Tang Yuyan was pulled out, and she was covered in blood. The cold and the pulling did not wake her — she was just too weak.
The two CIA agents threw her on the snow. Her face came in contact with the icy snow and her eyelid moved, but she did not open her eyes.
Gu Kewen spoke again. “Don’t be put off by the fact that she’s dirty, fellas. She’s a known beauty. I wouldn’t give you guys this chance if I were a man.”
Two Special Forces black men from the Marines smiled vulgar smiles. They looked eager.
“Enough!” Xia Lei said angrily, “Gu Kewen, you’ve captured me. I’ll go with you, so let Tang Yuyan go!
“Heheheh…” Gu Kewen giggled like a schoolgirl. “Are you begging me, Xia Lei?”
Xia Lei gritted his teeth. “Yes, I am.”
Gu Kewen’s voice grew cold. “You call that begging?”
“What do you want?”
Gu Kewen shouted at Xia Lei, “Kneel!”
Anger burned in Xia Lei’s heart and he wanted nothing more than to wring Gu Kewen’s neck, but he thought of Tang Yuyan, and he bent his knees.
Pride and dignity were important, but they were nothing when compared to life.
Plop. Xia Lei knelt.
Tang Yuyan’s eyelids moved again, and she finally opened her eyes a little this time. She saw Xia Lei, kneeling on the snowy ground, saw Gu Kewen, and saw the vulture-like CIA agents and Special Forces soldiers next to her. She immediately understood what had happened.
“Xia… No…” She wanted to say something, but her voice was just too weak, so weak that even she could not hear herself.
“Okay, I’m kneeling now.” Xia Lei had his head lowered, and was appearing as humble as he could. “I beg you, let Tang Yuyan go. I will go with you. You can do whatever you want to me.”
Two tears dropped from the corners of Tang Yuyan’s eyes to the ground and melted tiny spots of snow. What Xia Lei had said was the most moving thing she had heard in her life. Her heart melted.
“You caused my father’s death. You killed my brother. You made me lose everything I had, and now you are in this state.” Gu Kewen looked coldly at Xia Lei. “Do you think that this grudge between us will be resolved by your kneeling? That I would let you go?”
“I didn’t ask you to let me off. I said that you can do whatever you want to me, but please let Tang Yuyan go. This is a grudge between you and me, and nothing to do with her.” Xia Lei moved his knees to shift towards Tang Yuyan.
No one stopped the man walking on his knees. The way the CIA agents saw Xia Lei now, was that he had turned into a pitiful worm.
“Ha. You think I’ll let her go because you ask for it? I said that I would be glad to do anything that would cause you pain.” Gu Kewen shot a look at the two black Special Forces soldiers next to her.
The two black Special Forces soldiers understood, and walked towards Tang Yuyan.
Xia Lei threw himself over Tang Yuyan, protecting her. “You’re not allowed to touch her! Or I’ll kill you all!”
“What’s this guy shouting?” One of the black Special Forces soldiers kicked Xia Lei on the back.
Xia Lei did not let go of Tang Yuyan. He moved his hand to Tang Yuyan’s waist with the impact of the kick.
“Take him away!” Gu Kewen gave the order. “You guys have ten minutes. Kill this bitch after you’re done playing with her.”
The two black Special Forces soldiers smiled.
Two CIA agents came forwards and grabbed Xia Lei by the arms, lifting him off of Tang Yuyan.
Xia Lei did not resist. He looked in the direction of the hill, at the back of it, his gaze full of expectation and anxiousness.
“What are you looking at?” Gu Kewen looked where Xia Lei was looking, but she did not see anything.
Xia Lei kept his mouth shut and said nothing. His hands were clenched into fists, and his right hand trembled slightly.
Gu Kewen walked up to Xia Lei and drew close to his ear. She spoke softly in Chinese, “Xia Lei, are you waiting for your backup? Let me tell you that they are being taken care of now. Do you still remember that woman in Japan? She will take real good care of your underlings. No one will come save you. Today is the day you die.”
Ptoo! Xia Lei spat on Gu Kewen’s face.
“Bastard!” Gu Kewen swung her arm and slapped Xia Lei across the face.
The two black Special Forces soldiers lifted Tang Yuyan and headed to a spot sheltered from the wind. It seemed that they did not want to do what they were planning to do in the cutting wind.
“Why aren’t you making a move? What are you waiting for?” Xia Lei suddenly shouted in Italian.
“What did you say?” Gu Kewen paused and stared at Xia Lei in alarm.
Xia Lei shouted again in Italian, “Why aren’t you making a move? What are you waiting for?”
“Bastard!” Gu Kewen slapped him again. “What the fuck are you screaming?”
Xia Lei stopped shouting. He looked coldly at Gu Kewen, and a faint sneer appeared on his lips.
“Boss, I think he was shouting in Italian,” said a CIA agent. “I think he’s asking someone why he hasn’t made a move yet.”
Gu Kewen scoffed. “Have you gone mad? You—”
Her voice was cut off.
The two soldiers carrying Tang Yuyan stopped in their tracks too.
Practically all eyes had gone to the hill.
Under the gaze of everyone, a blonde girl wearing a pointy witch hat and holding a wooden staff came climbing up from the empty mountain path. The staff in her hand looked like a magic staff, but it obviously wasn’t, because the top of staffs in movies and novels were topped with precious gems, and hers was topped with a pink plastic ball. Plus, her staff also had a “Made in China” label on it.
A dark, sinful and heavy scene was instantly transformed by this girl’s arrival into a sense of joy which should not have been there.
Clatter! Dozens of guns were raised and pointed at the blonde girl.
Gu Kewen just had to give the order to blast this odd blonde girl to bits.
But Gu Kewen gave no such order, because this blonde girl did not have any weapons and looked like she had no combat ability. But this definitely was not why she had not had this girl killed immediately. It was because this blonde girl was just too strange.
Who was she?
How did she turn up here?
There were questions which Gu Kewen wanted answers to.
“Sorry I’m late, but I definitely didn’t do it on purpose. My parachute got snagged on a stone and it took me a long while to untangle the ropes. My butt is swollen from the fall,” said the blonde girl in very standard Italian.
“What did she say?” asked Gu Kewen anxiously, “Translate what she said!”
The blonde girl spoke in Chinese before the CIA agent who understood Italian could reply. “No need to translate. I can use all the languages of this world. Look, I’m speaking to you in Chinese now. Can you understand me?” She swept her gaze over the CIA agents and spoke again in English, “Are there any Inuits amongst you? I can speak to him in his native tongue too. Mayans too. I can speak Mayan.”
She was Xia Lei’s miracle soldier from the skies.
But her appearance made Xia Lei feel like a hundred alpacas had trampled over him.
Was she here to put on a show?
“Who are you?” Gu Kewen drew her gun and pointed it at the blonde girl’s head.
“Maritina.” The blonde girl had a smile on her face as she introduced herself grandly. “I have a Chinese name too. Zhu Xuanyue.”
Zhu Xuanyue.
Xia Lei felt like a hand had grabbed hold of his heart as soon as he heard that name.
She was back.
And in this unbelievable way too!
“What are you doing here?” Gu Kewen’s voice was cold.
Zhu Xuanyue pointed at Xia Lei with her “Made in China” magic staff. “I came to help him. Oh. I’ll kill you guys. I don’t want you to know my secret.” After a pause, she added, “Are you done asking questions? Can I start now?”
“Fuck you, bitch!” Gu Kewen pulled the trigger.
Bang bang bang!
Gu Kewen shot three times in an instant. Three bullets went flying towards Zhu Xuanyue, almost at the same time. One bullet to the head, one to the chest, one to the right lung. Each one of these shots were fatal!
Zhu Xuanyue fell to the ground and blood stained the snow.
Was it over, just like that?
Xia Lei stared, dumbstruck, at the blonde girl in the bloody snow. He contemplated death.
He was quite sure that this Zhu Xuanyue was a fake, because even the incomplete Zhu Xuanyue was 10,000 times more adept at killing people than this blonde girl. In his mission in Japan, Zhu Xuanyue had killed off over twenty Japanese soldiers. Back then, she had plunged into those soldiers’ heads like a storm and the men had died without losing a drop of blood. Zhu Xuanyue had been so powerful then, that he had been terrified of her and did not dare to release her. But the Zhu Xuanyue now came down from the sky carrying a “Made in China” magic staff, didn’t kill a single soldier, but was killed by Gu Kewen instead?!
What sort of fucking joke was this?
“Hahaha…” Gu Kewen laughed. “Xia Lei, is this your savior? Did you get her from the circus?”
Xia Lei was about to speak, but the words froze on his tongue. Under his gaze, the blonde girl who had fallen in the snow was melting quickly, like ice-cream in the sun. Her blood flowed, more and more, pooling in the snow as her body grew smaller and smaller.
“Sh, She…” A CIA agent let out a cry of horror.
The body of the blonde girl had melted completely into the snow.
The scarlet blood flowed quickly, and turned the entire surface of the peak red as everyone watched in stunned horror.
A sinister wind blew.
The dark wind, the blood, the black sky. It was like they had been plunged into hell.
“What’s going on here? What’s going on?” Gu Kewen shouted in terror.
The CIA agents and the Special Forces soldiers assisting the operation grew anxious too. They searched their surroundings for suspicious targets in alarm, and every one of their faces was writ with terror. Some religious ones made the cross, hoping to combat their fear in this way.
At that moment, the mysterious power lying dormant in Xia Lei’s brain shook, and was released. In that instant, Xia Lei’s vision seemed to have a violent wind sweeping past, and all the illusions plaguing him were chased away.
There was no blonde girl on the snow, and no blood. There was just a group of panicked CIA agents and Special Forces soldiers.
Everything just now had been an illusion!