CM | Chapter 57

The moment Xu Shuo heard Gu Yao’s cry, he was still half asleep, but his body had already reacted on instinct, he bolted.

The second his long legs started moving, the few people behind him who had been preparing to sneak up on him also broke into a run.

Damn it! They’d been spotted!

But Xu Shuo didn’t run far. He just opened up the battlefield, at the very least putting some distance between himself and Gu Yao. And right ahead, there was a surveillance camera mounted on the utility pole.

In those brief seconds, Xu Shuo also ran through the list of people he wanted to teach a lesson to. He had been in Jiangcheng for so long, and there was only one person he’d ever offended.

The instant those three characters flashed through his mind, he hit the brakes again, stopping at the diagonal blind spot beneath the camera. The moment he turned back, he dodged the iron bar the first thug swung down at him.

There were four more behind him.

Xu Shuo was already in the fight, but Gu Yao, sitting in the car, was getting anxious. At first she thought he had really run away, but after only a few steps he stopped again, for no apparent reason.

It wasn’t until she followed the position where Xu Shuo was standing and looked up at the camera above him that she understood.

Gu Yao glanced again through the rearview mirror at the punks behind them, and saw the one running at the back suddenly stop. He fumbled around on his body, then pulled out a small knife, the blade flashing white.

Gu Yao’s heart jolted. She knew it was too late to rush out and warn Xu Shuo, and she didn’t have time to think it through. She simply threw her body sideways across the passenger seat and, the moment the knife-wielding thug ran up to the car, quickly opened the door.

The thug couldn’t dodge in time. He gave a muffled grunt and was knocked aside by the door. Gu Yao hurriedly slammed it shut again, then grabbed two phones, one to call Xiao Chuan, the other to call the police directly.

The knife-wielding thug got back on his feet and charged into the fight too.

In her panic, Gu Yao climbed out through the sunroof and shouted at the top of her lungs, “Xu Shuo, they have knives!”

Several thugs had already surrounded him, and Xu Shuo stood right in the middle, fighting and grappling with them.

Long legs really did have an advantage. Most of the time, before the thugs could even get close, he had already kicked them away. But these guys were all the durable type. Kick them off once, and they’d come rushing back a second time.

Hearing Gu Yao’s warning, Xu Shuo still found time in the middle of the chaos to wave at her.

The thugs also heard the woman’s voice behind them. One of them even turned his head and saw Gu Yao lying on the sunroof, talking on the phone. Clearly, she was calling the police.

The thug cursed under his breath, then hurried over to another man and muttered a few words.

“Boss, that woman called the police, what do we do…”

“Fuck, go deal with her!”

The thug answered and turned to run back.

At that moment, the thug being called Boss shouted, “כולם on him! Take one of his arms off, and there’s 200,000 yuan!”

The instant they heard money, the thugs swarmed forward.

Xu Shuo arched a brow. Hearing that one of his arms was only worth 200,000, he immediately got a little displeased. He was just about to use these two strong arms of his to give these idiots a lesson when he looked up and saw one of the thugs rush off straight toward Gu Yao.

Xu Shuo’s heart tightened. He flung aside the thug charging at him, chopped the man’s neck with a knife-hand strike, then snatched the iron bar from his hand and broke out of the encirclement.

The thugs chased after him.

On the other side, Gu Yao had already finished calling the police. The second she hung up, she saw a vicious-looking man charging at her, swinging a hammer as he smashed hard against the side of her car.

Gu Yao jumped in fright. Just as she was about to hide back inside the car, the window shattered right by her leg.

She heard the man curse, “You nosy bitch!”

Gu Yao shouted, “I already called the police! I’m a witness now.”

As she spoke, she even took out her phone and snapped several pictures of the man.

The man instantly flew into a rage. He cursed “Fuck” and stepped onto Gu Yao’s car, trying to climb up and grab her.

Gu Yao immediately ducked back inside the car, then opened the door and tried to run.

But the man was faster.

She had only run a couple of steps when she felt a force wrench her neck backward. It nearly choked the breath out of her. Her vision suddenly went black, and after two harsh coughs, her phone flew out of her hand too.

This man wasn’t some perverted serial killer, just an ordinary thug, but he was used to robbing and assaulting people. His strength was terrifying. With his arm locked around Gu Yao’s throat, he could keep her completely immobilized.

Because she had her back to him, Gu Yao couldn’t struggle effectively. She could only claw at the man’s face.

The man was scratched and cursed, “Let me kill you!”

Right then, Xu Shuo had already run up. The man immediately tightened his arm around Gu Yao’s throat and turned, increasing the pressure.

“You brat, come any closer and I’ll strangle her!”

Gu Yao was almost out of breath. In her dazed state, she seemed to hear Xu Shuo shouting, “Ease up, she can’t breathe anymore. Isn’t it just one arm you want from me? Come take it yourselves!”

Then another man shouted, “Brat, you said it yourself. Get him! And listen up, if you fight back, we’ll start with this bitch!”

Gu Yao closed her eyes, and a scene suddenly surged into her mind.

…

…

In the scene there was a tall boy with healthy wheat-colored skin. His hair was already damp with sweat, and he lifted the hem of his white T-shirt to wipe his face, revealing a few defined abs.

And she was standing right across from him.

After wiping his sweat, the boy said to her, “Come on, try again the way I just taught you.”

She nodded, and then the boy moved swiftly. Before she could even see clearly, he had appeared behind her and wrapped an arm around her neck.

Her breathing instantly caught. She wanted to struggle free, but she couldn’t get any strength into her body. All she could feel was the heat of the boy’s body pressed against her, and the breath he exhaled.

He was covered in sweat, mixed with the scent of sunshine.

He lowered his voice by her ear and asked, “What, you already forgot what I just taught you?”

…

…

The scene cut off abruptly. Gu Yao suddenly opened her eyes, as if she could see several thugs surrounding Xu Shuo. Two of them were holding him down, while another raised a hammer and was about to smash it down on his arm.

Her voice turned hoarse as she shouted, “Stop!”

At the same time, her body reacted on instinct too.

Because the man restraining her had already let down his guard and loosened his grip a little, she finally had the strength to seize that split second.

She thrust one hand up under the man’s chin and shoved hard, while bending one leg and hooking her foot around the man’s right ankle, wrenching it sideways.

The man’s center of gravity shifted instantly. His footing went unsteady, and he quickly toppled to the ground.

Almost at the same time, Xu Shuo, who had already been prepared to be butchered, saw it too. He kicked away the thug holding the hammer, then seized the two men gripping him, dragged them in front of him, and slammed their heads together with a loud thud.

The thugs were beaten to a pulp. Xu Shuo spared a glance at Gu Yao and saw that she had already clutched her throat and stumbled several meters away, one hand braced against the car as she tried to steady her breathing.

Just then, sirens sounded in the distance.

The thugs who had scrambled up from the ground looked at one another when they heard it. Then, at the boss’s shout, they immediately ran the other way.

Seeing this, Gu Yao finally dared to relax. She leaned against the car and slid down to the ground.

Xu Shuo came over to her, crouched down with his long legs bent, his back to the light, his eyes pitch-black. “That takedown technique of yours, not bad at all.”

Gu Yao coughed twice more. “If he hadn’t let his guard down, nothing I did would have worked.”

Xu Shuo let out a soft laugh, then held out a hand. “I’ll help you up.”

Gu Yao placed her hand in his palm. He squeezed it firmly, using that strength to help her stand, but she got up a little too abruptly. Before she could even steady herself, her vision swayed for a moment.

Frowning, Gu Yao closed her eyes and swayed on her feet, when she heard Xu Shuo’s voice right next to her ear. “Careful.”

A force followed at her waist too.

But once she was steady, that force withdrew.

In a daze, Gu Yao opened her eyes and looked at the man before her again. But for some reason, the focus in her vision kept wobbling, and everything started to blur.

Until darkness surged over her, and she was pulled into it without warning.

Her body went soft and tipped forward. Faintly, she could still hear that man calling her name.

“Gu Yao!”

…

…

Gu Yao slept very deeply.

Her head was heavy, and she felt a little dizzy, as if some force were constantly and fiercely dragging her downward. She tried to open her eyes, but it was useless.

She kept running in the dark, only faintly seeing a sliver of light in the far distance. She strained toward that light, but no matter how hard she ran, she could never reach it.

The light seemed to be moving.

She was tired. Exhausted. Her legs gave out, and she fell to the ground.

Then she caught a faint scent in the air, the smell of sunshine mixed with the scent of a boy.

She looked up and saw a tall figure standing before her. The boy had sharp eyes. He looked down at her, a sharp knife still in his hand.

The boy suddenly lifted his arm, and the blade in his hand stabbed through the darkness around them.

The darkness seemed to have substance, torn open again and again by the knife, and the light beyond it poured in from all directions, bright and blinding.

Gu Yao instinctively squinted, lifting a hand to shield her eyes.

Then the boy reached out, gripping her elbow to help her up.

Only after Gu Yao adjusted to the light did she realize they were in a back alley.

It was a dead end. No one else was there besides them.

The boy suddenly said, “This won’t do. Your body’s too weak. If you run into a bad guy and get dragged somewhere like this, you’ll be completely helpless.”

Gu Yao lowered her hand and looked at the boy in surprise. “Can you wish me something better? Why would I run into a bad guy? I don’t do anything illegal.”

The boy smiled, a bit roguishly. “Because if I were a bad guy, I’d definitely go after you.”

Gu Yao: “…”

As he spoke, the boy took two steps back, shoved both hands in his pockets, looked Gu Yao up and down, and said, “Look at you, such a pretty little girl…”

Gu Yao glared at him hard.

Then she asked, “What if the move you just taught me fails?”

The boy paused, folded his arms, and frowned his thick brows. “Then that’s a little harder.”

Gu Yao: “You mean there’s no way?”

The boy said, “There is a way, but it’s a bit dirty. I’m worried you might feel awkward…”

Gu Yao blinked, not following. “How dirty?”

The boy looked a little stiff. He cleared his throat twice, stepped back a little farther, then said, “Um, I heard that when you women get your periods, it hurts, right?”

It took Gu Yao a second to understand what he was asking. “So what?”

The boy turned his face away, somewhat awkwardly. “Actually, men hurt too.”

Gu Yao: “…”

Men hurt too?

She suddenly understood something, and her gaze couldn’t help drifting downward.

The boy glanced at her quickly, then turned half sideways and said, “Look, all the organs in the human body are protected by bones on the outside, like the ribs or the skull. There’s also fat underneath the bones for cushioning. But there’s one place on a man that has no protection at all. If you accidentally do intense exercise and kick it, grab it, or get it crushed, it’ll be damaged.”

Gu Yao’s mind went completely blank. She could only stand there listening to him explain.

The boy’s ears had started to turn red too, but he forced himself to stay calm, seriously lecturing her on the most unbearable pain in life.

His description was vivid too. He said it was a kind of pain that started from the penis, shot up to the lower abdomen and then the kidneys, like diarrhea but a hundred times worse. The first burst of pain felt like being struck by lightning, and then came the endless, waves-on-waves aftermath, extremely long-lasting, enough to make someone teeter on the edge of heaven and hell, to the point they couldn’t even cry out.

The boy described it so vividly that Gu Yao listened in a daze. When he finally finished, she couldn’t hold it in and burst out laughing.

A flicker of annoyance crossed the boy’s face, and he shot her a deeply frustrated glare.

Gu Yao could only lower her head, suppressing her laughter as she asked, “So you mean, if I really run into a bad guy, I should go after that part?”

The boy coughed twice and said seriously, “If you run into one, never turn your back on him. Don’t try to run away while lying face down. If the other person is pressing down on your back, there’s nothing you can do. You can only let them do whatever they want.”

Gu Yao paused. “You mean I should turn over and face him head-on?”

The boy nodded. “Only if you’re facing him can you possibly reach out and grab the weakest part.”

Gu Yao: “…”

After a two-second silence, Gu Yao asked, “Not with a knee?”

The boy snorted with laughter. “Before you even get your knee up there, you’ll already be restrained.”

Then he continued, “Remember, once you grab it, don’t let go. Use all your strength. No matter how strong the other person is, he’ll go soft in an instant. It’ll hurt so much he’ll wish he were dead, and he’ll beg you to let go.”

Gu Yao: “…”

The boy said, “But you absolutely mustn’t listen to him. At the very least, wait until the police get there before you let go, understand?”

Gu Yao: “…………”

…

…

Gu Yao woke up.

She slowly opened her eyes. The light wasn’t glaring, and after a second she adapted and closed them again, hearing faint movements all around her, as if someone were walking outside the door.

She also caught a faint smell of disinfectant.

Taking a breath, Gu Yao opened her eyes once more and saw a snow-white ceiling. A white cotton blanket covered her body, and all the furnishings around her were a cool, muted color.

It was a single patient room.

Who brought her here? Xu Shuo?

Thinking that, she got out of bed, slipped on a pair of slippers, and moved to the door.

The moment she cracked the door open, she saw the back of a man in a suit. It was Zhu Shengxi.

He was listening to the doctor speak. “The patient is fine, just badly frightened, physically exhausted, and a little hypoglycemic from not eating enough. She can be discharged after some rest.”

Zhu Shengxi said, “Thank you, doctor.”

The doctor quickly left. Zhu Shengxi was just about to turn back toward the ward when his phone rang.

He looked down at the caller ID, then frowned and answered, “You’d better have a reasonable explanation for what happened today.”

His voice was not only cold, but edged with anger.

The person on the other end was clearly terrified and stammered out a few explanations, which quickly made Zhu Shengxi lose patience.

“I don’t want to hear any more nonsense. Figure out the cleanup yourself.”

As soon as he finished speaking, Zhu Shengxi cut the call.

Gu Yao froze. She quickly closed the gap in the door and hurried back into the room.