Chapter 30 Part 3

Xu Zhinan remained standing in front of him, not moving. Lu Xihe asked in surprise, "Is there something else?"

Xu Zhinan moved a little closer and said in a low voice, "Didn't we say the four group champions would treat? Should we go settle the bill now?"

Lu Xihe burst out laughing. "They were just kidding. How could we let a kid who hasn't even graduated treat? Just go, I'll pay your share."

He patted his chest and said magnanimously, "Big Bro is rich!"

"..."

Xu Zhinan insisted on paying according to the rules, but Lu Xihe was equally insistent on not letting her pay. In the end, he simply pushed her out of the room. "Hurry up and go!"

The door was slammed shut with a "bang."

Xu Zhinan: "..."

Carrying her backpack, she went to the front desk and asked about the bill for Room 888, then took out the business card Lu Xihe had given her at the end of the preliminary round from her bag.

There was a phone number on it.

Xu Zhinan entered it into Alipay and searched. A user profile popped up—Assassin Lu Xihe.

Assassin was the name of his tattoo shop.

Xu Zhinan divided the price she had just inquired about by 4 and transferred it to Lu Xihe.

After washing her hands in the restroom, she took the elevator downstairs. Just as the elevator doors were closing, they were blocked by a hand, and the doors reopened.

Xu Zhinan looked up. It was the group champion of the School Group. She thought for a moment and remembered the man's name was Wei Jing.

The man walked into the elevator and smiled at her. "What a coincidence."

"Yeah." Xu Zhinan wasn't good at talking to strangers and just nodded in acknowledgment.

"Leaving so early?" Wei Jing asked.

"Yeah, it's a bit far to get back. I'm afraid the subway will stop running." Xu Zhinan paused, then asked out of courtesy, "Are you leaving early too?"

Wei Jing: "No, I'm just going down to get something."

Xu Zhinan nodded, said "oh," and didn't say anything more.

She took out her phone from her bag to check the time and found that it had run out of battery and automatically shut down. Fortunately, she had brought her subway card.

The KTV was on the fifth floor.

The KTV everyone chose wasn't in a mall, as the hourly rates for large rooms in malls were too high. So they went to an older KTV in another part of Yan City. It was next to a commercial street, but the immediate surroundings were very quiet.

Right outside was a large parking lot, and you had to cross the vast lot to get to the main road.

After getting off the elevator, Xu Zhinan was about to walk towards the subway station when Wei Jing suddenly grabbed her wrist. Her steps halted, and she turned to look at him. "What's wrong?"

"You're taking the subway back?"

"Yeah."

"I'll give you a ride." As Wei Jing spoke, he pointed behind him with his right hand. "My car is over there. Where do you live?"

His left hand was still holding her wrist.

Xu Zhinan faintly sensed that something was wrong. She took a step back and discreetly pulled her hand away. "Thanks, but it's okay. Weren't you coming down to get something?"

"Oh, my friend suddenly said he's not coming anymore because he has something to do," he said casually, waving his phone.

"I'll just take the subway." Xu Zhinan silently tightened her grip on her backpack and took another step back. "I'll be going then."

But just as she lifted her leg to leave, Wei Jing grabbed her wrist again.

The parking lot here was pitch black, with only one streetlamp that was broken. The dim yellow light flickered, closely resembling a close-up shot of the environment in a horror movie, a bit scary.

Her wrist was yanked unexpectedly, forcing a scream from Xu Zhinan.

"Hey, do you think I'm a bad guy?" Wei Jing said with an amused laugh. "We're all from the same competition. It's just a small thing to give you a ride home. You can't misunderstand me because of this."

Xu Zhinan remembered what Lu Xihe had told her in the afternoon—this kid was no good.

"Let go of me first," she forced herself to calm down and said, looking at him.

The young girl was pretending to be calm, but her trembling eyelashes undoubtedly exposed her inner turmoil. Wei Jing had to admit, this Xu Zhinan was indeed beautiful, but it was more than just her pretty appearance. Her beauty was alluring, probably because it was so pure, which could more easily arouse a person's desire to conquer.

Wei Jing had originally just wanted to come down with her to get her contact information and get to know her, but suddenly, the blood rushed to his head and he acted on impulse.

"Little girl, you're an adult, right? Ever thought about getting a boyfriend?" Wei Jing had a roguish smile on his face, the pad of his thumb rubbing against the inside of her wrist. He hissed, a grin spreading across his face. "Your skin is so smooth."

Xu Zhinan struggled to pull back, but the difference in strength was too great. In the end, she had to use her other hand to grab her backpack and slam it heavily against him.

There were many odds and ends in her bag, including a thick Buddhist scripture, which happened to hit Wei Jing's brow bone. With a dull thud, he subconsciously raised his hand to block, and Xu Zhinan finally escaped his grasp.

She didn't even have time to pick up her bag and just turned and ran.

But she was tripped by a stone on the ground and fell heavily onto the concrete. Her jeans scraped against the coarse gravel, and her palm was probably scraped raw.

Xu Zhinan didn't even glance to see if she was bleeding. Just as she was about to get up, a dazzling car headlight shone straight at her. She squinted and raised her hand to shield her eyes.

The car screeched to a halt, creating a brief spark as it rubbed against the ground, followed by the sound of a door slamming shut.

In the glare of the headlights, a tall figure appeared. The young man's steps were urgent and fast. He walked past Xu Zhinan and went straight towards Wei Jing.

There was a stick on the ground. He bent down to pick it up, weighed it in his palm, and then his arm muscles tensed. Wei Jing was knocked to the ground with one strike.

Lin Qingye's face was filled with fury, the lines of his neck taut with exertion.

He used the stick to lift Wei Jing's chin, his gaze lowered, indifferent and cold, as if he didn't see the blood on his forehead at all. "What were you just doing?"

"Who the fuck are you!" Wei Jing's eyes were also blurred with blood, unable to open. He roared, "I'm disciplining my own girlfriend, do you need to meddle in my business!"

He was trying to use this to drive away this meddlesome good Samaritan.

Just like how some human traffickers would tell passersby that a crying child was their own.

Lin Qingye sneered, and without even blinking, he struck down with the stick again.

"You think you're worthy of calling her your girlfriend?"

The blood-stained stick tapped against Wei Jing's face, one tap for each word. "Say it again, and I'll make it so you can never speak again. Believe me?"

His tone was flat, his expression was neutral, but that made it all the more unpredictable, all the more terrifying, as one couldn't tell if that stick would come crashing down again in the next second.

Wei Jing was dazed by those two hits. He curled up pathetically on the ground, trying to retreat, but Lin Qingye stepped on his calf.

Xu Zhinan witnessed the entire thing, stunned, as if she was once again seeing the boy in a high school uniform throwing punch after punch.

Only at this moment did she suddenly snap back to reality. A sharp pain shot through her knee as she got up, but she endured it and limped quickly over.

"Lin Qingye."

The young man's hand holding the stick paused, as if breaking free from a trance.

He tightened his grip on the stick, and his foot pressed down hard.

Wei Jing lay on the ground, wailing incessantly.

Xu Zhinan's fingers slowly clutched his sleeve, then she grabbed his wrist and tugged twice forcefully. "Lin Qingye."

After two seconds, Lin Qingye's hand holding the stick moved away.

That thick Buddhist scripture had fallen out of her backpack and landed on the ground, flipped open by a few pages.

The stick hung above the scripture, and a drop of blood trickled down, landing right on the page printed with a Buddha image with a "pat."

That golden Buddha statue was stained red and dirtied by the drop of blood.

It still smiled with Zen-like tranquility, looking at the two of them.