Wuchang had never been this angry, not even when men had hunted him. In his previous life, back on Earth, he had seen crippled children begging along the streets more than once. At first he had taken them for ordinary disabled kids, and more than once he had felt sorry for them and helped.
But later, by chance, he learned the truth from a comrade in arms: those children had all been trafficked, controlled by a gang of so-called Beggar Gang types who broke their limbs and burned their eyes blind, turning the children into money-making machines, trading the children's misery for other people's pity and pocketing the profit.
In that life, Wuchang had always wanted to teach those beasts in human form a lesson, but he'd never gotten the chance. Now, in this future world, the very same scene was playing out in front of his eyes.
"Now I finally get what it means to lose your humanity. So there really are people in this world who've handed their souls over to the devil." Wuchang fired a snap kick straight at Adu's chest, striking later but landing first — before Adu's fist could even reach him, he had already kicked him back.
"A Yun, protect the children!" Wuchang roared, then surged forward and clamped down with a tiger claw on the hand Adu had stretched toward the children.
"Using kids as hostages? With a poisonous gut like yours, who do you think you're fooling?" Then a Nail Fist slammed hard into Adu's solar plexus, and that one punch had him throwing up without end.
Kneeling on the floor, Adu pulled the breathing mask off his face, and vomit mixed with blood spattered all over the ground, making every child cover their nose.
"Please, please don't kill me—" Adu, sobbing uncontrollably from the pain, knelt before Wuchang and begged for mercy, "It had nothing to do with me, really nothing to do with me, it was all... all Coyote Seven's orders!"
"Bullshit!" A Liang shot to his feet the moment he heard it. "You grabbed me when I was six! Don't think you can hide your dirty work from me. You control us, make us steal to line your pockets, and today you admitted with your own mouth that you killed off so many of our brothers and sisters..."
A Liang had it right. He and A Yun were not the same: A Yun, after being separated from his parents at six, had been taken in by Eileen, and only at eleven, when he came to Huang'e City and happened to run into A Liang and the others, did he become a part-time thief. If A Yun hadn't taken pity on these little kids, Adu could never have controlled him at all.
A Liang's lot had been far more wretched. Adu had already had him under his thumb at five or six, and he knew practically every one of Adu's old secrets inside out.
"Little Liang, I raised you all these years — maybe I get no credit for it, but I put in the sweat! Don't do me in!" Adu had given up hope; from Wuchang's footwork and the speed of that punch, he had already felt it plainly — he was no match for this man at all.
Wuchang looked at Adu with contempt. "You want to keep breathing? Then beg these children. If they say to let you go, I'll spare your life."
Adu heard the opening and immediately shuffled two steps forward on his knees to the front of the huddle, then started slapping his own face, left and right.
"I was wrong, children, I was wrong, I'm not a human being, I shouldn't have scared you..."
The children's fear of Adu was in their bones. The moment he came close they shrieked like frightened chicks and all crammed toward the corner, and the few at the edge who couldn't squeeze in wailed with terror.
Adu panicked as well — that death god Wuchang was right behind him, and if he was pushed far enough he really would kill. Adu scrambled on hands and knees to a crate in the corner, pulled out canned food of every kind, and carried it over to the children, offering it up as if it were treasure.
"Good children, just put in a good word for uncle. These canned meats and canned fruits are all for you, all of it..."
How could five- and six-year-olds hold out against the lure of good food and sweets? One by one their eyes lit up, fixed on the gaudy wrappers around the cans.
"Then... then I forgive you," said a slightly braver little boy, who snatched up a can of fruit and darted off into the crowd to share it with his friends.
Once there was a first, there was a second, and soon the whole crate of food was handed out. Watching the children eat so happily, Wuchang smiled too.
"The children have spared your life, so I can't go back on my word. Come outside with me." With that, Wuchang hauled Adu out of the stone room.
Just outside, at a bend in the mine tunnel not far from the stone room, Wuchang suddenly stopped, fixing Adu with a frigid stare, as though he were looking at a dead man.
"What... what are you doing? Are you going back on your word?" Adu's legs turned to jelly with fear. Right then Wuchang moved — the Triple Nail Fist trailing a streak of afterimages, straight at Adu.
"This punch pays you back for the humiliation in the mine pit..." One punch, and his left shoulder blade shattered.
"This punch is for the miners who lost their lives at the Ration Center..." One punch, and his right elbow joint shattered.
"This punch is for poor Adu..." One punch, and his left kneecap shattered.
"And this punch is for Xiao Mei, Obi, Da Qiang, Crybaby..." Wuchang's fists came down like a rainstorm on every fragile joint in Adu's body — wrists, elbows, shoulder blades, ankles, knees, hip joints; every major joint that lets a human body move was smashed to pieces.
The cruelest part was that Wuchang's blows were precisely measured: he would cripple you, but he would never kill you.
In the end, Wuchang pried Adu's mouth open, dragged out his tongue, and shoved his jaw shut hard. "You'll be a mute for the rest of your life..." The bloody tip of the tongue dropped to the ground.
That beating taught Adu what hell was. He knew he had no future left — a cripple was of no use to Coyote Seven, and apart from begging on the streets of Huang'e City, there was no other road open to him.
Looking at Adu slumped there like a puddle of mud, Wuchang muttered to himself, "I hear the doctors on the capital star are something else — drop a few hundred thousand gold coins and they can cure any crippling. I wonder whether a punk like you has the kind of friends who'd do that for you? Heh. Maybe your friends feel for you and fork over the money to patch you up. You never know."
With that, Wuchang left the despairing Adu behind and turned back into the stone room.
In the stone room, the children were huddled together wolfing down their food. In all their memory they had never eaten anything so good; the sweetness of the canned fruit seemed to seep right down into their souls.
Many of them wept as they ate. When they saw Wuchang come in, a little girl ran over and pushed the half-eaten can into his hands.
"Uncle, you eat some, it's so, so sweet..." Young as they were, the children were old enough to understand things; they could still tell who was good and who was bad.
Looking at these children, Wuchang felt a sting in his nose and nearly burst into tears. "Uncle isn't hungry. You eat..."
"The canned fruit is so yummy. A Yun just told me this taste is called sweet — it's the first time in my life I've tasted sweet..."
Before the little girl could finish, Wuchang could hold it in no longer and tears rolled straight down his cheeks. He knew that on Huang'e, 99 percent of the food had to be imported, that the people here ate only the lowest grade of food, and that something as fancy as fruit was a luxury even Adu tasted only a few times a year.
Many of these children had been stolen while still in swaddling clothes; with no parents to care for them, on a harsh planet like this, it would be a wonder if any of them had ever tasted sweetness.
"Don't worry. Uncle's here now. I'll make sure you eat your fill every day, and every day you'll get something sweet."
A Yun came over. "These kids don't just go hungry — they get beaten all the time. They don't even have a single breathing mask between them. Once it's bedtime, the whole room is full of coughing. The volcanic ash is murder on the lungs..."
A Liang edged over too and said timidly, "Uncle, we can work. We can still steal, and we'll give you every coin we steal. Just please don't hurt them — let them grow up safe and sound..."
Here A Liang choked up and could hardly speak. "Uncle, do you know? At most half of these kids live past ten. Boo-hoo... please, don't burn out their eyes, don't break their arms and legs. Just let them live happy..."
Wuchang, grown man that he was, could hold his emotions back no longer. He hugged the little girl to his chest and said thickly, "It's all right. The hard days are over. Think of the past as a nightmare — the nightmare's over now, and we're going to live well..."
Then Wuchang pulled a coin pouch from his jacket. It held four or five rainbow coins and over a hundred gold coins, and he handed it to A Yun.
"This is your living money for the next few days. Lie low underground until things blow over, then come find me in Huang'e City. I'm staying at..." Wuchang explained everything to A Yun carefully, even telling him about Mad Dog and his connection to Boss Pan, so that if they ran into danger A Yun and the others could go to Mad Dog for help.
Wuchang went over the important information three full times before finally packing up his bag, ready to head deeper into the tunnels and keep mining. But before he could get out of the stone room, the children surrounded him.
"Uncle, are you abandoning us? You're not going to look after us anymore?"
Fighting back tears, Wuchang patted their heads. "Of course not. Uncle's going to make money — only with money can I buy you food, and I'm going to buy every one of you a brand-new breathing mask..."
"Uncle, don't go. Let us go make money. Aren't children supposed to make money and support the family? That's what we did before — we all went out together to make money and support the grown-ups..."
Heavens above, earth below — Wuchang could not bear such a tear-jerking scene. These children were only six or seven. How much suffering did it take for them to say a thing like that?
Wuchang gritted his teeth, turned, and strode into the mine tunnel, shouting over his shoulder without looking back, "Don't be stingy with that money! Feed the kids till they're full, then get every one of them a breathing mask. I've got money now — plenty of it..."
He hadn't gone a hundred meters when the boy called A Liang came running up behind him.
"Uncle Wuchang, wait a moment. There's something I have to tell you. Did you know that filthy old man Lane used to be Coyote Seven's and Adu's shift boss? They say Lane even saved both their lives once. I only found out because one time Adu got drunk and I was nearby, listening to the two of them muttering, drunk as lords. I hear the pair of them swindled a high-grade crystal out of Lane — and it was on the money from that crystal that Coyote Seven got his start..."
Hearing this, Wuchang blew up on the spot. In a fury he turned back and ran for the other tunnel — he wanted to plant a few more hard kicks in Adu. An ungrateful white-eyed wolf born like that had no business living among people at all.
But something unexpected happened. When Wuchang reached the bend, apart from the scattered drops and smears of blood on the ground, Adu had vanished.
"Fuck. What the hell — every bone in his body smashed, and the bastard can still run?"