Standoff

With no warning whatsoever, bullets rained down from above. Lying flat on the ground, Chen Yubo’s vision went dark, cold dread washing over him in waves. But Ji Jue felt even colder—bone-chillingly cold, as freezing as the double-door refrigerator he had bought just days ago. Subconsciously calculating the trajectory between the point of impact and the shooter, Ji Jue realized that out of all these people, the line of fire was aimed squarely at Chen Yubo, who had just been grinning like an idiot beside him. We're screwed. They're gunning for the boss! The echoes had not yet dispersed among the mountains. The two had barely hit the ground, and before Chen Yubo could even react, the dormant Kunpeng roared to life once more. Its engine revved at high speed, burning rubber in place and spinning furiously under Ji Jue's command. It kicked up clouds of dust and dirt while belching thick plumes of black smoke from incomplete fuel combustion. And the instant Ji Jue slammed his palm onto the ground, the surrounding streetlights abruptly shut off. The sudden plunge from light to darkness caught the distant sniper off guard for a second. But when he pressed his eye to the scope again, he found that the two people who had been lying on the ground had vanished without a trace! The crosshairs swept over the chaotic scene and the scattering crowd, quickly locking onto a car hastily reversing and speeding away. After two more resounding blasts, the driverless sports car flipped onto its side. It exploded, burning fiercely. From start to finish, not a soul crawled out. Meanwhile, amid the dead leaves and muck beneath a drainage ditch, Chen Yubo was wedged into a narrow gap, panting heavily. Ji Jue pinned him down firmly, leaving him unable to budge an inch. Thank heavens the ditch wasn't covered! Bless the municipal road department! Ji Jue slipped his other hand into his backpack and dialed a call. At the same time, back at the starting line, beside the dwindling DJ stage, a persistent ringtone sounded from the bed of a tricycle, like a morning wake-up alarm. The moment the music played, the cargo-laden Little Niuma opened its eyes. Blinding headlights pierced the darkness. A thunderous roar surpassing any sports car erupted from its engine! Before anyone could react, it had already bolted onto the road, weaving effortlessly among sports cars at a savage velocity surpassing even the Kunpeng. Having casually left the dumbfounded young masters and heiresses in the dust, it crashed straight through the guardrail, cleared ravines, rolled over brick and stone, and defied gravity as it scaled upward through the mountains and dense forest. Straight toward Ji Jue's location! Three minutes. At most three minutes, and Little Niuma would arrive carrying his full arsenal. Sensing the rapidly shrinking distance between them, Ji Jue finally breathed a sigh of relief. The Path of Embers was indeed unmatched at utilizing external objects; at the same time, stripped of external objects, ninety-nine percent of one's abilities were gutted on the spot. Had Xiao An or Wen Wen been here, even if they were in the same rank as Ji Jue, they would never have been forced into such passivity. One had maxed out agility and evasion; the other boasted peerless defense. They could have simply charged straight through the bullets and smashed the sniper to pieces with a single punch. Ji Jue, on the other hand, didn't even dare expose the drone hovering in midair. He had even pulled it back, squinting through the camera's maximum zoom at the hazy outline in the distance. Only then did he notice that after aiming at several different spots in succession, the shooter perched on high ground decisively turned his barrel toward the drainage ditch where they were hiding! You got wallhacks or something? Instant lock-on? Or... Could one of the panicked people in the crowd be an accomplice? "Just how big was your bet?!" Ji Jue glared at the panicked Chen Yubo, unable to hold back his questioning. "Calling for backup because they can't take a loss is one thing, but hiring a sniper to take off our heads? What the hell is this?" "Impossible!" Chen Yubo shook his head emphatically. "Absolutely impossible!" Seeing Ji Jue's skepticism, he scrambled to explain, "Even if that kid Mu Jiang lost every penny of the wager, at worst he'd get a beating back home and still pay it all back with interest. Besides, do drugs, drink, crash cars—sure, he might do that. But hire a hitman to kill me? He doesn't have the guts! If I lose so much as a single hair, he wouldn't make it out of Yacheng alive!" Ji Jue was stunned. Had he really underestimated just how wealthy these second-generation scions were? "Then who wants to kill you?" Then he saw that familiar, crystal-clear innocence resurface in Chen Yubo's eyes—so pure, and so profoundly dumb: "I dunno!" "You don't even know who you've offended?!" "Sigh, just being alive offends people. Sometimes merely breathing is a sin. When you're rich, the more friends you have, the more enemies you make..." After the initial panic passed, an eerie calm settled over Chen Yubo, as though he were long accustomed to this. "It's probably targeted at my family." "What does your family actually do?!" Ji Jue couldn't take it anymore. What kind of import-export business made enemies this lethal? "Ah, you didn't know?" Chen Yubo seemed even more shocked than he was, as if socializing with him without knowing what his family did was utterly bizarre. He said, "My older brother is Chen Xingzhou." "Fuck!" Ji Jue's vision went dark. Chen Xingzhou!!! Two months ago, had Ji Jue heard this name, he might have asked which idiot that was and remarked on how familiar it sounded. But having become a Celestial Chosen and gradually gained exposure to the other side of Yacheng, he truly grasped the terrifying weight that name carried in Yacheng's underworld. On his business cards, titles such as industrialist, financier, or Vice President of the Quancheng Fellow-Townsmen Association were usually printed to project a genial, illustrious persona. In truth, that was merely a glamorous disguise draped over his shoulders. He was one of the foremost bosses in Yacheng's underworld, an executive of the Wild Gathering. In his early years, he had started out in underground lotteries and gambling parlors, serving as an enforcer and lieutenant. Six years later, he founded Yacheng's largest gaming corporation, vaulting into the status of an honored guest among high-ranking figures on all sides. Beyond commanding an untold number of enforcers, he ran numerous businesses franchised out by the Wild Gathering, and was simultaneously the biggest intelligence broker, fixer, and middleman in all of Yacheng. And among his many clients was Ji Jue's dear teacher, the director of Tide Sound Workshop, Master Artisan Ye Xian! Now Ji Jue was beginning to suspect that tonight's entire race might have been a setup! Just thinking about the kinds of storms he could be dragged into by crossing paths with someone like that gave him chills all over. He might well end up dead without even a scrap of bone left. "Why didn't you say so earlier?!" "Wasn't I worried about bad PR? That kind of status isn't something you brag about in polite company." Chen Yubo rubbed his hands together awkwardly. "Besides, I started my business relying on myself... and all the years of hard work my brother put in..." As he spoke, he grabbed Ji Jue's hand, teary-eyed. "I'm a legitimate entrepreneur, Brother Ji! I've never done anything shady in my life. You can't just abandon me!" Brother? You're my damn ancestor! Had there not been a sniper aiming outside, Ji Jue might well have thrown his hands up and bolted at top speed. Years ago, Ji Jue had heard the old saying that fate has already set a price on every gift. He had always believed it deeply, but he had never imagined that this time, the price tag would be slapped right out in the open! He knew easy money like this was cursed! Well, karma had arrived. He squeezed words out from between his teeth: "This is going to cost extra!" "Double it—I'll double it! No, triple it! Wait, I don't have that much cash flow right now, can I give you company shares?" Chen Yubo clung to him like a lifeline. "Can I pay in cryptocurrency? Stock or futures settlement?" "Shut the fuck up!" Ji Jue shoved a hand over his face, glaring in warning. "Not another word!" The sound of a speeding vehicle drew closer from the distance. It barged into the venue. Unfortunately, it wasn't Little Niuma, which was still scaling mountains and crossing ridges, but a van without even a license plate. The vehicle screeched to a halt. The doors slid open, and five masked men leaped out. They paid no attention to the people scattering in panic or hiding in corners, nor did they care about the luxury bags or valuables strewn across the ground. They walked straight toward their direction. Some were tall, some short, some fat, some thin. Their only common trait was what they held in their hands, wrapped in black plastic bags yet revealing a silhouette intimately familiar to Ji Jue. Pistols! You think you're the only ones with guns?! Propped against the wall of the ditch, Ji Jue drew the Deerhunter without an expression. Watching from the aerial view of the Sky Eye, he counted down silently: 5, 4, 3, 2—1! The instant an unfamiliar figure appeared at the edge of the ditch, he pulled the trigger without hesitation. Before the man could even make out where they were, he fell backward toward the sky. As the remaining men instinctively recoiled, they heard the roar of an engine right in their ears! The headlights of several sports cars scattered across the lot snapped on at once. Then, they demonstrated to the attackers in full what terrifying acceleration meant—zero to a hundred kilometers per hour in under three seconds. In an instant, one man was sent flying by a direct hit, while two others were dragged beneath spinning tires amid crisscrossing drifts, turned into bloody messes that rolled across the ground. Amid frantic screams, the lone surviving gunman who had tumbled to the ground froze, then instinctively turned and fled for his life. Only then did he notice the cold beams of light cast onto the road from behind. A sports car accelerated! In less than a hundred meters, it turned into a shooting star, sending him straight into the heavens! Finally, a dull thud as he hit the ground. In the dead silence, only the echoes of engine roars reverberated across the mountains. The sniper pulled the trigger once more. The bullet grazed past Ji Jue's head, burrowing into the dirt and disappearing. Ji Jue fell back against the slope, chest heaving violently. In that brief moment, Ji Jue had intended to use the chaotic distraction to leap out of the drainage ditch. He hadn't expected that from beginning to end, the shooter wouldn't be swayed in the slightest by his comrades' brutal deaths, keeping his aim coldly fixed on their position. Every possible escape route was locked down. Beneath the sniper's line of sight, the open world outside the ditch was already flooded with waiting death. "We're pinned down," Ji Jue murmured softly, looking up at the night sky. Amid the scattered stars, the Sky Eye looked down from above, staring at the figure hidden among the mountains. In this dead silence, they stared at each other. Just as they were locked in a standoff. Motionless. As if turned to stone, ready to remain deadlocked until the end of time. Until, from the distant mountains, the roar of an engine echoed out. Little Niuma was speeding their way!