Chapter 849: Setting an Ambush
That first swing clearly wasn’t full force, but a carefully measured strike. So after getting hit with that stick, the pimply guy just felt dizzy and disoriented, stumbling around in place for a few steps before collapsing unconscious on the ground.
After he hit the ground unconscious, his phone also fell onto the concrete floor.
He hadn’t caught it.
“Tch, my phone!”
The sunny cheerful guy quickly stepped forward and picked up the phone that had slipped from his hand.
After picking it up, he inspected it thoroughly. Finding everything intact, not even a crack on the screen, he immediately breathed a sigh of relief.
“That scared me…”
“Good thing it’s not broken.”
The sunny cheerful guy put the phone back into his pants pocket, then looked at the unconscious pimply guy on the ground, as well as the Stalker who had attacked him.
“Kaiyu, I realize you’ve got way better control over your strength than I do—knowing exactly how much force to use to knock someone out! If it were me, I’d probably have hit him so hard he’d be both unconscious and bleeding from the head.”
The Stalker was none other than Huang Kaiyu.
The sunny cheerful guy was Huo Yun.
Huang Kaiyu didn’t feel much joy from the compliment. Instead, he sighed: “I’m just experienced from practice, that’s all. I like making those people who abuse cats and dogs watch their own deaths, so I’ve definitely put some thought into knocking people unconscious.”
After the two knocked the pimply guy out, one lifted his shoulders and the other lifted his feet, carrying him to the very edge—a spot only faintly lit by a sliver of light. They placed him there, then used a black cloth bag they had prepared in advance to cover his entire head.
After that, they tied up his hands and feet with that hemp rope.
Huo Yun suddenly slapped his forehead: “Look at my memory!”
Then Huo Yun pulled a ragged rag out of his pocket, removed the black cloth bag from the pimply guy’s head, and stuffed the rag into his mouth.
After securing it, he put the black cloth bag back over his head.
“Now there’s no way he’ll make a sound.”
Huo Yun clapped his hands in satisfaction.
Seeing this, Huang Kaiyu, standing nearby, was clearly feeling unsettled. He said worriedly: “Are you sure we should really do this? Use some random person to lure out the mastermind who sent me that letter, then take him out. Instead of actually catching a lab rat to settle this storm?”
It turned out that Huang Kaiyu, after much deliberation, had told Huo Yun about the two pieces of white paper.
After hearing the full story, Huo Yun was first shocked. He really hadn’t expected something like this to happen to Huang Kaiyu. Of course, he also understood why the person who ambushed Huang Kaiyu hadn’t killed him.
So the choice was: hand over ten cats and dogs, which would almost certainly be tortured to death, and then possibly face endless blackmail in the future?
Or hand over one lab rat, cut ties for good, and never be extorted again?
Huo Yun chose option three.
Kill the bastard.
What the hell, who do you think you are? Threatening my brother?
When Huo Yun first learned about those two pieces of white paper, he started missing The Artist. He thought that if The Artist were still around, with his criminal group of dozens of people, just a word to him would have been enough. That kind of pretentious, shady bastard could have been found quickly and diced into pieces.
How was it like now, where they were outnumbered and had to do everything themselves?
At this moment, Huo Yun looked at Huang Kaiyu, whose mood was clearly unstable.
He patted his shoulder reassuringly.
Huo Yun thought to himself: Sure enough, most people fit that saying—when you’re directly involved, you’re trapped in the situation. You’re bound to be affected, unable to analyze things as calmly and objectively as an outsider.
Huang Kaiyu was obviously affected.
And what Huo Yun found truly bizarre was that Huang Kaiyu wasn’t really afraid of dying. He was afraid that after he died, his large group of stray cats and dogs would die en masse without anyone to care for them.
He cared more about the lives of those cats and dogs than his own.
Worry breeds chaos; concern leads to disorder.
Huo Yun and Huang Kaiyu found a small cart, placed the pimply guy on it curled up, then covered the cart—and the guy—with a large cloth to conceal him. Finally, they pulled the cart toward the library at Alice Apartment.
According to the second piece of white paper’s instructions, the delivery point was in the middle of the library’s first floor.
The two pulled the cart along a route that was relatively hidden, deliberately avoiding others. They didn’t run into anyone on the way and reached the back door of the library, entering from there.
After entering from the back door, they didn’t pull the cart inside. Instead, they left it outside. Just like before, one lifted his shoulders and the other lifted his feet, carrying him into the first floor.
The first floor of Alice’s library.
It was pretty much like the first floor of any ordinary library: divided into categorized sections, rows upon rows of tall bookshelves filled with all kinds of books.
The first floor of the library was eerily quiet, as if no one was there.
Visibility on the first floor was very low. Since the lights were off, only a little light filtered in through the windows on that floor, but that wasn’t enough to illuminate everything. The further toward the center, the darker it got.
The center of the library’s first floor.
Nothing was placed there.
Just a small open area.
After placing the pimply guy there, the two silently disappeared back into the shadows.
…
“Damn, this apartment complex is seriously impressive—it’s even got a shooting range! And they provide all kinds of bows, crossbows, and arrows too.”
“Too bad there’s no guns.”
At the shooting range.
Three of the fourteen people—two men and one woman—were here.
The one speaking was a guy with silver-dyed hair among the two men and one woman.
This guy probably had zero self-awareness and an inflated ego, because one prerequisite for dyeing your hair silver is having pale facial skin. His face was definitely on the darker side among Hua Country people.
Yet he’d dyed his hair silver. The jarring contrast was hard to describe.
Still, he must have cherished that silver hair dearly, because judging by how freely it swayed and flowed when he casually tossed his head, he clearly washed it every day.
“Ha, guns? If there were guns in here, we probably wouldn’t even have been allowed in.”
The other guy among the two men and one woman had purple-dyed hair.
And his hair was pretty long.
It strongly resembled those male characters in Cherry Blossom Country anime with long purple hair.
For example, Atsushi Murasakibara from *Kuroko’s Basketball*, one of the Generation of Miracles.
This purple-haired guy probably used that anime character as a reference when styling his hair.
Of course, the hairstyle was done, but paired with his face and height, the result was a bit… underwhelming.
“Ha, I’ve never even shot a gun before! I wonder when I’ll get to fire a real one! I also wonder if there are any shooting ranges in our country where you can actually shoot real guns?!”
The girl among the two men and one woman spoke up.
This girl had long pink hair.
There was also a black tattoo on her right thigh—unclear what it was.
Her hairstyle was clearly also based on a reference.
Momo Sakurai from *Kuroko’s Basketball*—the department manager of the Generation of Miracles.