CH 63

Ch63 - Like fairy floss

The man dragging me was of Herculean build, with bulging biceps as he wore a tight white singlet, revealing a black vine-like tattoo which snaked from his chest to his neck. He tossed me into a chair and then circled behind me to press down on my shoulder.

“Only talk if you’re asked a question. If no one is addressing you, then keep your mouth shut.” He exerted force on my shoulders firmly as he spoke, his tone deceivingly calm, when each word was full of hidden threats.

Outside the small, dark room was another room of about 20 square metres, its exteriors made of wooden walls and a wooden roof. There was a window, but it was covered with newspaper so that one couldn’t see the view outside. However, the surroundings of this place felt extremely quiet, to the point where I could hear the noise of the cicadas and the rustling of leaves carried by the wind. The sounds of civilisation, of car horns and people conversing were nowhere to be heard.

I didn’t see Xiao Meng in the room, however a middle-aged man in a floral shirt with a cigarette in his mouth approached me and asked in a hoarse voice, “Where’s the cipher?” As he spoke, a gold teeth flashed from a corner of his mouth.

“…What cipher?”

I played dumb in the hopes of holding on to some leverage, only to see a sneer form on the other mans expression as he bit down on his cigarette, raised his hand back and gave me a resounding slap.

My ear buzzed, and the smell of blood in my mouth became even more pungent. It took me a while for my vision to focus again, as the middle-aged man stood close and warned, “Don’t force us to do things the hard way.”

An icy object was suddenly pressed against the side of my neck, causing frissons to run down my whole body, as a bad premonition arose. I shifted my gaze downwards and saw a black pistol pressed against my neck.

Xiao Meng the fucking coward, how did he even find such reckless criminals, ones that kept a gun with them?

My heart sank, as I swallowed the blood in my mouth and spoke, the action tugging at the sore corners of my mouth, “It’s at my brother’s place.” A satisfied expression appeared on the middle aged man’s face as I quickly added, “But he lives in an expensive residential area, there are surveillance cameras everywhere, and security guards patrol the place 24 hours a day. You guys won’t be able to get in. Aren’t the two of you here only in pursuit of money? There’s no need to make this situation even more complicated. My brother isn’t aware about the cipher so I’ll give him a call and tell him to take it with him to a designated place. Then, you guys can use the cipher to open the safe, destroy its contents and then let Yi Da Zhuang and myself go free. This is an outcome which benefits us all and is to everyone’s delight, how does that sound?”

The middle-aged man pondered for a moment, then sneered, “We have a fast thinker on our hands, you’ve only just woken up for a couple of minutes, and here you are already having planned our next steps.”

I gave him a smile, “That’s just my suggestion, what happens next ultimately depends on what you two Da Ge think.”

As I said these words, sweat formed from the roots of my hair out of sheer nervousness as each drop traced its way down my collar, following the hollows of my back, crawling down like the pedipalps of a spider.

The middle-aged man held his cigarette between his fingers and levelled a glance at me for a while before he lifted a finger and pointed at the tattooed man behind me, “Da Long, put it away.”

The metal object which had previously been digging into my neck was pulled back all of a sudden, as I closed my eyes and allowed myself to let out the breath that I was holding.

“Little brother, just stay here obediently, you don’t need to worry about anything else.” He lifted his head up and looked around, “It’s very quiet here, no one will find you two.”

A chill seeped into my heart as his eyes were filled with murderous intent and malice. I could tell that he was someone who was willing to kill for money, a person most definitely not to be messed with.

“Jin Ya ge, I feel like that Xiao guy is already very dissatisfied with us. I don’t want him to possibly renege on our agreement if we mess up again.” The man nicknamed Da Long walked towards the middle aged man as he placed both hands on his waist and continued, “Then we would’ve really exposed ourselves to all this risk and put this much work in for nothing.”

He casually tucked the gun away to the back of his waist, where the entire barrel was hidden under his pants. I sneaked a few glances to try and ascertain if it was a real gun, but I couldn’t tell because of the distance.

We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.

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I groaned reflexively in pain when my elbow hit the ground, accompanied by the sound of the wooden door closing slowly behind me. The parts of my body illuminated by the light became smaller and smaller before my surroundings returned to pitch black once more.

Now I could only hope for Sheng Min Ou to realise I was missing and to look for me at my place. Then, upon discovering my house looking like it had been broken into, he would call the police to have them handle the case.

But why did I feel like…that hope was so slim?

“Feng ge, how are you feeling?” Yi Da Zhuang asked anxiously in the dark.

I pushed myself up by propping my shoulders against the floor, as my feet coordinated with my butt in a synchronised movement to nudge myself over to his side.

“They have guns,” I whispered. “Have you seen them?”

Yi Da Zhuang replied, “I have, they’ve even fired it once to scare me.”

Fuck, it was a real gun.

My heart sank once more, and I began getting afraid that they’d hurt Sheng Min Ou by recklessly storming his door with a gun in hand.

It was at this point that I heard the sound of a car engine roaring to life outside. I glanced in the direction of the door and I could see from the gap underneath that there was still someone pacing outside. My guess was that one person was sent to steal the cipher device, and the other remained behind to keep an eye on us.

I gritted my teeth and decided that I couldn’t sit still any longer. I had Yi Da Zhuang turn his back towards me, then I leaned over and used my mouth to locate the rope tied around his hands.

Jin Ya and the other man used zip ties and their own locks to tie us up. Our arms were folded behind our backs, with the palms of our hands facing our elbows. There were three ties on our arms and even more on our ankles, knees, and legs, making it hard to escape easily.

“It’s not going to work, I can’t bite through it….” I tried to sever the zip tie using my teeth but I soon realised that I couldn’t make a single dent in it. Even if I continued out of sheer perseverance to whittle the three zip ties down, it would probably be daybreak by the time that happened.

I could only straighten myself up as I leaned against the wall panting, “They have no intention of concealing anything in front of us, and they showed us their faces rather carelessly. They even revealed Xiao Meng as the mastermind behind this whole scheme. Da Zhuang, they have no intention of letting us go alive.”

“Feng Ge, it’s my fault that you got involved in this.” Yi Da Zhuang’s suppressed emotions finally erupted.

He bursted into tears as he continued talking, “I deserve to die, I’m a bastard!”

Though his grating wailing was all I could hear, I was in no mood to comfort him. The only thoughts in my head were about Sheng Min Ou and that cipher device.

I began to slightly regret telling the truth, I should’ve delayed spilling the information a little longer. For each day that they couldn’t locate the cipher, they would have to keep us here a day longer. This would provide enough time for the others to notice our disappearance and to report it to the police. Even though I would be in for a vicious beating, I’d be greatly increasing our chance of survival later. It wouldn’t be like our current situation, where we’d have to endure an excruciating wait until they gave us more information, a wait for us to be told when the hatchet placed on top of our heads would come slicing down.

Tsk, I was still lacking in my ability to adapt to a given situation. I panicked as soon as the gun was pressed against me.

I thumped my head repeatedly against the wall, “Yi Da Zhuang, if I die I die. After all, you’re my friend, so if the heavens had plans for our ill-fated relationship then so be it, I don’t blame you. However…” I paused for a second as my voice became glum, “However, if anything happened to my brother, would you believe me if I said I’ll rise back from the dead and bite you to death.”

Yi Da Zhuang’s body trembled evidently as he hurriedly said, “I do, I believe it!”

I wasn’t aware of how much time passed until the small, dark room was gradually filled with light as it became brighter. I found out then that one of the walls not far away from us had a window there too. Similar to the window I saw before, newspapers concealed the surface so we couldn’t see outside, but sunlight could still illuminate faintly through the newspapers.

It was probably around noon when the sound of the car engine returned again outside the house. The car that left last night had come back.

My gaze met Yi Da Zhuang’s as we both shifted ourselves towards the wall that was shared by both rooms, as we pressed our ears against it.

The door opened and closed again, then came Jin Ya’s voice sounding slightly irritated, “Damn it, I couldn’t get in.”

“Did you manage to get close to the apartment door?” Da Long asked.

“What door? I couldn’t even get into the residential complex, and the kid’s brother didn’t leave to go anywhere either. I camped outside for a long time and didn’t see him step out of the complex.”

“Then what do we do? He’s not like that paparazzi guy. That guy could disappear for half a month and it wouldn’t raise any suspicions, but if we keep the other one here for longer his brother may call the police.”

Jin Ya was silent for a while, then said, “Go and bring him here.”

Da Long brought me out of the small room again. This time, Jin Ya agreed with my proposal yesterday and had me call Sheng Min Ou to tell him that someone was coming to pick up a delivery. I was instructed to have him hand over the parcel with the cipher to Da Long, who would dress up as a delivery boy. If he were to ask where I was, I was to say that I had been drinking and got drunk at a friend’s house.

“Once Da Long confirms that he has what we need, he’ll give me a call, and I will let you guys go immediately.” Jin Ya’s features were shaped in a crude and wicked way, so when his expression morphed into a smile conveying benevolence, the juxtaposition of this sight raised all the hairs on my back instead.

“Alright, hand me my phone.”

I knew he was lying, but I still swiftly agreed to his demand.

Da Long fished out my mobile phone from his pocket and dialled Sheng Min Ou as he set the phone on the table in front of him and switched it to speaker mode.

I leaned over slightly, facing the microphone.

The call connected, and Sheng Min Ou remained silent on his side, as he had done countless times before. In fact, the other end was so quiet that those who didn’t know might have thought the phone itself was faulty.

“Ge, it’s me.”

“Where are you?”

“I’m at…” I looked at Jin Ya, whose gaze was intently fixed on me as I followed his instructions, “I’m at San Ge’s house. I had too much to drink with him last night so I slept at his house.”

Sheng Min Ou was quiet, then after a long while he confirmed with me what I had just said, “You slept at Wei Shi’s house?”

His voice came out extremely soft, like it was fairy floss, but I knew it was just an illusion. There was no fairy floss, only a violent snowstorm instead.

I swallowed, attempting to make my voice as natural as possible.

“Yes.” Da Long was toying with his beloved black gun as he gestured it at me in random movements. I knew this was him threatening me, so I spoke even more cautiously, “Ge, there is a courier box on your desk. Someone will come to pick it up in the afternoon, just hand it over to them when the person arrives.”

“The one Yi Da Zhuang sent?”

“Yes, the one Yi Da Zhuang sent to me.”

“What’s in there?”

Da Long and Jin Ya’s gaze converged on me at the same time. They were getting nervous.

“I… I don’t know. He sent it to me by mistake. I haven’t opened it.”

“Understood.”

Sheng Min Ou hung up the phone, Da Long rubbed his hands excitedly, and said to Jin Ya, “Jin Ya ge, it looks like this is about to happen!”

Jin Ya’s face morphed into the same gleeful expression as he waved his hand to have Da Long shut me into the room again.

I didn’t know if Sheng Min Ou would be able to understand my hint. If he went to Wei Shi to verify my story, he would know that I wasn’t at his place at all, therefore indicating that something must be wrong.

I spat out the dust in my mouth as I started examining the now brightening small space. My gaze passed Yi Da Zhuang, who had a bruised nose and a swollen face, and instead fell upon an unknown piece of rusted iron on the ground.

It might have been from some sort of farming equipment. It was palm sized, and the colour of dirt. No one noticed it when it fell on the ground, which ended up working greatly in my favour.

Holding the iron piece between my fingers, I said to Yi Da Zhuang, “Even if I cut into your flesh later, you have to endure it no matter what, got it?”

Yi Da Zhuang looked at me, then at the iron piece in my hand, before finally nodding vigorously and fearfully back.