Chapter 61: The Person Picking Up the Goods, and the Statue at the Center of the Ritual...?!

The text message was not long, yet it contained a rather overwhelming amount of information. Feng Mu’s cranial CPU momentarily overloaded, and he just wanted some peace and quiet.

His reward had arrived; the courier was here.

My cargo wasn’t lost, and my courier didn’t lose his way. The [Destiny] member who died in that dilapidated residential complex wasn’t my courier after all!

Had I guessed wrong from the very beginning?

Feng Mu experienced a complex mix of emotions. After pondering for a moment, although the overall picture remained unclear and obscured like flowers viewed through a thick fog, the outline of those flowers had become slightly clearer, leading him to deduce two possible answers.

Answer 1: It was a false alarm, and for the time being, he didn’t seem to need to run for his life.

Answer 2: The cargo had arrived, and the courier appeared to be none of other than that sinister and vicious fellow, Ma Bin!

Surely, this inference wouldn’t be wrong... right?

Thinking this with a dry throat, Feng Mu suddenly drew in a sharp breath as he hit upon an extremely terrifying and absurd conjecture.

If Ma Bin truly was the courier, why was there an hour's difference between the two overlapping locations?

The first hour was an appointment for us to meet where I would act as the [Destiny] superior;

The second hour was an appointment for us to meet where I would act as the [Limping Freak].

Ma Bin clearly harbored malicious intentions; he wanted to use the former version of me to ambush and kill the latter version of me!

Bad news: Ma Bin was indeed sinister, vicious, and untrustworthy. He wanted to kill me.

Good news: He had become my subordinate!

Exhaling a long breath of foul air, Feng Mu complexly canceled the text message he was drafting and rewrote a reply to Ma Bin:

——Fine, Zheng Si’s head belongs to me. No one else is allowed to snatch it. See you in 2 hours.

........

To backtrack slightly in time, right around when the masked figure was on a killing spree in the dilapidated residential complex, another story and slaughter were unfolding simultaneously inside a certain unfinished building.

The staircase in the darkness wound all the way upward. Because the walls had not yet been sealed, one had to walk with extreme care; otherwise, a single misstep or stumble could send someone plunging to a shattering death.

“Why didn’t you bring everyone back to Blood Rose?” Zheng Si asked in a hoarse voice, his single eye filled with tyranny.

Ma Bin lowered his head to lead the way and explained, “There were too many people to bind, and the commotion would have been too large. There were many patrol bureau cars on the road, so we had to pick an uninhabited, secluded place instead.”

Zheng Si snorted coldly, not entirely satisfied with Ma Bin’s explanation. “Weren’t you told to deal with Li Xiang?”

Ma Bin lowered his voice and sighed, “I sent men, but unfortunately, they failed.”

Inside, however, he was thinking: *Well, I didn’t just send men; I sent two batches—one to intercept, and one to rescue.*

Zheng Si knitted his brows in a ferocious scowl. “Useless trash.”

Ma Bin could offer no refutation and was forced to bury his face even deeper to prevent Zheng Si from noticing any clues.

He said, “There are forty-nine people in total, and all of them have been brought back bound. In any case, the killer who murdered Xiao Hang must be among them. Since they are already in our hands, extracting the real culprit is merely a matter of time.”

Seeking vengeance for his son, Zheng Si was nearly deranged. “Extract a confession if you can; if not, send them all down to keep Xiao Hang company. It’s too lonely for him down below by himself.”

Ma Bin acknowledged the order.

The top floor remained unroofed, fitted with an iron door that Ma Bin had specially ordered and extra-thickened. The door was currently ajar, and a cacophony of crying and shouting leaked through the gap.

Ma Bin stepped slightly aside and made a gesture of invitation.

Surging killing intent churned within Zheng Si’s chest. He let out a sinister laugh, yanked the iron door open, and strode inside.

Bang!

The iron door was slammed violently shut, and the clacking of snapping lock cylinders firmly pinned the door deep into the load-bearing wall.

“Boss, I’m sorry. You have completely lost your mind, but I cannot sit by and watch you drag the Green Wolf Gang into the abyss. Therefore……”

Through the thick iron door, Ma Bin’s hoarse roar penetrated inward, his voice seemingly fraught with intense internal struggle.

The sudden and unexpected betrayal shocked Zheng Si’s brain into a momentary flash of clarity, only for him to see several fully armed constables standing before him.

There were no forty-nine bound suspects—only a tape recorder sitting on the ground, looping noise on repetition.

Li Xiang lifted his shoe and crushed the recorder with a single stomp, while Chang Erbing and the others raised their gun barrels to aim at Zheng Si.

“Ma Bin, how dare you betray me?” The rage in Zheng Si’s eyes burned like fire, and the killing intent in his roar seemed eager to pierce through the door gaps and tear Ma Bin to pieces.

With a thunderous crash, he slammed a heavy fist against the door, causing Ma Bin, pressed against the other side, to shudder.

Ma Bin’s mouth split into a eerie grin, yet his tone remained as respectful as ever: “Boss, I’m sorry. But don’t worry, Captain Li Xiang has promised to leave your corpse intact, and I will custom-make the finest coffin to bury you with honor……”

Veins bulged prominently on Zheng Si’s forehead, his thick arms ripping his clothes apart as he pounded the door again and again in a frenzy.

Boom, boom, boom!

The iron door vibrated violently, its surface marred by fistprints of varying depths. Each blow seemed as though it might blast the door open, yet every time, it fell just a fraction short of the necessary force.

Li Xiang could no longer watch and offered a gloomy, cold laugh. “Don’t waste your breath, Boss Zheng. This iron door was custom-built by Ma Bin specifically for you; your fists cannot smash it open.”

Hearing this, Zheng Si stopped, turned around, and glared at Li Xiang through gritted teeth, the fury in his eyes seemingly wanting to devour him alive.

“Why help Ma Bin?” Zheng Si asked in a hoarse voice, keeping a wary eye on the gun barrels aimed squarely at him.

Li Xiang touched his faintly aching wound at his waist and laughed out of sheer anger. “You were going to kidnap my wife and children—what do you think?”

Zheng Si did not argue. He assumed Li Xiang meant what his words implied, now understanding that Ma Bin had betrayed him.

Therefore, he simply believed Ma Bin hadn't carried out the kidnapping at all, but had instead directly confessed everything to Li Xiang. In reality, however... Ma Bin had not only gone through with it, but had taken it a step further than what he would have confessed.

Zheng Si laughed out of extreme anger, his laughter deranged. “Was it you who framed my son and also obstructed me from hunting down the killer?!!”

Li Xiang’s gaze was icy and devoid of warmth. “The patrol bureau never frames anyone—you are simply too deranged!”

“Die!”

Zheng Si roared. He violently ripped apart his remaining clothing, revealing muscles as robust as blocks of iron. Pushing off the ground, he pounced forward like a frenzied tiger.

“You’re the one who’s going to die~”

Li Xiang sneered. At his command, several constables who had aimed and positioned themselves in advance pulled their triggers, and bullets poured in from all directions like a howling rainstorm, completely enveloping him.

........

Outside the door, the moment gunfire abruptly erupted, Ma Bin strolled with brisk footsteps down to the underground garage. A man wearing a black hat stepped out from the darkness. “Contact, I am here to pick up the cargo.”

Ma Bin stared at him expressionlessly.

The latter pulled the brim of his hat down slightly, revealing a pair of pale, lifeless fish eyes, and recited the contact code: “My cargo is not my cargo!”

The hand Ma Bin kept in his trouser pocket relaxed slightly, a tiny speck of black light on the back of his hand silently dissipating. He replied, “The deep-diving fish emits no light.”

The passphrases matched.

“The cargo is inside,” Ma Bin said as he pushed open the door to the underground garage. Instantly, a thick and fresh stench of blood washed over them.

The black-hatted man walked inside and saw forty-four corpses of Green Wolf Gang thugs lying on the ground. None of them bore any obvious wounds, and faint smiles still lingered on the corners of their mouths before death—a rather eerie way to perish.

The black-hatted man paused, secretly curious as to how the contact, who possessed no martial arts, had managed to kill these people, but after a brief hesitation, he chose not to ask.

Respecting the privacy and secrets of every member was a rule of [Destiny]; his only job was to collect the cargo.

On the floor, the blood of the forty-four corpses had been drained to draw a bizarre sacrificial diagram. In the center of the diagram lay forty-four blindfolded people, completely motionless, curled up on the ground like a giant snake biting its own tail.

The black-hatted man counted the quantity and frowned, saying, “The cargo is short by five.”

Ma Bin sighed. “Five died during transport; consider it normal attrition.”

The black-hatted man nodded, then stepped one by one into the center of the sacrificial diagram. He drew a palm-sized statue from his bosom and placed it with fanatical reverence right at the center of the "giant snake."

If Feng Mu were present here, he would undoubtedly have recognized that the face of the statue was none other than his own face from his past life—Feng Mu.

The black-hatted man stepped back out of the diagram, nodded at Ma Bin, pressed one hand to his chest, and said in a deep voice, “For Destiny, offer death!”

Ma Bin, typically cold and sinister, also turned solemn. He likewise pressed a hand over his heart and feverishly declared, “For Destiny, offer death!”