Volume 2 – Bloom of the Other Shore Flower, Chapter 32: An Unpleasant Episode
When he left the Home of Hunters, the sky was already turning dark.
After entering a random bar and drinking two glasses of alcohol, Qianye learned from a maid which houses were on sale.
An hour later, Qianye had finished signing his first accommodation in Darkblood City.
The house had a courtyard and a second floor, but its price was only five gold coins. The reason it was so cheap was because it was one wall away from the slum. The slum was the concentration camp of all evil, filth, and chaos, so one might figure that that house would be visited by several thieves almost every night.
No one would want to stay at such a place. They would move away as soon as possible.
Qianye wasn’t afraid of trouble, however. He had gone out to buy plenty of parts, and set up many traps outside the corners of the courtyard, the building’s doors and the windows. These seemingly simple gadgets were actually pretty useful in that they would not easily kill someone, but still were more than capable of dealing pain. After he was finished setting up the traps, Qianye painted these words on the outer wall: Beware! Traps inside.
Once he was finished, Qianye locked the front door and set out to hunt in the wastelands.
The fastest path to the front gate of the city was to go right through the slums. Qianye ignored the idling men and women’s hostile gazes and walked directly into an alley that was so narrow that one almost had to turn sideways to go through.
The alley was crooked and filled with all sorts of rubbish, causing the already narrow alley to be even more jam-packed and uncomfortable to walk through. Some places were so packed that it was almost impossible to find a spot to step on. The ground was filled with trash and dirty water.
Kids whose faces were so dirty that it was impossible to see their features were playing and chasing each other from alley to alley.
The sides of the alleyway were formed by shacks so short that even a middle-sized man had to bow their heads to enter. There were women standing at the entrance, beckoning incessantly at any passersby. As long as one paid ten copper coins, they would sleep with them for the night.
Not only did these sceneries not disgust Qianye, it made him reminiscent about the past. The place he had lived and grown up in was even worse than this place. There were no streets in the airship graveyard, and every step on the ground either landed on metallic parts or lumps. People would squeeze themselves into all sizes of abandoned cabins and even tubes to live in.
The kids there never thought of playing. Due to the lack of food, they would normally move less and preserve their strength. The only reason they would fight was for food.
In Qianye’s eyes, these narrow and dark alleys had at least the very basics of law to govern them. The kids running around represented the energy of this place.
At the end of the narrow and dark alley was an empty square. There were seven or eight roads that all converged to this place. After taking a little bit of time to identify his direction, he headed towards the tallest and widest road of them all. At almost every alley entrance, there were two or three original inhabitants of the place gathered together. When they saw a stranger passing by, they gazed at him while harboring malicious intentions.
Qianye did not look sideways nor did he intentionally avoid their gazes. His full leather armor, the assault rifle at his back and the short axe at his waist all showed clearly that he was not one to be provoked.
However, when he was passing through an alley entrance, a thin and small boy suddenly charged out and ran right at him like a cannon. Of course, Qianye wouldn’t let him run into him, so with an easy sidestep, he dodged out of the way.
The boy missed and fell face first onto the ground. When he struggled to get up, he suddenly sniffed extra hard with his unusually large nose and abruptly screamed, “A vampire’s origin gun! I smell it! I smell it!”
The entire slum boiled up when they heard his cry!
A vampire’s origin gun was worth an unimaginable fortune. Anyone who obtained it would be able to change their fates!
Qianye was a little surprised by this. The little boy’s nose was incredibly keen, to be able to smell the Flowing Gold Rose wrapped deep inside his backpack. Moreover, the fact that he didn’t point out the more common wealth such as gold coins and the like meant that he wasn’t just spouting nonsense. It would seem that there were plenty of talented people even in the slums, although most of their talents were fated to be buried forever.
Many shabbily dressed people gradually surrounded Qianye. They were all holding primitive weapons such as wooden sticks and kitchen knives.
Qianye was helpless. A situation like this usually ended with blood being shed. He unslung the assault rifle from his shoulder and pulled the gun bolt lightly, pointing the black muzzle at the crowd.
“Anyone who comes forward will die! Now, get out of the way!” Qianye yelled.
However, his words were unable to intimidate these people at all. Not only did the mob not back down, after looking each other in the eyes, they even tightened the encirclement further. Their breathings were heavy, and their eyes were slowly turning red. They stared at Qianye’s backpack with lust and greed in their eyes.
A man that was as thin as bones suddenly acted as to leap toward Qianye. However, as if Qianye could see behind him, he abruptly pointed the muzzle directly at the man’s forehead the very moment he moved.
The man froze, but when he saw that Qianye hadn’t opened fire, he began lowering his body like a wild dog and even let out a provocative, low growl.
Qianye knew that he had screwed things up.
But perhaps it was because the reminiscent feelings hadn’t completely faded away, or because the metallic tang of rot in the air was too familiar to him, but Qianye’s curling finger never pulled past the point of no return.
Ambusher’s power was not only enough to blow this mad man’s head apart, the shockwave was also enough to knock the people at the side away and blow off the shack at the front of the alley.
Seeing that Qianye did not open fire all this time, the man’s courage abruptly grew tenfold as he leaped into the air without any hesitation and bit towards Qianye’s throat!
After hesitating for a moment, Qianye ultimately let out a sigh on the inside, and let go of the trigger. Instead, he grabbed the gun vertically and was ready to knock the guy out with the handle. With his abilities as a rank three Fighter, he could even forcefully push his way out of this place if he wanted to.
It was at this moment that a gunshot suddenly rang from the side. The head of the man in front of Qianye suddenly exploded and covered Qianye in blood and brain matter!
It was a scene only possible when someone was shot with a large caliber bullet!
Qianye abruptly turned his head and saw that a woman wearing tight suit had appeared on the rooftop beside him out of nowhere. She held what was obviously a modified rifle, and right now, the unusually large muzzle was still fuming with white smoke.
She slightly turned her muzzle and pointed at the boy with the unusually large nose, smiling coldly, “Go to hell, little bastard!”
“Wait!” Qianye’s voice rang together with the gunshot.
The powerful recoil caused the woman’s full body to fall backwards by a bit as the boy’s head and upper body were shot to pieces.
The mob immediately fell into panic as some of them began to turn around and run away. However, there were even more of them who turned vicious and charged towards Qianye while yelling. There were countless hands aiming for Qianye’s backpack, and short knives made from scrap metal stabbing towards his lower back.
These mobs were as fragile as paper, and yet, their attacks were vicious and cruel. Moreover, they did not care about their own lives at all.
Qianye sighed, and with a backhand motion, he caught two knives perfectly within his hands. The two mobsters did everything they could to pull their weapons back or pushed them towards Qianye, but the blades did not move an inch, as if they were melded into Qianye’s hand.
However, it was during this moment that a metallic lump emitting green smoke was suddenly thrown in his direction. It was a grenade!
Qianye swore loudly in his heart, but left without a choice. He leaped over a two story tall shack, landed on the other side of the street and lay himself on the ground immediately.
When the explosion happened, the two mobsters were the first to be blown up into the sky along with a few broken limbs. The shockwave destroyed the surrounding shacks and caused countless wooden bits and random objects to sweep past Qianye’s back, drawing pain on his skin.
This was an high-power, offensive hand grenade! Qianye immediately came to the conclusion from the unexpected shockwave. This was a powerful gadget often used to deal with low level dark races, and even official vampire warriors would be hurt by the blast!
If Qianye had thought that it was a normal grenade and had not dodged to the best of his abilities, then he would’ve been hurt rather badly by this indiscriminate attack.
He cursed at the woman’s ruthlessness on the inside. She actually used a weapon that was only allowed on battlefields directly in the city!
More than a dozen mobsters were instantly killed by the explosion. The rest of the people were finally frightened by the firepower and escaped frantically.
The commotion occurred at a faraway street, and a few fully-armed expeditionary soldiers rushed to the blast site.
When they saw the woman standing on top of the roof, they immediately froze and turned respectful. They asked, “Miss Yingnan, may we know what’s going on? You seemed to have used a weapon that’s disallowed inside the city.”
The young woman laughed coldly and said, “It’s nothing. There were some fellows here who were planning to rob one of our Home of Hunter member, so I took a couple of them out so they’d grow a memory. As for that offensive hand grenade, it fell to the ground by accident and has nothing to do with me.”
The leader of the expeditionary soldiers, wearing a corporal badge on his shoulder, actually nodded and told his companions, “The situation has been clarified. Someone hid a grenade in this place, and the grenade accidentally exploded. Alright, we will leave now!”
The few expeditionary soldiers actually turned tail and left. It was as if they hadn’t seen the dozen or so corpses on the floor at all.
Qianye only kept quiet when he saw this scene. He had encountered the death toll a couple of times when he was at Red Scorpion, but that was only used for the local nobles. He had often heard about the scene before him from a few veteran soldiers who served in regular army, but this was the first time he had experienced it himself.
It was at this moment that the young girl jumped off the roof and landed in front of Qianye, examining him from head to toe before showing him something on her palm, “Come with me! We’ll find a place a get a drink.”
A while later, Qianye and the woman sat down inside a bar.
The reason Qianye had followed her was because she had shown him a four star hunter badge. The status of a four star hunter could only be obtained by accumulating a certain amount of merit and a rank four strength.
It was only now that Qianye had the chance to examine her closely.
She was a young girl, about twenty years old. She was clad in an armor with matching tones of dark brown and dark gray. The armor’s base material was probably some kind of vicious beast’s skin, and the vital spots of the armor were forged from steel. The armor was of course several times stronger than the one Qianye was wearing, and it fit the girl unusually well. It was obviously either tailor made or modified.
She had a soldierly and wild face that was extremely beautiful. She had a tiny scar on her forehead that not only didn’t damage her looks, but even gave her a wild charm when she turned her head and lifted the corner of her eyes.
The girl was extremely tall, being only slightly shorter than Qianye. Her figure was extraordinarily sexy, and it was as if they contained energy and strength that would overflow at any moment. She had dark brown hair, which she had tied back into a ponytail.
She leaned forward, seemingly not noticing at all that her chest was pressing against the table.
The girl then knocked the table in a bold manner that only an experienced and knowledgeable veteran would have, and said to Qianye, “I am Yu Yingnan. You can call me Yingnan, or better, Sister Nan… But kid, are you seriously going to drink this swill that’s so thin that it may as well be plain water?”
