"..."

Lu Feng punched himself hard in the forehead, making sure this wasn't an illusion, and even harder to believe. He looked at the people on the ground, "What's going on here?"

"I don't know."

Lu Ling choked up, shaking her head, eyes brimming with tears: "They came at me, wanting to grab me, pull me into the car. I ran, and they kept chasing."

"And this..." Lu Feng pointed to the panting small bull motorcycle beside them, struggling to discern: "Is... is this our car?"

"I don't know."

As Lu Feng took out his gun, Lu Ling quickly hugged its 'dog head' to her chest, "It's alright, don't scare it!"

Lu Feng, dumbfounded.

He couldn't make a sound.

After a while, the burnt-out synapses in his brain seemed to finally reconnect, the instinct to kill receded, and some rational thinking returned.

"I'll take you home first, tidy up, and don't tell mom, or she'll be worrying."

He reached out and embraced the girl before him, gingerly, as if afraid of touching her wounds. When he saw the wound on her forehead where hair had been torn out, his gaze lost focus and color for an instant.

Quickly, in Lu Ling's gaze, he squeezed out a smile.

"Don't be afraid," he rubbed Lu Ling's cheek: "Just a bunch of lowlifes, I've dealt with them. If big brother can't handle them, there's still the second brother, right?"

"Mm."

Lu Ling held his hand, no longer afraid.

.

.

Ten minutes later, at dusk, Ji Jue, who was eating takeout, heard the frantic vibration of his phone ringing in his pocket and picked up instinctively: "Hello, Feng bro..."

Then, the smile disappeared from his face.

"I see, yeah, okay, I'll be right over."

He hung up the phone and put down his chopsticks.

"What's up?" Ye Chun looked up: "What is it?"

"Family needs me for something, I probably can't do overtime tonight or tomorrow." He smiled awkwardly: "Senior sister, can I take a leave?"

"Come on, you're already frantic, why put on a front?" Ye Chun rolled her eyes: "Get going already, do you need money urgently?"

"Ah, no need, I'm off."

Before he finished speaking, Ji Jue packed up his things, hesitated a moment, then took another portable probe from the toolbox and tucked it into his pocket: "The tools, I'm borrowing them for a bit."

"Don't you just walk off with them, remember to return it!"

Ye Chun's voice came from behind him, almost inaudible after the door closed.

He ran flat out, charging towards the factory gate.

Outside the gate on the street, the van used for moving goods by the mainland auto repair shop was parked across the road, and through the rolled-down window, he could see Lu Feng smoking in the driver's seat.

He pulled open the door and sat down in the passenger seat: "Is little sister alright?"

"Just a small cut on her head, a dab of iodine and she's okay, mainly just got a fright,"

Lu Feng flicked ash from his cigarette, turned his head to the happy, panting dog-like motorbike in the back and said with a complex expression: "In more ways than one."

"..."

Ji Jue also looked awkward: "I can't explain this right now. Haven't you been riding it for two or three years? Anyway, it's our family's pet."

What kind of extraordinary sheep is this? Eats chicken legs, fights, and with a whirlwind of lashes, managed to wipe out the opposition.

Not to sell himself short, but Lu Feng suspected that even face-to-face and empty-handed, he would be floored by this thing.

After all, everyone's made of flesh; no one beats reinforced steel. Plus, this thing is all metal through and through, no use even sliding in, it's just delivering food.

"Where are they?"

Ji Jue asked directly after placing his bag.

Lu Feng pointed again, behind the bull's butt, to the pile covered with a tarp that was still wriggling with movement. Ji Jue nodded, patted the steering wheel, and the van started on its own, following Ji Jue's navigation.

"Heh, you've got this trick, too."

Lu Feng clicked his tongue in admiration and followed him into the back of the van.

Lifting the tarp, they saw several men, faces covered in blood, so much so that they were unrecognizable, bound with their own ropes, struggling and moaning.

Their expressions were fierce.

As if they were uttering vicious words.

"Have you asked them?" inquired Ji Jue.

"Not yet," Lu Feng said, examining their arms and legs, glancing at the tattoos, and nodding in understanding: "These guys have probably been inside several times. Without some professional stuff, they probably won't talk."

"No worries, we don't need them."

Ji Jue searched through their pockets, and soon found three mobile phones.

Then the screens lit up.

No passwords, no face recognition.

The phones unlocked faster than an old john's pants.

Right in front of those three people, the screens flicked rapidly, call logs, messages, social media apps, and various clients, even including deleted messages.

"Scar Ming? Qi Qin? And… Jiang Jin?"

Accompanied by Ji Jue's murmur, contact logs, and numbers were displayed on the phones, glimpsing the past from the momentary insights.

They had been targeted when Sister Wen visited me in hospital?

"So that's how it is..."

He put down the phone and sighed, "It's my fault, Feng bro; they came for me."

Lu Feng was stunned for a second before giving him a displeased slap on the back of the head, "Then they came for our family, didn't they? What roundabout way of saying it?"

Ji Jue was about to say something, but the words stalled, his gaze drawn to the pictures scrolling on the screens.

Lu Feng looked curiously, and then froze.

On the screens of the three phones, the pictures hopped past—intimate lighting, or single beds in shabby dorm rooms, those filthy sheets, and many more… bodies.

Some dressed in ragged clothes, some naked.

Either sitting there, drawing on a cigarette with an indifferent, numb smile or curled up with a body covered in bruises, with disheveled hair, trying to cover his face, but unable to hide the needle holes on his wrists and the purplish marks on his arms...

Confined in cages, hung up.

And the faint cries and sobs coming from the video.

Causing Lu Feng's pupils to gradually become empty.

When he looked at those people, his face showed nothing but a slowness spreading bestial grimace.

"Sure seems like you've been living it up, huh."

He looked down at those whimpering, terrified faces and suddenly asked, "What were you planning to do with my sister?"

At the very front, the man with the mangled face struggled to move and spit out the cardboard stuffed in his mouth, choking and coughing, "Bro, bro, please, I was wrong! It's all a misunderstanding! I was just joking, I..."

"Really?"

Lu Feng started laughing, "That's hilarious."

Ji Jue's complexion changed slightly, "Feng, wait—"

Bang!

He had already pulled the trigger, the gunshot erupted and that face exploded into a burst of blood plasma.

Hilarious to death.

Then, the gun barrel pointed at another, but Lu Feng's hand was grabbed and abruptly stopped, while just beneath the gun barrel, that disintegrated face revealed a look of intense relief and ecstasy.

"What are you doing?"

Lu Feng turned to look at Ji Jue, not hiding the ferocity in his eyes.

"Have you gone mad?"

Ji Jue angrily glared back, wishing he could land two punches on him, "Is this car not to be driven by Lu Ma anymore? Do you realize how difficult it is to clean up murder traces in a car?

Could you not wait until I drive the car to the seaside?"

"Ah?" Lu Feng paused.

"Ah what? Think of Big Brother when you're doing stuff!"

Ji Jue forcibly snatched the gun from his hands, looking at the sticky blood plasma on it and got infuriated, "Great, now apart from panel beating, the car needs a full wash, and this pool of blood... What if someone shines an ultraviolet light on it in the future? Are you going to say you were transporting live pigs? You'll clean it yourself with the reagent I'll get later!"

"…Okay."

Lu Feng responded, a bit stunned, and after cooling off, he started to feel a headache about how to explain the new hole in the car to his mom.

But looking over at the side, he couldn't help but ask, "And what about these two?"

Ji Jue looked down at the gun in his hand, sighed, and finally unchambered the bullet and pocketed it.

"Forget it, we're all out here to make a living; it shouldn't always be a matter of life and death."

He patted one of the men on the shoulder, "How does that saying go? In the world of the jianghu, you can't... can't control your life, right? I'm not the type to hold a grudge. If I can, I don't want to resort to killing people."

"Mmph! Mmmmmm!!!"

The two who could still breathe frantically nodded their heads, wriggling in the blood plasma, almost bursting into tears.

Even the minivan that had been speeding along came to a gradual stop, and outside the window, the sound of the waves began to rise, the surface of the sea reflecting the shimmering light, like a million tiny suns leaping.

Ji Jue reached out to open the door for them, revealing the overwhelmingly bright light outside.

Bound up, they hurriedly nodded their heads, trying to show a grateful smile, but their vision was inevitably drawn to something in that brilliance that couldn't be melted away...

Those eyes that seemed like an abyss.

Pitch black.

Looking down at the vast ocean below the cliffs.

And like that, they faithfully begged,

"Since you're used to not having control, why not strain yourself one last time?"

He said, "Could you please... jump down yourselves?"

.

.

In the afternoon sea breeze, the sound of the tide surged.

Lu Feng, having barely managed to wipe off the bloodstains in the back, jumped down from the vehicle, still holding a dirty headrest cover, not knowing where to begin, "Xi Ji, how should I wash this? The color doesn't seem to come off."

"Just throw it away."

Ji Jue was sitting on the railing, blowing in the wind and gazing at the scenery, "Be filial once in a while and buy a new one for Lu Ma!"

"F*ck, why is it that every time you suggest something, I'm the one who pays and you still end up earning all of my mom's affection?" Lu Feng complained, sticking his head out and looking down.

In the sea breeze, on the lone pine below the cliff, a person was desperately clinging to a branch, screaming something loudly, but the wind was too strong to make out the words.

A gust of sea wind blew, and the person bound up helplessly swayed, along with the two companions hanging below him on the same rope.

The surviving companion's lips constantly quivered as if energetically cheering them on, urging not to give up and to quickly pull themselves up.

Like grasshoppers on the same rope, they struggled awkwardly.

"Wow, they're still hanging there, huh? I'm starting to admire him," Lu Feng lit a cigarette, excited, "How long do you think he can hold on?"

"I don't know."

"I bet twenty bucks he can last ten minutes!"

"No bet."

"Hey, just have a go once in a while, you're so dull... watch out or you might not find a girlfriend in the future."

"Fine, I'll bet, fifty bucks."

"Fifty it is!"

No sooner had Lu Feng finished speaking did he see Ji Jue get up from the railing, pick up a stone from the ground, and toss it down, which immediately angered him, "Hey, that's cheating!"

"You didn't say I couldn't."

Ji Jue retorted as if it were the most natural thing, "Besides, couldn't you have stopped me?"

"…"

Lu Feng seemed to swear under his breath, helplessly pulled out fifty and slapped it into his chest, then took away the stones from his hand.

And so, against the setting sun, the happy stones scattered into the waves.

One after the other.

Like the most leisurely game from childhood summer vacations.

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