Chapter 53: A Desperate Death

Song Ren quickly rushed out of the nightclub, hot on the heels of the retreating figure.

Judging from the fleeting glimpse of the silhouette, the individual appeared to be rather slender.

However, the clothing was somewhat loose, and a peaked cap was pulled down low. While the movements were relatively agile, they still fell a notch short compared to Song Ren.

The late-night street was devoid of pedestrians and vehicles.

Unsurprisingly, it was only a matter of time before Song Ren caught up.

Yet, the intruder was nimble. After darting across the street and vaulting over two guardrails, the figure suddenly veered into a pitch-black alleyway.

Just as Song Ren advanced to follow, he was abruptly struck by the fierce roar of a motorcycle engine.

Vroom! Vroom! Vroom!

A dark shadow tore through the silent alley, shooting straight out right before Song Ren's eyes!

Song Ren twisted his body to dodge, and the motorcycle surged forward, leaving everyone else in the dust!

As the rider sped away, the person seemed quite triumphant, going so far as to look back and flip Song Ren a middle finger in retaliation.

However, the exact moment the rider turned his head, he caught sight of Song Ren standing quietly in place, a pair of pitch-black pupils locked onto him.

Under the cover of night, those intensely piercing eyes were as sharp as an eagle's gaze.

A nameless panic gripped his heart.

The next second, an 80-pound top-tier compound bow materialized in Song Ren's palm.

This item had always been kept within his storage space.

Because of the unique spatial properties of the storage inventory, objects kept inside remained in a state of absolute stasis.

Consequently, Song Ren hadn't bothered to unstring the compound bow, keeping it perpetually primed for immediate use.

Aside from the compound bow, the carbon arrows were fitted with triangular blade-style specialized broadheads, maximizing both piercing power and bloodletting effect.

Song Ren nocked a carbon arrow lightly against the bowstring.

Draw the bow, pull the string!

Despite the eighty-pound draw weight, the bowstring was pulled nearly to its limit in a single motion!

Cold sweat broke out across the forehead of the rider on the motorcycle.

A bow and arrow?!

Are you kidding me?

In this day and age, if you pulled out a gun, I wouldn't be surprised at all.

Yet, faced with that intricately designed compound bow, the rider panicked completely.

He twisted the throttle all the way down, thinking only of fleeing frantically from this place.

Fifty meters, sixty meters, seventy meters...

Twang!

The bowstring vibrated, leaving a trailing afterimage.

The carbon arrow pierced straight through the air!

The rider on the motorcycle shuddered violently as a piercing pain tore through his waist.

A triangular blade broadhead penetrated from his lower back right through to his abdomen, cleanly skewering his torso.

Blood instantly seeped out around his waist and abdomen; the triangular blade broadhead possessed an exceptional hemorrhaging effect.

Even if it missed vital organs, a short delay would guarantee his death without a doubt.

Struck heavily, the motorcycle spun out of control and skidded across the ground.

The rider was immediately thrown off.

The motorcycle crashed heavily against the guardrail at the edge of the street, emitting a resounding roar.

As for the rider, his fate was even more gruesome, tumbling and colliding with a street corner, his body covered in bruises and abrasions.

Fortunately, he had been wearing a helmet, so his head should be relatively unscathed.

However, Song Ren's arrow had pierced straight through his waist and abdomen; he needed immediate medical attention, or he was a dead man.

Song Ren walked over and removed the helmet from the man's head, revealing an utterly ordinary male face.

He felt a momentary flicker of confusion, a nagging sense that the face grew more familiar the longer he looked at it.

After a brief mental search, a particular person suddenly clicked in his mind.

This fellow was one of Wong Po's henchmen from the movie SPL (Kill Zone), the very one who actually killed the undercover cop Ah Ren.

In the original plot, this man had been hunted down by Chan Kwok-chung's crew, who orchestrated a trap and forced him to his death on a rooftop.

Who would have thought that, through a twist of fate, this fellow would come looking for trouble with him ahead of time?

He had originally intended to interrogate the man, but now that seemed entirely unnecessary.

Since Wong Po had set his sights on him, it was most likely because of the incident involving Ah Ngai.

At that moment, the man was clutching his continually bleeding waist and abdomen in agony.

He simply could not fathom where his assailant had conjured a bow from.

Yet, he no longer had the luxury for wild thoughts, and could only plead in a feeble, desperate voice:

"Please, please."

"Help me call an ambulance. It hurts so much, I don't think I can hold on much longer."

"Save me, please save me..."

Song Ren nodded. "Alright."

Then he stood up, walked aside, and picked up the blood-stained carbon arrow that had fallen to the ground.

Under the man's silently pleading gaze, he wiped the blood from the arrow shaft against the victim's clothes.

Then, he stowed both the arrow and the compound bow back into his storage space.

Only then did he pull out his phone and begin dialing a number.

A glimmer of hope instantly welled up in the man's desolate eyes.

Yet, the moment Song Ren spoke, that final thread of hope was utterly crushed into dust.

"Hello, Inspector Chan."

"It's me, Ah Ren."

"Here's the thing, I ran into one of Wong Po's lackings over here."

"Right, it must be because of Ah Ngai that he targeted me. He pulled a gun."

"Yeah, yeah, I understand."

"However, when he tried to escape, I shot him with an arrow."

"Yes, a bow and arrow."

"Right, um, yes. Bad luck on his part, he died on the spot."

"I'm worried about stirring up trouble, so this time I'll have to trouble Inspector Chan and the boys to lend a hand."

The phone call finally concluded, which could be summarized in a single, succinct sentence—

Inspector Chan, come on out and clean up the crime scene.

However, Chan Kwok-chung was evidently more than happy to take on anything that could target Wong Po.

Right then, the palefaced Chung Yi Sing henchman lying on the ground was teetering on the edge of despair.

Song Ren's casual mention of "died on the spot" during the phone call completely shattered the last shred of wishful thinking in his heart.

This bastard... is a cop!

Song Ren hung up the phone and glanced at the deserted street.

He muttered in a low voice, "The economy really hasn't been doing well these past few years. Not a single working vehicle out in the middle of the night."

"Tsk tsk, people these days don't know the first thing about utilizing their rest time properly."

With that sigh, he turned and walked away.

He acted precisely as if he hadn't noticed the man on the ground at all from the very beginning.

Furthermore, before leaving, he didn't forget to stomp a foot down, crushing a mobile phone that had rolled onto the ground.

Farther down the street corner, feeble cries for help still echoed through the quiet, dead of night:

"Save me, don't, don't leave, please, save me, save me..."

That voice, growing so weak it was nearly indiscernible, faded lower and lower.

His waist and abdomen were completely soaked crimson with blood, leaving a massive pool beneath him.

Yet, he could only watch helplessly as Song Ren walked further and further away.

Summoning every ounce of his remaining strength, the instinct for survival drove him to crawl painfully across the ground until he reached his dropped mobile phone.

He picked it up, desperately wanting to dial for emergency medical help.

Yet, after trembling as he pressed the buttons, the screen steadfastly refused to light up.

His eyes instantly flushed entirely red.

Anger, despair, agony...

Countless negative emotions surged over him in waves.

The process of watching his own life steadily bleed away into death without a glimmer of hope was simply too despairing.

He gasped for air in huge gulps, his chest heaving violently, until finally, he drifted into eternal sleep amidst the silent night.

Everything returned to peace once more.

Leaving behind nothing more than a corpse with a thoroughly distorted expression upon the ground.