Qin Peiran pulled out her phone to check the time. This bus had stopped and started so many times that it had wasted quite a bit of effort, but fortunately she had left early, so the timing was just right.
She walked into the shipyard. The iron plates beneath her feet were rusted through in places, and some cracked under her weight, sending crisp snapping sounds echoing hollowly through the lofty, vaulted structure.
Taking advantage of the fact that Lu Wang hadn’t arrived yet, she found a spot to put down her backpack, pulled out a stun gun from inside, and tested it.
The crackling blue sparks gave her a substantial sense of security.
Although Lu Wang had agreed to a bare-handed, one-on-one duel with her, with the loser apologizing to the other in front of all the teachers and students and promising to stay out of each other’s way from then on, Qin Peiran didn’t trust a person like him very much. Naturally, she wasn’t about to show up empty-handed.
The location was chosen by Lu Wang, and it was sparsely populated. Even if a commotion broke out, no police officers would suddenly pop up to drag the two fighters away before a winner was decided.
Qin Peiran waited for over ten minutes, but Lu Wang still hadn’t shown up, nor had he replied to her WeChat message. Impatiently, she flicked the stun gun in her hand and walked back toward the corner of the wall where her backpack was resting.
Just as she bent down and was about to shove the stun gun back into her bag, she sharply picked up the sound of rushing air being violently torn apart.
Her waist, Qin Peiran thought.
She quickly dropped and rolled across the ground, dodging the sneak attacker, and with a swift turn, gripped the stun gun tightly, swinging it upward before she even had a chance to see who it was.
“Ah!” A bald man collapsed instantly right in front of Qin Peiran, revealing a dozen or so malicious gazes standing behind him.
Lu Wang was at the very back, smiling with greasy, sinister triumph. “You’re breaking your promise, aren’t you? Didn’t you say it was going to be bare-handed?”
Qin Peiran shook the stun gun in her hand, pressed the button again, and raised her head amidst the crackling current, casting a cold, stern gaze at Lu Wang:
“Bringing this many people, aren’t you ashamed of yourself?”
None of these people looked like someone you wanted to mess with. They had more facial piercings than the last, and various tattoos covered every inch of exposed skin.
One of them, squatting on a crate not far away, was extremely excited. He kept trembling all over like an eager, coiled viper, sticking out a tongue that was split down the middle into two tips.
Seeing Qin Peiran pull out a stun gun, not only did these people show no signs of shrinking back, but they actually grew restless. They signaled to the split-tongue man squatting on the crate, and upon receiving his nod, they pulled out butterfly knives and brass knuckles they had ready in their pockets, walking straight toward Qin Peiran.
Even with the stun gun’s combat capability, it was still outnumbered. A thin layer of cold sweat broke out across Qin Peiran’s forehead.
“Yo, you Qin Peiran know how to be scared, too? Let me tell you, once I’m done dealing with you, I’m going to go take care of that old weirdo Lou Fan. The two of you teamed up to play me for a fool, didn’t you? Huh? If I hadn’t kept an extra eye out, who knows how long you two would’ve kept making a fool of me!” Lu Wang pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket. His overbearing expression instantly morphed into a fawning, bootlicking grin as he offered one to the split-tongue man, indicating that they could begin.
He had been dying to see Qin Peiran kneel before him and beg for mercy. For today, he had specially brought along his camera and spent a hefty sum hiring these thugs.
Seeing that a good show was about to begin, the wrinkles on Lu Wang’s face bunched up into a smile. Holding the camera in his hands and staring through the viewfinder, he shuffled his heavy feet forward as he said, “Take your time, no rush. There’s nobody to disturb us here anyway. After all, I hired you guys for the whole day.”
“If you guys get the job done cleanly today, we’ll keep going tomorrow. There’s still another one left.”
The fingers gripping the stun gun tightened. Qin Peiran had still overestimated Lu Wang’s bottom line. The cold sweat on her forehead gradually seeped into her palms, making the stun gun slip and slide so that she could barely keep a steady grip on it.
“Get her!” Someone yelled, and the crowd surged forward like a pack of trained wild monkeys, shouting, leaping, and brandishing their weapons, rushing at her with the uncontainable eagerness of a zombie horde.
Just as the stun gun in her right hand struck a forearm, Qin Peiran’s left hand instantly formed a fist and heavily smashed into the face of a man lunging straight at her. Taking a cue from Lu Wang, the opponents intended to play slowly with Qin Peiran, giving themselves plenty of leeway. Yet Qin Peiran was fighting multiple opponents at once; after just a few rounds, her body was covered in bruises and her breathing grew heavy and ragged.
If this kept up, she really wouldn’t be leaving here today without a broken limb or two, Qin Peiran thought.
“Are you guys useless or what? It’s taking this long to deal with a female student?” The split-tongue man, who had been squatting on the crate watching the battle, grew impatient first. “Hurry up and finish so we can go get lunch.”
With that, he stood up and leaped down from the crate.
The moment he landed, he casually snatched a dagger from a tall, thin man nearby, kicked the tall, thin man out of the way as if he were an obstruction, and spat on the ground. “Such a hassle.”
The tall, thin man sprawled on the ground, clutching his stomach and contorting his entire face, his skin turning bright red from holding his breath without daring to make a peep.
Unlike the others, the split-tongue man was fearless. He hadn’t expected a female student to be this resilient. Clearly, those blows had landed squarely on her body, and that amount of force should have been enough to make a seemingly weak student drop to her knees and beg for mercy. But the split-tongue man’s experience had never failed him before.
“Still got the energy to fight?” The dagger was tossed high into the air, tracing a bright, vicious arc. The split-tongue man caught it without even looking down, his pupils instantly contracting as a bloodthirsty cruelty spread across his face.
This guy was different from the rest of them. Qin Peiran’s intuition told her so. He looked like he genuinely wanted to kill someone, or perhaps he was intentionally putting on this terrifying mask specifically to force the seemingly calm and composed female student into making the panicked face of a cornered rabbit.
Whichever it was, Qin Peiran was genuinely panicked.
That dagger was quite ordinary; the blade wasn’t particularly sharp, and its tip looked as though it had been ground down by a blunt tool, showing several pitted dents under the sunlight.
Yet it thrust forward with such vicious precision.
“Hiss.” Qin Peiran rolled backward rapidly, drawing in a sharp breath.
Fortunately she dodged quickly, otherwise that dagger likely would have pierced straight into her eyeball. Qin Peiran wiped away the blood seeping down from her brow bone, staining the back of her hand with a sticky layer of red.
The split-tongue man had no intention of giving Qin Peiran a moment to catch her breath. Before she could even re-establish her footing, the old dagger came whistling through the air once again.
There was no dodging it this time, Qin Peiran thought.
Right at that moment, the wail of police sirens drifted closer from a distance. Someone panicked first; a butterfly knife went clattering down onto the metal plating at their feet with a sharp clang. “The police are coming.” That man squatted down to grab the butterfly knife, babbling incoherently, “The police are coming, let’s run. I already have a criminal record.”
“Ah.” Blood gushed forth as the split-tongue man abruptly changed the trajectory of his dagger, stabbing it straight down into the hand of the man reaching for the knife.
“Who the hell gave you permission to speak?” The dagger was ground brutally back and forth across the back of the hand. The man who had dropped his knife sprawled on the ground, letting out a series of miserable screams that drowned out the creaking and cracking of muscle and bone.
The wail of the sirens grew closer, followed by a clutter of approaching footsteps. Everyone present, including Lu Wang, panicked. No longer paying any attention to Qin Peiran, they looked around in panic, each trying to push someone else forward to take the blame.
Then, a skinny, malnourished-looking man was the first to drop to his knees with a wet thud. He began kowtowing to the split-tongue man. “Boss, I just came out to make some quick cash. My wife and kid are still waiting for me at the hospital to pay for their treatment, I can’t go to jail. Boss, you’re a magnanimous man, I’m running ahead first, I’ll come back and repay you if I get the chance.”
With that, the skinny man fled without looking back.
Lu Wang had already bolted out of sight, and the rest of the gang scattered like birds in the woods. These people were nothing more than a mob of fair-weather cowards. Qin Peiran slumped back against the wall, closed her eyes and let her fate rest in the hands of the heavens, tilting her head back to catch her breath.
She heard the split-tongue man cursing angrily as he chased after the others, and then she heard the dagger stuck in the hand on the ground being yanked out with a vicious pull, eliciting a long, strained gasp through a tight throat.
The metal dagger was tossed to the ground with a clang. Limping heavily, that man gradually faded into the distance as well.
After catching her breath, Qin Peiran waited a moment before lifting her eyes at the sound of approaching footsteps.
A tall, thin man clutching his abdomen with one hand was walking toward her.
Qin Peiran remembered him. This was the man whose dagger had been snatched away and who had been kicked by the split-tongue man earlier.
The tall, thin man squatted down in front of Qin Peiran, his attitude as sincere as if he were a completely different person: “Little sister, it’s not easy for us either. We couldn’t find jobs and were dead broke, so we just followed the boss to make a living. Don’t hold a grudge against us, huh?”
Qin Peiran cast a side-glance at him.
She found it utterly laughable.
The man kept chattering away, “Don’t look at me like this, back in our hometown middle school, I ranked first in the whole school. I am, I’m actually a good person. You students don’t understand, there are so many things in this society you’re forced into doing against your will.”
Too lazy to argue with such a person, Qin Peiran simply raised a hand to wipe the wound on her brow bone again, casting a cold remark at the man before her: “Wanting to eat meat while reciting Buddhist scriptures. If you’re that desperate for a good life, you might as well burn some extra joss paper for yourself ahead of time and pick an auspicious date to jump straight down.”
The tall, thin man’s expression twisted instantly. Cursing Qin Peiran with vulgar profanities, he raised his foot to kick her right in the stomach.
The distance was too close, and since Qin Peiran was still sitting on the ground, she had no time to dodge whatsoever. Just as she braced herself to take the kick full-force, the tall, thin man suddenly went limp all over, collapsing to the ground like a sack of torn rags.
“Are you alright?”
“Quick, get her to the hospital.”
Qin Peiran stared blankly at the two people appearing before her, completely dazed:
“You guys? Why are you here?”
Qin Peiran had been acting extremely strange lately. Earlier, it was only disappearing early and coming home late on weekends. Although she insisted she was out dating, Lou Fan couldn’t see how that added up.
Over the past few days, she discovered that Qin Peiran had actually gotten hooked on online shopping. Packages kept arriving at the house one after another, and she would hole up in her bedroom all evening surrounded by a mountain of delivery boxes, unpacking and tinkering away. Then, the very next day, she would hand those same boxes back to the delivery driver for a return.
“What did you buy?” Lou Fan had casually asked one day before heading out for work.
Only to see Qin Peiran hide a delivery box behind her back with maximum vigilance. “Nothing.”
Keeping little secrets now, huh? Lou Fan twirled a strand of hair behind her ear, feeling a tiny pinch of sourness in her chest while keeping her smile unchanged as she slipped her shoulder bag on. “Buy whatever you want. If you blow past your budget, just come to me.”
She spent the entire morning at work with a nagging twitch in her eyelid. By the lunch break, just as she had gotten her food at the company cafeteria, she received a text message from the sister running the residential complex’s delivery station:
[Little Lou, so many packages arrived for your place today, remember to pick them up after work, okay?]
Lou Fan gripped her phone tighter. Even though she knew it was a bad idea, she still sent the message anyway: [Okay, can you help me check what kind of items arrived?]
The woman sent a long voice message directly. Lou Fan pinched the Bluetooth earpiece in her ear, clicked to convert it to text, and hit play at the same time: [Oh my goodness, a stun gun, a spring-loaded knife, butterfly knives. Why are all these kinds of things? Little Lou, what are you trying to do here? Did you get targeted by bad guys? Tell me if something’s wrong, as a young girl you must never try to fight them head-on, if something actually happens it’ll be too late!]
Lou Fan’s heart skipped a beat, her mind instantly going blank.
First, she reassured the woman, claiming she had been coming home too late and wanted to buy them for self-defense. Then, she opened her chat window with Qin Peiran.
Lou Fan: [Tomorrow is Saturday, got time to check out a new dessert shop with me? Or Sunday works too, depends on which day you’re free.]
Qin Peiran replied quickly: [I have plans tomorrow, let’s do Sunday.]
Lou Fan: [Alright, sounds good!]
Lou Fan: [Oh right, a new breakfast shop opened at the entrance of our neighborhood. Every time I walk past, the smell almost knocks me out. What are you up to tomorrow anyway? How about we grab breakfast together, and I can just drop those things off for you on the way?]
Qin Peiran took ages to reply: [No need, I’ll be back early.]
Why is she acting so well-behaved all of a sudden?
Pfft! Behaving my foot, buying stun guns and switchblades is what she calls well-behaved? Lou Fan tossed her phone onto the table, so angry she lost her appetite for lunch.
Such a good student, what on earth is she doing? Going out to join street gangs or something?
“Director?” Yan Li blinked her big eyes as she sat across from Lou Fan. Looking worried yet slightly embarrassed, she pointed at the phone on the table. “I accidentally saw it. Sorry about that.”
Lou Fan was so lost in her own emotions that she only snapped back to reality upon hearing this. With one hand, she rubbed the bridge of her nose in frustration, while the other reached out to pick up the phone from the center of the table.
The text generated from the delivery station owner’s long voice message was sitting right there in the middle of the screen.
“Director, when you head home… Is it unsafe?”
Lou Fan let out a sigh. Ever since Lu Siyuan and Yu Huai jumped ship to another company, Yan Li was practically the only person Lou Fan could chat and kill time with at the office. The kid had just graduated and lacked worldly sophistication. Though sometimes a bit childish, she was at least genuine.
“That distant cousin of mine, do you remember her?” Lou Fan summarized the situation in a few concise sentences. Yan Li lacked experience, but she had a quick mind, especially when it came to questionable situations.
“Right now I just don’t know if she’s going out to pick a fight, or just stocking up for self-defense.” Lou Fan poked at a piece of cabbage, finding it completely flavorless. “I can’t just make assumptions out of thin air and file a false police report, right?”
Just as Lou Fan was mechanically shoveling food into her mouth while debating whether to grab a kitchen knife from home tomorrow morning and stealthily tag along behind Qin Peiran, Yan Li suddenly spoke up.
“I have a method!” Yan Li’s round eyes narrowed, a hidden smile playing at the corners of her lips. “Guaranteed to work without a hitch.”