Chapter 344
Chapter 344
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>Translator: Ryuma
>Chapter: 344
>Chapter Title: Big Dragon
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The other man’s words caught Li Huowang completely off guard. He stared in shock at the chubby guy in front of him, decked out with a thick gold chain around his neck. He almost thought he’d misheard.
“Stalking me? What’s there to stalk about with me?”
The fatty eyed the bloodstained shards of glass in fear and stammered out his reply.
“I don’t know. It was my distant cousin who told me to keep tabs on you. Said he’d pay me 2500 a month.”
“I figured tailing a lunatic for 2500 bucks a month was a sweet deal. No boss riding my ass, I could slack off and play games. Beats slaving away in an electronics factory, so I took the job.”
Li Huowang reached out and yanked on the gold chain. He immediately knew something was wrong—he’d handled real gold before, and this felt much too light. It was fake.
The fatty was probably telling the truth. He was nothing more than a stooge sent to tail him.
A fawning smile crept onto the fatty’s face.
“It’s a knockoff I got at a street stall for 30 bucks. Where would I get the cash for a real gold chain? That bastard Wang Zhilong hasn’t paid me in two months.”
Li Huowang’s gaze grew vacant. What the hell had happened in this hallucination? And who had sent someone to watch him?
He shook his head vigorously. His breathing grew ragged as he muttered to himself.
“No! None of it matters. This is all a hallucination. Hallucinations don’t need logic. I don’t care what happens here, and I don’t need to.”
“Li Sui!”
Li Huowang whipped around and bellowed at everything around him.
“Li Sui! Had enough fun yet?! If you still recognize me as your dad, then get your ass back here now!”
He’d already given up on this place. There was nothing left to care about. He didn’t want to stay trapped in this hallucination any longer—he wanted to go back. There was still a mountain of things waiting for him over there!
The bizarre outburst from Li Huowang in front of him terrified the bound fatty. He nearly pissed himself.
He’d been tailing the guy long enough to know this wasn’t an act. This was the real deal—a genuine psycho. And from what he’d heard, the guy had even hacked someone up before.
The fatty struggled desperately to scoot backward while shouting at the top of his lungs.
“It’s got nothing to do with me! I’m just the hired help! It was that Big Dragon punk who told me—if anything popped outta thin air around you, I was supposed to call him right away! Go take it up with him!”
Li Huowang’s pupils contracted slightly mid-shout. He slowly turned his head toward the fatty.
“What did you say?!”
He strode over, grabbed the fatty by the collar, and hoisted him straight up off the ground. He glared straight into the man’s flabby face.
“What’s really going on here? Who the hell is this Big Dragon? How does he know I can make things appear out of nowhere?”
Everything that had seemed so absurd until now was starting to make sense. The sudden emergence of this logic unnerved him.
“That’s all I know! His number’s in my phone. You dial it—I’ll lure him over for you!”
Li Huowang snatched the fatty’s phone, unlocked it with facial recognition, and scrolled through the contacts to find one labeled Big Dragon. He hit call.
“Hey~ Dragon Bro! Get over here quick! The psycho’s conjuring stuff—like magic tricks! He’s pulling shit outta nowhere nonstop! Yeah, yeah! There’s gold!!”
After delivering the performance with utmost sincerity, the fatty looked up at Li Huowang. His expression was seven parts terror, three parts flattery.
“Bro, he said he’ll be here soon. I reeled him in for you. You can let me go now, right?”
Li Huowang chucked the phone into the rushing river nearby. He yanked off the fatty’s sock, balled it up, and shoved it straight into the man’s mouth.
It seemed Big Dragon wasn’t far away. Before long, Li Huowang heard the screech of brakes from outside.
Three men clutching various objects rushed hastily into the bridge culvert. A buzz-cut thug with a face full of menace was surprised to spot the fatty deep inside, bound hand and foot with belts and shoelaces.
They charged over and fumbled frantically to untie him. Wang Zhilong shook him hard.
“Where’s Li Huowang?”
Before the fatty could get a word out, a black shadow erupted from the river beside them. Clutching a goose egg–sized stone, it smashed viciously toward one of the men’s heads.
The man dodged in panic. The stone struck his collarbone instead, and that spot swelled up visibly at a rapid pace.
But that was merely the beginning. Caught completely off guard by Li Huowang’s ambush, the four-on-one fight somehow left them retreating step by step.
“Fuck this! I’ll take you down with me!”
A squat, melon-headed man steeled himself, whipped out a dagger, and plunged it into Li Huowang’s arm.
Having stabbed him, the man panicked instantly. He let go of the dagger and stumbled back a step on instinct.
In the next instant, Li Huowang seized the handle without hesitation and yanked it out with a savage twist. He rammed it straight into the man’s arm. A horrific scream echoed through the bridge culvert.
With the speed of lightning, Li Huowang then yanked the bloody dagger free and stabbed it into another man’s thigh.
The utterly terrifying scene unfolding before him clearly rattled Wang Zhilong. He hadn’t expected his target to be this monstrous.
He wanted to run now, but with Li Huowang armed, it was far too late. A kick to his back sent him crashing face-first into the dirt.
In short order, all four men lay on the ground, their limbs bound with their own belts and shoelaces—like pigs waiting to be slaughtered.
Li Huowang grabbed Wang Zhilong by the hair and dragged him to the riverbank. He shoved the man’s head straight into the murky water and held it down until his struggles grew violent. Then he yanked him back up.
He repeated the process several times. Wang Zhilong was already half-dead.
When he hauled him up once more, Li Huowang stared down at him.
“How did you know I could make things appear?”
Wang Zhilong’s eyes were glazed over. His voice came out weak and halting, broken by gasps.
“I... I heard it... secretly...”
“What else did you do?”
Li Huowang loosened his grip slightly. Wang Zhilong’s face hovered mere centimeters from the water’s surface. The terror of suffocation made his words tumble out in a frantic rush.
“I heard you had supernatural powers! That you could conjure gold outta thin air! So I got some crooked ideas. Pulled strings to sneak you outta the hospital. Wanted you to make gold for me!”
By the end, Wang Zhilong was sobbing outright.
“They didn’t abandon me?”
A surge of intense joy flooded Li Huowang’s heart.
“They didn’t abandon me!”
He’d kept telling himself he didn’t care. But upon hearing that this man had been the one to sneak him out of the hospital, he realized just how deeply he truly did.
Seeing Li Huowang’s mood stabilize, Wang Zhilong wailed and begged through his sobs.
“Spare me this once, yeah? I lost my damn mind. Took the wrong path. I was wrong! I really was!”
Li Huowang looked down at him. The elation in his heart rapidly faded away, replaced by a fresh wave of intense suspicion.
“You’re lying! If you wanted to control me and make me conjure gold for you, then why not tie me up? Why just dump me on the street like trash? This place is fake! It’s a hallucination!”
Wang Zhilong howled in utter despair.
“I wanted to tie you up! But I couldn’t! The ropes would be tight on your hands one second, then slip right off the next. The door’s locked tight, but somehow you’re standing outside it!”
“If you hadn’t shown off that supernatural power just now, I would’ve sworn you were just some ordinary lunatic! I’d have quit long ago!”
(End of chapter)