Mu Dai ate her meal in silence, watched Luo Ren pay the bill in silence, and got into the car with him in silence. On the way, she kicked a small stone, which rolled into a ditch.
Luo Ren opened the passenger door first, letting her in. As Mu Dai sat down, he suddenly bent down and kissed her forehead, saying, “It’s that I don’t like roses.”
After saying this, he closed her door and walked around the front of the car to the driver’s seat.
Mu Dai smiled in her seat, watching Luo Ren through the glass, mischievously feeling that her silent little temper had been rewarded.
The car hit the road again. After passing the toll station, the way ahead was smooth. With the headlights on, illuminating only the road immediately ahead, and the sky now dark, there was no scenery to see. Mu Dai pressed her forehead against the window for a while, then turned to look at Luo Ren: “Why don’t you like roses?”
Luo Ren said, “I knew you couldn’t resist asking.”
He took a deep breath, his Adam’s apple moving almost imperceptibly.
“Once, I went to a bar with Yuris and the others.”
Going to bars was common. The high-intensity, high-pressure, life-risking work required extreme relaxation. Cigarettes, alcohol, and women were all outlets. There were also more relaxing options, like drugs, but they all tacitly agreed not to touch those.
That time at the bar, Luo Ren was late. As soon as he stepped in, Yuris pulled him aside, meaningfully winking: “There’s a girl you’ll like.”
Then he dragged Luo Ren to the bar counter.
One glance, and Luo Ren knew what was going on.
Filipinos are mostly of Malay descent, which wasn’t bad, but it was far from Luo Ren’s aesthetic. When Qingmu and the others had pressed him about what type he liked, he had eventually thrown out Pin Ting’s photo: “Like this.”
No wonder Yuris said he would like her. The woman at the bar looked about eighty percent Chinese in her features, but her skin tone and demeanor carried the hot, bewitching charm of Southeast Asia.
Stunningly beautiful, she wore a high-slit silver evening gown, her hair up with curled strands falling on either side, languid and elegant. A long, graceful neck adorned with a diamond necklace, eyes with sparkling half-millimeter eyeshadow, and full red lips like a lush rose.
She was out of place in this bar.
Luo Ren wondered: “Where did she come from?”
Yuris shrugged: “Who knows? A rich merchant’s mistress, a drug lord’s lover—could be anything.”
Nobody was a fool, especially not in Mindanao, where just a few streets away, there could be robberies, armed conflicts, even explosions. No one believed a princess would appear in such a bar.
Surprisingly, no one approached her to strike up a conversation.
Neither did Luo Ren. He sat at a corner table, ordered a drink, and drank alone.
Midway through his drink, the woman came over on her own, lifted her skirt slightly, and sat down beside him.
She initiated conversation: “The men in this bar are either with someone or flirting with dancers. Only you are alone, yet you don’t even buy me a drink.”
Luo Ren said, “With all your jewels and finery, ordinary people wouldn’t dare approach you.”
The woman smiled: “I think I’m beautiful and bet my friend that many people would approach me at the bar. But no one has, and the Malay dancers are more popular than I.”
“If you changed your outfit, wore a tank top and shorts, let your hair down, every man in the place would go crazy for you.”
The woman’s eyes lit up: “Wait for me.”
Luo Ren saw her grab a dancer, bargaining in the shadows of a corner, taking off her earrings, then the necklace from her neck.
The dancer accepted them, delighted, and led her out through the back door.
When she reappeared, she was indeed wearing a tank top and shorts, her long hair flowing in waves. In an instant, she became the center of attention, like a star surrounded by satellites.
But she refused drinks bought by anyone, pointing at Luo Ren and saying: “I’ll only drink what he buys.”
The whole place hooted, with Yuris and Qingmu shouting the loudest.
She specifically requested a Northern Lights cocktail, but the bartender didn’t know how to make it, so she made it herself. After preparing it, she said, “The lights need to be off to see it properly.”
The barkeeper obliged, turning off the lights, and she carried the cocktail toward Luo Ren.
No wonder it was called Northern Lights. As she slowly approached, the glass shimmered with iridescent light, as brilliant as the Milky Way.
Luo Ren didn’t refuse, slowly drinking it all, then said: “I agreed to buy you a drink, but I ended up drinking it myself.”
She said, “You can give me something else.”
When the lights came back on, Luo Ren gave her a rose.
…
Mu Dai listened, stunned. After a moment, she smiled gloomily and said: “Little Knife Luo, you shouldn’t be telling me this.”
“After that, she disappeared. No one noticed when she left.”
He continued, and Mu Dai turned her face toward the window. In the reflection, her expression showed some anger: “I don’t want to hear anymore.”
“Yuris and the others were still reveling, but I felt it was a magical encounter. So I went out the back door of the bar to find that dancer. I remembered she had exchanged her diamond earrings and necklace for that ordinary tank top and shorts. I wanted to help redeem her jewelry.”
Mu Dai irritably bumped her head against the window. He’s still talking!
“Those dancers lived hard lives, most staying in wooden shacks just behind the bar. I’d been there many times and knew my way around. So I called out her name while pushing open a wooden door.”
Inside the room, clothes were scattered everywhere. The dancer was dead, lying on the bed, stabbed twice—once slitting her throat, disemboweling her. Blood was everywhere. When I entered, blood was still dripping from the bed.”
Drip, drip, and outside the shack, the noisy sounds from the bar could still be faintly heard.
A chill ran up Mu Dai’s spine.
Luo Ren began to laugh, first softly, then loudly.
“Did you, like me, initially think she was a charming girl who exchanged diamond jewelry for clothes?”
No, smiling, she had followed the dancer, who thought she’d gotten a bargain, into the room, taken her life, then unhurriedly selected clothes, changed, and entered the bar as if nothing had happened.
Luo Ren rushed outside, held onto the doorframe, and vomited. That Northern Lights cocktail, which moments earlier had been as stunning as a nebula, now seemed sour, foul, and nauseating.
“A casual remark from me cost an innocent person her life.”
Mu Dai didn’t speak. After a while, she unscrewed her water bottle and asked him: “Want some water?”
Luo Ren shook his head. The road ahead seemed endless, the headlights never breaking through the darkness.
“That woman was the Leopard. No one can take anything from the Leopard—not diamond jewelry, not money, not an eye.”
Those who take will pay a price, even… much later.
The car fell into a long silence again.
Mu Dai began to feel that time was passing too slowly. She wished it were already morning, nine o’clock, already in Chuxiong, having picked up Cao Yanhua.
She didn’t want Luo Ren to reminisce anymore.
She said softly, “Maybe we should stop talking about this.”
Luo Ren smiled slightly: “Let’s push through. If I don’t say it now, I don’t know when I’ll have the courage to say it again.”
“Not long after that, we had several successful operations. Over time, I became the unofficial leader—that’s how private armed forces work. No appointments, no regulations, everything is determined by capability.”
“The good part was that my value increased; the bad part was that, as the saying goes, ‘the nail that sticks out gets hammered down.’ I became a thorn in the enemy’s side.”
“One day, very urgently, we received a job. At the Mindanao Imperial Hotel, twenty-three hostages had been kidnapped, all foreign tourists—though ‘tourists’ isn’t quite accurate. Mindanao rarely had tourists. Most of the twenty-three were there for business or official purposes, so the fee was substantial. We moved quickly, almost trapping the kidnappers inside the hotel.”
A fierce gunfight ensued, with even hand grenades being used. The kidnappers, holding the hostages, retreated from the first-floor lobby to the second floor, then to the third.
Behind this kidnapping was the Leopard.
Luo Ren quickly had someone find the hotel’s structural plans, considering attack and defense arrangements. Just as he was deciding who would stand guard and who would break in through the upper windows, intense gunfire and screams from hostages suddenly erupted from the second floor.
Later, they learned that the kidnappers had contacted the Leopard, who said: “If you can’t bring them back, don’t let others profit either. It would upset me.”
So, not one was left alive.
“After hearing the gunshots, I knew something was wrong. Qingmu and I broke through windows while others launched a frontal assault. After entering the third floor through the windows, the corridor was already littered with bodies and eerily quiet. The kidnappers had hidden themselves in an ambush. A fierce battle was inevitable.”
Luo Ren and Qingmu, guns ready, fingers lightly touching the triggers, every nerve tense, moved lightly, slowly skirting around the bodies on the ground.
At that moment, Luo Ren noticed one corpse moving slightly, not because the person wasn’t completely dead, but because underneath the body was a child.
Qingmu crouched down and turned the body over.
Beneath was a five or six-year-old girl with golden hair, white skin, and large eyes filled with tears. She was covered in blood and trembling.
Suddenly, through the communication earpiece, came Yuris’s voice, cursing loudly: “Luo, it’s a trap! The Leopard’s reinforcements have arrived, blocking our exit. This time, we can’t get out without losing our heads!”
Almost simultaneously, both outside the hotel and in the corridor, a barrage of gunfire erupted. Luo Ren grabbed the little girl and rolled into the nearest guest room. Qingmu tumbled into the room opposite. Both immediately checked their weapons and remaining ammunition.
The little girl looked at Luo Ren with tears in her eyes.
Luo Ren gestured to Qingmu across the hallway.
—I’ll charge first, you cover.
—Move forward in crossing patterns.
—Can’t take care of the girl, leave it to fate.
—Alright, one, two, three…
Just as Luo Ren was about to rush out, the little girl suddenly grabbed the hem of his clothes, calling tearfully: “Uncle, don’t leave me alone.”
Luo Ren’s heart softened for a moment. Meanwhile, Qingmu had almost rolled to the doorway. Seeing Luo Ren’s sudden hesitation, he quickly rolled back, drawing a burst of gunfire that sent stone fragments flying around the doorway.
Luo Ren turned to look at Tasha.
He truly couldn’t take her. It was now clear that this so-called job had turned into a planned ambush by the Leopard. They were now trying to break out and escape. Every hand, foot, and nerve needed to be utilized, and he simply didn’t have the extra capacity to look after her.
From the opposite room, Qingmu angrily continued to gesture.
His meaning was resolute: Don’t soften! Don’t soften! Don’t soften!
Luo Ren turned to look at the little girl. Her pretty face was tear-streaked like a little cat’s. She raised her arm to wipe away tears, softly begging him: “Uncle, there are bad people here. Take me out. I’ll be good. I won’t make a sound.”
This wasn’t hide-and-seek; staying quiet wouldn’t solve the problem.
Luo Ren was silent. The little girl, timidly, tried to reach out to grab him again, but seeing his grim expression, slowly withdrew her hand.
Luo Ren asked her: “What’s your name?”
“Tasha.”
Looking back, he saw Qingmu was about to stomp his feet in impatience.
Luo Ren steeled himself, took a deep breath, and crouched down with his back to Tasha: “Climb on.”
Two slender arms wrapped around his neck, and the child’s soft body pressed tightly against his back.
Luo Ren said, “Tasha, let’s be clear. I can’t take care of you. You have to hold on tight. If you fall, I won’t stop to pick you up. Don’t make a sound. Don’t distract me. Just hold tight—but not too tight, I still need to breathe.”
Tasha tightened her arms and nodded against his back.
He gestured to Qingmu again: One, two, three, go!
The two rushed into the corridor. Gunfire erupted instantly. Luo Ren, ignoring the child on his back, fired, dodged, rolled, and flattened himself. Stray bullets whizzed past, and his nostrils filled with the acrid smell of gunpowder.
They finally broke through, regrouped, jumped into vehicles, and retreated. Yuris shouted: “Luo, you’re injured! Your pants are covered in blood… And where did this kid come from?!”
It took Yuris great effort to pry Tasha’s hands open.
She had already fainted. A stray bullet had hit her back, passing through at an angle. The blood on Luo Ren was all from Tasha.
Yuris stopped the bleeding. In her unconscious state, she repeatedly murmured, almost convulsing: “Hold tight, hold tight, uncle, don’t leave me alone.”
As the vehicle continued to bump along, heading toward the forest, Yuris handed the bandaged Tasha back to Luo Ren: “Luo, what do you plan to do with her?”
Luo Ren, leaning against the side of the vehicle, sat holding Tasha and said, “I don’t know.”
He lowered his head to look at Tasha in his arms. Due to blood loss, her face was pale. Her small hand unconsciously clutched Luo Ren’s collar as she murmured: “Daddy.”