What... should we do next?"