Moth Chasing the Sun 27

Bang!

The recoil jerked Xu Zhen's wrist. Her eyes stayed locked on Qian Hu. The bullet hit—but not him. One of his bodyguards took it for him.

"Damn it!" she cursed.

Why would anyone be that loyal to trash like Qian Hu, trading life for life? What had he ever done to deserve it?

Night City had strict gun control. They'd only managed to smuggle in one gun. The explosives had come through sheer skill and coordination—a sleight of hand right under the guards' noses.

If only she had a rocket launcher. She'd blow that bastard to bits, so even his mother wouldn't recognize him.

Xu Zhen's eyes burned red with fury when the tide turned: Tan Yiyuan's grenade sailed over their heads and exploded ahead, sending shockwaves and shrapnel flying.

The men sprinting forward couldn't just stop on a dime. They stumbled—trying to halt momentum, twist, turn, and regroup. That took more than a blink, but the explosion didn't wait.

With a thunderous blast, the gunfire ceased.

Tan Yiyuan rushed to Feng Tao first, slipping his hands under the man's armpits and dragging him back into the room. Skinny Monkey and Xu Zhen seized the lull to open fire at Qian Hu's position.

The guns didn't have many bullets left, but that didn't matter. There weren't many enemies left either—one bullet each, aimed at the head, would be enough.

These men were devoted. Like in the last explosion, they chose the same tactic: they threw themselves over Qian Hu, shielding him with their bodies.

But the attack was sudden, and Qian Hu was already wounded—shrapnel had pierced his abdomen.

Xu Zhen fired in rapid succession, taking down the remaining bodyguards while they were still dazed and deafened, each shot hitting its mark in the skull.

Only Qian Hu was left alive.

He struggled to crawl out from under the pile of bodies. The tiled floor was slick with blood, wet and slippery. Qian Hu could barely muster strength; his hands kept sliding, and every stumble worsened the bleeding.

He took deep, ragged breaths, his eyes filled with defiance.

Was he really going to die here today? He'd clawed his way up from nothing, from a nobody to the feared Boss Qian. The effort he'd put in—no one else could even imagine it.

He didn't want to die. He couldn't die!

Qian Hu lifted his head and looked at the two approaching.

"...It's you!"

Xu Zhen's face was striking—hard to forget, especially since she was someone Qian Hu had never managed to possess.

As for Skinny Monkey, Qian Hu had no idea who he was, assuming he was just a comrade.

Xu Zhen walked over, grabbed Qian Hu by the collar, and dragged him out, tossing him aside like a dead fish. "Look at you, the famous Boss Qian. How'd you end up in such a sorry state?"

"Where are your men now? Where's that commanding presence, huh?" Her tone was mocking as she stepped on his shoulder, grinding the thick sole of her boot into his skin without mercy, nearly crushing his arm.

Qian Hu had been pampered for too long. He'd lost the ruthless grit from his days scraping by at the bottom. Back then, getting stabbed a few times wouldn't have changed his expression. Now, this minor wound made his face contort in pain.

"Let me go, and I'll give you half of the Black Tiger Gang!" Qian Hu gritted his teeth. "Most of the underground commercial district is Black Tiger property—it can all be yours."

Xu Zhen stared at him for a long moment, then suddenly laughed. "So you think that's what I want? That I'm after money?"

"Boss Qian, just because you treat these things like treasures doesn't mean everyone else does. Hahaha!" She laughed so hard she bent over, as if she'd just heard the funniest joke.

Skinny Monkey kicked him in the stomach. "Who cares about your dirty money? We want you dead!"

Qian Hu's face went pale, then green with rage. The sharp pain jangled his nerves, and he blurted, "That's hundreds of millions in assets!"

Dirty money? Who cares? That money, turned into cash, could bury a person alive, fill an entire mansion. With money came status—you'd be untouchable, have whatever you wanted, never kowtow to anyone again. It was power; it was freedom!

He'd lived his whole life for those things. And these two dismissed it like trash on the roadside.

Money! It was money!!

"People like you only see money. There's nothing else in your world. Countless things are more precious than money, but you'll never understand," Tan Yiyuan said, walking over with pity in his eyes.

Qian Hu understood that look, and instantly, he was enraged.

Pity me? Why the hell? I built everything from nothing; I'm on top of the world. Pity me? Who does he think he is?

Qian Hu glared at him. "More precious than money? You mean what you call love? For a woman, you throw away your future, even your life. A woman—I can have as many as I want. You two are the fools!"

Xu Zhen turned to look at him, and Tan Yiyuan said in a low voice, "Lucky for us, it's a through-and-through wound. I've bandaged it. But we need to hurry—the guards are on their way."

"I wanted to toy with him a while longer," Xu Zhen said, genuinely regretful.

Skinny Monkey pulled out a dagger, his eyes gleaming with malice at Qian Hu. "We can each take a few stabs. Just make sure not to hit anything vital. We can't let him die too easily."

He let out a cold laugh, then drove the blade into Qian Hu's other shoulder with force. The sharp tip sank into the joint. Qian Hu cried out in pain, his legs flailing as he tried to squirm away, but the more he struggled, the more it hurt.

The blade scraped against bone, and he nearly passed out.

Skinny Monkey planted his foot on Qian Hu's arm and yanked the knife out. Blood splattered across his face, but he only felt satisfaction. He handed the weapon to Tan Yiyuan.

Tan Yiyuan took the foot-long dagger and met Qian Hu's dazed, terrified eyes. Qian Hu shook his head desperately, begging, "Kill me, you're a good man! Kill me! Make it quick."

"I'm not," Tan Yiyuan said, sliding the blade between his ribs and into his lung, his tone flat. "Being a good man only gets you trampled."

His hand on the hilt remained steady. He rotated it counterclockwise.

Qian Hu was beyond words, blood foaming at his mouth, a rattling in his throat. Every breath was agony, his nose and mouth filled with the copper taste of blood.

Then it was Xu Zhen's turn. She looked down at her miserable, pathetic enemy, shifted her foot up, and pressed it on his neck, pushing down gently.

It didn't take long. Qian Hu's face swelled and turned purple from asphyxiation, his eyes bulging. She eased off, watching him gasp like a dying dog.

"How does it feel to be tormented like an animal by someone you looked down on, Boss Qian? You never thought you'd die at our hands, did you?"

She crouched low, the knife tip tracing a line up his cheek, from his jaw to his eye socket. With a gentle scoop, an eyeball popped out like a peeled grape and rolled across the floor.

"I once swore I'd slice you into a thousand pieces. What a pity."

The hilt was slick with blood. She wiped it carelessly on her clothes, then smoothly gouged out his other eye.

Qian Hu flopped like a fish thrown onto the sand. Xu Zhen let out a low laugh, pressed his head down, and with a flick of her wrist, sliced off both his ears.

"And there's still Brother Feng's share."

The short dagger sank fully into Qian Hu's thigh. He only twitched, unable even to scream.

It hurt. It hurt so much!

Qian Hu could no longer tell what was happening to him. He was on the verge of breaking down.

"Time to retreat," Tan Yiyuan said, listening to the command in his earpiece. "I'll carry Feng Ge."

With that, he ran back into the room.

"What a shame," Xu Zhen said again.

She raised her hand and drove the knife into Qian Hu's abdomen dozens of times in rapid succession. He was nearly a bloody mess, blood seeping from every hole in his body.

Seeing that he was already barely breathing, Skinny Monkey still wasn't satisfied. He kicked Qian Hu, sending him flying off the floor, plummeting straight down to the gambling table on the first floor.

Qian Hu didn't move. The blood draining from him soaked the chips on the table.

He was dead.

Dead in his beloved pile of money.

Tan Yiyuan came out carrying Feng Tao on his back. Apart from the through-and-through wound, Feng Tao had a few scrapes, but nothing life-threatening, none to his vitals.

His face was a picture of relief. "We made it."

The group kept moving, hurrying toward the exit.

"What are your plans? Are you going back?" Feng Tao asked quietly.

Xu Zhen quickly scanned the retreat route. Seeing no guards, she gave a safe signal and said, "I don't know."

Killing Qian Hu had felt satisfying at first, but now there was only emptiness. What would she do next? She had no idea.

Skinny Monkey said, "I don't want to go back. To be honest, Azbeto isn't a good man either. Why go back?"

"He's a lunatic. Working under someone like that, we'll be dead sooner or later. Honestly, of all the soldiers sent here to infiltrate and kill, barely any made it back alive. The higher-ups never saw them as retrievable—just one-time use."

"I don't get why so many people follow his orders to their deaths."

He brought up the rear, keeping watch. "My mom used to say she wanted to retire somewhere quiet. I'll move her and Dad to a good place and spend the rest of my life looking after them."

"They want me to live a good life, so that's what I'll do. I'm not following them to my grave."

Tan Yiyuan said quietly, "Originally, I planned to take her and her daughter out of Black Street, open a repair shop, live a decent life, and send my daughter to school."

Xu Zhen picked up the thread, "I used to want to open a restaurant. My sister said my cooking was great."

The group fell silent for a moment. Then Feng Tao said, "Alright, we're not going back. First, we need to find a place to get the chips in our heads removed. As long as they're there, we won't be able to leave anyway."

"Do you know a reliable black-market doctor?" Tan Yiyuan asked, then his voice turned worried. "He's still alive, right?"

They had passed plenty of corpses along the way—people killed by the Insurgents.

The soldiers were well-equipped and highly trained. Facing untrained street thugs, one could take out ten. The whole street looked like a pot of human stew, blood pooling into little streams that flowed into the drains.

"Of course he's alive," Feng Tao said, patting Tan Yiyuan's shoulder. "That guy loves the high life. He doesn't live here—he owns a place in Qingyuan District."

Xu Zhen: "Shit... Talk about loaded."

"I'm starting to regret not taking Qian Hu's money. It's not like I had anything else to do."

For people who'd been living day to day, money seemed pointless. But now that they planned to keep going, money was a necessity.

Skinny Monkey shrugged nonchalantly. "No problem. As long as we stick together, making money won't be hard."

Tan Yiyuan laughed out loud, his voice full of hope. "Right. We'll make it better."

Not just for themselves, but for those who'd died.

The guards from Dingyang City arrived quickly—the Federation had been on high alert all along. Luckily, three of the four had household registrations in Dingyang, so when they ran into the guards, they pretended to be survivors who'd narrowly escaped. It actually worked.

The four of them stole a car by the roadside and drove straight to Qingyuan District. Xu Zhen shot out a surveillance camera with one bullet, creating a blind spot. One by one, they climbed over the wall and found the black-market doctor's house.

They knocked on the door. A moment later, it swung open, and a middle-aged fat man poked his head out, looking annoyed. "Who's there?"

Chaos was erupting outside, but he stood there in his pajamas and slippers, looking disgustingly relaxed.

He didn't know the others, but Feng Tao's face was familiar. He immediately tried to slam the door shut.

Xu Zhen stuck her foot in the crack, grinning like a bandit. "Aren't you going to invite us in?"

The man's face twitched three times. "Come, come in!"

...

The chaos came and went quickly. Thirteen thousand people had come, and fewer than two thousand made it back alive. Many of them could have escaped if they'd retreated in time, but they didn't—they kept 'cleaning up' the 'lower classes' and were shot down by the arriving guards.

The two thousand survivors only left because their commander ordered a retreat.

These men appeared to have their wits about them, personalities unchanged, but in truth, they'd already lost their sense of self. They were puppets that only followed orders.

With such a major incident in Dingyang City, word reached the main branch of the Yan family. The family head ordered Yan Xianchuan to organize charity efforts, aiding those injured and displaced by the violence.

This was about public image.

The Yan family had always engaged in charity. In Moon City, there were barely any homeless, and it boasted the highest happiness index among residents.

Among the major financial families, the Yan family had the best reputation. The others were more or less the same—nothing special.

As for now, the Bolov family was certainly the worst off.

The good news was that Azbeto didn't care about such trifles; his mind was set on his grand ideal.

But Yan Xianchuan wasn't in Dingyang City right now. She was down south with Lu Mingqiu. Charity didn't require her presence. Mirror could handle it on her own, and with Xie Five helping, nothing would go wrong.

She and Lu Mingqiu had secretly returned to Moon City, staying at the Resistance base. There, they met the new esper, a child named Duo Duo.

She looked eight or nine, but was actually eleven. Years of malnutrition had left her thin as a rake, her limbs like sticks wrapped in skin. She looked pitiful.

She spoke little and was timid. When they met her, she was hiding behind Grey Rabbit, clutching his coattails like a shadow. Wherever Grey Rabbit went, she followed, step by step.

When others spoke to her, she rarely responded. Perhaps because of Lu Mingqiu's esper power, Duo Duo was noticeably more relaxed around her.

That night, while she was asleep, Grey Rabbit finally had time to tell them about Duo Duo.

She was a child with intellectual disabilities, single-minded. Her mental age was about that of a three- or four-year-old. She spoke haltingly, thought in a straight line.

According to her, she'd been wandering for a long time, through many nights with round moons. How long exactly, she didn't know. Duo Duo had no concept of months or years.

She'd survive by scavenging trash and sleeping wherever she could at night.

It was a miracle she was still alive.

She wasn't used to sleeping in a bed and couldn't stand open spaces. Grey Rabbit had laid a mat on the floor and rigged up a canopy to enclose the sleeping area completely. Only then did Duo Duo settle down to sleep.

What a pitiful one.

"You still have that habit of picking up strays," Lu Mingqiu remarked.

Several people at the Moon City base had been found by Grey Rabbit. This baby-faced middle-aged man had a heart more overflowing with kindness than most, especially toward children.

Not many knew about his past, but Lu Mingqiu knew a bit.

Grey Rabbit had once had a daughter. She died in a 'medical accident.'

Later, he learned it wasn't an accident at all, but a premeditated murder—her organs were harvested for a rich person.

He'd taken his revenge, but the dead never come back. Revenge was nothing more than an account for the living.

"Doesn't R&D have that intelligence-enhancing drug?" Lu Mingqiu said. "You could give it to her."

Grey Rabbit was silent for a moment. "What good is intelligence in this world? Better she stays like this, blissful and happy."

"Ah, I'll think about it."