Chapter 55 A Silent Baptism If you touch them again, I'll kill you.
Chengguan Road, scrap metal yard.
The air was thick with the stench of rust and engine oil, mixed with the putrid smell of rotting garbage. Upon smelling it, Li Leshan involuntarily held his breath. They were almost outside the city limits, in the development zone, where facilities were underdeveloped. The surrounding area was all construction sites, deserted at this time of year, and with weeds growing in the cracks between the stones, the whole place felt desolate and barren.
Stepping onto the overgrown path, Li Leshan cautiously scanned his surroundings. He had no other plans; he had only two purposes for coming here: to delete the photos and to resolve this matter once and for all. He couldn't let Wang Hao continue to act so arrogantly; if things continued this way, others would be harmed as well.
Li Leshan stood in the shadows at the entrance, his backpack slung over one shoulder, with a palm-sized wrench in the side pocket. It was covered in a thick layer of rust, indicating that he had prepared it a long time ago. As for the person he was supposed to guard against, it wasn't actually Wang Hao.
He calmly observed Wang Hao in the center of the "small square." The man was leaning smugly against his well-maintained secondhand motorcycle, chatting and laughing with several thugs beside him. The blond-haired man was toying with a switchblade in his hand, while the heavily made-up woman was impatiently smoking a cigarette.
"When are you coming?" the blond-haired guy asked impatiently. "Is that guy surnamed Jiang so powerful? Why did you call so many people?"
Although Wang Hao was reluctant to admit the latter part of his statement, it was true that he and his companion alone were not confident in dealing with Jiang Yueming. He had brought so many people today precisely to show Jiang Yueming who the real loser was, and to let him know that he was not someone to be trifled with.
Li Leshan stopped hiding and walked straight ahead. The road beneath his feet was rugged and uneven; it had rained not long ago, and he could even feel the soft mud beneath his feet, yet he stepped into the muddy ground without hesitation.
When Wang Hao saw him, he was taken aback at first. He looked around Li Leshan and saw no one else. Then he burst into exaggerated laughter. He didn't take Li Leshan seriously at all. If it were just Li Leshan alone, he felt he could handle it. Why did he need to call so many people?
"Hey! Dumb, you actually dare to come here to die alone? What about that guy surnamed Jiang, too scared to come? And your little sweetheart Xu Qing, scared out of her wits after taking a couple of photos? I have more photos here, do you want to take a look? I bet you've never even seen them before." He grinned lewdly, reaching into his pocket.
In that instant, Li Leshan's pent-up anger finally erupted. He yanked the heavy wrench from his side pocket, without warning or negotiation, so fast that no one could react, and smashed it straight into the man's outstretched arm.
"Bang!"
With a dull thud, the wrench slammed solidly into Wang Hao's forearm.
"Damn it—!" Wang Hao screamed in agony, his face contorted in agony. The excruciating pain caused him to lose all feeling in his arm, and his obese body staggered, nearly knocking over his beloved motorcycle.
"Damn it! Kill him!" The blond-haired guy reacted the fastest. The knife that was just twirling in his hand was now tightly gripped in his hand. Without thinking, he stabbed Li Leshan in the waist and abdomen, aiming to kill him.
Li Leshan caught a glimpse of the blade out of the corner of his eye and took two steps back to narrowly avoid it. At the same time, using the force of twisting his body, he swung the wrench upwards with a whoosh, aiming hard at the wrist of the blond-haired man holding the knife.
The blond-haired man screamed shrilly as the switchblade flew out of his hand, his wrist dangling at an odd angle.
"You son of a bitch!" the man in the floral shirt roared, throwing a punch at Li Leshan.
"Bang!" The fist slammed into Li Leshan's forehead, causing his vision to go black and his head to ring. The man in the floral shirt was considerably taller than Li Leshan, and he had used all his strength in that punch.
Li Leshan swayed, shook his head violently, and before he could see the figure in front of him clearly, he was kicked hard in the abdomen again. The pain made him groan, clutch his stomach and fall backward, but he stepped on a rolling solid steel pipe and fell with a thud onto the rickety steel frame. The cracking sound exploded in his ears.
Upon seeing this, the heavily made-up woman screamed in fright and ran away.
Wang Hao clutched his arm, wincing in pain. Seeing Li Leshan's injury, his voice filled with rage as he struggled to pick up the knife that had fallen to the ground, yelling, "Kill him! Beat him to death! I'll take responsibility if anything happens!"
...
Night completely engulfed the scrapyard.
All that remains here are the most primal screams, the muffled thuds of bones hitting flesh, and the lingering groans.
Li Leshan didn't know how many blows he had taken. Blood and sweat blurred his vision, and every inch of his body screamed in pain, but he couldn't make a sound. He just gritted his teeth, his mouth filled with the taste of blood.
I don't know how much time passed, maybe only a few minutes, but it felt like an eternity before the fighting finally subsided.
The man in the floral shirt covered his arm, which was swollen from being hit by a wrench, and backed away with a bruised and swollen face. Looking at the man on the ground, whose face was covered in blood and whose eye was so swollen that he couldn't open it, yet who was still trying to stand up, he felt a strange fear for this mute man for the first time.
Wang Hao collapsed to the ground, his face contorted with grotesque muscles, unable to move, only able to curse incessantly.
Li Leshan staggered, finally managing to stand up. Blood dripped from his chin, splashing onto the ground. He was trembling all over, his bones felt like they were falling apart, but he stood firm.
Ignoring Wang Hao's curses, he staggered over and roughly pulled out a cell phone—worth half a year's worth of food for an average family in those days—from the inside pocket of the man's leather jacket with his blood-stained hands. Li Leshan had only ever seen such a thing in the window of a cell phone store.
He opened his phone, the screen's light blinding him. He'd never used one before, and relying on his limited memory, he clumsily but quickly found the photo album. Inside were several candid photos of Xu Qing's back and profile, along with a blurry video.
Li Leshan's hands trembled uncontrollably as he hurriedly selected the photos and deleted them all, including emptying the recycle bin.
After doing all this, Li Leshan felt it wasn't safe enough. He raised his phone high, and under Wang Hao's shocked gaze, he used all his strength to smash it hard against a sharp piece of debris next to him.
The sound of the phone hitting the metal overlapped with Wang Hao's scream, but Li Leshan didn't even frown. He pulled a bloodstained notebook and pen from his tattered backpack and tore off a piece of paper.
With blood-stained fingers, he painstakingly wrote a few crooked, yet powerfully written characters:
If you touch them again, I'll kill you.
He walked up to Wang Hao, who was limp as a board, and squatted down.
Then he slapped the bloodstained piece of paper hard onto Wang Hao's face, which was contorted with pain, anger, and a hint of fear.
Wang Hao felt a chill run down his spine from the man's gloomy gaze. He dared not say anything more, and the curse stuck in his throat. In the end, he said nothing at all.
Li Leshan didn't look at him again. He picked up his tattered schoolbag and wrench from the ground, and dragged his almost broken body, step by step, unsteadily walking towards the deepening darkness outside the scrap metal factory.
Despite the immense pain, his back remained ramrod straight, like a flag that had long been broken but refused to fall.
The deathly silence of the scrap yard returned, leaving only Wang Hao's unwilling shouts and the thugs' trembling breaths behind him.
The early winter wind, carrying a biting chill, bleeds against his burning, bleeding face, making his mind go blank, and an incredibly firm thought arises spontaneously.
He didn't know if Wang Hao's retaliation would come back, or if it would escalate.
But he knew that from this moment on, Li Leshan, who had previously chosen silence and avoidance, might have disappeared forever from this abandoned ironworks.
Because Shengping was very small, Li Leshan took a long detour, avoiding streets where he might know people, and specifically chose to walk through narrow alleys that were backlit, piled with clutter, and covered with various small advertisements for "traditional Chinese medicine" and "drain cleaning".
The dim streetlights cast his long, stumbling shadow on the wall, and the pain in his body became clearer and clearer, with each breath causing pain throughout his body.
Li Leshan recalled the screams of those people when his fists and wrenches landed on them; the sounds were deafening and piercing, stabbing into Li Leshan's heart. He realized that pain could be expressed verbally. His breathing grew lighter, and a few barely audible syllables escaped his throat.
Finally, Li Leshan found his way to his old, dilapidated apartment building. The stairwell was filled with the lingering smells of cooking oil from each household's dinner and a faint musty odor. Standing at the entrance, Li Leshan's gaze drifted towards the floor where Jiang Yueming lived not far away. He drowsily looked at the warm yellow light coming from the window and felt a long-lost sense of peace and tranquility.
Like a ray of light shining from who-knows-where in the vast darkness, just looking at it brings warmth, even if the light doesn't reach you.
He held his breath, trying not to make a sound, and gently opened the door with his key. The house was pitch black; his grandmother was already fast asleep.
Li Leshan locked the door behind him, and only when he leaned against the cold wooden door did he dare to relax the breath he had been holding on to.
Intense pain and exhaustion overwhelmed him instantly. He slid down the door and sat on the floor, curling up in the shadows behind it, panting. His body trembled uncontrollably. He was a little sleepy, but he was jolted awake again just as he closed his eyes.
That's not right.
It cannot be detected.
In the darkness, he groped his way to his feet, leaning against the wall as he walked to the bathroom. He turned on the faucet, and water gushed down the pipe.
He bent down and put his head under the tap, letting the cold water wash away the blood and dirt from his face. The icy water stung his wounds like needles, and the water washed away the scabs. Li Leshan wiped his face haphazardly a few times, regaining some clarity.
He went back to his cramped little room, opened a drawer, found a half-empty bottle of iodine, and walked to the only small square mirror in the room.
The mirror reflected a face he could hardly recognize. Li Leshan stared at his reflection for a long time before realizing that the scene was strangely familiar.
He took a deep breath and firmly pressed the cotton swab soaked in iodine onto the deepest wound on his forehead.
A sharp, burning pain shot from the wound straight to the top of his head. He closed his eyes, as if the pain would stop if he couldn't see the bleeding.
The irritation from the iodine on his skin made him gasp, his body tensing instantly, and his hand holding the cotton swab trembled. Cold sweat broke out on his forehead, mixing with the iodine and trickling down.
He grabbed his arm, forcing it to stay still because of the pain, and repeatedly wiped the open wound with cotton swabs.
After treating his forehead, he dipped the povidone-iodine in fresh solution and used it to clean the wound on his nose, the cracked corner of his mouth, and the abrasions on his chin... Gradually, he became numb.
After dealing with everything, Li Leshan wearily took off his dirty, blood-soaked clothes and put on a clean shirt. Then, an overwhelming wave of exhaustion washed over him, and he collapsed to the ground.
From somewhere in the distance came the noisy sounds of fighting from a movie. Li Leshan leaned against the corner of the wall and listened quietly. He thought to himself that he had become no different from Wang Hao, no different from the group of people he used to hate the most, and no different from him...
In the dead of night, he was forced to undergo a silent baptism.
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Author's Note: I poured all my energy into writing this mess of fight scenes... I'm done writing TT
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