“Then coax me.”

“…”

I played deaf and dumb, lying there like a dead fish, waiting for my heartbeat to settle, my mind to clear, for the fire from twelve years ago to gradually extinguish, its embers covering the ruins at the bottom of my heart, before I spoke to him: “I’m sorry.

“I’ve failed you.”

“That’s not coaxing, that’s an apology.” 

Yet he said, “Don’t apologize to me. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“But you—”

“My baby.”

He pinched my nose, his laughter carrying a kind of touching helplessness.

“Too foolish.”

Then, disregarding my conflicted feelings, he reached out and pulled me up from the mattress.

“There’s someone who wants to meet us. Get ready and let’s set off.”

I drank several mouthfuls from the tap water pipe without much concern for cleanliness, washed my face while I was at it, changed the bandages on both my and Yu Baijin’s wounds, and kept the remaining half roll with me in case of emergency.

Besides that, I also found in the assassins’ “treasure box” an FN Five-seveN tactical handgun, a hodgepodge of 17 rounds of 5.7mm diameter bullets, a Swiss Army knife with multiple tools, and two long-outdated button-style listening devices. 

I rubbed them together with some loose change and stuffed them into my pocket.

I turned to look at Yu Baijin. 

He was tucking a fountain pen, a razor, and half a bottle of men’s cologne into his clothing. 

“What are you bringing that stuff for?”

“Maintaining my image.”

He shook the amber-colored liquid in the glass bottle, sprayed one pump each onto his wrist and near my ear. 

Fine mist sprayed up, and the scent of iris and musk expanded accordingly, then dispersed like the gunpowder smoke pervading a battlefield—pungent and fierce.

He walked toward me from that sweet apocalypse, handing me a bouquet of fresh freesias.

“Since we’ll be spending every day together from now on, I can’t have you finding me unkempt.”

I hastily rubbed my neck with my sleeve.

“Alright, let’s go.”

Before setting off, I confirmed once more the only two important items on my person: the corner of the photograph with Rong Wanqing’s message written on it and Duan Wenshu’s business card. 

Due to the lack of communication equipment, we temporarily couldn’t contact Duan Wenshu to seek manpower or material support from him. 

This was a bad thing, but it might also be an opportunity.

“Should I open the door?”

Yu Baijin grasped the fingerprint lock, teasingly winking at me.

“Maybe there are a dozen guns aimed at us right outside the door.”

“Then pretend to surrender,” I said, “and then kill them all.”

The door opened.

There were no guns, nor any troublesome ambushers. 

Outside was a completely different scene from last night. 

Daylight hung overhead, with some rays of light penetrating the dense shade, stirred by the wind, drifting across the open grassland.

The ghost market, the customers—all were nowhere to be found, making one doubt whether everything seen last night was imagined, a shock-induced dream left over from an accident.

It was too peaceful. 

Just like encountering your next-door neighbor when going out every morning.

 On the open ground outside the safe house, a folding chair was set up, and a girl was sitting there eating donuts. 

Her medium-length black hair was braided in a fishtail braid. She wore ill-fitting cargo pants and a tank top, with a tattoo of a yellow paper talisman on her chest.

Before either of us could speak, the girl’s eyes shifted, and she spoke first: “Damn, why do you two get to share a room?”

Bird calls faintly echoed from the woods. 

Yu Baijin said: “What number?”

The girl’s eyelashes suddenly lowered.

“08.” 

She said, “I recognize you. You’re 01.”

Yu Baijin seemed to have heard something interesting. 

“Am I that famous?”

“Your bounty on the dark web has been raised to twenty million.” 

The girl smiled. 

“But I can’t kill you, and I have no intention to. Let’s each play our own game, no interference.”

“That suits me perfectly.”

The girl tossed us two donuts, one drizzled with strawberry jam, one covered with chocolate sprinkles. 

I caught them and heard her say: “Not poisoned, eat up.”

She took a big bite and counted what remained in the box.

“I’ll come back to eat these three after I finish killing.”

I didn’t immediately bite into mine. 

I turned to look at Yu Baijin and said: “The price went up.”

He raised his eyebrows, leaned over with great interest, deliberately stared into my eyes, and provocatively took a bite of the donut in my hand.

“When I first met you it was still fifteen million.” 

He wiped away the chocolate sprinkles stuck to the corner of his mouth with his thumb, confirming, “Yours tastes better.”

So I made an exchange with him—he ate mine, I ate the strawberry-flavored one. 

The girl asked us: “Got a mission?”

“I want to see the organizer of the ghost market.”

“Need goods?”

“Looking for a young girl.”

“Sorry, last month I just raided their hideout. I released all those girls.”

The girl licked the cream on her fingertips, the lines of her bent upper arm distinct.

“What does the one you’re looking for look like?”

“Black hair past her waist, very noticeable, straight bangs, 163 centimeters tall, weighs 49 kilograms.” 

I finally found a chance to interject. 

The girl glanced at me, her gaze neither cold nor warm, harsh yet fair like a ruler.

“Needle in a haystack.” 

She sneered coldly. 

“Girls like that are all over the streets—ignorant, weak, never learning their lesson, always making excuses for men, thinking the sky is falling at the slightest scare.”

Without realizing it, the girl had crushed the donut box. 

Coming to her senses, she stretched it out flat again, inch by inch.

“No matter how many times you save them, it’s never enough.”

Her eyelids reddened, her spine slightly hunched. 

The girl had squashed one of the donuts, her hand full of dark purple mulberry jam. 

She extended it straight out, pointing north to a small path hidden in the deep forest.

“Walk straight along that road. When you encounter a swamp, turn left, northwest direction, watch out for the electric fence. There’s a service station by the highway. Go ask that damn fat bastard. His underlings patrol the area every night—they’ve most likely seen her.” 

She said.

“Thank you.”

I thanked the girl, and Yu Baijin and I set off in the direction she indicated. 

Not far away, I paused again and took it upon myself to add: “If I run into the person you’re looking for, I’ll let her go for you.”

The unnamed female assassin didn’t respond for a long time.

“I don’t need you to meddle in my business!”

We ventured deep into the forest again.

The daytime forest was a completely different face compared to nighttime. 

They say night roads are hard to travel, but in this lush and verdant green maze, daylight didn’t provide much advantage either. 

Instead, it was even more dizzying—every path looked familiar, every tree seemed seen before. 

It was difficult to detect when you’d deviated from the initial route, ultimately going wrong again and again, unable to turn back.

And I was amazed by Yu Baijin’s beast-like instinct and sense of direction. 

In such wilderness, lacking illumination and maps, he had still been able to reach the safe house smoothly. 

At this moment, he was also completely composed, not relying on a compass or any positioning tools, only occasionally squatting down to observe the moss on the ground and the growth pattern of a certain plant, and he could timely pull me back when I went off course.

“How about we hold hands?” 

He made a sincere-looking suggestion. 

“No other meaning, just afraid you’ll get lost.”

“Don’t take people for fools.”

“Ha, I’ve been exposed.”

I could only steel myself and follow him closely, imitating him, paying attention to the flowers and grasses along the way, the degraded soil, and the half-wet, half-dry stones. 

We traveled in silence until we encountered the swamp the female assassin had mentioned, as expected. 

The surrounding soil was noticeably softer, with a slight sinking sensation when stepped on. 

The petroleum-colored water surface was covered by layers upon layers of fallen leaves and humus, making it difficult for the naked eye to distinguish the boundaries.

The girl hadn’t lied to us.

Along the shore, besides the dried corpse of a dead bird, there were also vaguely visible footprints—adult male shoe sizes. 

Although they were scattered and chaotic, their direction was very clear: northward. 

Between the sky-obscuring tree canopy, several black lines of intersecting cables could be glimpsed from time to time. 

“Almost there.” 

I said to Yu Baijin.

Then I asked him, “Are you very familiar with that ‘organizer’?”

“I suppose so.”

He brushed away a leaf that had fallen on my shoulder.

“I chopped off his left pinky finger.”