Chapter 00130: Moments of Serenity
# Moments of Serenity?
Chapter 130
Novel: Above Destiny
Chapter 130 – Moments of Serenity?
For several days in a row, there was nothing to do.
There wasn’t the roaring wind and torrential rain that Chen Yubu had imagined.
After the incident when someone had once pointed a gun at him, his days in the villa had been remarkably peaceful.
Every day he fed the cats and basked in the sunshine, almost thinking that he had been forgotten.
“It feels so relaxed,” Chen Yubu mused, watching the sunset from the window. “Could it be that no one even remembers me anymore?”
“Yeah, yeah, exactly,” Ji Jue replied with a helpless nod.
Jin Maozi wanted to speak up but held back, and A Yi lowered his head as if he hadn’t heard anything.
As for Xiao An… lately, Xiao An had stopped playing video games and had instead become absorbed in reality shows.
He was now using Chen Yubu’s VIP membership, sitting in front of the TV, intensely watching variety shows.
When good-looking idols appeared on screen, he would pause the show and compare them with Ji Jue.
Something just didn’t seem quite right.
Ji Jue scratched his head, his eyes growing more and more strange.
“What about Lao Tang?” Chen Yubu suddenly realized something was off. “I haven’t seen him these past couple of days.”
“Uh…” Jin Maozi’s movements stiffened for a moment. “Perhaps he went out for a walk?”
“Yeah, yeah!”
A Yi frantically nodded. “He ate too much; it just won’t settle.”
Chen Yubu looked confused. “Should we buy him some digestion pills?”
Jin Maozi gradually found his composure. “No, no, he said he was constipated. He just needs to have a few more bowel movements.”
Chen Yubu sucked in a breath.
Instinctively, he glanced toward Ji Jue, utterly shocked.
You guys chosen by fate are so weird!
For an instant, Ji Jue seemed about to speak but then hesitated.
The rest of them pretended to focus on their work, diverting their gaze from the gradually deepening dusk, and they couldn’t help but sigh in resignation.
There’s a saying: when you feel that time is peaceful, someone is surely bearing heavy burdens for you.
When was life ever truly calm? The mess of harassment and attacks had never ceased! Mainly because every time Chen Yubu got startled at the slightest thing, screaming like a ghost.
Eventually, everyone stopped telling him anything—they decided to let him spend his days feeding the cats and watching short videos.
At least that was hassle-free.
As for the heavy lifting… Ji Jue, always busy sneaking around trying to flirt with the senior sister, was certainly not willing to do that kind of work.
And Xiao An, being practically crippled, couldn’t run around either.
A Yi and Jin Mao were indeed the most loyal bodyguards, shadowing Chen Yubu every single moment.
They even stood by the door when he went to the bathroom, leaving just a small gap.
At night, they slept on the floor next to the cat’s kennel.
So all the dirty and tiring tasks were left to the “newcomer” Lao Tang.
Who else could it be? He always boasted that he was great at everything—more work for the capable!
On a swelteringly hot afternoon, as twilight gradually appeared, in the shady thicket near the hill, the sound of an iron shovel scraping against soil was ceaseless, mixed with complaints and grumbling voices.
“Damn it, must dig more, must dig more,” Lao Tang grunted as he struggled to excavate from the sandy earth, wiping the sweat from his forehead and grumbling, “The contract didn’t include digging pits! I need to charge extra for gardening and funeral fees!”
Boom!
A heavy corpse was thrown into a pit, then slowly covered up until it became nothing more than a mound of earth.
Lao Tang pulled out a handful of sand from his pocket, recited a couple of lines of a dirge, then casually scattered the sand over the mound like a perfunctory middle-earth-style rite for the dead.
Right in front of him, one mound after another rose up in the dense forest, stretching into the dim distance.
“Finally, it’s done,” he sighed.
Just as he tossed his shovel aside and turned to leave, the radio crackled with Ji Jue’s voice, “Lao Tang, someone’s coming—about ten of them—and among them there’s a Chosen One.”
He continued, “Could you go out one more time?”
Lao Tang exploded in anger. “Damn it, how many waves now? Will it never end? Do you think this is a tourist spot?”
“Not even close,” Ji Jue replied calmly. “Only now has one Chosen One appeared—pretty good odds.”
“This isn’t fair; why am I the only one doing all the work?” Lao Tang glared. “Even outsourced guys are human, and they have their tempers too! If you keep treating the outsourcers like this, I might just quit!”
“Alright, alright, let me handle it this time,” Ji Jue relented.
Lao Tang nodded in satisfaction. “That’s more like it.”
“Anyway, you’re still the one digging pits.”
“Ji, you… damn it…” His transmission was cut off.
Not far away from the villa, at a forked road, a fleet of mud-splattered off-road vehicles came to a slow stop.
In the increasingly dark evening, a group of people with sunglasses and faces covered by masks gathered together.
Their exposed skin was dark and marked by sunburn.
The leader lifted a pair of binoculars and scanned toward the distant mansion on the edge of the cliff, sighing with the same mix of envy and frustration as Ji Jue.
“Damn, living so well? Aren’t you afraid of shortening your life?”
“How far have they come?”
Someone beside him clicked their tongue, “With all that inheritance, they don’t just live here – they could even share a bed with the governor’s wife if they wanted.”
“That guy… what’s his name… Chen… Chen Yubu, is he really there?”
Zhong Naohai turned his head, lowering his mask.
His scruffy beard revealed a glint of cunning. “Yu Mazi would be foolish enough to let such a leak happen, wouldn’t he? Would he really let this whole bunch run without doing it himself? There’s no way that after getting under Lei Yaoxing’s wing, he would just wash his hands of it and turn over a new leaf!”
“He… he said he’s switching to… the A-side now!” A tall, skinny man with a stutter piped up, “If this entire batch goes through, then we all get a share!”
“A share of the money?”
Zhong Naohai laughed scornfully. “I did the work, I tied up the meat tickets, and you expect me to hand people over so he can share the profits with us? Do I look like I’m begging on my knees?”
“What do you mean, Boss?” The man beside him’s eyes lit up.
“Who cares about Yu Mazi or Wang Mazi? Once we capture them, they’re ours!” Zhong Naohai spat. “We’ve had it rough living in these godforsaken hills for too long. Once this is over and the money’s split, we can finally become city folks! Just look at this storefront and interior—if that Chen guy isn’t in on it, we can still make a killing and get out! Who knows, maybe we’ll even snag a couple of side chicks to play with!”
At this, the others’ eyes shone with excitement.
“Boss is right!”
“Let’s do it!”
“Me too, me too!”
For so long, living as common looters between the city-states, who wouldn’t dream of making a big score and then escaping to a place where no one knew them—to finally be wealthy?
“Then it’s settled!” Zhong Naohai grabbed the gun leaning by his side, cocked it, and declared, “Let’s go and score big!”
Amid shouts of celebration, the fleet’s engines roared to life, belching thick smoke.
But just as he settled into the front passenger seat, Zhong Naohai felt a jolt in his lap, and his phone began buzzing incessantly.
Irritated, he hung up, yet the screen lit up again.
Finally, fed up, he answered.
Before he could start swearing, a gentle piano melody filtered out from the other end, followed by a pre-recorded electronic voice:
“Dear visitor, we regret to inform you that due to maintenance of our facilities, we must temporarily suspend reception services. For your safety, please return immediately—”
“Return? To your place?” Zhong Naohai roared in anger.
The moment he hung up, a tremendous explosion came from the very front of the fleet.
A deafening roar.
Thick smoke billowed, and flames erupted.
From the lead armored off-road vehicle at the head of the fleet… as soon as it crossed the boundary marker, a large hole suddenly appeared on the converted bulletproof vehicle.
A gash tore through the driver’s seat, splattering bright red, cutting through the vehicle’s body, finally lodging into the fuel tank where it instantly ignited.
The speeding off-road vehicle screeched to a sudden stop, swallowed by surging flames.
Smoke roiled upward, and the entire fleet halted as if in shock.
Then, the booming sounds from the villa in the distance slowly spread out.
The formation of the fleet fell into chaotic disarray.
Every vehicle instinctively started to reverse, retreating into the shadows of the trees.
“Damn it, there’s a sniper!” Zhong Naohai’s pupils narrowed, and sweat immediately poured down his face.
Thank goodness he’d been slow in relieving himself and hadn’t been in the lead vehicle, or he might have been taken out on the spot.
After the initial shock, he grew furious. “Do you guys think you’re the only ones with long guns? I’ve got one too! Damn it, get out here and take out that sniper!”
Under his radio’s urging, from the rear vehicles a man as skinny and rickety as a monkey hoisted his gun, then climbed onto the roof of his vehicle.
Using the cover of nearby trees, he carefully extended a barrel.
Then came the sound of a thunderous shot!
Splashes of bright red erupted abruptly from the roof, seeping slowly along the window, contrasting with the eerie silence as the faces behind the glass turned pale.
“Boss… Boss…” The stuttering driver felt, for the first time in his life, that he’d never spoken so fluently.
He almost began to cry, “Our guy’s gone!”
Zhong Naohai said nothing.
His phone buzzed again, its screen lighting up.
Soon the second ringtone, then the third, then every phone in the fleet began ringing simultaneously in that deadly silence.
The scattered ringtones sounded like the wails of ghosts—so cacophonous that none dared answer.
Until, as if coming from the depths of hell, a call was automatically answered.
Through the loudspeaker, gentle music began to play: “Dear visitor, we regret to inform you that due to equipment mainte—”
“Mainte your ass!” Zhong Naohai’s face turned ashen as he bellowed at his phone, “Are you here to mess with me in front of my own eyes?”
Among these desperate highway looters—uncouth as they were with curses that flowed like torrents—amid his furious barrage of insults, his fingers quietly made a signal.
In the rear, someone vanished without a trace.
As if rendered invisible, his entire attire shifted in camouflage, and as the outside light changed continuously, he slipped through the dense forest like a nimble lizard, moving on all fours without alerting even the slightest rustle in the underbrush.
Silently and stealthily, he crept from the side, using the cover of shrubs and rocks to approach the direction of the sniper.
Yet, while crawling, his movement suddenly halted for an instant.
Looking puzzled at his side, he reached out and brushed aside the foliage—only then did he spot that small blinking red dot… the infrared camera?!
Boom!
Accompanied by a rumble that seemed to announce doom, a bloodied figure suddenly appeared in the air, flying backwards.
A piercing, agonized shriek tore through the silence.
Though not dead on the spot, one of his hands had instantly been blasted into a clump of mush under the impact of a high-explosive round.
Wailing, rolling on the ground and staggering toward the fleet, he cried for help.
But not an inch of movement stirred in the dense forest.
Everyone even instinctively held their breath.
“Ah, it was off target.”
Xiao An, serving as the spotter, set down his binoculars. “The wind speed was a bit off.”
Ji Jue sighed as he awkwardly adjusted the heavy anti-materiel sniper rifle he held.
He began praising the good characteristics of the Thunder Leverage Rifle—a weapon whose design embodied the lingering spiritual residue of a sharpshooter’s lifetime experience, far nimbler than a freshly manufactured weapon.
It locked on as soon as it sighted its mark and told it all once the shot was fired!
Too bad the caliber was unchangeable.
For long-range sniping, the kinetic energy loss was too great, limiting its destructive power.
In the end, he would still need to secure another weapon to combat threats at ultra-long distances.
But even scouring the entire Cliff City through his veteran network, all he could find was one Thunder Leverage Rifle.
Finding another would be unlikely… No, wait, if he’s engaging in long-range strikes, why does he even need a gun?
Ji Jue suddenly had a thought.
Like in a military base, there might still be several decommissioned howitzers in a storeroom—ninety years old, perhaps—that had even seen action in the Central Lands’ wars.
Every now and then, on some festival, they were set up for display, and they were said to be in decent shape!
Maybe one day he should contact Brother Feng, and on a quiet night the two could just go and tinker with one?
He pulled the trigger.
Boom!
Amid an ear-splitting blast, the Chosen One—who had been tumbling all over the ground—was hurled into the air once more, only to land painfully, his cries growing ever more pitiful.
This time, he lost another hand.
Xiao An froze for a moment, then looked over, “Was the wind speed still off?”
“Got distracted, didn’t perform well,” Ji Jue replied with an embarrassed smile, nearly blurting out a disgraceful comment about a one-shot kill or a crippling injury.
He steadied his breath and fired the trigger once more.
In the final tremendous explosion, the sprawling mass of the Chosen One rolling on the ground finally met its end.
His head burst apart.
Blood splattered all over Zhong Naohai’s car window, causing his expression to twitch for an instant.
Dryly, he swallowed hard.
“Boss… Boss…” A trembling voice came over the radio, “Maybe…?”
“Old Liu is right!” Zhong Naohai pounded his thigh, finally coming to his senses. “Let’s go, let’s move—this is a real pain!”
No one corrected that Old Liu had died just now.
Before he could finish speaking, every single person in the fleet began frantically reversing, retracing their route as they sped away in a desperate escape.
Only that, at the original fork in the road, a few massive pits had mysteriously appeared.
Next to one of the pits, a man carrying an iron shovel and smoking stared intently at the rising dust.
With one swift motion, he planted his shovel in the ground and, grinning at the oncoming off-road vehicles, bared his teeth in a snarl.
On every tooth was the carved imprint of the Thousand Island Wind Totem.
A wild gust swept past as the vehicles raced on.
Not even caring about the roadblock ahead, the drivers slammed on the accelerator as if chased by invisible demons—but they hadn’t realized that what lay before them was none other than death itself.
In that split second, Lao Tang’s long sword at his waist whistled as it was unsheathed.
As it sliced through the air, a brilliant arc of metallic light fell, dazzlingly vibrant.
The onrushing off-road vehicle was cleaved in half!
Then a second knife was drawn from his waist, sweeping horizontally and slicing the second vehicle cleanly in half.
Next came a third blade, drawn by a hand seemingly grown out of his own back—a slash that continued!
A fourth, a fifth, a sixth! On those six muscular arms, blades and swords of various kinds glittered in the setting sun, dazzling and deadly.
In an instant, they summoned a storm of death.
Blood spatters spread everywhere, even turning the sunset a deep, bloody red.
Smoke, flames, explosions, screams, and wails—soon all came to a sudden stop.
One by one, corpse after corpse was heaved into deep pits.
Each time one was thrown in, Lao Tang never tired of checking the face of the corpse with his phone, snapping a photo.
After all, every head was worth money!
Had he known that he’d been facing such a bunch of trash, he would have come himself! In the end, Ji Jue had inserted himself into the affair, and now he’d earned four hundred and fifty thousand less!
“One, two, three, four… eleven, twelve!” Lao Tang counted the photos, beaming brightly. “It’s a bountiful harvest, a bountiful harvest!”
“Lao Tang, don’t bury that Chosen One. Do me a favor and bring him back,” came the voice over the radio. “I have a use for that corpse.”
“Not even the corpses are spared?” Lao Tang blinked in astonishment, mouth agape. “Only you, the remnants of your crew, are so damn twisted!”
“That too will be counted for money.”
“Alright, boss!”
“You should have said that earlier—where’s your spirit of service?”
Pulling a tattered canopy from the wreckage of the fleet, he happily wrapped up the Chosen One’s corpse, binding it carefully as he considered whether to charge an extra fee for packaging.
After all, dine-in and takeout come at different prices!
Meanwhile, on the rooftop after repelling a wave of attackers, Ji Jue’s face was downcast as he looked at his phone, devoid of any joy.
Based on Xiao An’s understanding and experience, it seemed that Ji Jue was gradually growing sullen.
“What’s wrong, Brother Ji Jue?”
Xiao An asked in confusion.
“Let’s just say the worst-case scenario has come true,” Ji Jue sighed, glancing at the message streaming in from the signal tower. “Lei Yaoxing has targeted us.”
Through the signal tower’s feed, photos and videos from the scene were displayed one by one, along with text reports detailing the situation inside the villa and Lao Tang’s pictures.
Judging by the direction of the photographs, the observer was likely hiding somewhere on the opposite hill, outside the range of the signal tower.
Had it not been for a slight signal disruption on the other end that forced his phone to automatically connect here, Ji Jue wouldn’t have known.
It seemed that the watcher had been spying on them from the very beginning.
Xiao An glanced at a photo, his eyes instantly falling on a spot in the hollow of a hill. “Should we take care of that person?”
“No need,” Ji Jue decided after a moment’s thought, shaking his head. “It would only alert them. For now, we maintain the status quo.”
Once a watcher becomes overt, his threat is nearly 90 percent gone.
Ji Jue even considered using this informant in reverse to mislead the enemy into a false sense of security.
But to avoid further complications, he decided not to act just yet.
Lei Yaoxing was already troublesome enough.
Chen Xingzhou was barely clinging to life in the hospital, and not to mention his incompetent younger brother.
No matter how much money he had, as long as Chen Xingzhou drew breath, it couldn’t be liquidated.
If Chen Xingzhou should eventually pass away, then Chen Yubu—with his more than four billion in assets—would have to hang the entire fund and the invaluable equity on a bounty for the murderer… The consequences would be dire.
Ever since Chen Yubu was attacked, all the tangled clues Ji Jue had gradually gathered had spread out in all directions, only to converge at one inevitable relay point.
Chen Xingzhou.
Chen Yubu’s older brother—the one Ji Jue had never seen until now.
What role did he play in all this?
Ji Jue flipped through his phone, looking over the messages from Ye Chun, Tong Hua, and the others received in recent days.
Most of what Ye Chun forwarded were rumors from the streets and collections of leaked photos and videos from various chat apps.
Meanwhile, Tong Hua’s messages mostly contained inside scoops from the Security Bureau.
In a word—this was madness.
Everyone was on the verge of losing it!
Lei Yaoxing was going crazy, Koushuikun was going crazy, Lei Xiaoniu was going crazy, Xu Yan was going crazy… In the dark underbelly of Cliff City—and beyond just the barren lands—everyone involved, from the big shot to the lowlife, was on the brink of insanity!
Once the possibility of a peaceful transition and complete consolidation was lost, even the last vestige of order left by Lei Wuye disintegrated into nothing.
With watermelon knives in hand and severed heads rolling about, everyone’s eyes turned red.
In the midst of the bloody annexations and conquests, anyone who couldn’t clearly see the situation yet fancied themselves the puppeteer was practically about to join forces with everyone else.
Faced with Lei Yaoxing’s brutal methods, whether to save themselves or to further their ambitions, people began a desperate counter-attack, escalating the conflict even further.
The most useful and immediate choice now was external aid, or in other words, finding a godfather.
In Chao City, Chuan City, and even among the power brokers of other cities beyond Haizhou, who would pass up such a valuable opportunity to expand their own power? Who wouldn’t want to make a bold move in Cliff City, the largest maritime hub of the federation?
Thus, the likes of Lu Xue, Shi Shi Xiongdi, Black Spade 3, Wooden Man, Wolf Face, Centaur… In recent days, those Chosen Ones of the White Deer—from the Federation, the Empire, as well as the Central Lands and the Thousand Isles—had been drawn to Cliff City one after another through various channels under the vortex of this storm.
Among them were not only wanted criminals but even lunatic maniacs.
This uncontrollable force stirred up the delicate balance both inside and outside Cliff City into a powder keg ready to explode at any moment.
What made matters even more tense was the steel monster that appeared in a stolen video this afternoon.
—A fully decked-out power armor truck, blatantly strutting on the streets!!!
It was unimaginable what kind of psychological shock the governor would be under upon receiving this report.
A chassis without any identification number, a spinal frame not recorded with the military, a federal engine matched with an imperial core, and a knock-off system written by some programmer from who-knows-where, equipped with imitation weapons and exterior armor welded from sheet metal—it was a complete death machine! With the right operator and enough firepower, it could easily break through the governor’s mansion and kill him!
What the hell are you doing? What on earth is this gang in the barren lands trying to achieve? Have they gone mad?! Is this another reenactment of the Tianyuan White Deer Uprising from over two hundred years ago?!
(End of Chapter)