Hai Ning sat quietly in the dark warehouse.
His mouth was locked in a steel muzzle, impossible to remove.
His right hand, along with his forearm and half of his upper arm, were fixed in a pitch-black, sturdy cylindrical lock.
A thick iron chain as thick as a finger connected him to a stone pillar wide enough to be hugged by one person.
This method of tying him up like a dog was more humiliating than it was imprisoning.
He just didn’t know whether this was the handiwork of the one whose crotch he had kicked or the one whose eye he had gouged.
After being captured and enduring a bumpy journey, Hai Ning, whose head was injured, had stubbornly forced himself not to faint, counting the seconds until he was brought here, where he finally passed out for a short while.
Hai Ning had lived in Yunmeng since childhood and was familiar with the situation in all nineteen north-south streets and thirty-six east-west streets.
He knew which shopkeepers couldn’t afford alarm systems, and based on the speed of the car, the travel time, and the fresh smell of fish in the air, he guessed that this was the lawless area on the east side of Yunmeng, near the fishing district.
After roughly figuring out his location, Hai Ning started thinking about which fool would dare to kidnap him.
This kidnapping was obviously premeditated and quite elaborate.
If Hai Ning had to choose, he would never have picked a kid like himself to kidnap.
Even if they bit down hard, they probably wouldn’t get a drop of grease from him.
So, was there something special about his family?
After thinking it over, Hai Ning could only come up with one recent and most likely reason: the matter concerning “Dionysus World.”
Hai Ning’s brain raced.
His father was strapped for cash, cowardly, and had few friends. He clocked in and out of work punctually and was focused on his family, with no private life to speak of.
In the past half month, he had been even more well-behaved, coming home right after work to take care of the kids, so low-key that he seemed to want to hide himself away.
His investigation into “Dionysus World” had been done with selfish motives, and his intention to blackmail the big company was far from an honorable affair. He certainly didn’t have the courage to boast about it.
So, here comes the question.
If his father hadn’t done anything, how could the interest company have known about him?
Normally, a large company of that size wouldn’t rush to stamp out trouble the moment they detected it.
Ignoring it or probing and trying to win someone over would be their first strategy.
Could it be because his father was a police officer—a special identity that made them wary?
But he was just a low-ranking nobody, someone who couldn’t stir up any waves.
As Hai Ning was thinking, someone lifted the transparent curtain stained with fish scales and fishy water and came in.
The man was holding an old-fashioned communicator, glowing red. The reception wasn’t great, but Hai Ning could hear his father’s panicked breathing and pleading on the other end.
A bare chip was plugged into the interface at the bottom of the communicator.
Hai Ning recognized it. It was a device that could show the police the call signal bouncing all over the city.
It was clear that the people who had kidnapped him were a professional team.
After making eye contact with Hai Ning, the man sneered contemptuously and said to the person on the other end of the line, “Well, well, your precious son is awake. Want to talk to him?”
Hai Ning looked at the man’s right eye, swollen and purple, and chuckled softly.
Wasn’t this the unlucky guy whose eye he had nearly gouged out?
The man froze, then erupted in fury.
If Hai Ning had dared to resist earlier out of ignorance, he should now realize the gravity of his situation if he had any sense.
How did he still have the nerve to laugh?!
The man kicked him hard in the chest, knocking him down violently. “What are you laughing at?!”
As that foot came toward him, Hai Ning subtly shifted his position, curling his body slightly and dodging the brunt of the force.
But even the leftover strength from the blow made him grunt heavily, sliding several meters across the floor until his back slammed into the concrete pillar.
A few seconds later, a trace of blood seeped from the edge of the iron muzzle covering his mouth.
Hai Ning swallowed the metallic taste filling his mouth.
He knew that now, with this interaction between him and the kidnapper, his father on the other end of the line wouldn’t need to desperately beg the kidnappers to prove that he was still alive.
At the same time, he also understood clearly that he probably wasn’t going to make it out of here.
Because the kidnappers hadn’t bothered to blindfold him.
Once he accepted that, Hai Ning actually felt a calmness settle over him.
At least his parents didn’t only have him.
He endured the pain in his ribs and, from his fallen position, saw through the lower part of the transparent plastic curtain that there was another person standing outside.
Judging by the calves, this person had an exceptionally strong build and was holding an axe, gripping it by the handle in a reverse grip.
Hai Ning adjusted his ear, pressing it against the concrete floor.
There was another person walking outside, and the sound of their shoes scraping against the ground came from a distance.
Wherever the footsteps echoed, the sound of someone puffing out smoke followed.
Hai Ning recalled the scene.
The vehicle that had kidnapped him was a seven-seater medium-sized car.
It wasn’t full inside.
Lying in the trunk, Hai Ning had identified five people inside based on the varying breathing sounds coming from different positions in the car.
There was the driver, responsible for driving, and a person who had cursed “useless”—likely the leader. These two had never gotten out of the car.
Three others were the ones who had grabbed him.
Now, these three thugs were guarding him.
After a quick comparison, Hai Ning was sure that the hardest one to deal with was the man holding the axe at the door.
Judging by his muscular build alone, even without the axe, he could easily beat Hai Ning to death with his fists.
Hai Ning wondered why a 13-year-old kid like him deserved this level of guarding.
While he was pondering, the man whose eye he had nearly gouged out was pacing back and forth in front of him, lazily glancing at Hai Ning from the corner of his eye, trying to catch a glimpse of fear or anxiety on his face.
Unfortunately, the man’s swollen eye was so puffed up that, from the side, it looked like a greenish-purple awning shading his eye.
He really didn’t look intimidating, but rather quite comical.
The man was negotiating the ransom with his father, which was hovering around 500,000.
Hai Ning knew his father couldn’t come up with that amount, so he remained calm.
To his surprise, the person on the other end of the phone hesitated only briefly before agreeing, and quite readily at that.
This seemed to play right into the man’s hands.
The swollen-eyed man let out a sinister laugh: “Hai Ning, are you trying to trick us? We know exactly how much you’re worth, don’t we?”
The other side fell silent.
The swollen-eyed man chuckled: “There must be cops around, right? Have the highest-ranking one take the call.”
He stopped pacing and squatted down in front of Hai Ning: “Hurry up, or I’ll gouge out one of your son’s eyes, and you can enjoy the sound.”
From the other end of the phone came the sobbing of Hai Ning’s weak and gentle father.
Hai Ning wasn’t surprised.
He had been taken by a car in broad daylight; someone would have reported it.
At that time, his father had still been at work and would have known about it immediately.
Given his father’s personality, such a major disaster was something he couldn’t bear.
Reporting it to his superiors was a choice he would definitely make.
Sure enough, the phone was quickly handed over to someone else.
The voice on the other end was upright and calm, transmitted through the airwaves: “Hello, I’m the head of the ‘White Shield’ in Yunmeng District…”
Hai Ning, who had been playing dead on the ground, suddenly felt his scalp tingle. He jerked violently; the iron chains binding him instantly tightened, producing a sharp clattering sound.
He recognized it.
This voice was identical to the one he had heard from the leader in the car!
That deep, commanding “useless” now merged with the distant, blurry voice on the other end of the phone:
“…My name is Charlemagne. The child is innocent; please don’t hurt him.”
__
Author’s note:
[Silver Hammer Daily]
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Put on the “Dionysus World,” drink this cup of electronic wine, and block out the noise and pain of the world.
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Our company is not responsible for any adverse effects caused by misuse.
Thank you for translating this novel. It’s very interesting. I’ll read raws. Honestly Bl novels nowadays all have very similar plot and are boring, but this one is quite unique.