When I realized that it was Xu Tuo's voice, I immediately ran towards the door almost as a conditioned reflex.
Xia Mo raised his gun and pointed it at me: "Xue Ming, come back."
His voice was so soft that Xu Tuo probably couldn't hear it.
Because I didn't answer immediately, Xu Tuo stopped talking. He realized that this was a door that couldn't be opened without a key, so he was thinking about the various possibilities inside.
The delivery window is about seven centimeters high and close to the ground. Due to the angle, you can't see what's going on inside from there.
I have to open the door.
Xia Mo went to get the gun, but he didn't care about the body on the ground. Brook must have the key on him.
I was closer to the body.
Considering the micro-pistol's penetrating power and accuracy, I decided to take a risk - I rushed towards the corpse, lifted it up with all my strength, and blocked it in front of me like a shield. The muzzle of the gun trembled, but Xia Mo didn't shoot in the end.
The key was found in my pocket. I threw it towards the delivery port and yelled to Xu Tuo, "Xia Mo is going to kill you!"
A hand reached in from the delivery port, fumbled around for a few seconds, and stole the key. Soon, the heavy iron door opened with a sharp friction sound, and two figures emerged from the dim entrance.
I don't know the exact length of time I've been imprisoned here. In my endless despair, I've thought countless times that he would appear. It was the same in the past. Even if a situation required a head-on confrontation, as long as Xu Tuo was there, things would always be turned around.
Now that he's actually here, I struggle to reconcile this face with the person I remember—his features haven't changed, but he looks dusty and worn, like a wild animal traversing the jungle. I feel a certain strangeness about Xu Tuo like this, as if I'm looking at a robot that hasn't yet been covered in bionic human skin.
Jackman came with him. I didn't recognize him at first—he had changed even more. He was wearing ordinary everyday clothes, his short silver hair had been dyed black and made longer, and his face, completely without makeup, looked very handsome. Perhaps to conceal his identity, he wore glasses, looking as refined as a college boy.
"What's going on here?" No matter who it was, the scene in the prison was very bizarre. I was wearing prison clothes and holding a corpse with a headshot, and Xia Mo was holding a gun in his hand... Even Xu Tuo needed some time to digest this weird scene.
Seeing the tools in his hands, I roughly understood how the two of them had just dealt with those bodyguards. The chains of the two chainsaws were still dripping with sticky blood, and Ajie was frowning as he cleaned half of his finger that was stuck in the chain.
"——Brooke wanted to clean up Class L, so Xueming and I were brought here. Xueming is in a very bad condition." Xia Mo actually spoke first, looking relieved. "What about you? How's the situation outside?"
"About a month ago, the rest of the L class was cleared out, and the rest were exposed to the police," Xu Tuo said lightly. But the exposure of Jackman's identity alone would likely be enough to cause a major uproar. "Xueming, that person is..."
"He wants to kill you!" I knew I was talking nonsense, but there was nothing I could do. "He has a gun!"
Xia Mo walked towards me: "Xue Ming, calm down. You shot and killed Brooke, and I took the gun just to calm you down..."
"I'm calm!"
The hoarse tone of the words sounded unconvincing. Ajie sighed: "Did he get drugged?"
"Xu Tuo, I'm not crazy! It was Xia Mo who brought me here, and he was the one who led the elimination of Class L!"
A horrifying truth lay before us—on one side was me, looking haggard and mentally ill, and on the other was Xia Mo, the man who had raised them. This incident was like a ghost story that happened on a snowy mountain: the person who took you away from the camp told you that everyone else was dead; and the other person told you that person had died in an avalanche…
Ajie walked towards Xia Mo, and Xu Tuo walked towards me. He glanced at Brooke's body and said, "How could he take you away..."
"Believe me, it's really Xia Mo..."
"——The person he wanted to take away was me, but Xueming happened to be with me." Xia Mo said, "Why are you here?"
"I'm wanted and have nowhere to go. I remembered you mentioned this place before, so I came here to give it a try."
Xu Tuo and the others thought that the place where Brooke had imprisoned Xia Mo should be a secluded and remote place. Even if it was abandoned, it should be a place that was not easily discovered. They originally planned to hide here for a while.
It turned out that there were people from Brook here.
Considering that Xia Mo and I had been out of contact for a long time, they suspected we were captured and brought here. Fortunately, it was difficult to bring guns in from here. The bodyguards only had combat knives, so they were killed by the two of them with chainsaws.
"It's not safe here. We have to take Xueming away quickly." Xia Mo patted Ajie's shoulder.
"He wants to kill you! He's pregnant, and he has a secret passageway underground!" I told them everything. However, from the looks in their eyes, I could tell the situation was not good. Ajie sneered first, "Even your madness has its limits..."
"—The secret passage is right there! Under that concrete slab!"
"How about knocking him out and taking him away? ...Xu Tuo?"
Jackman wanted to control me and make a quick end of it, but Xu Tuo walked to where I pointed and felt for the scratches on the concrete floor.
That place was difficult to find. In the dim light, his fingers slowly groped on the ground.
After searching for a while without finding it, Xu Tuo sighed. Jackman grew impatient and asked, "If he says he's pregnant, will you still accompany him to the prenatal checkup?"
"That's not impossible." He smiled. "By the way, teacher, were you captured together with Xueming?"
"Um."
"—That's not what the dashcam in Xueming's car showed."
Xia Mo was stunned for a moment, his expression bewildered. Xu Tuo found a crack, reached in, and lifted the concrete slab at the exit. "Xue Ming's car was in an accident before, and the front end was badly damaged... The dashcam screen was also shattered. They never had time to replace the screen, so they only had the camera and storage device... From the outside, it looks like this car doesn't have a dashcam, but it's still recording."
"…"
"After I was released, I only found Xueming's car nearby, but didn't see him. So I took the dashcam memory card back and checked it, and I found out that it was you who took him away."
There were two gunshots. Xia Mo didn't even bother to listen to him finish. He pulled out his gun and shot at Jackman and Xu Tuo.
The bullet shot at Xu Tuo missed. After the third shot, Xu Tuo fell to the ground.
The room fell silent. Xia Mo slowly breathed a sigh of relief: "Really... these two kids..."
"…" I watched all this in astonishment.
"Let's go, Xueming, there's no need for a secret passage." He threw away the empty miniature pistol.
"...in my car..."
"What?"
"…There's no dashcam in my car."
Hearing what I said, Xia Mo stopped, realizing he was being tested. Suddenly, he fell to the ground—because someone had twisted his shoulders and neck.
There was a bullet hole in Jackman's chest, revealing the black bulletproof vest underneath.
He held Xia Mo down, but only for a few seconds before he let go. Ajie looked at him and asked, "Why?"
He really didn't understand.
I've never seen him look so sad.
Xu Tuo also climbed up. They were all wearing bulletproof vests.
"Luckily, before running away, Ajie asked Qi Mengzhu for two." He removed the bullet stuck in his bulletproof vest. "--Teacher, do you want to get rid of Class L completely?"
"…I want to erase that world."
"Impossible. Where there's light, there's shadow." Xu Tuo smiled at him and pulled Ajie up from the ground. "Let's not worry about this. Do you want to go together, or do we go our separate ways?"
Ajie didn't stay with us: "No matter what happens, I will go with the teacher."
Xu Tuo only thought about it for a few seconds before nodding decisively: "Then I'll take Xueming away. Take care."
Finally, Xia Mo decided to go through that passage. Ajie lifted the entrance to the passage and let him go down first. Xu Tuo pulled me towards the exit, and we looked back one last time.
Xia Mo did not go down the passage.
He stared at Ajie, and in that instant, we seemed to realize what was about to happen. It was a premonition of danger and death—but the sharp intuition was filtered out by Xia Mo's smile and was very thin.
Xia Mo pressed a remote control hidden in a secret passage. The shockwaves from the explosion instantly spread throughout the building. Xu Tuo rolled me to the cell door, and the next second, countless concrete bricks poured down, burying us alive.
My shoulder was hit, but not seriously. Xu Tuo was above me, taking most of the impact.
The iron door saved us. It became the fulcrum next to it. The collapsed concrete slabs and steel bars formed an umbrella-like space around it, blocking the deadly weight for us.
But the other side is not that simple.
Without a strong fulcrum, Ajie could only stay as close to the corner as possible. Fortunately, the corner did not collapse, and apart from the bumps and scrapes all over his body, he was not seriously injured.
We found Xia Mo from the rubble. He hadn't been able to retreat back to the passage—the moment he pressed the button, Ajie grabbed his other hand and pinned it with a dagger into the cement cracks. Countless concrete bricks crushed his head and back. He wasn't dead yet, but Xu Tuo wouldn't let me get close. I could only imagine the scene over there.
Xia Mo's face was covered by his hair, revealing a bloody smile. He said one last sentence, which made Ajie very concerned, but Xu Tuo didn't want him to finish.
"That man is not dead... He is in Tieqi County, Wucheng..."
Xia Mo didn't finish. I heard the chainsaw start up, and Xu Tuo brought the saw blade down on his neck, and everything went quiet.
Ajie stared blankly at Xia Mo's body until Xu Tuo dropped the chainsaw. He then rushed towards Xu Tuo, grabbed him by the collar and knocked him to the ground: "Why didn't you let him finish?!"
"He still didn't intend to let us go. He knew you would never let that man go. As long as you knew where that man was, you would kill him even if it meant risking your own life."
"...You don't want to kill him?"
"I would like to, but not right now. The most important thing right now is to save myself."
We left the ruins. Nearby villagers, drawn by the explosion, watched in amazement as we crawled out, bloodied. We hurried away, and Ajie parked the car on a nearby side road. It was a surprisingly luxurious supercar.
He saw my reaction: "So? I can't drive a luxury car just because I'm running away?"
"Because it's a luxury car, it doesn't arouse ordinary people's suspicion." Xu Tuo and I got in the car. After confirming that I had no other external injuries, he wrapped me in a blanket and said, "Rest, you're fine now."
There was a mirror in the car, and I saw how horrible I looked now, haggard and pale like a ghost.
"...What are your plans next?"
"Go north." "To kill an enemy."
Two people gave different answers at the same time.
The car was driving on a dirt road. I dozed off and on, always waking up from nightmares. Sometimes I'd fall asleep clutching Xu Tuo's hand, and when I woke up, his wrist was bruised from my scratching.
"Go to sleep, it's okay." He always said this to me.
I dare not sleep.
"You can leave me behind in the next city if you want."
"No."
"You will."
He didn't want to flee with me.
"—I killed someone." I said, "Ji Yuyi and Brook, I killed two people. Maybe I am also wanted."
This softened his attitude a little.
"Let's wait and see." Xu Tuo was helpless.
The address Xia Mo finally told Ajie was the current residence of Ajie and Xu Tuo's former "adoptive father".
Before this, Xia Mo had been lying to them, saying that the man was dead. But in fact, he was not. Perhaps out of fear of retaliation, he had been changing his residence over the years.
"I can hardly remember what he looked like." Ajie liked to open the car window when driving, letting the wind blow in. "Maybe he had a kind face? He always had a kind face when he coaxed us into the back room to entertain guests."
"Don't think about it."
"Kill him and I'll stop thinking about it."
The car did not go north, but turned towards Ajie's destination. It was the last thing they wanted to finish before fleeing to the north.