Unexpected Encounter and Divine Punishment, Part One

As the students were scrambling for ropes and pry bars, Huo Rui, unable to sit by any longer, finally made his move. He swept the bespectacled boy out of the way and grabbed the driver by the seat belt over his chest.

"Who has a knife?"

"I do, I do." A girl immediately handed over a tiny fruit knife, but after a single cut Huo Rui tossed it aside. He then used the bracelet on his wrist to slice through the belt at once, after which he wrapped the seat belt around the injured driver's thigh and pulled it tight, barely stemming the severe bleeding.

"The pry bar's here! The pry bar's here! Hurry, come help lift!" A broad-shouldered student came running up with a metal rod nearly five feet long and as thick as a finger. He was about to lever up the dashboard pinning the driver's leg, but before the students could act, Wang Si suddenly rushed over, shouting.

"No! Don't pry it up recklessly. Just leave him like this and wait for the ambulance!"

Wang Si adjusted her glasses nervously and raised her voice as much as she could so everyone at the chaotic scene would hear.

"Get lost, woman. What do you know? If we waste any more time, this driver's leg is probably done for," the bespectacled boy shouted back just as loudly. Someone daring to oppose his rescue plan, especially a girl, infuriated him.

"Amputation is better than losing his life. If you pry up the dashboard crushing his thigh now, you'll cause massive bleeding, and then you can just stand there and watch him bleed to death," Wang Si shot back without yielding an inch.

"Really?" The bespectacled boy looked at Wang Si, whose face was all seriousness, and his overinflated confidence finally wavered.

"I'm Wang Si, class of sixteen, forensic medicine. I take responsibility for every word I say."

A powerful confidence suddenly burst from the small frame of her body, and the hotheaded students around her could not help but believe her.

"Fine, then... for now, leave it like this. Damn it, why isn't the ambulance here yet?" Losing his position as commander, the bespectacled boy finally backed down. He muttered an excuse and retreated to the side.

At last, the ambulance and fire rescue vehicles that Huo Rui and the others, or rather the injured victims of the crash, had been waiting for arrived. A crowd of uniformed professionals took over the rescue effort, while several traffic police quickly secured the scene and kept Huo Rui's group of students outside the crash area.

When Huo Rui saw two paramedics preparing to lift the truck driver onto the ambulance, he suddenly turned to Jin Shanshan and the others and said, "I want to go see too. Why don't you head back to school first?"

"What are you thinking? What's so interesting about a hospital?" Jin Shanshan asked, unable to understand.

"Actually, I want to take a look at the wound." Thinking on his feet, Huo Rui tugged his shirt open a little and showed Jin Shanshan the bleeding injury on his shoulder.

"Oh! How did that happen? Does it hurt? Let me see." As soon as Jin Shanshan saw the wound, she immediately grew anxious and kept asking questions.

"It's nothing. I got scraped while helping lift people earlier." Huo Rui didn't want her to worry, so he made up an excuse.

"All right. You be careful too. Call later." Jin Shanshan and Chen Xiangyu, having not been of much help, had no choice but to agree.

"Got it." Huo Rui said, then ran off. Using the wound on his shoulder as his pass, he smoothly slipped onto the ambulance with the medics.

Watching Huo Rui's back and remembering how he had helped save people earlier, Jin Shanshan felt both proud and puzzled. Was that cruel look he had before the kiss really Huo Rui? Or had she mistaken it? After all, how could a heartless person actively help rescue strangers?

But their faces had been less than four inches apart, and she really had no reason to have seen wrong. Those eyes had truly been terrifying, so frightening that one glance would probably remain with her for life.

"No. I must have been looking at too many case files lately and started assuming the worst of people. I need to rest for a while when I get back. My monkey can't possibly be a cold-blooded, heartless person," Jin Shanshan finally found a more reasonable explanation.

"Shortie, the man you have is a real one. He may be a little too popular with the ladies, but when it comes to action, he doesn't hesitate. He has spine," Chen Xiangyu said, beginning to praise Huo Rui. Linking arms with Jin Shanshan, she watched as Wang Si and the truck driver who had been pulled free from the van were loaded into another ambulance.

"Tch, what's so great about that? It's not even certain whether I'll end up liking him," Jin Shanshan said, her mouth stubborn though her heart was sweet, and then she trotted back toward the school.

On the ambulance, Huo Rui had been quietly observing the supposedly unconscious truck driver. After the medic on board finished a brief examination and bandaging, they quickly contacted a nearby hospital, and in less than fifteen minutes Huo Rui and the truck driver were taken into the emergency room together.

"Traffic accident. Truck driver, facial trauma, mild unconsciousness," the medic said while pushing the gurney, introducing the situation to the emergency doctor. Then he pointed to Huo Rui standing nearby. "Bystander at the scene, shoulder injury. Bleeding isn't severe."

"Leave him to us." A sharp-looking emergency doctor spoke up, then pushed the gurney into a treatment room and casually assigned a nurse to care for Huo Rui.

The nurse had just approached Huo Rui with a tray of gauze and medication when the emergency room doors were pushed open again. Another team of medics, their uniforms stained with blood, burst in shouting, "A traffic accident involving a family of four. The mother in the back seat has already stopped breathing. The two children have multiple open fractures all over their bodies. The father has severe head trauma and massive blood loss!"

"Get them into treatment rooms two, three, and four. Everyone, come help!" Even the director of the emergency center ran out now, mobilizing every available hand for the rescue.

Seeing this, the nurse beside Huo Rui hurriedly lifted his shirt, glanced at the wound on his shoulder, and said, "Yours isn't too serious. Wait a moment. I'll go help first."

"All right." Huo Rui looked at the emergency room, all in chaos and running on all cylinders, and could only understand. But after the nurse turned away, he suddenly caught, in the reflection of a mirror before him, someone who should not have been there: Xiao Lin from Pengcheng Driving School was quietly leaving the emergency room.

Now everything lined up. From the signs of it, this crash must also have been a task arranged by the organization. Once Huo Rui's suspicions were confirmed, he thought for a moment and then set off after him, wanting to see what Xiao Lin would do next.

The two left the hospital one after the other. Huo Rui followed Xiao Lin in silence. Just as the other man quickly turned a corner and slipped from the main road into a narrow alley, Huo Rui hurried after him, only to step, most unfortunately, on a bamboo skewer.

Before even the faint crack had faded from the skewer snapping, Xiao Lin, who had been about fifty feet ahead of Huo Rui, suddenly spun around. At the same time, his right hand flicked, and several sharp whistles sliced through the air straight toward Huo Rui's face.

"It's me, Wild Dog! Doot doot doot!"

Huo Rui dodged the ambush and shouted at once, just in time to keep Xiao Lin from firing the object in his other hand as well.

As Huo Rui sidestepped only a few inches, four long nails were driven into a thick wooden plank behind him, one after another from top to bottom.

"Damned Wild Dog, why are you following me? You nearly got me to kill you." Xiao Lin, now stopped, tucked the thing in his hand behind his lower back and walked step by step toward Huo Rui.

"Don't mention it. I ran into a traffic accident and got a small injury, so I went into the emergency room. I just happened to see you, so I followed." Half true and half false, Huo Rui's explanation was basically flawless.

"Next time you tail me, I won't be polite." As Xiao Lin finished speaking, he began pulling the long nails one by one out of the thick plank. Only then did Huo Rui clearly see that the hidden weapons Xiao Lin had fired were actually motorcycle spokes, each more than four inches long, their tips ground to a vicious sharpness.

"Brother Lin, you use these as weapons?" Huo Rui asked curiously.

"It's not convenient to use guns in this country. This works very well." Seeing that Xiao Lin was about to leave, Huo Rui gritted his teeth and decided to get straight to the point.

"Brother Lin, that crash just now..."

"What, got a problem with it?" At that, Xiao Lin stopped leaving altogether. He turned around, looked at Huo Rui, and slowly narrowed his eyes. A sharp spoke twirled nimbly between his fingers, like the casual spinning of a pen by many students, but Huo Rui knew he could fling it at any moment and pierce a vital point.

"Nothing. I was just curious. What is the commission for a family wipeout task like that?"

"For adults, fifty thousand each. For children, ten thousand each." Xiao Lin answered coldly, as though discussing not human lives but a simple transaction.

"That seems pretty expensive."

"Of course. This isn't an assassination. More accurately, it should be considered an accident." Hearing Huo Rui's words, Xiao Lin's narrowed eyes finally returned to normal, and he put on the same roguish, carefree air he usually used when chasing girls.

"An accident?"

"Heh heh heh. Even accidents can be arranged. Take that accident crash just now. The police will soon discover that the brake line on the heavy truck had aged, and there are even marks showing it had been gnawed by rats. Then isn't the death of that family of four simply heaven's arrangement?" As he spoke, Xiao Lin had already put away the spoke between his fingers. He slowly came to Huo Rui's side and casually draped an arm over his shoulder.

"You're still new, but I can tell you this: with a tragedy like that, the driver responsible will serve twelve years and get out, and no one will suspect a thing. That is the greatest advantage of an accident—no trouble." As he spoke, Xiao Lin put an arm around Huo Rui and walked on. The two soon emerged from the alley and came out onto a side street, where there were not many pedestrians nearby.