In the car, Xia Mo lit a cigarette. He caught my eye and narrowed his eyes slightly: "Do I look like someone who doesn't smoke?"
——What I noticed was his lighter, with a pink shell and a word crookedly engraved on it: "Snow".
"Hey, this..." He noticed me looking at it and carefully placed it in his palm, "Xue Ya picked it for me. She liked pink at that time and even engraved something on it with a coin... This is the only one I can use."
"Who is Xueya? A daughter?"
"Hmm. This year... she should be two or three years older than you... 25, maybe." He looked out the window at the rapidly moving scenery, his mind slightly distracted. "It's taking longer and longer to calculate her age... After all, it's been so long."
"What happened to her?"
"The school shooting—she was ten years old at the time, and we were still in the United States. I moved her from Akron to a new city. She'd only been at her new school for two weeks when two high school students armed with submachine guns broke into her elementary school." Xia Mo flicked the lighter. "I was living abroad with three children at the time...Xueya, Xiaoyan, and Xiaojie. Xiaoyan is the Xu Tuo you know."
"Did you take Xu Tuo and the others to meet the real controller of Class L?"
"It's really embarrassing to say this... I dragged my three children around China and the United States for five years just to avoid that man. But after Xueya got into trouble, I took the initiative to look for him." Xia Mo's voice became softer and softer, almost whispering. "I never thought about it before... Xu Tuo even told me that I could hide for the rest of my life, but I surrendered on my own initiative."
——There is something that I have always found magical.
The rest of Class L was bound by a powerful force, bound by rules. However, Xia Mo seemed completely unconstrained by these rules. This privilege even caused Xu Tuo and Jackman to become somewhat liberal.
So what exactly is Class L? Xu Tuo told me that it was established not long ago.
Is it a private organization?
I realized I'd been overthinking something. I'd used the deepest quagmire imaginable to measure the secrets behind Class L, but what if it was just an "experiment"?
It is entirely possible to do this with personal power. Just look at Qi Mengzhu and you will know that when wealth reaches a certain level, if power is added...
The relationship between Xia Mo and the real controller of Class L may be far more complicated than I imagined.
"Xue Ming," his voice called my attention back, "Do you want to join me in wiping out Class L?"
I thought I had heard wrongly.
"—Eradicate Class L and make it disappear completely. Of course, it will be painful, because Xu Tuo and Xiao Jie will also die... I wanted to use You Zili to kill Xu Tuo and the others. I watched the child grow up, and I didn't want him to die in front of my eyes."
"...Why?"
"Because the stage has come. Class L's value as an experiment has ended. A new stage is about to begin, and the past 'experimental records' must be completely erased to prevent them from being discovered."
Is Class L really an experiment?
I thought of Li Fen, the psychologist who proposed the L-Class concept - that is to say, someone really picked up Li Fen's neglected idea of fighting violence with violence and began to experiment with it in the real world.
"I don't care how this experiment with Class L ends," I said. "You know who I care about. Don't worry about erasing the other people in Class L. As for Xu Tuo, we can go talk to him together and reach the best outcome. Xu Tuo will live with me as an ordinary person from now on, and we will never mention this again..."
"—I thought you were past the age of liking fairy tales."
Okay, it seems there is no room for bargaining.
I sneered, "To put it bluntly, you're just worried that your past will be discovered and will harm you. Your killing of those who harmed children wasn't motivated by a desire for prey, but revenge—you've been avenging your daughter for so many years, and you're still not satisfied? Who cares how old your daughter is or what her name is? Your ego is too inflated. Just because you're pretty and get a few compliments, you think everything you do is justified."
Xia Mo was silent for a moment. After a moment, he put out his cigarette in the silver lid of the cigarette case.
"Xu Tuo is a man who... as long as you don't cross his boundaries, no matter how much you mess with him, he won't get angry." He gestured, and the driver stopped the car on the side of the suburban highway, got out of the driver's seat, and opened the door next to me. "But, Xueming, you can't assume that everyone in the world is like this."
The tall driver restrained me effortlessly. I felt a sharp pain in my arm—he had injected the needle into me.
I fell into the back seat, my consciousness quickly blurring. Xia Mo let me rest my head on his lap and combed my hair, which was soaked with cold sweat. As he did so, he sighed in his soft voice, "...I need to teach you a lesson..."
When I woke up again, I was in a completely unfamiliar place.
—Prison cell. This was my first impression of this place.
There were iron-gray cement walls and floors, shabby furniture, and the only light source was the white light bulb above, so that it was almost dark three meters away from the light source.
A staircase led up to an exit above, and the door was locked.
My clothes had been completely changed, leaving me in a sky-blue hospital gown. Worse still, there were iron shackles around my left ankle, the chain extending to the corner of the room.
Is this the lesson he's giving me? Locking me up here?
My first reaction was to see if there were any saw-like objects lying around. This is the kind of reaction you'd expect if you've seen Saw.
No.
My eyes gradually adjusted to the dimness. My shaky consciousness also began to help my hearing recover. There was a signal worse than a saw—I felt like there was another person in this space.
In other words, there are living things.
It was panting, like the growl of a beast before attacking. A dangerous aura came from the dark corner on the left, and I retreated cautiously, but because of the shackles, my hiding place was limited.
Suddenly, a sharp radio wave sounded from above. The noise lasted for a long time before it turned into the sound of someone tapping on the microphone.
"Can you hear me?"
——It's Xia Mo's voice.
Meanwhile, the creature came closer.
"Xueming, this place will be your residence for a while. No matter what, you can't live well with shackles on your ankles. You can't even get food at the door." He chuckled softly, "But the key on your ankle is very close to you. I believe you can find it. However, it's also possible that you will be killed by the key."
Killed by the "key"?
I was thinking about the meaning of this sentence when a familiar figure appeared in the darkness.
I watched him approach in shock. His eyes had rotted away into two dark, wrinkled hollows, and he reeked of a foul odor. He was so thin he looked almost like an alien.
——It's Ji Yuyi.
After being blinded by Xu Tuo, the L squad dealt with him. I thought I would never see him again.
"Simply put, if you kill the other team, you'll have a chance to survive." Xia Mo announced the rules of the game and turned off the radio. At the same time, Ji Yuyi rushed towards me.
Even in this state, Ji Yuyi was a difficult opponent for me. Despite his poor condition, he was still much more powerful than me. I had no idea how long he had been imprisoned; I even suspected he had lost his mind.
"-Where is the key? Is it hidden on you?" I searched for something nearby that could be used as a weapon while trying to steady him. "Give me the key, and we'll find a way out together!"
It backfired. Upon hearing my voice, Ji Yuyi lunged at me frantically. The shackles restricted my range of movement, so I could only fight back, picking up the black plastic box on the table and throwing it at him—I thought it was iron, but it turned out to be plastic. It had no effect at all, and instead only infuriated him further.
The contents of the box were scattered all over the floor. They were all CDs, and none of them were useful.
This room was undoubtedly built as a prison, with tables and chairs welded to the ground and unable to be moved. Just as he was about to launch another attack, a sound from the southeast corner attracted him.
——I threw a CD there.
This person can't see anything and can only rely on hearing sounds.
I tried to distract him with the disc, but it wasn't a long-term solution. Ji Yuyi was experienced in combat, and he quickly felt for the disc in the darkness. Realizing he'd been tricked, he turned around and began searching for me.
In a nearby drawer, I found something that could be used as a weapon. To be honest, the existence of this drawer made me uneasy, as it seemed to be a place where small torture instruments were stored, and some of them had traces of use such as blood scabs on them.
But I found a hammer and a rope inside.
The plan was this: I would replicate the trap I had used to trap Dong Quanming, lure him into the rope loop, make him lose his balance, and then take advantage of the opportunity to attack his head. This way...
"Bang."
The crisp sound of metal hitting the concrete floor rang out and we were all stunned.
--not good.
Before I knew it, I had lost my chance to resist. Ji Yuyi touched the chain extending from my ankle. He quickly understood my situation and tugged at the chain. I was dragged in front of him and was immediately punched in the head.
There is no way!
I shouted something at him. Hearing this, Ji Yuyi paused.
"——Dong Quanming is still alive!" I said.