Soon enough, the girl came back with a tray and placed a bottle of Vodka in front of Tang Yin. She then stared sentimentally at him, and walked away slowly.
Opening the lid, Tang Yin filled up a glass of Vodka. With just a tilt, he bottomed up the glass of alcohol.
The strong liquor he drank felt like countless knives slashing the insides of his body. He closed his eyes while tapping his fingers on the table anxiously. After a long while, he opened his eyes slowly. At that moment, it was as if there were two rays of light that shot out from his eyes. It was for a short while, and fleet off in a flash.
Tang Yin exhaled a long breath and pushed away the wine bottle and the wine glass. He then took out his wallet and pulled out a few hundred yuan notes, putting them neatly on the table. He stood up and walked toward the back door of the disco bar.
He knew that he was obviously not supposed to walk in this direction, but his legs were out of his control.
The disco bar was gorgeous; it was decorated glamorously. The alleyway behind the disco bar was, however, a different scene; it was dark, damp, dirty and messy. With just a wall in between them, one was heaven, and the other was hell.
As he walked out of the back door, he was overwhelmed by the pungent smell of rotten rubbish. Tang Yin couldn’t help but frowned.
At this time, there was a moan from the deep end of the alleyway. The voice was soft and weak. An ordinary person wouldn’t have heard it, but it couldn’t escape from Tang Yin’s ears.
He turned and walked straight into the depths of the alleyway.
The narrow alleyway was dark and unlit, and it was so dark that it made people feel spooky. In the middle of the night, it had an indescribable horror. The more you walked toward the deep end, the more it was like walking into a huge beast’s mouth.
After walking for more than ten meters, he saw a group of people squatting at the corner of the alleyway. Those four bald men laid the unconscious girl on the ground, and they had already ripped all of her clothes off. The four men surrounded her and were molesting her all over, laughing and whispering softly from time to time.
Suddenly, they heard footsteps behind them. All four of them were shocked; they looked up hurriedly and turned to look back.
At the beginning, there was still some distance between them, so they couldn’t seen Tang Yin’s appearance clearly yet. Only after he came close did the four bald men recognize him. They all let out a sigh simultaneously. It’s the coward fair-faced man[1] from the disco bar.
They were being disturbed just when they were about to enjoy. The first bald man stood up in a rush, and the look on his face was extremely fierce. His eyes expressed a murderous vibe as he glared at Tang Yin like a stray wolf whose food had just been snatched. He would pounce on Tang Yin any time to bite him.
Tang Yin was facing some contradictory choices in himself at this time as he was looking down. His pace didn’t stop as he walked passed the four baldies and the girl. Instead, he walked away from them slowly.
“Chi!“
Someone among the baldies sneered out loud. Tang Yin’s indifference had turned into cowardice in their eyes. It also became a catalyst for their unscrupulousness. Someone said coldly, “You are quite smart. I would motherf*cking stab you to death if you dare to cause us any trouble!”
“Haha! Old San, don’t you scare him. See how his baby hair has yet to shed, he might still be a student!”
“What student! Motherf*cker, from how I see it, he’s just a mongrel…”
The bald-headed men took turns to yell and cuss. Their voices got louder and louder, and their words got more and more vulgar.
When Tang Yin who had already walked passed them heard the word ‘mongrel’, he stopped. Mongrel! He hadn’t heard this word in many years. He was an orphan, and he had always been living in a remote mountain village in the northeast ever since he got adopted. When he was young, many people had used this word to insult him. It was just that those people no longer existed anymore.
He stood in the alleyway with his back facing the bald man. He turned his head and asked while sneering, “What did you say?”
“What did I say?” A bald man laughed out of anger, and he scolded loudly, “I said that you’re a jerk, a motherf*cking mongrel.”
Tang Yin breathed out. He didn’t seem like he was angry, but it was more like his heart was relieved.
He turned back slowly and walked straight toward the four bald-headed men.
The four men were stunned at first, then they went toward Tang Yin in a tit-for-tat manner. They stood in front of him in the fan formation. The first bald man sneered, “Kid, what do you want to do? Are you looking for trouble…”
Before he could finish with his words, a ray of blinding electrical light flashed across the dark alleyway suddenly. Only a click sound was heard, and the round and bald head of that bald man had fallen off his neck onto the ground, rolling far down. Next, a puff sound was heard. A spurt of boiling blood spurted out from his neck like a red fountain. In the dark night, it was glamorous yet ghostly.
“Ah-“
The other three baldies could hardly believe what they saw, raising their hands while being stunned. They touched the blood droplets that splashed onto their faces, and then looked at the dismembered body parts. Seeing the headless corpse that was still standing still, they all screamed horrifiedly in unison.
Before they knew it, there was a machete shaped like a crescent moon in Tang Yin’s hand. The blade was narrow, and it had a crescent arc shape. At first glance, it looked like a sickle. It was just that it was a sickle that could take a person’s soul away.
The three bald men, as well as the one who died, didn’t manage to see it clearly on how he pulled out the machete, where did he pull the machete from, and how he attacked. All they saw was the sudden electrical light that appeared abruptly.
Thump!
A bald man’s legs caved in as he dropped to the ground in his knees. His face was pale and was without the slightest hint of redness. His body crumbled into a ball and he looked up fearfully at Tang Yin. He said with a trembling voice, “Big… Big brother, I… We…”
Tang Yin didn’t give him any chance to speak. The crescent moon machete in his hand swayed just a little and the sharp knife tip had already pierced deeply into that baldy’s neck. It was yet another deadly strike. The baldy’s voice had yet to even choke a little, and he had already fallen dead onto the ground.
“Oh my…”
The hooligans had only participated in a fistfight at most, they had never seen such a scene before, and they had never encountered with such a powerful and vicious character. The other two baldies were scared to their bones. They both screamed out loud as they turned to run away.
They both spread out their legs and made a great effort to escape. Yet in the eyes of Tang Yin, their speed was just about the speed of a crawling tortoise. His body swayed and caught up behind them with just one step. He raised his hand and swung his machete, following by two deep piercing sounds. Their backs had been pierced through and their bodies that were running tried to take a few more steps before they fell to the ground and died.
It was quick! Tang Yin’s machete was not just quick.
The person who adopted him was also his master. He once said that martial arts was meant to kill. One must not be merciful when attacking. In order to kill the opponent, one must have speed. There wasn’t a single martial art in this world that could still kill off the opponent in a slow and leisure situation, not even Tai Chi [2] could do that.
Power determined speed. Therefore, when Tang Yin was only eight years old, he needed to go into the deep forest with an axe that was almost equivalent to his height to chop down trees that were even thicker than his body, even when it was snowing. If he couldn’t meet the requirements of his master, he could only fight for food with his master’s hunting dog upon his return.
When he was fifteen, he finally didn’t have to take a big axe to chop trees. His master gave him a huge chopper. When he was eighteen, the chopper was replaced with a kitchen knife. When he was twenty years old, he killed his master. He killed him in a fair duel.
In his childhood, he never understood what happiness was. In that period of time, he had already undergone all the hardships that normal people wouldn’t undergo for lifetimes. This was also why regardless of how difficult and painful his encounters were in the later days, he would be able to hold on and go through them.
This was Tang Yin.
A man who had made countless people respect, worship, fear, and hate him in his later days.
When the girl awoke, she was already lying in the hospital. When she asked the nurse why she was here, the nurse told her that it was a man who sent her in. She asked, what did he look like? The nurse zoned out for a while and she said while smiling, “He is a handsome and cheerful man!”
[1] fair-faced man: very handsome young man, usually also used for gigolos.
[2] Tai Chi: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tai_chi