Chapter 211 was about letting the blade graz my carotid artery, but not killing me instantly.
Finally, Gu Yuan slowly opened his mouth.
“I was twenty-five years old that year, just three years after graduating from the police academy.” Ji Yuan’s voice was soft, as if he were telling someone else’s story.
"The bureau selected me to go undercover in the southwest region, codenamed Camellia."
"Six of us went in that batch, and now... I don't know how many are still alive."
“I spent eight months at the very bottom of the drug trafficking network. I climbed my way up from the logistics department of a drug den to a position where I could contact the middle-level leaders.”
"Later, they deliberately spread a false rumor that a batch of high-purity heroin was going to be transported into the city via Highway 3." Gu Yuan closed her eyes in regret.
"I was too anxious, afraid of missing out on this big fish, so I sent the message back overnight."
"But that's a trap!"
She opened her eyes, which were dry, only filled with a deathly clarity. "I've been exposed. I'm cornered in an abandoned sugar factory by twelve armed drug dealers and four machetes."
Beside the stone table, Niu Tou silently put down his soup bowl.
Horse-faced man reached out and patted him on the shoulder.
“They didn’t kill me on the spot.” Gu Yuan’s soul began to ripple slightly, a natural reaction of a soul recalling pain.
"Because that's when Han Xiao arrived..."
It was a rainy evening.
The tin roof of the abandoned sugar factory rattled under the rain, and the air was thick with the sour smell of rust and moldy sugarcane.
Gu Yuan was tied to the rusty rollers of the press, and blood from his forehead mixed with rainwater flowed into his eyes.
Through her blood-red vision, she saw a pair of gleaming black leather shoes step into a puddle.
At that time, Han Xiao did not yet have that scar on his face.
He was wearing a black shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his forearms, revealing his bulging muscles and full-arm tattoos.
It contained images of Guan Yu, skulls, and incomprehensible Sanskrit mantras.
He crouched down and used the barrel of his gun to lift her chin.
"Young policeman?"
He smiled, revealing a set of teeth stained yellow by betel nuts. "You're quite pretty."
Upon hearing this, Yuan spat a mouthful of blood at him.
Han Xiao was not annoyed; instead, his smile deepened.
He waved for his men to retreat outside the factory, and then untied the ropes binding her hands.
"I'll give you a chance." He slapped his sidearm into her palm. "There are six bullets in it. Either kill me, or—"
Before he could finish speaking, Gu Yuan had already pulled the trigger.
“哢”.
Empty shot. All six shots were empty shots.
Upon seeing this, Han Xiao burst into laughter, as if he had just watched a very amusing show.
He snatched the gun back, slowly loaded six bullets, and then pressed it against her temple: "Now, it's my turn."
But... he didn't fire.
That night, Gyu-won was imprisoned in a converted room in the basement of the sugar factory.
It was called a room, but it was actually a five-square-meter iron cage.
The cage was placed in the center of the factory building, and armed guards were stationed all around it 24 hours a day.
“In the first week, they whipped me with leather whips soaked in salt water.” Gu Yuan’s voice remained calm, but the edges of her soul began to blur.
“Every day, we ask the same questions: How many undercover agents are left? What are the police's code words? When is the next sweep?”
She didn't say anything.
So the following week, they started using stun guns.
"Set the current to a level that won't be fatal, but will cause convulsions and incontinence." Gu Yuan looked down at her translucent hand.
"They made me lie on the concrete floor and gave me two hours of electric shocks, with only one minute to drink water in between."
In the third week, Han Xiao changed his approach.
"He had my clothes stripped off and filmed me with a high-definition camera." Gu Yuan's soul suddenly solidified for a moment, a mark left by the ultimate humiliation within his soul.
He said he would send the video to the police station.
She still gritted her teeth.
One night during the fourth week, Han Xiao, half-drunk, kicked open the door of the iron cage.
When Yuan finished speaking, the entire backyard fell into a deathly silence.
Meng Guichen's fingertips dug into his palm, Lin Yanxin turned her face away, and even Feng Jin's eyes darkened.
“Three months after that…” Gu Yuan paused for a long time, “I became his pet.”
She used this word, but there was no hatred in her tone, only a deep-seated weariness.
“He stopped having people beat me and instead found women to bathe me, change my bandages, and feed me. But I wasn’t allowed to wear clothes; I could only wrap myself in a blanket. My only activity areas were the iron cage and his bedroom at the sugar factory.”
"He started talking to me. He talked about his childhood, how he climbed from a henchman to a boss, and how it felt to kill for the first time." Gu Yuan suddenly chuckled, a hollow laugh that sent chills down one's spine.
"He wanted to make me his possession. A living, breathing plaything that he could never escape."
The turning point came in the fourth month of his imprisonment.
That day, Han Xiao's men brought in a newly captured traitor, a young man.
In front of Gu Yuan, Han Xiao chopped off three of the young man's fingers with a cleaver.
As the man screamed, Gu Yuan saw something fall out of his arms.
It's an old-fashioned flip phone.
“That man was a police informant, codenamed Locust Tree,” Gu Yuan said. “His phone contained an encrypted message that he hadn’t sent: Three days later, Han Xiao would be trading heroin at the sugar factory.”
The message was seen by Gu Yuan.
That night, she used a half-nail that she had hidden for four months.
It was secretly pried off from an old machine and used to unlock Han Xiao's room.
“I ran away,” she said. “Barefoot, wrapped in that blanket, I ran towards the lights in the rainy night.”
When she had run two kilometers, she heard gunshots and explosions coming from the direction of the sugar factory behind her.
Gu Yuan had no idea what was happening, so she could only run forward as fast as she could.
“I thought I had escaped…” Gu Yuan’s soul began to fluctuate violently, “but Han Xiao caught up with me.”
He drove his car through the bushes where she was hiding. The headlights were so bright that she had nowhere to hide.
“When he got out of the car, he had a fresh scar on his left cheek.” When describing the scene, Ji Yuan’s tone was like reading an autopsy report. “Blood was flowing down half of his face, but he was still smiling.”
Han Xiao didn't grab her immediately.
He lit a cigarette, leaned against the car door, and watched her huddled in the mud, shivering.
“Ah Yuan,” he said, exhaling a smoke ring, “come back with me.”
Yuan shook his head.
Han Xiao sighed and drew a knife from his waist—the folding knife that had cut off countless fingers.
"Then I can't let you leave." He walked towards Gu Yuan, his eyes filled with self-righteous affection.
“Ah Yuan, since you’re disobedient, I have no choice but to sever your Achilles tendons so that you can no longer run away and can only stay by my side.”
“The moment he got close,” Gu Yuan raised her eyes and looked at Shen Yuepo, “I did something.”
She raised her translucent hand, her fingertips making a vague line in the air: "I pretended to say that I was willing to go back with him."
"But the moment he got close, he used all his strength to lunge at his knife."
"Let the blade graz my carotid artery, but not instantly kill it." Her fingertips lingered on her neck, where a faint soul mark faintly appeared. "I need time. At least thirty seconds."
Han Xiao's knife was very sharp; the blade sliced through the flesh, and blood gushed out.
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