A summer night, with a cool breeze drifting by.
Hands stuffed in his trouser pockets, Ye Tianxie walked alone down the street awash with lights of every kind. The flow of people and vehicles brushing past him now and then didn’t draw so much as a thread of his attention. His mind was wholly occupied with the scene of Guoguo appearing in this world just now.
All the answers ought to lie in this Hour of Eternal Fate. Ye Tianxie lifted the black ornament at his chest… Whether in the World of Fate or the real world, Guoguo emerged from inside it, and this Hour of Eternal Fate — miraculous beyond words to describe — could actually exist freely alongside him in both the World of Fate and the real world… Just why?
What exactly was it she had left him?
She… who was she?
Ye Tianxie’s steps abruptly halted. This question, which he’d forgotten for many years and fled from for many years, suddenly assailed his heart. He let out a long breath and kept walking forward.
After crossing a full three streets, Ye Tianxie finally arrived before the nearest vending machine. There were a good five or six supermarkets large and small still open in the villa district where he lived, but… if he, a grown man, were to go running off in the dead of night to buy a big heap of lollipops… he really couldn’t bring himself to lose that much face. The clerk’s strange looks alone would probably be enough to instantly kill him.
Rather sheepishly, he swept his eyes around a few times, and only once he’d confirmed there was no one nearby did Ye Tianxie fish out a hundred-yuan bill, feed it into the cash slot, then tap the lollipop button twenty times in a row.
Clatter-clatter — twenty lollipops in an assortment of flavors came tumbling out one after another. Ye Tianxie glanced around once more, and only then, with a calm face, did he tuck the twenty lollipops into his pocket, wrapped up tight. He was just about to leave when he hesitated, turned back around, and fished out another hundred-yuan bill to buy ten chocolates in various flavors, stuffing his other pocket full too.
Mission complete! Ye Tianxie let out a small breath and quickened his pace on the way back. Never in his wildest dreams would he have imagined there’d come a day he’d make a special trip out just to buy candy for some little thing… but Guoguo’s innocent, pitiful, yearning eyes had defeated him utterly.
The sky had gone completely dark, a dim cloud veiling the broken bright moon, robbing the earth of a layer of its lustrous white glow. The city’s lights, flickering, showed off their prosperity, yet could not illuminate the countless sins and filth hidden away beneath the dark.
Ye Tianxie had always regarded himself as a man outside the world; everything about him was at odds with reality — at times aloof and cold, at times pulling off bold moves ordinary people wished to but didn’t dare. Just what was it he wanted… even he was silently searching for the answer. Observing everything in the real world with cold eyes, silently peering into the corners ordinary people couldn’t see, he felt himself drifting further and further from this world.
Blue, oh how sky you are,
White, oh how cloud you are.
Ye Tianxie gazed at the pitch-black sky and the clouds sketched in dim shapes, chanting from his mouth a piece of wondrous poetry that would have his elementary-school teacher clutching his head and wailing, so wretched he’d want to dive headfirst into a sewer…
A gust of icy wind blew past his ear. Ye Tianxie tilted his head up slightly, savoring this faint coolness laced with the city’s murky reek — but then his steps halted, and his gaze shifted slightly, looking toward the far end of his right-hand side, that dim corner.
“Mmph… mmph… let me go… help… help…”
A mocking smile surfaced on Ye Tianxie’s face. He drew his gaze back, not sparing that direction another glance, and kept walking forward. This most prosperous central capital of the nation of Huaxia was crammed with all manner of filth seen and unseen; he’d witnessed far too much of it, going from initial fury, gradually, to familiarity, and then to numbness. Perhaps this was simply a rule belonging to another stratum of the real world. He had long since lost any interest in minding others’ business.
At a distance of a hundred meters, that plainly muffled voice was by no means something an ordinary person could hear, nor would anyone see what was happening in that dim corner. Ye Tianxie rounded a corner, his gaze glancing offhandedly in that direction — and his steps suddenly halted once more.
Across a hundred meters, his gaze sliced through the veil of night and fixed on that corner, on the terrified face of the girl there. From her face, he caught a thread of familiarity — and this familiarity wasn’t distant at all, as though he’d only just seen her.
In an instant, Ye Tianxie recalled where he’d seen this girl. Turning around with a touch of resignation, he walked over that way, murmuring under his breath, “Count yourself lucky. You must have checked the almanac before heading out today.”
“Whew… make it quick. Not one of those bodyguards around her is a simple character — it’ll be a real pain once they come looking back.”
“Hmph! Those idiots are probably still being led by the nose around the whole city by our people. Hmph, elite of some so-called Cheetah Organization my ass — one little lure-the-tiger-off-the-mountain and they’re off like a pack of pigs racing to be reincarnated.” A man with a crew cut, dressed all in black, a fierce look on his face, said mockingly.
“All right, get in the car, quick.” A man with a cigar clamped in his mouth, his face all gloom, said.
Under the cover of night, the rear door of a black van was pulled open, and a young girl with a strip of tape stuck over her mouth was roughly dragged toward the rear compartment. Her terrified eyes wide, in her violent struggling she could only let out feeble “mmph, mmph” sounds.
There were four men in black in all, and neither their expressions nor their getups marked them as anything but villains — they were one step short of slapping “I’m a gangster” placards on themselves.
“On a night this dark, with the wind this high — what a wonderful, delightful moment. I wonder where you four friends and this beautiful young lady are planning to spend this wonderful night?”
The four men in black stiffened all at once and whirled around in an instant. In the dim space ahead, at some point unnoticed, a young man in casual homewear had already come to stand there. In the murky light, one could faintly make out that the man wore a face full of ease — yet that trace of a smile, for no reason at all, made their hearts pound wildly.
With their high vigilance, not one of them had noticed when he’d appeared behind them. This person…
The leader at the head calmed down from his brief surprise. He jerked his head and spat out the cigar in his mouth, a sinister light shooting from his fierce, wolf-like eyes as he said coldly, “Deal with him.”
“Mmph, mmph…” The girl half-collapsed by the car let out a pleading whimper, straining to open her eyes wide and make out this person who’d suddenly appeared. Having been all but in despair, she seized on him like a sudden grasp at a life-saving straw, struggling with all her might.
Chik!
The scrape of metal rang out, a cold metallic glint flashing past, as a silver handgun was raised, its muzzle pointed at Ye Tianxie’s head. A cold, sinister smile appeared on all four faces at once.
(End of Chapter 26)