The underground mine-shaft labyrinth of Huang'e had never been so deserted. After a massacre of unspeakable cruelty, the surviving miners had no stomach for mining at all; they crawled off into the taverns to drown their sorrows and drink to still being alive.
In the pitch-black shafts a feeble mining lamp swept its beam over the surrounding rock, and Wuchang, eyes sharp and bright, refused to give up on any suspicious spot — any strange glimmer could be a crystal calling out to him.
By now a four-centimeter rainbow crystal was already stuffed into his backpack, the spoils of an hour's searching. Wuchang's reasoning was sound: since he carried the secret art of Dragon-Tiger Rush, he had an edge over ordinary miners to begin with, so why not make the most of it? Even a man running for his life ought to run with a full purse.
Boss Pan was on good terms with the smuggling syndicate, so getting the crystal sold looked like no problem at all; and Mad Dog had promised that three thousand rainbow coins would buy everyone a safe departure from this planet.
Money, money, and more money. Making money was the only thing left in Wuchang's head now. The smuggling fee to get off Huang'e alone would cost thirty liquid-mithril coins, and the future was full of uncertainty; without a decent reserve of cash a man wouldn't last. And right now the only way Wuchang had to make money was to put his martial skill to work and dig rainbow crystal properly.
The shaft Wuchang was in now ran directly beneath Huang'e City. This endless labyrinth of tunnels held altogether too many secrets.
Just as Wuchang was carefully searching for crystal, a rust-covered iron door appeared at the end of one tunnel — and through the little window in it, faint threads of white light leaked out.
"You'd all better explain to me why not one of you turned in a single gold coin today. Have I been too good to you? Have you forgotten the rules..."
"Speak up, you little bastards. Why is there not one gold coin today? Lost your tongues..."
Smack! A slap rang out inside the room, and together with the furious shouting it carried a long way down the empty tunnel.
The man cursing in that room was none other than Poison Wasp Adu, the top killer under Coyote Seven. And kneeling in front of him was a whole crowd of children — at their head, of all people, A Yun and his good friend A Liang.
Nobody would ever have guessed that the boss who ran every pickpocket in Huang'e City was Adu. The thug who obeyed Seven's every word had a secret identity like that.
"B-boss, there was really no way today. The Guard's all over the streets, nobody dares go up, we've all been hiding in the shafts — we honestly couldn't steal any money..." A Liang stammered out his explanation.
"Fuck!" Adu stepped up and kicked A Liang into the corner. "Don't dare go on the street? You little shits dare to eat, don't you? With no money, what are you going to live on, the wind? With no money, how the hell am I supposed to live?"
"So I've been feeding you for nothing?" The more Adu talked, the angrier he got; he charged into the huddle of children, punching and kicking.
The oldest children in the room were A Yun and A Liang, and even they were only thirteen or fourteen. The rest were as young as six or seven, at the tenderest age of all; at the sight of the raging Adu they shrieked in terror and, like frightened chicks, squeezed frantically into the corner.
"Don't hit me! I won't dare again, I swear I'll steal more money tomorrow..."
"Uncle, it hurts, it hurts..."
"Waaah, Uncle, we're hungry, please don't take our food away, we'll be good, we promise..."
More than ten children averaging six or seven years old huddled together begging for mercy with all their might — and all they got in return was more of Adu's beatings.
On his gleaming respirator, that vivid wasp glittered under the lamplight with an eerie sheen. To these little children, that wasp was the source of every nightmare they had.
A Yun and A Liang and two or three other kids in their teens couldn't take any more. Young as they were, they were already the big brothers of the group. With A Yun leading, they threw themselves at Adu's feet, clinging to his legs and crying out.
"Uncle, don't hit them, hit me. Whatever they owe, we'll pay you back double later, please just stop hitting them, they're only children..."
A Yun's pleading won no sympathy from Poison Wasp Adu; instead it dredged up the rage he had long been holding in. He grabbed A Yun by the collar and hoisted the small body up into the air.
"And who did I think it was? If it isn't A Yun, the boy who went and found himself a mommy. You got money? Didn't you spend it all supporting that whore of a mother of yours?"
"And now you dare stick your neck out? Hand it over. Aren't you the best hands in the business? Empty out everything you've saved and pay up for these little bastards!"
Just the sight of A Yun made Adu's blood boil. The boy handed in ten gold coins a day as his cut, yet he was giving a full thirty to that fake mother of his. How could Adu not be jealous? How could he not be furious? If Blood Rose didn't still need the boy's information, he'd have settled the brat's hash long ago.
Adu had long since learned exactly how A Yun and A Liang ticked: beat the little ones, and money would always be squeezed out of the pair of them. That was how it had always gone. But ever since A Yun had run into that swindler of a "mother," not another coin could be wrung out of him.
And today, this stinking kid who didn't pay up had actually dared to step forward for the little ones — and the long-suppressed Adu exploded outright.
"You little bastard, you think that's your mother? Fuck, let me tell you, she's a fake — that whore is playing you..." By then Adu was in such a fury that he swung with both hands, slapping him ten times in a row.
A Yun had always been the leader of these children. He was only thirteen, but in the hearts of the six- and seven-year-olds he was already their guardian spirit. When the children were hungry, A Yun bought them food; when they were cold, A Yun found them clothes. Six-year-olds are at the neediest age of all, and kindhearted A Yun filled exactly that hole in their hearts.
Seeing the blood all over A Yun's face, the children couldn't bear it any longer. From somewhere they found the courage to swarm forward, clinging to Adu's legs, weeping and cursing.
"Villain, let go of our big brother! You're a villain..."
"Waaah, A Yun's face is bleeding, A Yun, don't cry..."
"Bite him, bite the bad man..."
What fighting strength did a pack of kids barely a meter tall have? Their punches and kicks were no more than tickles; they hadn't even finished losing their baby teeth, and their bites didn't hurt. Annoyed past all patience, Adu lifted his foot and kicked one of the children square in the face, and a few teeth flew out of the child's mouth mixed with blood.
"It hurts... it hurts..." The children all dissolved into wailing at once.
The bright red blood roused the savagery in Adu's heart. Looking at those tender little faces, he suddenly felt a fury he had no way to vent. He flung A Yun out of his grip, seized the child whose baby teeth he had just kicked out, and a cruel smile rose at the corner of his mouth.
"I almost forgot — you useless little shits still have a use. All I have to do is break your arms and legs, burn out your eyes, and hand you over to Seven, and you'll be honorable street beggars."
"Hahaha, I'm a genius! If you hadn't slacked off today, I'd never have thought up such a fine way to make money..."
Adu's cruel laughter filled the room. The children were scared witless; not one of them dared resist again. They jammed themselves into the corner, and more than a few had wet their pants in sheer terror.
The child in Adu's grip was only six — on any other planet, a first grader, the age when a kid traces characters along with the teacher. How could a child that small have ever endured such terror? And what came out of Adu's mouth was never an empty threat; it was bloody fact.
"No — please, Uncle, please don't..." The child was already senseless with fear. Of course he had seen the crippled children of Huang'e City: blind kids sitting at street corners holding out both hands to beg, every coin they got taken away by someone else, and not one of those children lived past ten.
Just as Adu was laughing like a madman, A Yun and A Liang, sprawled on the floor, suddenly lunged at him like demons and rammed the hysterical Adu headfirst to the ground. A Yun clutched the child whose mouth was full of blood, pointed at Adu, and demanded:
"So it was you — you and Coyote. No wonder kids vanish for no reason every year. It was you two who killed them?"
Now even timid A Liang was furious. He stood shoulder to shoulder with A Yun, shielding the children behind them. "Where's Xiao Mei? Where's Obi? And Da Qiang, Crybaby... where did all those kids go? Did you kill them too?"
Their question needed no answer. One look at Adu's cruel eyes said it all: what stood before them was not a man at all. It was a beast.
"You little shits dare question me?" Adu acted as though he'd heard something hilarious. "Haha, why should I feed useless trash that can't earn, for nothing? If you two weren't so handy and didn't bring in money every day, where do you think you'd have ended up?"
With that, Adu tossed the two boys aside like chicks, picked a little girl at random out of the huddle, and slammed her down on the table.
"Let's start with you." Adu, his face a mask of savagery, gripped the little girl's arm and wrenched it up behind her back; it looked like he meant to twist that skinny arm until it snapped.
By then the girl could do nothing but howl; tears and snot streaked her whole face into a mess. Just as Adu was about to put his strength into it, the bruised and swollen A Yun and A Liang charged in, and a heavy chair came down hard on the back of Adu's head, splitting his scalp so that blood came surging out at once.
Poison Wasp Adu had never expected these two boys to dare resist. In a rage he flung the girl aside and kicked A Yun away.
"You want to die? Then I'll oblige you." With that, a huge fist drove straight at A Yun's temple. Adu was a martial artist who'd made it into the dan ranks, after all; a punch like that would crack stone, let alone little A Yun.
"Aaah—" Screams broke out all over the room.
At that critical instant a tremendous crash came from the stone room's doorway: the thin sheet-iron door tore loose and flew, swift as lightning, straight at Adu's back.
"Who's there?" Before the caught-off-guard Adu could even react, the iron door had already slammed into his back.
"Ghost Wuchang?" Staggering from the blow, Adu shot up off the ground like a cat whose tail had been stepped on and threw a punch straight at Wuchang's face.
Wuchang's eyes missed nothing. The instant Adu's body shifted, he knew the rat was about to bolt — did a first-dan martial artist really think he could match a third dan like him?
But Wuchang was blocking the only way in or out, so Adu had no choice now but to fight for his life.