Chapter 126: Li Kangshan

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Klein tried to get up, but a searing pain tore through his back. A foot slammed down on him and forced him back to the ground, making him swallow two mouthfuls of dust.

Yet Klein had already caught a glimpse of the culprit’s face. Gritting his teeth, he snarled, “Li Kangshan, what the hell are you doing!? I’m with Prism! You’re making an enemy of Prism!”

In the face of his threat, Li Kangshan said nothing. He merely stared in silence into the house, its doorway smashed open. A corpse, torn to pieces and drenched in blood, lay in disarray against the wall, while a malnourished child, deformed by hunger, crouched over it.

There were no tears, no sobs. Crying would waste precious water, and even more precious strength. Yet sorrow permeated the scene, profound and all-consuming.

Klein was, after all, a highly educated white-collar professional. He quickly pieced together what had happened and sneered. “You pity that mongrel? Hmph. You only dared attack me after they lured my wyvern away, didn’t you? You never had the guts to face me directly. His mother died because of you! You—ah!”

Li Kangshan lifted his foot. The wyvern, which had been staring fixedly at him, immediately moved, but Li Kangshan brought his foot down again with brutal force, stamping on Klein’s back and squeezing the breath from his lungs. A piercing agony shot through him, as though his ribs had been shattered.

The wyvern let out a low growl and grew increasingly agitated, but it still did not dare attack. The greatsword in Li Kangshan’s hand remained suspended above Klein’s head.

Klein was no hardened fighter. How could he endure such torment? He soon began whimpering and could no longer form words.

Li Kangshan could have killed the defenseless Klein with a single swing of his greatsword. The reason he had spared his life was that he feared the wyvern might go berserk and strike back, causing innocent casualties.

During the past few days, Li Kangshan had managed to learn a little about the bond between wyverns and their riders.

But when it came to putting that knowledge into practice, things had still gone wrong.

He had failed to save the poor mother.

At last, Li Kangshan spoke.

“Harley Quinn Christopher, graduate of Dover Institute of Finance and Higher Education. Self-proclaimed spokesman for the Federation’s Fortune 500 corporations. You illegally raised five hundred billion in funds across China, Myanmar, Vietnam, and other regions. Afterward, you transferred vast amounts of property beyond recovery, crippling the economies of several regions for decades. Tens of thousands of families were torn apart, and thousands of people driven to suicide. It was the most heinous social crime in recent years…”

Li Kangshan recited the formulaic language of a news report, his voice calm and cold—so cold it seemed to suffocate the air around them.

Klein suddenly stopped struggling. Twitching, he said, “What the hell? I never thought I’d run into some lunatic here who knows me.”

“Your photograph has spread across the entire internet,” Li Kangshan said. “Though I’m surprised you ended up dying here.”

Klein snorted contemptuously. “Then who are you? A policeman? The FBI? Special forces? A spy?”

After receiving only silence in reply, Klein suddenly burst into laughter. “You’re nothing! Even if you were a policeman, you’d have no right to judge me on land without a single law. Who do you think you are? Some champion of justice? What gives you the right to treat me like this?”

“There are no laws here,” Li Kangshan said, “but the law should exist in the heart of every one of us. I’m no champion of justice. I only want to do what I can.”

Klein stared at him in disbelief. “What you can?”

Li Kangshan fell silent once more.

Scene after scene from before his death flashed through his mind: hoes and sickles descending like claws and fangs, gaunt faces twisted by hardship and weather.

Their ruddy-brown cheeks and skin were proof of years spent enduring wind and rain, struggling to sustain themselves before the might of nature.

He had once believed that human nature was fundamentally good. He had once believed that, no matter how darkness spread across the world, a ray of justice would still shine through.

But he had been wrong.

He could bear the consequences of his own mistakes. What he could never forgive was dragging innocent people down with him.

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Through his blood-red vision, he saw that the motionless woman seemed to be holding something beneath her. A small, trembling hand protruded from beneath her arm.

Only then did Li Kangshan realize that he had pushed the responsibility of upholding justice onto others simply so he could accept his own incompetence and cowardice with a clear conscience.

That way, whenever he faced the darkness, he could comfort himself: There was nothing to be done. Someone else would deal with it. I only need to do what I can.

The result was that despair had arrived without warning.

Klein suddenly said, “Li Kangshan? Ha. I remember that amusingly old-fashioned name now. You’re the idiot who was beaten to death by a mob of peasants wielding farm tools, aren’t you? The charge was child abduction. A woman was beaten to death alongside you. The trial ultimately came to nothing—after all, the law doesn’t punish a crowd. Looking at that righteous expression of yours, it seems there’s quite a story behind the incident.”

Li Kangshan remained silent, but his breathing had clearly quickened.

Noticing this, Klein continued to fan the flames. “Let me guess… Those villagers were the real child traffickers, while you were searching for the child! You failed to find the child and were silenced by the villagers. Even your wife died, didn’t she?”

A trace of icy malice lurked deep within Klein’s mocking gaze as he watched Li Kangshan’s reaction.

“That was her child,” Li Kangshan said. “Not mine.”

Klein stared at him in astonishment, then broke into uninhibited laughter. “You pathetic member of the Child-Seeking Association! Ha! You ran all over the country for someone else’s child. Are you a complete idiot? In those impoverished backwaters, even the police are nothing but local thugs in uniform, and you still charged in there to snatch the child? In the end, you got yourself beaten to death too. What do you call someone like that? A loser! A loser who has achieved nothing and can only comfort himself with justice!”

Li Kangshan clenched his fists.

Yes. I was a loser. If only I had been more patient then, and waited for the others to come from hundreds of miles away…

If only I had been more ruthless, and been willing to kill one or two people. Perhaps I could have intimidated them all…

The more “ifs” there were, the more Li Kangshan suffered.

Visions flooded his mind. He seemed to be back beneath that blazing sun, in those lush green fields, before the two pools of blood that had been swallowed into the depths of the earth…

Klein seized the opportunity. With all his remaining strength, he endured the pain in his chest as though it might burst apart, lifted Li Kangshan’s foot while it was unsteady from distraction, and rolled hard across the ground. At the same time, he ordered the wyvern to pounce.

He was on the verge of escaping with his life.

But before the joy of survival could even bloom, it was stabbed into countless fragments.

Without hesitation, Li Kangshan twisted around and drove his blade into the back of Klein’s head, severing his brainstem. He ended Klein’s life cleanly—or rather, the glittering, criminal life of Harley Quinn Christopher.

Even in death, Klein seemed unable to believe what had happened. A faint, triumphant smile still lingered on his face.

The elite con artist who had finally escaped a dull and ordinary world, and who might have flourished spectacularly in the Little Garden, was dead at last.

The death of its master drove the wyvern completely mad. Like a true vicious hound, it lunged at Li Kangshan.

Li Kangshan rolled awkwardly across the ground and barely avoided the attack, though three bloody gashes were torn across his shoulder.

He let the blood run freely and fled down the street at full speed.

The wyvern let out a sorrowful, piercing cry and sent a howling gale rushing toward him.

On that broad street, a race between wyvern and man—one of life and death—began.

More savage than an eagle striking a rabbit, the wyvern summoned every ounce of strength in its body and closed in inch by inch on the two-legged Li Kangshan. Its claws were about to tear him in half.

At the final moment of his life, Li Kangshan finally closed his eyes.

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Did he regret it?

No.

If a financial fraudster like that were allowed to revive, who knew how many more people would be ruined and how many families destroyed? He had to kill him!

Li Kangshan suddenly opened his eyes. A resolute light illuminated the road ahead. He threw himself forward with all his strength and made one last evasive move.

The wyvern, caught off guard, slammed headfirst into a solid stone wall. Bricks and stones flew in every direction, and the young wyvern appeared to have been badly injured.

Yet it still rose from the fallen rubble, giving a dangerous cry as it staggered toward Li Kangshan, who had taken shelter beside the wall at the crucial moment.

Li Kangshan rolled helplessly across the ground several times. A layer of skin had been ground from his chin, and one of his arms felt half-broken. Just as he finally lost the strength to keep running, he realized that the attack he expected had not come.

His ears rang from the explosive impact, but amid the ringing he heard a strange, rhythmic clacking.

He focused his eyes and saw a tall, heavily built man wielding an ax as broad as a door panel. He was chopping at the writhing wyvern on the ground with the speed and force of someone butchering ribs.

This man, strong enough to tear tigers and leopards apart with his bare hands, effortlessly hacked Li Kangshan’s mortal enemy into minced flesh.

When Li Kangshan struggled to his feet, Xu Xiaoke had already hoisted the ax onto his shoulder. Without even wiping the blood from his body, he simply stared at Li Kangshan.

The scene was awkward for a moment.

Li Kangshan felt he owed the bold, broad-shouldered man an explanation, so he began, “I…”

But Xu Xiaoke turned away and set off directly toward the battlefield, leaving behind only one sentence.

“Don’t explain yourself to me. I’m not your father or mother.”

Li Kangshan did not follow him back to the city wall. Instead, he first returned to the ruined home.

A strange rustling sound came from behind the door.

He took two steps forward and saw the frail, emaciated child lying atop his mother’s corpse. Grief still lingered in his eyes, yet he greedily gnawed at the bright-red muscle and connective tissue, tearing at his mother’s remains.

Li Kangshan’s lips trembled. He involuntarily took two steps backward. He wanted to cry, to scream at the top of his lungs, but not a sound emerged.

He could stop the child. He could condemn the child. He could teach the child.

But what would that accomplish?

Nothing but self-satisfaction.

This hellish world had turned every principle he possessed into garbage.

Only survival was the greatest truth.

Only the living had the right to speak of principles.

Li Kangshan thought of Siroya, the female knight more resolute than any man. What kind of resolve sustained her life and drove her into battle? He did not dare claim that he understood.

She had said that she envied him.

Li Kangshan looked at the big-headed child, who had licked every trace of blood from his lips, unwilling to waste even the slightest morsel. At last, he fled through the nearest opening, leaving behind the dazed and starving child.

As though, if he ran fast enough, those cruel truths would never be able to catch him.

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