The sleazy man's friends seethed, veins popping on their foreheads, but none dared open their mouths under Boss Li's watch. His expression was calm, but the faint frown at his lips made them silently rejoice.
Good. He'll expel her. She's finished.
They fantasized about the humiliations they would heap on her once Boss Li tossed her aside.
But then — Boss Li spoke.
"How old are you?"
Scarface flashed a mischievous smile, her boot still twisting lazily atop the broken man's ruined manhood.
"Sweet twenty, Boss Li."
Twenty.
The ugly freak was twenty.
The crowd of hardened killers twitched as if someone had spat in their mouths.
The middle-aged ones looked personally offended, their faces green.
Even Boss Li's expression wavered — his mouth twitching imperceptibly, eyes narrowing with a razor glint.
The sleazy man's friends froze, stunned. Where was the punishment? The reprimand? The expulsion? Why was the Big Boss asking her age?!
Where is the justice?! Their hearts screamed.
On the ground, the sleazy man stirred, eyes fluttering open, blood dripping from his mouth. He tried to speak, rage and humiliation boiling inside him.
"You—"
That single word left his lips—before his body convulsed again and he vomited another litre of blood, collapsing into unconsciousness.
"Follow me." Boss Li's tone was calm, clipped, and unquestionable. His gaze swept once over Scarface before he turned, striding toward the stairway without looking back.
Scarface tilted her head, then trailed behind him like a shadow, her boots leaving dirty prints across the polished floor.
Boss Li did not pause as he spoke to the man in spectacles who had been standing at his side all along.
"Begin the trial. Eliminate the useless."
The assistant bowed slightly, expression unchanged.
"Understood, Sir."
His voice was flat, but the gleam of his silver-rimmed glasses caught the light like the edge of a blade. He turned on his heel, surveying the restless, hungry crowd as if measuring cattle.
His gaze flickered once toward the scarred, ragged figure trailing behind his superior. For a fleeting second, his lips tightened—as though restraining the urge to wrinkle his nose—then he turned, facing the bloodthirsty crowd as if nothing unusual had happened.
At his gesture, rows of masked men armed to the teeth emerged from the tall building. Their synchronized steps struck the ground like drums, and the arena fell abruptly silent.
The sleazy man, broken and smeared in dirt, was dragged away by the guards like a sack of spoiled meat. Not a soul pitied him.
Then the shouting began again. The first elimination round was brutal: fists against flesh, knees against shins, bodies crashing to the sand. The air grew heavy with the roar of violence, the scent of blood and sweat rising like incense to the gods of carnage.
But Scarface didn't even glance back. She followed Boss Li up to the second floor, humming an off-key tune as if she'd just left a carnival, not a blood-soaked pit.
Her gaze lingered on the tall, straight-backed man in front of her, her wide eyes glittering with something unreadable.
Her wide, unblinking eyes locked onto the straight, unyielding back of the man ahead of her who marched with a poised and firm gait. There was amusement in her gaze, like a child staring at a fond toy.
The second floor opened into a study. In stark contrast to the blood-soaked sandpit below, this room radiated calm sophistication. Ancient Chinese furnishings filled the space: sandalwood low tables, cushions, lacquered shelves heavy with scrolls. An exquisite silver incense burner at the corner exhaled faint trails of sandalwood smoke, mingling serenity with power.
A jade calligraphy set sat untouched on a low desk near the window, its brushes pristine, its ink stone smooth from frequent use. Behind it rested an elongated chair, its brown cushion softened by years of careful sitting.
At the center stood a porcelain tea set, white as bone, painted with thin, deliberate strokes of bamboo leaves.
Boss Li took his seat without flourish. He gestured silently for Scarface to sit opposite him.
She flopped onto the cushion, all lazy grace and dirty boots, but when he poured tea into her cup, she lifted it with the poise of a princess—wrist delicate, gaze unblinking, lips brushing porcelain as if it were ritual.
Her scarred mouth curled into something sly.
"Good tea."
Boss Li watched her in silence, his calm face betraying nothing.
Scarface's smile widened, eyes glinting like a cat's in candlelight.
"Shame it isn't poisoned. I was hoping you'd test me properly."
The incense smoke coiled in the still air. The violence outside raged on, but here—between Boss Li and Scarface—the real battle had only just begun.
Boss Li lifted the porcelain cup with steady hands, the faint wisp of steam curling into the dim air. His gaze lingered on the disfigured girl across from him—her scarred face softened oddly by the way she savored the tea with an elegance far too natural, too ingrained, for someone who lived in blood and dust. A gleam flickered in his eyes.
"A friend gave it to me," Boss Li said calmly, his voice measured, heavy as a blade resting flat. "Only ten tins of these leaves exist each year."
Scarface tilted her head, her dark pupils glimmering faintly. "Good stuff. My old man would've liked it." Something sharp flashed in her eyes—there and gone in a heartbeat—before she slouched back into her careless posture, all mockery and indolence.
The words slipped too easily, yet her expression shifted an instant later, shuttered, indifferent—as though even she had forgotten what she'd just confessed.
Boss Li's gaze sharpened. His hand, hidden under the sandalwood table, coiled into a claw, tendons straining, ready to crush bone. His voice was steel drawn slow from its sheath.
"Now… why are you here?"
Scarface chuckled softly, the sound thin, hollow, almost childlike in its cadence. "Why else? To join the finest bodyguard team under Boss Li. Where else would a little stray like me go?"
His eyes narrowed, unblinking, reading every fracture in her words.
"Little girl," Boss Li murmured, sipping again, each motion precise, deliberate. "I'm afraid my humble house cannot accommodate a tiger that hides in kitten's skin."