"Do you know who I am?" I demanded.
"I don't, but I know that the people you offended must hate you very much! Injustice has its perpetrator, and debt its creditor so don’t blame us for this!"
His underling threw a small bag containing a pill. Pointing to the pill, Big Baldy said, "After taking this, you won't feel any pain. I, the Wolf King, am a decent guy, eh?"
"The Wolf King?" Song Shichao looked astonished. "You’re the wanted criminal who killed more than a dozen policemen?"
"Haha,” laughed the Wolf King. “I never expected to be recognized in a small town like this! Ah, but heroes don’t rehash their past glories! That was all in the past."
It turned out that this man was a notorious wanted criminal throughout Fujian which explained why I had never heard of him.
"Let me see the hostages!" I said.
The Wolf King snapped his fingers, and his underlings immediately stepped aside, exposing a middle-aged couple in the cellar who both had a knife to their necks.
"Dad! Mom!" shouted the waitress.
Judging from the waiter's expression, she wasn’t in cahoots with these people. The hostage situation was real.
After showing us their faces, the hostages were taken back down. What a complicated situation indeed! There was no way we could save them even with Song Xingchen’s abilities.
Upon further contemplation, I turned to Song Xingchen, "Your knifework is impeccable. Remove my radius and send me to the hospital immediately. We can still save my arm!"
The forearm had two long bones, namely the ulna and radius. If the radius was removed, the hand could no longer exert strength which was essentially a disability.
"No!” protested Song Xingchen. “I won't allow you to do this."
“Should we watch them kill the hostages then?" I argued.
Song Xingchen replied indifferently, "I don't care about some stranger’s life. It is my duty to protect you."
Raising his sword, Song Xingchen shouted at the gang, "Listen up, let us go now, or I’ll kill all of you!"
A sinister smile rose to the Wolf King’s lips, "Cut off an ear!"
A woman's scream sounded from below, then a bloody ear was thrown up and landed on the floor.
“Mom!” The waitress shouted at the top of her voice.
As I had expected, the Wolf King was a ruthless one. The woman's ceaseless wailing worried me but I knew Song Xingchen couldn’t watch me get hurt.
The Wolf King arrogantly held out five fingers, "You two seem to disagree. I'll give you five minutes to discuss this. When the time is up, I'll cut off a tongue."
When Song Xingchen pulled out his sword, the gang reciprocated by flashing their weapons. Two of them had homemade guns.
“Look, it’ll only take me a second to kill you but I’ve been very polite!" said the Wolf King.
A thought suddenly crossed my mind. Since the madman wanted my radius, the sniper and gangsters who had targeted us before could have killed me and then removed the bone, but they didn't do that.
Did the madman specifically ask for my bone and not my life?
As time went by, the entire restaurant remained in a tense atmosphere. My throat became dry from nervousness. Suddenly, an off-road vehicle pulled up outside the restaurant. As soon as the Wolf King caught a glimpse of the vehicle, the look in his eyes changed drastically.
The next second, three grenade-like objects were thrown into the restaurant, filling the room with smoke. Taking advantage of the panic, Song Xingchen charged towards the gangsters and slashed twice, severing two of the gangster’s arms. Blood spurted from their wounds, drawing an arc in the air.
"Asshole!" cursed the Wolf King as he pulled out a pair of guns from his belt and pointed them at Song Xingchen. Dropping down to the ground, Song Xingchen deftly dodged and rolled to the cellar. From below came the shrieks of the Wolf King’s underlings.
The smoke grew thicker and thicker, causing uncontrollable coughing. It turned out that those weren’t grenades but smoke bombs.
“Uncle, run!" shouted Sing Sichao.
The Wolf King's men fled outside one after the other. There seemed to be some sort of commotion outside. All I saw was the men in the frontmost collapsing to the ground and a bloody mist spraying forth from their bodies like a morbid fountain. This time, the people after me were using light machine guns.
My discovery shocked me. In fact, gun control in our country had always been the most severe in the world. How did these men obtain light machine guns? Were they smuggled in from the border via special channels?
It would make perfect sense if the weapons were smuggled in from the border. In 1992, an all-out anti-drug campaign swept the country. At the time, assuming that the operation wouldn’t spread to such a remote location like a village in Pingyuan, Yunnan Province, every household there made money from the sale of drugs. In order to resist counter-narcotics police, they dug deep trenches and smuggled a large number of arms from the Sino-Vietnamese border to arm themselves, including heavy weapons such as light machine guns, rocket artillery and mortars. In the end, the Ministry of Public Security dispatched three thousand armed officers. After more than fifty days and nights of fighting, the evil drug lords were annihilated, restoring peace to Pingyuan. However, a few remnants went underground and continued to engage in arms trading. This operation was known as the Pingyuan Incident, which was eventually made into a TV series.
At the moment, I didn’t have the liberty of further contemplation. Crouching down, I stuck to the bottom of the wall to avoid the oncoming bullets.
Right then, something suddenly flew in through the thick smoke–a severed hand. Song Shichao shivered with fear. A few seconds later, Song Xingchen nimbly rolled over to our side, his face stained with blood. "The hostages are safe! But the Wolf King has fled."
I thought I heard the sound of glass breaking. The Wolf King must have escaped through the window.
"The Wolf King used to be a criminal gunman. He was involved in a gunfight with a dozen policemen on the main road, causing a sensational incident known as the May 23rd Shooting. Many people think he’s dead, but that’s obviously not true!" remarked Song Sichao.
"I don't care about the Wolf King’s past,” I snapped. “I just want to know who the hell is sadistic enough to offer a reward for my radius. What is he going to do with my bone? Make soup?"
"Only the Jiangbei Daggers would do such a thing!" said Song Xingchen.
I believed that was entirely possible. The criminals in that organization were all strange, to say the least. Each and every one of them had a distinct personality that set them apart as individuals. Perhaps this time, I was dealing with a pervert who liked collecting bones.
The gunfire finally stopped and the smoke in the restaurant had almost dispersed. The floor was littered with corpses. Three of them had their throats slit by Song Xingchen while the rest were shot to death. The walls were riddled with bullet holes and blood, much like a scene from an American movie.
Footsteps sounded from outside. Whoever it was seemed to be wearing boots. The man paused at the door and an object fell to the ground–he was reloading his gun.
Song Xingchen suddenly charged towards the man. The sound of the blade hitting metal reverberated in the room. Song Sichao and I looked up to see a tall, muscular man going head to head with Song Xingchen! The man’s strong, ripped body reminded me of an action star. He wore aviator sunglasses and a beret, a black T-shirt over his scarred body, with a pair of karambits in his hands.
After several blows, Song Xingchen managed to slice a long wound along the man’s arm. However, the man remained indifferent, without so much as a wrinkle in his brows. His hands continued their nimble movements as if pain wasn’t part of his vocabulary.
Completely defenseless, he continued approaching Song Xingchen. Very quickly, several bloody wounds appeared on his body. But even Song Xingchen was uninterested in such a desperate battle. During the fight, he shouted, "The two of you should go! I’ll be right with you!"
"Alright, be careful," I cautioned.
With that, Song Shichao and I ran out of the restaurant. Halfway through, the man threw a karambit at us. Fortunately, Song Shichao reacted quickly, dragging me away so the karambit was embedded into a tree instead.
We ran up the street for some time before stopping to catch our breath. Suddenly, I noticed that the tree on the side of the road was shaped rather strangely.
As it turned out, there was a man standing in front of the tree in camouflage. He was stark naked, having painted himself to resemble the tree bark. A silver glint flashed from the thin pipe in his mouth. I pushed Song Shichao away at once.
The needle from the pipe struck a few millimeters away from Song Shichao. Before I could rejoice at avoiding yet another attack, I felt a sting on my neck–the man’s needle pricked my skin!