CHAPTER VII — A Glint? The Riddle of Waste Paper
2195 Words
The alley's darkness congealed like stagnant plasma. The reek of fresh blood merged with the bin's sharp, vinegary rot, thickening the icy air into an invisible shroud—a gossamer net woven with mortality's scent, silently settling.
At the alley's end, against a heap of rusting oil drums, one thug lay like a discarded puppet, motionless save for a viscous, dark pool slowly spreading beneath him in the sickly light. Nearby, the yellow-haired one curled on the ground, emitting guttural death rattles, body spasming with arrhythmic twitches punctuated by moans. Closer still, another was pinned by the ragged edge of a warped metal drum lid; a ruptured femoral artery pulsed a warm, relentless torrent. The crimson stream traced a gruesome path along the ground, pooling like obscene blossoms in the filthy water.
The air itself felt compressed by an immense, suffocating weight.
Shen Qingwu sprawled on the frigid, grimy pavement. Her cheap plastic shopping bag lay askew, spilling cheap noodles and salt saturated with filth. Her slight frame trembled violently under the onslaught of blood-reek and invisible dread—a fragile reed in a gale. The auditory assault and the psychic residue of that apocalyptic crimson sea and demonic dragon's roar threatened to rend her fragile nerves. Her blindness was flooded with boundless terror and despair.
Qin Hao stood less than a pace ahead, shadowed against the alley wall. His larger form merged with the gloom. He inclined slightly, his gaze not on Qingwu, but silently scouring the misshapen figures on the ground. The only semi-mobile thug pressed a futile hand against the torrent at his thigh, eyes wide with visceral death-fear. Qin Hao’s expression remained impassive, as if assessing refuse for disposal.
Then—
*WHEE-OO! WHEE-OO!*
A jarringly familiar police siren shattered the alley’s b****y silence!
A patrol car!
Less than three hundred meters away! Its rotating lights painted the street ahead with garish, shifting hues.
The downed men seized this lifeline. The bleeding one’s eyes flared with desperate hope. An incoherent rasp rattled from his throat—a final attempt at noise!
Qin Hao’s brow creased imperceptibly. His gaze swept the encroaching police lights and the lingering threat on the ground in a fraction of a second.
Time stalled.
In the next instant—
His left hand darted out, phantasmagorical in speed. Gone was the bone-shattering grip. Merely the rough, calloused pad of his thumb and forefinger closed with surgical precision on a minute, concealed depression midway along the yellow-haired thug's intact shoulder blade seam.
*THOCK!*
A seemingly effortless press! An impossibly refined filament of an jin—internal force—threaded silently within, locking a crucial nerve cluster governing vocal cords and pulmonary spasms. A masterstroke of bio-stasis!
The yellow-haired thug seized rigid! Flash-frozen! The death rattle strangled at its inception. Only a grotesque tableau remained: bulging eyes, agape mouth, features petrified in excruciating fear. Even his body’s reflexive pain-spasms ceased. An instantaneously vacated puppet, frozen in the icy mire, his unseeing pupils reflecting abject terror.
Qin Hao didn’t pause. Simultaneous with the pressure point strike, his right foot took a sideways step onto an oil-smeared banana peel. His foot slipped forward with convincing “naturalness.” His shoulder bumped, seemingly off-balance, against the other thug attempting to summon attention with his gushing blood.
*THUD!*
The impact was muted, yet perfectly shifted the bleeding man’s precariously balanced weight.
*THWACK!*
Already faltering, the thug lost all equilibrium! His head slammed squarely onto the jagged, rust-eaten edge of an upturned metal bin—a dull, gristly axe.
*CRUNCH!!!*
A hideous, sickening sound—worse than the siren—tore the air! Crimson mixed with greyish matter sprayed onto the rusted surface like a macabre fresco!
Only the distant siren wail and the alley’s abrupt descent into glacial silence remained!
Qin Hao withdrew just as the siren’s crescendo and the police lights breached the alley’s mouth! A retreat that seemed merely a stumble away from the b****y filth, nearly colliding with the still-terrified Qingwu!
The entire sequence unfolded with lightning speed—a dizzying, confusing spectacle amidst the gloom and gore, perfectly mimicking a drunken brawl’s fatal accident.
“Ngh…” Qingwu, jostled to the ground, grunted. Her hand instinctively caught herself on the cold, filthy pavement, coating it in sludge.
Strong police lights, accompanied by the screech of brakes, sliced the entrance darkness!
Two uniformed officers burst in, batons ready, powerful torches probing!
“Freeze! Police!” The beams swept the alley’s c*****e like accusing swords.
The harsh glare illuminated three mangled, barely human forms: one head-shattered by the bin, one bleeding out, unconscious, and one rigidly frozen, eyes wide, drooling silently! The overwhelming stench of blood and death hit like a wall. Even seasoned officers blanched.
“Christ—What happened?! Liu! Ambulance! Secure the scene!” The lead officer’s voice held shock and fury, face grim.
The torch beam darted to Qingwu huddled in the corner, trembling violently, and the shabby-jacketed man seemingly stunned by the bloodshed, awkwardly stooping to aid his wife.
“You two! Stay put!” The officer’s hawkish gaze locked onto Qin Hao, holding Qingwu’s arm. “What just happened?! Explain these men!”
The swirling red-blue lights flickered across Qin Hao’s unnervingly placid face. His eyes held a convincingly stunned “dullness” and residual fear. Confronted, his voice emerged low, raspy, thick with a rural accent, perfectly laced with tremors:
“Officers… we… me an’ the missus… jus’ headin’ home… come ‘round this corner… them fellas… seemed well pissed… they started scrappin’ amongst ‘emselves! Mad ‘un, it was! So… so I grabbed the wife… tried to get outta the way… pitch black, ‘sides… ground’s slick… I near lost me own feet…” His words stumbled, radiating abject terror. He gestured at the oil slick and his “slip” zone. “See… stepped on some rotten peel… skidded… reckon… reckon I… bumped into somethin’? Then… saw him… fall ‘gainst that bin…”
The testimony, coupled with the oil slick evidence, the overwhelming alcohol stench on the thugs, the vulgarities (easily imagined), and the image of a “simple man” protecting his clearly traumatized blind wife, formed an airtight alibi.
“Goddamn scumbags!” The younger officer spat, noting the strewn beer bottles and the heavy booze reek. “Sarge, textbook drunk brawl! Dog eat dog! Two look finished. The woman… blind? Shitless scared, aye?”
“Officer… sniffle… they… they said they would…” Qingwu’s choked sob, perfectly timed, her body trembling uncontrollably, pallid face, blind eyes wide with shock—it radiated primal terror. She was oblivious to the final crunch, only aware the police, and safety, had arrived.
The lead officer frowned. His sharp eyes flicked between Qin Hao’s “bewildered” fear and Qingwu’s palpable terror. The scene screamed drunken mayhem. Seeing the pair—bedraggled yet clinging together—especially Qingwu’s stark, bruised temple under the strong light, his suspicion waned, replaced by grudging pity.
“Alright, you two! Up! Get clear! Wait by the curb! We’ll need statements!” He waved them towards the road’s edge, voice softer. He snapped orders to his partner: “Cordon it off! Preserve the scene! Where’s that damn ambulance?! Scum like this…” He dismissed the “hapless” couple, turning to the grim scene management.
Out of the glare of lights and blood-reek, leaning against a cold wall in a quieter corner of the street, Qingwu’s legs still threatened to buckle. She panted heavily, cold sweat beading her forehead and back. Relief and lingering shock warred within her. She clutched Qin Hao’s arm—a cold, rough pillar, her sole anchor in a shattered world.
“Huff… huff… that was… horrifying…” Her voice rasped, tear-strained, thick with residual dread, body still quivering. “…They just… lunged… I thought…”
Blind to the c*****e’s specifics, the suffocating aura of butchery and the psychic dragon’s roar had shattered her nerves. The police arrival felt miraculous.
“…Thank god they came… Those beasts… must’ve drunk themselves senseless… turned on each other…” she murmured shakily, fingers slick with sweat gripping his sleeve. “…Lucky the police were close… so… so fortunate…” Oblivious to Qin Hao’s calculated “stumble,” she ascribed their survival to chaotic luck.
Fortunate?
Qin Hao stood impassively under the jaundiced street lamp, letting her cling. The hard line of his mouth might have tightened fractionally before resuming its impassive mask. His gaze dropped to where she gripped his arm—the hem of his faded navy jacket bore minute, dark brown specks. Flecks of brain matter.
Then—
Near his casually lowered left sleeve’s cuff—within the jacket’s inner pocket seam—something glinted with infinitesimal intensity in the wan streetlight.
A corner of an object, impossibly thin, barely the size of half a credit card, slipped silently, jostled by his gait. Its edges were perfectly rounded. A matte-black so deep it devoured light. No markings, save for almost imperceptible, intricate raised patterns in a muted dark silver—etched with an alien complexity. The material was neither metal nor wood, cold and unyielding. Only at a precise angle under the lamp did those silver threads catch light, refracting a fleeting, impossibly deep iridescence—a dark golden firefly in the gloom.
Tianhai Group — Arcadia Sequence · Starlogos Key!
This cipher of global financial hegemony—a key capable of unlocking any treasury on Earth—now looked like a mere smudge on Qin Hao’s grease-stained, brain-matter-flecked pauper’s jacket!
Qin Hao’s pupils constricted. That card—used moments ago to intercept a single, spattering drop of blood aimed at Qingwu’s face and instantly pocketed—had snagged and slipped. The trajectory of that fugitive prismatic flash now fell—
Like a laser—into the dilated pupils of Shen Qingwu, who stared sightlessly, uncomprehending, towards his arm!
*HUMMM—*
As the minuscule iridescence touched her vision—
An icy current of will—vast as the cosmos, cold as deep space, infused with absolute order—infinitely remote yet piercingly distinct—flooded into Qingwu’s still-shattered psyche.
Her mind’s eye mirrored an infinite stellar vista!
Obelisks of pure data-light coalesced! A colossal, living pyramid, its structure an eternal flux of cascading binary streams (0x7FFF 0xFFFF 0xDEAD 0xBEEF…) hovered within a nebulae of raw information!
At its apex! A starlogos ignited! Constructed of arcane, dark-golden runic code, its structure defied comprehension! Its light pierced dimensional veils!
[THE ARCADIA MATRIX — Starlogos Vector: █████ — (Verisign Locus: Riverport City · Tianfu Gardens) — Non-Core Physical Layer! Unshielded Starlogos EMR Detected! WARNING… WARNING… Vector Leak Detected ████████]
A blizzard of incomprehensible data—zeros and ones like cosmic static—engulfed her. A synthesized voice, resonant with the indifference of stellar cores, spoke directly within her soul:
This sudden data-torrent was an unseen pile-driver, impacting Qingwu’s fragile mental levees!
“Gyah—!” A sharp, agonized cry escaped her! She recoiled from Qin Hao’s arm as if snakebitten, stumbling back! Hands flew to her temples, gripping fiercely! It felt as if her skull might burst under the cold, fracturing pressure!
“What’s wrong?” Qin Hao’s low voice cut the air, devoid of inflection.
“N-nothing…” Qingwu gasped, ghostly pale, forehead slick. She shook her head violently, trying to dislodge the phantom pyramid and the icy warning. Too much shock! Hallucinations! She lifted her head blindly towards him, voice thin and lost: “Just now… such a sudden pain… now… it’s gone…”
Qin Hao’s gaze lingered on her pain-clenched hands and bloodless face—a fathomless stillness obscuring any inner turbulence. His hand moved casually towards his jacket’s inner pocket seam.
A rough finger brushed precisely against the protruding corner of the starlogos key! The pad of his thumb hooked infinitesimally!
The fugitive dark-gold gleam vanished. As if never manifested.
In the next breath, the world-shaking sliver of card was smoothly, entirely, tucked back into the jacket’s innermost, concealed sleeve. A mere adjustment of rumpled fabric.
“Home.” He offered no further glance at her unsettled face, turning towards the gaping, beast-dark maw of Building 7’s entrance. His movements brooked no dissent. The street lamp cast his long, silent silhouette on the ground.
Qingwu stood rooted, her ragged breathing slowly steadying. The throbbing pain at her temples receded, yet the cold data-pyramid and the shrieking warning reverberated like psychic scars. She cast a final, sightless look towards the barricaded alley, now echoing with official clamor. Only a heavy relief and an icy seed of disquiet remained.
Groping, she retrieved the discarded, blood-and-filth-soaked package of cheap noodles. Silently, she turned, tracing the sound of Qin Hao’s retreating footsteps, her stiff legs shuffling step by step towards that dark orifice exhaling grease fumes and the decay of old wood. The phantom iridescence that had ignited her inner h*******t glowed like a cold ember in the deepening shadows.
- Writer
