Chapter 116: The Shadow Stained in Blood

Silhouette was silent for a moment, then laughed soundlessly. “So you think I’m someone who uses rationality to disguise cowardice?”

“It’s shallow to carelessly define someone you just met,” Qi Ran shook her head. “I don’t know you. The only reason I said so much was because you wanted to know why I laughed. I laughed because the first thing you said gave me a strong, familiar sense of déjà vu. It’s as simple as that.”

“Simple as that,” Silhouette sighed. “Well said. If only every matter could be explained that simply.”

Qi Ran paused, still trying to decipher the meaning behind his cryptic words, when a sudden, violent jolt sent her stumbling off the pile of white cloth.

“It’s here,” Silhouette said quietly. He looked at Qi Ran. “Be careful. It’s going to get a bit bumpy.”

Before Qi Ran could react, she quickly understood what he meant by “a bit bumpy.” It was far more than that. It felt like two colossal sledgehammers were taking turns pounding the left and right sides of the truck, which was now swerving in an S-shaped path through the torrential rain. Making things worse, the constant bouncing tossed her up along with the white cloths. Her fingers inadvertently brushed against a hard object… While not a military enthusiast and not very knowledgeable about weapons, she could still recognize that the item concealed beneath the white cloth was a shoulder-fired rocket launcher.

What kind of postal truck hid a shoulder-fired rocket launcher? Qi Ran felt her mind go completely blank.

“What is this?” Qi Ran yelled, the only way to avoid being drowned out by the loud, frequent crashes. “And what’s happening outside?”

“You like it? It’s yours now,” Silhouette communicated by shouting as well. “As for the people outside, I’m guessing the Pingjiang Executor Group found out we were escaping to Taoshi, so they tipped off the Taoshi Executor Team. They’re here to intercept us!”

“If I surrender to them now, would it count as turning myself in?” Qi Ran asked. “I think I’ve calmed down.”

“You just said cowardice is not the same as calm,” Silhouette reminded her. “Isn’t that boomerang coming back a little too fast?”

“But there’s another saying: recklessness is not bravery,” Qi Ran shook her head. “I think there’s still time to choose the wise path of knowing when to submit. Look at all this white cloth in the cargo hold. It’s practically suggesting we raise a white flag and surrender.”

She now saw things clearly. Silhouette’s talk about being a day-to-day person and all that other nonsense was pure fabrication. Maybe not outright lies, but in their “New World,” a “normal day” apparently meant carrying RPGs and playing life-or-death high-speed chases with Executors on a rain-lashed highway. And his talk about “finding some work” probably referred to things like armed bank robbery or other highly criminal activities. There was no reasoning with such madmen.

“What’s happening?” Jiang Zhique, startled awake from her sleep, already had her fingers on the button at her left cuff. The violent jolting had sent her rolling directly from the top of the piled white cloths all the way to the bottom. Even though she was now awake, she was still groggy and disoriented. “An earthquake?”

As soon as her words fell, a tearing sound came from the tightly shut iron doors at the back of the cargo hold. Two bizarre, sharp objects, resembling black bamboo shoots, effortlessly pierced the closed doors. They then suddenly expanded like spiders, hooking sharp claws from all directions into the steel. Jiang Zhique stared at these strange objects, a sudden feeling of familiarity washing over her for some unknown reason.

“Something’s wrong,” she suddenly heard Grey Crow’s doubtful voice. She and Silhouette both looked surprised by this sudden event. “Executors wouldn’t use something like this.”

Jiang Zhique suddenly froze. She finally remembered why those strange objects looked familiar. They were regulars in action movies, appearing whenever there was a car chase or hijacking scene… These harpoon-like things were usually used to breach car doors!

“Beep, beep, beep—boop.”

After the series of crisp beeps ended, four small blasts erupted at the corners. The claws embedded in the steel ripped the last two iron doors of the cargo hold off their hinges and flung them away. Torrential rain and raging wind surged into the hold. The piles of white cloth were swept up by the gale, pouring out like a migrating flock of birds, instantly blanketing the view of the pursuing vehicles behind them. All that could be seen was an expanse of blinding white.

Weng weng weng…

Qi Ran froze, straining to look up. A beam of stark, pale white light stabbed diagonally downward into the cargo hold from above. Enormous rotor blades sliced through the wind at high speed, illuminating their bedraggled state with perfect clarity. Under that glaring beam, she shakily raised her hands. It wasn’t out of cowardice, truly. It was because, after squinting, she saw the M134 Minigun, painted pitch black, mounted under the helicopter. She figured that if that thing started spinning, turning them into sieves wouldn’t be a major problem.

At this moment, she finally began to understand why The Circle had fallen to such a state. Just facing this single, arguably outdated, minigun still filled her with immense pressure, as if staring down the Reaper, about to be consumed by a rain of bullets in the next second.

“This isn’t the kind of firepower Executors should have!” she said to Silhouette. “Are you sure it’s Executors coming to capture us? With this level of force, even if they catch us, they’d probably just be giving their coroner colleagues a headache!”

“I don’t think they’re Executors either,” Silhouette shook his head, crouching down and plunging his hands into shadows. “Even better if they’re not. Fewer worries.”

He raised his head, looking towards the source of the light beam, and sighed.

“Using high beams on the highway. Really no sense of decency. They should be fined.”

As soon as he finished speaking, the light beam actually began to sway. It wobbled and drifted erratically, like a drunkard. The massive, scythe-like rotors kept spinning, but Qi Ran no longer found it imposing. It now seemed somewhat tragic, like a bird shot down, struggling in vain, evoking pity.

Qi Ran stared directly at the cockpit, her pupils contracting vertically like a snake’s. Only then did she understand what Silhouette had done. All the occupants in the cockpit were clutching their throats, blood seeping through their fingers. The killing intent had been swift and clean, like a venomous snake in the shadows.

The murderers were their own shadows.

On the cockpit walls, the standing shadows watched their former masters indifferently, making no attempt to intervene.

The pilot kept one hand clamped over his throat while the other clung uselessly to the control stick. But it couldn’t save the giant from crashing. The helicopter lost balance, spinning out of control wildly. Like a panicked, directionless beast, it plowed headfirst into the hillside beside the highway. The minigun didn’t even get a chance to roar. It silently fell until the very last moment before impact. With a deafening explosion, debris flew everywhere, and roaring flames lit up the pitch-black rainy night.

“He who does not believe has been condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of my own,” Silhouette murmured, placing a hand still veiled in shadow over his chest. “The wages of sin is death.”

Qi Ran thought it sounded like something from a religious Bible. But the original text surely didn’t say “in the name of my own.” Silhouette had most likely modified the words for his own use. A few hundred years ago, such blasphemy might have landed him on a stake, roasted alive.

This couldn’t help but remind her of Miss Ah Qiao’s words: “The thing scheming conspirators fear most are young people who aren’t afraid of guns and still have naive, single-minded brains.” Because when those young people say something incredibly naive, you can’t retort. You can only nod. You can never guess if these kids, with their brains not yet fully developed, might, in the next moment, on a surge of heat or hormones, create some irreversible, massive catastrophe.