Chapter 8: Disparity is Tragedy

  As the applause rose, I took out the crossbow and aimed at the door. When the applause stopped, a familiar yet suffocating voice came in first.

  "Haha, amazing, amazing, kid, you can do it! Not only did you deal with the trash downstairs, but you even handled Yang. I was going to let you off easy, but now I've changed my mind!!! Hahaahaha!!!" Although my ears were still ringing, hearing this voice made my stomach tighten up again.

  As the words fell, two big men squeezed into my line of sight. Why did I say that? Because they were really too strong, with muscles like a fitness coach, their camouflage T-shirts were almost torn apart, and their legs wrapped in army pants, even through their clothes, you could feel the lines of their muscles. At 185cm tall, they weren't particularly high, but to me, they looked so oppressive that I couldn't breathe. The speaker was a red-haired white man, who looked quite kind, but a scar on his face from his eyebrow bone down to his chin made people look at him with fear. Next to him stood a bald black man, with thick lips that looked very loyal.

  "Don't look at him as if he's a decent person, in fact, he's the kind of guy who can kill someone without batting an eye!" The red-haired man seemed to have seen through my thoughts and sneered with a smirk.

  "Haha, butcher, you damn fool." The black man laughed and cursed a sentence at the red-haired one.

  Seeing that neither of the two men took the crossbow in my hand seriously, I was a bit panicked and shouted: "Don't come over! Who are you? If you come over again, I'll shoot! Back off, back off!"

  "Don't you dare mention me in the same breath as that trash on the ground, what are you trying to scare with that slingshot? Kid, if you want to shoot, then shoot, haha, go ahead and shoot." The butcher said, pointing at his chest while approaching me. His muscles were getting bigger and bigger, his clothes torn into strips hanging from his waist.

  He got closer and closer to me, I didn't hesitate, my fingers moved swiftly, the crossbow arrow shot out with a "whoosh" sound and hit his heart, but surprisingly it didn't penetrate, the entire arrow body was outside his body. The butcher puffed out his chest, the arrow bounced off and fell to the ground, his chest only had a small dent, judging from the trickle of blood, I estimated that only a bit of skin was scratched.

  "Qigong!" I blurted out. My brother had shown me his qigong skills before, using our stainless steel chopsticks to press against his neck and then bending them against the wall with a loud "ka-ching". He told me that for someone who has practiced qigong, even a weak arrow would not be able to cause any harm if they were prepared. But seeing this skill from a foreigner was quite astonishing.

  "Pretty impressive, but this isn't hard qigong. I'm just tensing my muscles. Hard qigong is even more intense, a small-caliber handgun can't penetrate their muscles." The butcher said to me with a dust of his chest.

  As he spoke, I took advantage of the moment to stab him in the belly with my knife. Too terrifying! This guy! I wanted to escape. When the tip of my knife was still half a foot away from him, my wrist was clamped by an iron hoop, and the piercing pain made me cry out in agony. My fingers opened involuntarily, and the knife fell to the ground. He stretched out his hand and pinched my neck, lifting me into the air. In an instant, I felt my face swelling up, oxygen slowly draining from my brain, my vision turning blacker and blacker, and my limbs going numb. Looking at the butcher's ferocious smile, I summoned all my strength, twisted my shoulders, and swung my arm like a whip, slapping his face with my fingertips, which scratched his eye. I only felt that my fingertips were wet, and then I fainted. As I lost consciousness, I thought to myself: "Damn it, even if I die, I'll take out one of your eyes!"

  When I woke up, I felt a loud noise beside my eyes, and my eyelids were as heavy as iron. I made an effort to open my eyes, but it felt like I had been punched in the face, and then I lost consciousness again.

  I regained consciousness, I don't know when, and remembered the punch from earlier. I didn't dare to open my eyes, first rolling to the side, trying to avoid the attack. Unexpectedly, my body felt empty, and I fell to the ground. Opening my eyes, I found myself in a large stone cave, with a fire burning in the middle of the cave. I was lying on a large green stone, with a green military blanket spread out on it. Outside was pitch black, with the sound of wind blowing through leaves, giving me the feeling that I was in a mountain. My wound had been bandaged, but my whole body still felt like it had been scalded by boiling water, throbbing with pain. They were not there, I need to hurry and leave, and then think about what to do next.

  As soon as I came out of the cave, I heard: "Where are you going? Little boy" Then a huge black shadow fell from above my head, and I quickly retreated backwards. With a loud crash, the shadow hit the entrance of the cave. Upon closer inspection, it was a massive wild boar.

  Suddenly, a chill ran down my neck as a knife was placed on it, with a hint of blood on the blade. A large hand gripped my neck and the butcher's chilling voice came from behind: "Too careless! Now if my knife makes one cut, it will sever your trachea and carotid artery, you'll suffer brain hypoxia, suffocate to death. Before you die, you'll see blood spurt out 4-5 meters away, staining all the land in your line of sight red. You'll hear the sound of your blood gushing out of your body, like the 'shhh-shhh' sound of wind blowing through a wheat field... then you'll be dead, never to wake up again!"

  "Gulp" I swallowed my saliva: "If you wanted to kill me, you wouldn't have brought me here, and you wouldn't need to say so much nonsense!" Although I knew he wouldn't kill me, his "venomous" tone combined with the "nauseating" content still made my stomach contract.

  "Butcher, you're scaring the new recruits again. You really are a terrible person! Look, nobody cares about you." A black man named Bak dragged a wild boar in.

  The butcher waved his hand, walked to the side with a helpless and excited expression, and said: "Good, good, hehe, good, hehe, you've got guts, I like it!"

  Watching the two of them skillfully butcher the wild boar, split it open, and put it on the roasting rack to start roasting, I sat down on a rock with 1000 questions in my mind. But seeing the butcher's "fierce" face, I swallowed back the words that were about to come out of my mouth. Taking the roasted meat from the butcher, my eyes fixed on him without blinking, I carefully asked: "Are you gay?"

  In an instant, both of them froze, staring at me with their eyes wide open. The butcher's meat even fell out of his mouth, and he seemed to be unaware of it.

  "Pfft!" Burk spat out the water he had just drunk, coughing and patting his chest, pointing at Butcher and bursting into loud laughter, "Haha, haha, Butcher, you're done for! I'm going to tell everyone about this when I get back! Haha, haha!"

  "FUCK YOU!" The butcher suddenly jumped out: "WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU? I'M GAY? YOU WANT TO DIE? FUCKER!" It was then that I came to my senses and realized that the two of them had been speaking Chinese just now.

  "That's perfect! That's perfect! (That's great!) I heard he wasn't gay, which means my life is temporarily not in danger, and my "chastity" isn't either. I felt relieved, took a bite of the meat in my hand, and it was especially delicious!"

  "What did you just say? Are you saying I'm gay? Do I look like a homosexual?" The butcher grabbed my collar and lifted me up, his expression as if he would tear me apart if I didn't make myself clear.

  "You just said you like me, but you're not gay, so why do you like me? And why didn't you kill me? Who are you? Why did you bring me here?" I took the opportunity to ask all the questions that had been on my mind.

  "You little stinker, trying to get a rise out of me? Alright, I'll tell you, I'm not a damn homosexual, and if I don't want to kill you, I won't. Don't ask why! My name is Butcher! It's my pleasure to bring you here. And don't even think about escaping! I'll be keeping an eye on you." He saw that I could understand English, so he spoke directly in English. After finishing speaking, he threw me to the ground, grabbed a piece of roasted meat and took a vicious bite, as if he was biting me instead.

  "Kid, not bad, you can understand English, what else do you know? Where did you learn to shoot and use a knife?" Buck asked me.

  "I learned online, I don't understand anything! You're not going to kill me, where do you want to take me? Where is this place?" I said while chewing on the meat, my hunger and exhaustion from the intense battle making my stomach growl.

  "You'd better ask him, he's the one who wants to catch you, this is Myanmar!" Bak smiled at me.

  "What? You say this is Myanmar? No way, how did you guys cross the border? How did you escape?" As soon as I heard that we were in Myanmar, I panicked.

  "We took a helicopter, there's a helipad on the rooftop! We flew over here, China has air traffic control and police don't have helicopters for quick response, so we didn't encounter any interceptors before reaching the border." The black guy said it casually, as if crossing the border was just a game.

  "Impossible! You can't just cross the border that easily! The Chinese border defense army is not as incompetent as you said!"

  "Of course not, we encountered an ambush and the plane was shot down. They chased us for a whole day, but we crossed the border and they couldn't do anything to me. It wasn't until we entered deep into Myanmar that they retreated. Chinese soldiers are very fierce, unfortunately their equipment is too poor, otherwise we wouldn't have made it out alive. If those special police had planes, we wouldn't have escaped so easily." Ba Ke shrugged, looking like he was sympathizing with me.

  "Where are you taking me? What do you want?" I couldn't help but shout at them.

  "We're going to hold you accountable for the debt, we had business dealings with Yang and he still owed us money when you killed him. We can't collect the remaining payment because of you, so we'll hold you responsible!" The butcher said matter-of-factly.

  "How much he owes you, what does it have to do with me? If you're capable, go find him and ask for it. You're making things difficult for a student, what kind of ability is that? I'm not worth anything!" Damn, I'm so angry, this guy thinks he can use me as a slave.

  Click to view picture link: Strong Han