We agreed on the twelve zodiac animals, but you've transformed into the Monkey King?

The ninja's mangled body convulsed twice more in the muddy water before going completely still.

Wen Xiao leaped into the alley. A large-caliber sniper bullet blasted the cobblestones where he had been standing into dust.

He looked towards the alley entrance.

Meng Huai stood there, gripping the .38 rifle in both hands, smoke rising from the muzzle. He was soaked to the bone and his face was deathly pale.

Wen Xiao's bloodied lips twitched slightly.

"Bringing offspring."

Meng Huai wiped the mud off his face, his voice trembling in the wind and rain: "I can't run anymore. I can't get over that mental hurdle."

Wen Xiao reached out and patted Meng Huai on the shoulder once again.

Then, Wen Xiao turned sideways, reached out, grabbed the torn body of the gecko ninja, and dragged it into the shadows.

"Sizzle—"

The truth behind the mask made Meng Huai's eyes twitch wildly.

That's not a human being.

The coarse, black fur was stuck together with blood, and the protruding fangs gleamed with a chilling, eerie light under the pale flashes of lightning.

"The film crew..."

A familiar, violent aura surged through Wen Xiao's head. This scent resonated with a chilling resonance, mirroring his own moments of losing control and teetering on the brink of collapse.

An absurd, bone-chilling cold and a deadly sense of crisis suddenly seized my mind.

This is not Shanghai in history at all!

Pig, where the hell did you throw me into?!

"Detective... what... what is this thing...?"

Meng Huai's voice trembled slightly.

Wen Xiao did not answer, suppressing all her surging emotions into her eyes.

His gaze swept across the rainy alley and settled on the dark, imposing building of the Shenbao newspaper office. "There's a sniper hiding on the roof. I'll go teach him how to fire a gun. You stay here."

Meng Huai followed his gaze, his Adam's apple bobbing with difficulty.

"Detective."

"explain."

Meng Huai's eyes were red, and he spoke each word heavily: "Inside, in the basement. There's a girl named Panpan. I have to go in."

The long street was deathly silent, with only the howling wind and rain.

Wen Xiao flicked his toe out of the mud and kicked the samurai sword stained with the black blood of the ape, the hilt slamming into Meng Huai's chest with a "crack".

"Then don't keep her waiting too long."

Wen Xiao pulled out the last blood-soaked cigarette from his pocket and put it in his mouth. He then knocked away the hammer of the revolver he had seized.

Go pick up your girl.

……

Rainy night, Hankou Road. A 400-meter-long, deathly open space.

Wen Xiao didn't rush over. He dragged the corpse of the chain-scythe monster over and tied it to a handcart full of materials on the side of the street.

"Push him out," Wen Xiao hissed.

Meng Huai gritted his teeth and kicked the handcart out of the alley.

"Bang!" The sniper, 400 meters away, opened fire instantly using dynamic reflexes! The large-caliber bullet blasted the body on the handcart to pieces, and a flash of fire appeared.

Wen Xiao suddenly raised his revolver and aimed the muzzle at the transformer box with high-voltage power lines hanging from it at the street corner.

"Bang!"

The transformer was pierced by a bullet, and the dark blue high-voltage arc, like a wildly dancing lightning snake, exploded with a deafening roar in the torrential rain!

The blinding flash of light momentarily blinded the night-vision pupils of the sniper in the distance. Then, the entire Hankou Road was plunged into darkness.

"run!"

The two crouched low, skimming along the muddy ground, and raced forward through the darkness.

"Bang! Bang!" The snipers fired wildly in blind mode, bullets grazing their ankles and overturning the bluestone slabs, but they were always a beat too slow.

"Crash—!" Wen Xiao violently smashed the heavy revolving glass door of the Shenbao building with his shoulder, tumbling into the hall filled with the smell of ink with Meng Huai.

·····

The rough hemp rope had dug deep into the flesh of his wrists. The pungent acid odor of the bitter explosive, mixed with the leady smell of cheap ink from the basement, coldly seeped into his nostrils.

Panpan knelt on the cold cement floor. Around her knelt more than twenty people, bound hand and foot. There were night shift printing workers in coarse cloth work clothes, and seven or eight young students in blue indigo shirts and black skirts. Above them was a two-story-high maintenance walkway, and the neon-skinned assassin was holding a detonator.

I probably won't make it this day.

She stared blankly at the huge rotary printing press beside her. The cylinders were empty, and the ink hadn't been poured into the printing plate slots yet.

In this world where life is as cheap as grass, she studied for over a decade and learned thousands of characters. She always felt that she could use her pen to write something for this war-torn country and awaken something.

But it was only at the moment of her death that she sadly discovered that the river breeze blowing across the Shiliupu Wharf and the child laborers with broken fingers in the Zhabei cotton mills were still buried under the yellowed soap bottles of the Japanese trading company.

The rise and fall, everyone is responsible.

But in the end, he never managed to print the newspaper he truly wanted to print.

He poured out his heart and soul, yet left nothing for this land.

It's a bit of a regret, but I've come to terms with it.

Panpan gently closed her eyes.

However, in that final void at the boundary between life and death, those grand national righteousness and passionate indignation suddenly vanished like the receding tide.

In this void, what emerged was a dead-end alleyway filled with coal dust and rotten vegetable leaves. And a dark blue police uniform that always reeked of cheap tobacco.

It turns out that people can become so selfish and so insignificant before they die.

She suddenly felt as if a piece of her heart had been ripped out, leaving her with an empty, aching pain.

I want to see him.

In this cannibalistic world, how she longed, how she longed to see that timid, foolish man again. Just once.

"Meng Huai..."

Panpan's lips trembled as she greedily chewed on the name between her teeth.

"Squeak—"

The screeching sound of the heavy iron door being pushed open shattered the deathly silence of the basement.

Panpan opened her eyes.

Wen Xiao emerged from the shadows of the corridor.

"Detective Wen."

On the maintenance walkway, the assassin lowered his head and shook the detonator in his hand, speaking in broken Chinese: "Your scavengers outside have done a great job. I don't have their inhuman abilities, but you should stop. Fifteen kilograms of picric acid explosive, get out of here, or we'll all be reduced to dust."

Wen Xiao stopped in her tracks.

He glanced at the explosives on the ground, then at the assassin on the walkway.

Wen Xiao dropped the revolver with a crisp clang. Then, stepping through the oil-splattered ground, he took a large step forward, directly entering the lethal radius of the explosives.

"Halt!" The assassin's pupils contracted slightly. "Take one more step, and I'll detonate it!"

The assassin drew his Nambu Type 14 pistol from his waist with his right hand and cocked it with a "click." However, the muzzle wasn't aimed at Wen Xiao's head; instead, it was aimed at Wen Xiao's wounded thigh.

It was this seemingly incongruous, subconscious action.

This made Wen Xiao stop in her tracks.

The image of the ape face beneath the Shadow Group mask resurfaced in my mind.

He tilted his head, and a sinister, even cruel, look of realization suddenly appeared on his blood-stained face.

"If your direct order was to kill me, you should have pressed the button the second I pushed the door open."

Wen Xiao took another step closer: "Are you afraid that these fifteen kilograms of explosives will blow me to pieces?"

The assassin's breath hitched.

Wen Xiao's cold smile suddenly widened. "You're a clever assassin, but your master is too greedy."