Chapter 71
Yan Xu felt that the situation was very unfavorable to him.
That handsome guy could only be after Duan Heng. The odds were stacked against him. He was afraid it wouldn't be long before he was in trouble. He paced the room nervously for a moment, biting his nails, his back leaning against the window frame several times. But his impatience remained undiminished. He felt that waiting was a mistake: the Leica brothers wouldn't fully side with him.
He was frowning and hesitating when he suddenly felt a pain in his thumb, forcing him to hiss through his teeth. Only then did he realize that the gap between his nails was full of blood.
Yan Xu looked up at the time and was about to leave when Duan Heng, who was tied to an iron frame and was dying and covered in blood, suddenly called out to him.
"Yan Xu."
He acted as if he didn't hear it and didn't even pause.
"I didn't mean to hurt you." The voice behind me was extremely weak. "At that time, I just thought... this was a good path. I wanted to take you with me."
"Does this make sense now?"
"I knew you were going to go up. But I didn't really know it was like that up there."
"Duan Heng." Yan Xu chewed on the name, turned around, and looked at him deeply. "Do you think I'm stupid? You led me into the mud pit back then, and I don't hate you. But how did you climb out of it on your own? How did you live a glamorous life?"
"you……"
"At least you can't live better than me. No." He emphasized the last two words. "When I was sleeping on the streets, when I was living by squeezing the old man who took me in, you couldn't live better than me."
"What did you say?"
"It sounds unreasonable, right? But that's how I am. Do you know what happened to the last old woman who took me in?" Yan Xu bit his lip, his Adam's apple rolling as if in struggle. "She was sick. The cancerous esophagus kept waking her up from her sleep. But she made a living by picking up scraps."
"Do you know why she didn't treat the disease? It's because of her son. Her son stabbed someone and the old lady has been helping to raise compensation."
"When she found me on the street, she wanted the bottle at my feet. I refused to give it to her. At that time, I was beaten so badly that I passed out before I could sit still for two minutes. I don't know why, but when I woke up, I was already at her house."
Duan Heng raised his eyes to look at him with difficulty. His throat was so sore that he couldn't utter a word.
"That place is hardly even home; it's just a demolished factory. There are a lot of old men and women scavenging there. Some faces you'd get to know would disappear the next day. Weeks later, their bloated bodies would be found in a ditch somewhere."
"Being sick smells terrible, but a room full of people dying smells even worse."
"Duan Heng, I watched her die. In that red brick doghouse, even worse than a garbage room, I saw her die with my own eyes. And then... then I took the fifty yuan from her inner pocket. With that money, I returned to PBL."
"I really wish none of this had happened. I really wish it wasn't a bastard like me she picked up on the street."
He took a deep breath and licked his upper teeth with his tongue.
"I really hate you. You're living a good life, and you don't have to blame yourself for anyone's death. I should have gotten rid of my conscience earlier so I wouldn't be in this situation." He wiped his thumb across the sore corner of his eye. "I want to go back to PBL, so naturally I have to show loyalty to the Leica brothers. You took me away, so you have to buy back their trust with your life."
Having said that, he didn't want to linger any longer. He pushed the door open, slowly pressing his back against the handle and letting out a breath. But then, he saw the door to his left open. A familiar figure wiped the blood from his hands and walked out. He was startled, and their eyes met.
"Hello?" Xiang Mingqi waved at him with a playful smile.
He remembered this person. This madman who, in order to gain sympathy, was willing to kill himself. His appearance here meant that—
This time, without even thinking, Yan Xu turned his head and ran away.
"Ah, why did you run away when you saw me, huh? I haven't had time to do anything to you today, right? Forget it, my brother has something to talk to you about, so we..." Xiang Mingqi watched the expression on his face change from surprise to fear, and sneered. He had just followed him for two steps slowly when his earphones started to buzz and he heard the call of his senior.
【To Mingqi.】
"Brother, what's wrong?"
[…It hurts.] A suppressed groan finally escaped, and Xiang Mingqi gritted his teeth, turning around and running upstairs without even hesitating.
"Brother, are you okay? What happened? Are you okay? Please answer me, how is the situation over there?!"
Unfortunately, the Bluetooth headset was lost during the bumpy climb up the stairs. Outside the conference room, he used all his strength to force the door open, only to find the ground covered with unconscious thugs, numbering between eighteen and twenty. It looked like Pei Huai had subdued them all by himself.
His eyes swept over the chair, where an open medical kit lay at his feet. Pei Huai gripped his right wrist, biting the bandage, trying to fix the splint on his arm, but his hand was cramping so badly that he could only gasp in pain. Cold sweat trickled down his collarbone, streaking across his chest, which was doubly sexy due to its rise and fall.
Xiang Mingqi threw away the cracked phone and, without waiting for anyone to say anything, rushed forward to examine his injured hand. Seeing the red, swollen, and broken joints with obvious soft tissue injuries, the veins on his forehead bulged.
"How dare he, how the hell dare he?!" He took off his coat, his hands trembling as he tried several times before finally putting it on his senior's shoulders. His voice was unbearable, "I'll take care of the injuries, brother, relax... Please. Don't use too much force, what if there are any sequelae?"
"He has a piece of metal hidden in his glove." Pei Huai had no choice but to release the bandage as he was told. He tilted his head back, his jaw and Adam's apple stretched in pain, a line of fragility that threatened to crush Xiang Mingqi's heart. "I'm not interested in PBL. He decided to use force. I only realized he was..."
He carefully secured the splint and noticed the area around the wound had been roughly disinfected. "He was playing that trick on you, wasn't he?"
Dragging his injured right arm to defeat twenty thugs and repel Danduo sounds incredible. But this also means that during the 45 minutes he took care of Sang Lun, Pei Huai was gritting his teeth and holding on.
——He didn't tell me anything, wanting to solve it on his own. Such a powerful, proud, and untouchable lone eagle made people feel so distressed that they didn't know how to comfort him.
How can I make the eagle more dependent on me?
"You can't push anymore, brother. I don't know if the bones are broken, but we have to get out of here."
"Don't forget why we're here."
Pei Huai propped himself up and tried to push him away, but the latter grabbed his shoulders and stopped him from moving.
"Are you talking about Duan Heng? He's not important. It doesn't matter to me whether he's dead or alive. I don't care. It's best if he dies. If he dies, you'll have one less person to care about, brother. How great."
"Xiang Mingqi. I'm fine."
"I've learned first aid, so I can't get away with that excuse. Bro, I'm not blind."
Pei Huai's complete silence seemed to fuel a certain resentment. Xiang Mingqi bit his oral mucosa, feeling a lump in his throat. "Why didn't you tell me? Just call my name like you did just now, just once, and I'll come over no matter where you are. Right now. But why didn't you tell me?"
He hugged the senior's waist from behind and held him tightly.
"Brother, Duan Heng is not important. The commission is also not important. You clearly know who is the most important to me in this world."
Just as he was about to accept the hug helplessly, Pei Huai suddenly felt a chill on his neck, and a whole tube of unknown liquid spread from his blood vessels. He opened his mouth and grabbed Xiang Mingqi's collar in surprise.
"Anesthesia, it's okay. I won't hurt you." He gently pushed the anesthesia bottle to the bottom of the medical box, waited for a while, and then carried the senior, whose hands and feet were weak, horizontally into his arms.
He held Pei Huai's left hand, which had been raised and then weakened, and without paying attention to his collar, he carefully held it in his palm and leaned over to kiss him.
"Brother, I know you will never bow your head. But if it hurts, tell me, tell me. I will do anything for you."
-
Gyrfalcon.
He is the most special person in this world.
Three years ago, Dando had seen him backstage. Back then, the PBL owner had personally come out and surrounded him, constantly courting him. Unfortunately, he wasn't even considered a thug back then, so getting close to him was difficult.
The Gyrfalcon was a beautiful sight, and even his silhouette from behind gave him that impression. But most of the time, he seemed strangely distant. People talked about him, admired him, but didn't dare approach him. Dando had the good fortune of having someone hand him a towel, but that was all. Even when he tried desperately to get closer to him in the spotlight, he never even received a glance.
Most people, including Sanlon, only knew Gyrfalcon by name. His time in the PBL was too brief to be remembered forever.
I heard from my former boss that Gyrfalcon came here to pay off his debts. Once he made enough money, he left.
He thought of the striped white falcon, solitary and spiritual. This bird could not be kept. It did not belong in a cage. It roamed the polar regions and the plateaus, occasionally making a sweeping flight just to hunt. Its feathers fluttered, its long cry a captivating presence.
Flames leaped from behind the windshield. Dando lowered his head to light a cigarette, his right hand resting on the steering wheel, occasionally adjusting the arm of his glasses. The car stopped at the entrance to the stadium, pitch black, and the sparks were blurred by the diffuse smoke.
He listened to the real-time conversation coming from the communicator.
[Found it, Boss. The target tried to force his way through the exit. We couldn't stop him. But our losses weren't great. He seems to be injured.]
[I saw it. The gyrfalcon is in his arms. It's unconscious, so it's probably not a trap. The threat can be eliminated for now.]
[Fuck! He's been shot in the leg twice and he's still moving? Doesn't it hurt?]
Hearing this, Dando narrowed his eyes, biting the butt of his cigarette, and thoughtfully reminded them: "It doesn't matter whether the target is dead or alive. I want the gyrfalcon."
[Should this person be killed?]
"No rush." He took a few puffs of the cigarette, which tasted a bit greasy and astringent. He stubbed it out in the glass jar with two fingers. "He's a Gyrfalcon man, so I'll save his life if I can. I don't want to get into any trouble with him. But if that guy gets shot by a stray bullet, so be it. Just bring me what I want. Don't lose a single hair."
There's not much space in the arena, so it's easy to accidentally injure someone. For safety's sake, I'm having someone change the anesthesia.
After the communication was temporarily cut off, Dando fell into a trance again. The first time he saw the new Gyrfalcon, he felt a strong sense of unease. This unease did not come from the perspective of a totalitarian, but was more personal.
The moment he fell in love with the Tundra Raptor, he felt that the invincible figure in his heart was about to be replaced.
It would be a shame to kill this little gyrfalcon, so this time, he wanted to raise a bird of his own.
After a long moment, the car body shook several times from the jostling, and he finally pulled his wandering thoughts back. He turned his head and looked at the white-haired young man who was still sleeping soundly in the back seat, lying across the back of his subordinate.
His right hand was bandaged well, fixed in place correctly. But the pain in his muscles and bones didn't ease. His face, once so handsome that even he admired it, had become somewhat pale, his brow furrowed and relaxed, and the skin on his neck was so thin that the delicate blood vessels were visible.
Something flickered in his eyes, and he took off his coat and covered the thin and weak body with it.
The author has something to say:
Pei Ge was covering himself with clothes in the back seat of the car, and Xiao Xiang was thrown into the trunk (differential treatment means).
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