It was just after two in the afternoon. The train would arrive in Chuxiong at nine the next morning, which meant that from now until meeting up with Cao Yanhua again, they had roughly eighteen to nineteen hours.

Luo Ren asked for Mu Dai’s opinion: “Let’s drive. I know you’re in a hurry, and I’ll try not to be slower than the train—but I should say upfront, I’ll rest when tired, and stop to eat when hungry. The goal is to get you there safely; I won’t take risks just to save time.”

Mu Dai thought these were all reasonable: “That’s fine.”

She asked him, “Why did you insist on us traveling alone?”

There was no one else in the car. Huo Zihong and Yi Wansan had also been sent away.

Luo Ren smiled and said, “I just wanted to talk with you.”

—I just wanted to talk with you.

Mu Dai was quite happy.

Thinking about it, although she’d seen Luo Ren often all this time, they rarely had opportunities to be alone. They hadn’t even had a proper date, to the point where she often fantasized about what it would feel like to put on beautiful makeup for a date, what it would feel like to go shopping together at the supermarket, or what it would feel like to watch a movie together in a theater.

He had promised to take her mountain climbing in the snow, but they ended up falling into an underground pit. Though that time in the pit… well, it could barely count. There was some progress.

Eighteen to nineteen hours—such a long time. Luo Ren must have a lot to say.

They first went to the supermarket to buy food. Although they moved quickly, they did properly push a cart together, which fulfilled her fantasy of “shopping together.”

The aisles were narrow, and the two of them pushed the cart, stopping and going. Luo Ren occasionally asked her: “Do you want this?”

Whenever she nodded, he would casually take the item down, making it look effortless, unlike when she used to shop alone and had to jump to reach things on high shelves.

Turning a corner, they passed shelves of kitchen supplies. These pots, pans, and utensils were things Mu Dai normally never looked at, but strangely, this time, her steps suddenly slowed considerably. She glanced at salt bags and vinegar bottles, a thought suddenly springing to mind.

—In the future, if she lived with Luo Ren, they couldn’t rely on takeout for every meal. The house would need cooking utensils and a complete stock of oil, salt, sauce, and vinegar. Back when she worked at Aunt Zheng Li’s restaurant, she had developed decent knife skills. She could manage to cook a few simple dishes…

When she came back to her senses, she saw that Luo Ren had also stopped and was staring at her meaningfully.

Mu Dai blushed, stammering: “Let’s go.”

She hurriedly pushed the cart away. Luo Ren asked from behind: “Thinking about getting married?”

What? Mu Dai was speechless.

Luo Ren came over and put his arm around her waist: “I once heard that when a young, beauty-conscious girl suddenly becomes interested in kitchen supplies, either she wants to become a chef, or she’s thinking about marriage.”

Mu Dai forced a laugh: “No, no, no… I was just thinking about Uncle Zheng’s restaurant, wondering if his seasonings were complete…”

“Please thank Uncle Zheng on my behalf. Since his restaurant opened, you’ve never even entered the kitchen. Yet now, eight hundred miles away, you’re concerned about whether his seasonings are complete.”

Mu Dai’s face turned as red as a monkey’s backside: “You’re welcome, you’re welcome.”

Luo Ren held back his laughter, really wanting to kiss her a couple of times, but there were too many people passing by, so he had to give up. After thinking for a moment, he asked: “Should I bring some gifts?”

That wasn’t necessary. Mu Dai answered quickly: “Master wouldn’t appreciate it.”

The car entered the highway, and everything was smooth. Neither of them spoke, but Luo Ren particularly enjoyed this atmosphere. Sometimes with just a glance from him, Mu Dai would unscrew the water bottle and hand it to him. After he drank, she would screw the cap back on—always keeping the bottle in her hand, the remaining water inside swaying with the motion of the car.

The highway here had a distinctive feature: the opposing lanes were separated by barriers densely planted with greenery. From a distance, a slender white flower stubbornly extended through the vegetation, trembling in the sunlight, passing the car like the wind.

This seemed like the best moment to open up.

Luo Ren looked straight ahead, not at Mu Dai.

“At that time, I was in the Philippines. I had a falling out with my family, tore up my passport, and refused to return to China. A moment of anger led to endless troubles.”

Mu Dai knew the background and understood this was the continuation, so she listened quietly.

“I not only made myself an illegal resident, but I also quickly ran out of money. When I was extremely hungry and couldn’t hold on anymore, I honestly tried to find a way to feed myself. Do you know what job I found?”

“Bodyguard?”

Luo Ren laughed lightly: “You think too highly of me. It was dishwashing.”

To the Philippines, he was a complete “foreigner,” without connections or legal status. He could only trade physical labor for wages—washing dishes in a small Chinese restaurant, and he couldn’t even do it openly. Most of the time, he crouched in the cramped, narrow dishwashing area in the back kitchen, with greasy, dirty water mixed with detergent flowing past his feet.

“Locally, these honest, ordinary Chinese people were the most bullied. Gang members would often come to extort and blackmail them, sometimes even harassing the women. Once, I couldn’t stand it anymore, grabbed a wok, and rushed out to face three of them.”

The usually cool Luo Ren, the Luo Ren who could throw knives with perfect aim, had experienced rushing out from the back kitchen with a wok to fight. Mu Dai wanted to laugh, but also felt sympathy: “They beat you badly, didn’t they?”

“In your eyes, am I that useless?”

He did end up with a black eye and bruises, but those three men were in worse shape. Luo Ren couldn’t quite explain why, but back then, without any systematic training, relying only on his fierce determination and that wok, hitting, smashing, and slapping, he somehow managed to take down three men.

“Then what happened?”

“Then the boss didn’t dare keep me anymore. He said I caused trouble that would lead to endless problems. If they reported me to the police and discovered I was staying illegally, it would be even more troublesome for him to pay me two more weeks’ wages and let me go.”

Looking back now, the scene was like something from a movie. It was raining, and the boss casually gave him a large black umbrella. When he opened it outside, he discovered the umbrella was broken—heavy rain outside, light rain inside, with one of the ribs collapsed, just as disheveled as his situation.

In the alley, someone stopped him.

Mu Dai tensed up: “Was it those men coming for revenge?”

Luo Ren turned his head with a smile, reaching out to tweak her face: “No, it was a talent scout, coming to discover me.”

He then gestured: “Open the potato chips.”

Mu Dai bent down to take the potato chips from the shopping bag at her feet, tore it open, and first offered two chips to Luo Ren.

Luo Ren took them with his mouth, chewing quickly: “Tastes good.”

The leader had a scarred face with tattoos and asked if he wanted to make big money.

Mu Dai asked him: “Was it to become a mercenary?”

“Not yet, not so direct. It was to participate in underground fighting.”

They didn’t immediately put him in the ring; he had to train first. Scarface patted his shoulder and said: The more blood you shed during training, the greater your chances of survival in the arena.

Luo Ren remembered these words well.

“At the time, I had no choice. I just knew I didn’t want to die, and if I didn’t want to die, I had to try harder. In the arena, the prize money was high, but there was a lot of manipulation. Sometimes winning meant money, but sometimes you had to lose deliberately to let others win, which meant even more money. Breaking an arm or a leg had a set price.”

Mu Dai’s lips went dry as she looked at Luo Ren without speaking. Luo Ren seemed to know what she wanted to ask and nodded: “Yes, I’ve had something broken—my arm.”

Mu Dai lowered her head, her hands twisted together. In her daze, she felt the car stop.

Looking up, she saw that they had indeed stopped. Luo Ren had pulled the car over to the emergency lane.

He asked her: “Is this too difficult to accept? We can stop talking about it for now.”

Mu Dai shook her head, feeling a heavy pain in her heart. After a pause, she unbuckled her seatbelt and leaned into his embrace.

Luo Ren held her with a smile: “I was foolish back then. If I had known that someday a girl would feel pain for me, I would never have let it break.”

“Which arm?”

“The left one.”

Mu Dai reached out her hand, gently stroking his left arm, her touch very light, almost careful.

Luo Ren rubbed her hair: “It healed very well. They were experienced in the arena—as soon as the arm broke, they took me down immediately. Doctors were waiting to set the bone, and there were herbal remedies and bandages. It was quick and efficient, over before I could react.”

And at these moments, you could often faintly hear the roaring applause from the front of the arena. The winner would be parading around, spectators throwing cash into the ring, a bikini-clad beauty coming to present a garland, suggesting that tonight would be free.

…

They couldn’t stop in the emergency lane for too long. The car soon got back on the road. The sun had begun to slant, and the temperature was no longer as scorching as midday.

Mu Dai curled up in the passenger seat, silent, moving very slowly, occasionally eating a potato chip.

Luo Ren looked at her: “Want to sleep for a while?”

She shook her head: “So how did you go from underground fighting to becoming a mercenary?”

That story started with a death match.

Death matches, compared to underground fights, were even more cruel and stimulating: they required a higher death rate.

But such matches often had higher ticket prices and attracted more eager spectators. Luo Ren couldn’t understand why people would be so fanatical, spending huge sums just to witness the death of another human being.

He didn’t participate in death matches and rarely even fought to injure or maim, unless his opponent was trying to maim him or the opponent wanted to earn money from such injuries. By that time, he was already tired of and repulsed by this lifestyle, but many circles weren’t places you could enter and leave as you pleased.

In that match, Luo Ren was the third to go up.

Just before the match, the organizer hurriedly pulled him to the back door behind the arena and instructed him: bets had been placed, and the arena owner had also joined in the excitement. This match was to be a death match. Although the opponent wasn’t as strong as him, Luo Ren was expected to be merciless.

Luo Ren said, “You know I don’t do death matches.”

The organizer said, “This was a last-minute change. No one expected it. The boss bet several million, so I came to discuss it with you.”

“There’s nothing to discuss.”

The organizer’s expression changed: “Luo, you’re seeking death. Just you wait.”

After saying this, he stormed off in a rage. Luo Ren felt irritated and kicked a pile of logs stacked by the back door. The wood scattered and rolled away, and a figure stood up from behind the woodpile.

Luo Ren didn’t care. The underground fighting world was full of such suspicious people and events.

In the light from the corridor, he saw that the person had rolled up the sleeve of his right arm, revealing a tattoo of Chinese characters on his forearm.

—Silver bowl holding snow, white horse entering reed flowers.

Luo Ren suddenly felt a sense of familiarity: “Chinese?”

“Japanese. Japan, Hokkaido.”

So he was Japanese. Luo Ren instantly lost all goodwill toward him and turned to leave.

When he entered the arena and got on the platform, he realized something was wrong.

Originally, his opponent was supposed to be a white man named Human.

But when the organizer shouted hoarsely into the megaphone, “Welcome challenger Human,” the person who walked out from the tunnel amid the roaring crowd was a 90-kilogram Thai man with dark skin, half a head taller than Luo Ren, his bare upper body piled with muscles like hard iron.

Luo Ren stood motionless, cursing internally: Damn it.

The audience also questioned this, shouting: “That’s not Human!”

The organizer laughed loudly: “No, this one is also called Human, just not the one you were expecting. We deliberately kept it from you—surprise!”

The crowd roared, and the atmosphere reached another peak. Men and women alike suddenly waved their arms, shouting: “Kill him! Kill him!”

This Thai man, whose real name was truly Human or not, Luo Ren, was later learned to be a Thai boxer who had once won the title of champion.

And “champion” was not an empty title.

The disparity in strength was vast. Luo Ren only managed to defend for about ten rounds before a heavy punch came from his opponent. He nearly lost consciousness immediately. As he heavily hit the ground, he heard thunderous applause, and then a dark shadow, like a black cloud, came over him…

At that moment, gunshots rang out in the arena.

Continuous fire, like from a small submachine gun—ta-ta sounds without pause. The bullets didn’t hit people but struck the walls and lights. Plaster fell, brick fragments flew, and shattered glass rained down like a sudden shower onto the boxing platform.

Chaos erupted in an instant. Wailing and howling, people fled in panic. Men and women ran with their heads covered. The Thai man had disappeared long ago. The arena’s guards shouted from high positions, waving their guns and firing aimlessly.

Finally, things quieted down.

Luo Ren, with bloodshot and swollen eyes, struggled to look up and saw two blurry figures walking toward the fighting platform.

One of them, whom he had seen at the back door, had Chinese characters tattooed on his arm. He was thin, courteous, with a habitual smile on his face—a Japanese man named Qingmu.

The other was a small Black man, Yuris, swaggering, with a colorful gold-threaded headscarf over his head. His right hand held a small submachine gun, and a lollipop was in his mouth.

He walked to Luo Ren’s side, tucked the gun under his arm as if it were a sugar cane, made a fist with his left hand, took Luo Ren’s hand to form a fist as well, and then bumped the two fists together.

He said: “Yo!”

Luo Ren passed out.

When he woke up again, it was to indescribable, inexplicable sounds.

He was lying in a wooden house. The back window was open, overlooking a dense forest. Deep in the forest, the slanting western sunlight flashed with blinding gold. Birds chirped, and there was melodious music, along with irregular drumbeats…

Luo Ren struggled out of bed, leaning against the wall, and inched step by step to the door before pushing it open.

Qingmu sat on a large rock above, playing a ukulele and singing a Japanese song Luo Ren couldn’t understand. Later, he learned it was a pillow song. Qingmu was from Hokkaido; his ancestors were fishermen who often went to sea.

The song went: “Tonight I sleep on a silk pillow, tomorrow at sea I’ll rest on waves. I ask the pillow if I’m asleep or not, the pillow speaks and says I’m already asleep…”

The drumbeat came from Yuris, who held a hand drum, leaping and striding like a tribesman dancing in an African primitive tribe.

Cooking smoke wafted through the air, and the aroma of dinner came from the kitchen. People went in and out, curiously examining him. On the wooden floor of the corridor, mangoes, bananas, durians, and guns of various lengths were randomly piled.

Luo Ren leaned against the door, his chest still aching from the Thai man’s heavy punch earlier.

He wondered: Who are these people?