Part 2
Thinking this, his mood brightened a little. Shen Qizhao stepped aside, ensuring they could see Lu Xunye’s face clearly, saying regretfully, “Xunye, the thing for you was snatched. There’s no helping it, I…”
He turned his head; there was no one behind him. His heart immediately pounded uneasily. The next second, “Pah! Old thing, you dare play us!”
The agarwood was thrown heavily onto the ground. The box was stomped into pieces. A cold wooden stick was placed against the side of his neck. “Hurry up and take out valuable things.”
Shen Qizhao’s legs trembled. Raising his hands in surrender, he slowly retreated. “I-I didn’t bring money.”
These punks had no virtue of respecting the old and cherishing the young. Laughing, “No money?”
Shen Qizhao nodded slowly. Seeing their kind smiles, he thought they would let him go. But this thought didn’t last a second before being shattered by cold water. “Get him.”
“Alright.” The rest put down their weapons, rubbing their hands and approaching evilly.
Watching the people approaching him helplessly, he squeezed his eyes shut in fear, only hoping his own group would realize something was wrong and come save him quickly.
The expected pain didn’t arrive. The man frisked him.
“Nothing,” they reported.
“Old boy, you’re poor enough. Don’t even bring a phone when going out. You dress like a human but don’t have a cent in your pocket.”
The heavy wooden stick pressed down again. Soaked in cold sweat, Shen Qizhao blurted out betraying Lu Xunye, “Yes yes yes, my nephew has money, let him give it.”
Only then did they realize Lu Xunye was gone. One panicked, “Big Brother, that brat wouldn’t call the police, right? What do we do!”
A ghostly cold voice suddenly sounded from behind: “Salad, I guess.” (Translator’s note: Pun on “Liang ban”, meaning “cold dressed [salad]” but also slang for “what to do/we’re screwed”.)
Shoulders grabbed, several people screamed and jumped away. Looking back, it was the missing brat!
“Brat!”
“Don’t move.” Lu Xunye, holding a stick from who knows where against the artery on the side of his neck, had bloodthirsty ferocity in his eyes.
He wasn’t showing off fancy moves; he would really strike.
Lu Xunye looked down at the broken beads on the ground, then looked up at Shen Qizhao meaningfully, teasing, “Uncle Shen, I told you the beads on your wrist were better. Even they look down on this one.”
This overlapped with the young man’s casual words in the car that day.
Hearing this, Shen Qizhao’s face changed drastically. He didn’t lose his memory! So didn’t he hear everything when he sold him out just now?
“What are you standing there for? Get him!” The thug boss slapped his underling’s head. “Why be afraid of a brat!”
They swarmed up.
“Stop.” Lu Xunye held his palm in front of him.
Several people landed unsteadily, staring at his every move warily. “W-What are you doing?”
“Surrender.” Lu Xunye confidently handed over a phone worth a lot on the market.
No one expected this reversal, looking at each other.
On the contrary, Lu Xunye’s tone was as relaxed as discussing where to eat, as if that wasn’t his phone.
Coincidentally, it really wasn’t his. He “picked” it from someone’s pocket.
Shen Qizhao saw the familiar phone color and hurriedly touched his pocket. The punk reached out to take it, and he was anxious. “Wait.”
“Shut up, old thing!” Afraid he would interfere, the person in front turned and smashed a stick into his abdomen. He grinned in pain, face ferocious.
Turning back to Lu Xunye, he nodded in satisfaction. “You know what’s good for you.”
He casually threw the stick in his hand to the side, caught by a lackey.
Who would have thought when his hand touched the phone and pulled hard, he realized Lu Xunye had no intention of letting go. He glared at him. “You’re playing us!”
The moment he let go to grab his weapon, Lu Xunye also let go. The phone screen fell face down onto the hard concrete road with a smack.
In the silence where a pin drop could be heard, the sound of the screen cracking seemed audible.
Quiet as a chicken. The thug leader stared at the phone on the ground, eyes bulging in anger. Just as he looked up, a pain in his neck.
Bang— He collapsed to the ground.
Seeing him fall tragically, Lu Xunye felt a sympathetic pain in his neck. [No one even gave him a hand.]
The System was dumbfounded: [You think everyone is like you, hitting without any wind-up?]
Lu Xunye: [There is.]
System froze: [Huh?]
Lu Xunye enlightened it: [Wasn’t that person yesterday like that?]
The System looked at the red mark left by the bullet graze on his ear and fell silent.
“You’re looking for death!” Another person saw the boss knocked out and fiercely raised his stick to strike him. Seeing this, the others joined the melee.
Minutes passed. People lay on the ground, wailing incessantly.
The last remaining person, slightly younger, faced Lu Xunye’s cold and stern face, threw away the broken stick in his hand, and left a harsh word: “Just you wait!”
After saying it very spinefully in his imagination, he ran away.
The people on the ground recovered and limped away too. Only two people were left on the street.
Lu Xunye wiped the blood drops splashed on his face. The bean-sized blood drops on his cold white cheek were smeared into a blood streak, reflecting his eyes red like a fiery tattoo.
Dragging the wooden stick, he walked step by step toward Shen Qizhao. In the process, he kicked the phone on the ground back to Shen Qizhao’s feet.
Shen Qizhao had no time to care about his phone now. Retreating step by step, his heavy voice trembled. “Young Master Lu, Young Master Lu, we can talk this over. Don’t be angry.”
Lu Xunye didn’t stop. He panicked. “I’m Shen Yunqian’s uncle! You can’t hit me!”
“Shen Yunqian?” Lu Xunye grinned. “Old thing, you don’t think I’ll forgive you just because you apologize casually, do you?”
“Never mind that Shen Yunqian isn’t here. Even if he were, watching with his own eyes,” Lu Xunye enunciated word by word, “you couldn’t escape either.”
“Ah—” Shen Qizhao twisted his ankle and fell straight down.
The System couldn’t help persuading: [Host, isn’t this unnecessary?]
While it spoke, Lu Xunye had already raised it high and swung down. Ten centimeters away from Shen Qizhao, Shen Qizhao fainted.
“Tch, can’t even take a scare.”
Lu Xunye hadn’t really intended to hit him; he wouldn’t lower himself to haggle with such a person.
Messy footsteps stopped not far away. Lu Xunye looked up at seven or eight “Smart” (subculture) colorful heads and fell silent. They were even more stereotypical than the real thugs just now.
The Colorful Heads looked at the employer who met with “misfortune” beside the young man and the “murder weapon” in the other’s hand and also fell silent.
“What do we do?”
“Run is the best policy.”
Decisive action. They turned around, revealing some clothes tags hadn’t even been removed.
“Stop.” Lu Xunye called them.
“Big Brother, every debt has its debtor. We just came to put on a show. We will definitely keep today’s matter a secret!” Extending three fingers, “If we leak it, may lightning strike us!”
Boom—
“Mommy! It came true! Told you not to talk nonsense!”
The people opposite huddled together, shivering.
The instigator, the System, twisted like a maggot in his mind, laughing non-stop, laughing until it stuttered: [Hahahahahaha.]
Lu Xunye threw the stick, kicked Shen Qizhao, and said to the group, “Remember to take him with you.”
Leaving the alley, car horns on the road surrounded him. Only then did he realize the suffocation in his heart hadn’t been vented at all.
Using the reflection of a street shop window, he wiped the dirt off his face cleanly.
Glimpsing the scar on his ear out of the corner of his eye, he paused. Suddenly he remembered what he had forgotten.
It was Feng Chengyu!
Lanwine
Stepping into this bar again, Lu Xunye really felt things had changed while people remained the same.
He went upstairs and familiarly found that private room. Pushing the door open, wailing sounds filled his ears. Anyone who didn’t know would think someone was playing the erhu.
He muttered in his heart: What that man said couldn’t be true, right? Really hypnotized Feng Chengyu?
Approaching, he saw the crying person was someone else. That person had slid under the sofa, lying on the table crying, shoulders shaking. Empty wine bottles were all around his hand.
Feng Chengyu, holding a wine bottle, face flushed, murmured incoherently, “Cry, cry about what? Just press him back, cry cry cry, so annoying… wu.”
What nonsense was he talking about? Lu Xunye gave Feng Chengyu a moderate slap. “Hey, wake up?”
Feng Chengyu opened his eyes in a daze. His eyes, watery from the alcohol, swept over him lightly. Smacking his lips, he pointed at him. “Did you… ride, ride a snail here? So slow.”
His finger pointed diagonally to Lu Xunye’s side.
Lu Xunye: “…”
He held his forehead. “Do you still recognize me?”
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