GAMMT - Chapter 9
Chapter 9: Explosion
Villains who promise to spare a hostage for money are usually lying. Those who believe them end up dead.
Naturally, Fu Chuan didn't believe him, but she had no choice but to comply.
Of course, she needed to feign hesitation. And in that moment of feigned delay…
Li Kai suddenly grabbed a whip from the torture rack and swung it.
The whip bent powerfully in mid-air, its tip cracking against the air with a sharp sound… Crack!! In a single motion, it struck Fu Chuan's body viciously.
Her skin split open, and blood quickly seeped through her thin clothes, trickling down her skin to pool at her ankles before dripping to the floor.
Though this body had Xie Keli's appearance, the pain was all hers. Having grown up in a peaceful society, she had never experienced such a brutal beating. A single lash made her whole body convulse in pain. But suspended as she was, she looked like a pathetic salted fish about to be skinned and cured. All she could do was gasp in pain, crying out intermittently, "I'll talk! I'll talk! The copper coins are on the mechanical horse. I'm telling you, but that horse needs me to input a command with my wristband to come back. You won't be able to catch it."
"Should've just said so from the start. You think I'm this cruel, that I like killing people? If life hadn't forced my hand, who would choose this line of work? This is the wristband, right? Input the command."
Li Kai walked over, removed the wristband from her hand, and told her to input the command. This time, however, Fu Chuan showed a bit of intelligence, roaring stubbornly, "If I input the command and you get the money, you'll just kill me afterward! Who would I even complain to? Don't bother torturing me again. If I can't take it and die, you'll lose both me and the money. And if you're unlucky enough to get investigated, your whole plan will backfire spectacularly."
She gasped for breath, continuing as Li Kai's expression darkened, "If my guards really were in league with your men, even if my father doesn't know you killed me, you've destroyed all their communication devices. But Green Blood Nobles can report directly to the government for an investigation. They have the authority to pull my guards' past communication records, and it would be easy to trace it back to your subordinates. When that happens, who's going to believe you had nothing to do with it? The government is looking for an opportunity to send people here. When I was selling assets to the Li Corporation, I learned from them about a new government policy to investigate the garbage mining operations on X5. The conglomerates have been resisting. With such a perfect excuse, don't you think the government's Economic Department will send someone?"
A good-for-nothing couldn't withstand a second beating, but they couldn't be utterly stupid either.
In Li Kai's eyes, this piece of trash had a bit of cunning. It wasn't much, but if used correctly, it could be useful. At the very least, he felt threatened.
He stared grimly at Fu Chuan as if looking at a corpse, but Fu Chuan knew this was her biggest bargaining chip. And it wasn't an empty threat. Given the political sensitivities, she knew there was an 80% chance of it happening. In fact, based on her limited knowledge of this world's historical progression, the escalating conflict between the empire's Government and the financial conglomerates seemed to have been sparked right here on the male lead's garbage star.
Fu Chuan was terrified. After all, these people killed without batting an eye and had plenty of ways to torture her. To avoid more physical suffering, she had no choice but to play her trump card.
After a moment, Li Kai heard something through his earpiece. He narrowed his eyes, said nothing, and turned to leave.
In the outer room, several bandits were going through Fu Chuan's backpack. They immediately reported to Li Kai when he came out.
"Boss, none of the other kids' stuff is here."
This meant he hadn't tricked and killed their men, then run off with all the loot. Instead, it was just as he'd said: he saw the bandits attack them and fled in the chaos. Naturally, he wouldn't have any of the bandits' spoils.
Li Kai looked through the things. Combined with the earlier interrogation, he made his judgment. "This kid has some cunning. He's not willing to just hand over the goods."
If he did, of course, he'd die. But what he said wasn't without reason.
Li Kai explained the situation, and the bandits exchanged uneasy glances. Their trade on the plains was a bloody one, but they weren't truly that powerful. If they were wary of a behemoth like the Li Corporation, then the Empire's Economic Department—an entity that even conglomerates like the Li Corporation feared—was an absolute titan. Even if it was just a small investigation team, getting involved meant the imperial military force behind it could wipe them out in minutes.
"Didn't expect this kid to come with so much trouble."
"Even though he's a descendant of the Xie Clan, he's just a Green Blood Noble and all the way in Jingyang. But the timing is too sensitive."
The bandits grew fearful, cursing the comrades who had started the trouble. Then they all looked to Li Kai, waiting for his decision.
In truth, Li Kai had already made up his mind.
"The money—we're definitely taking it."
Eight or nine million copper coins was more than half a year's income for them. It was a huge sum, enough for them to live comfortably for half a year. But it wasn't worth killing for if it meant attracting major trouble.
"First, make him spit it out. Get that mechanical horse back here."
And then…
Li Kai returned to the interrogation room, his tone amicable once more. "You made a good point. I believe this was all a misunderstanding from the start. Here's the deal: you summon the mechanical horse, and I swear I won't kill you. After all, killing you does us no good. We're bandits. We're after wealth, not lives."
Fu Chuan was skeptical. "How can I trust you?"
"Do you have any other choice? Likewise, neither do we. We're all innocent people dragged into this by those idiots. You give us the money to compensate for our losses, and we'll leave this place immediately to avoid getting implicated. You get to keep your life and go on being a comfortable young master. That way, nobody loses."
Was this guy from a pyramid scheme? He'd said it all, and it actually sounded quite reasonable.
"Fine. I hope you keep your promise."
Fu Chuan then input the command. After Li Kai saw the command generate on the wristband and checked the mechanical horse's location, he confirmed it was indeed heading their way.
Li Kai smiled and reached down.
His hand touched his gun.
Fu Chuan's pupils trembled slightly. The next second, Li Kai's fingers brushed past the gun to a key, which he used to unlock her shackles and release her.
"Someone, take our Young Master Xie to a room. Watch over him carefully. Don't let anything happen to him."
This guy actually kept his promise!?
But Fu Chuan realized he hadn't returned her wristband, and her heart sank.
Earlier, on the way here, she had gritted her teeth and endured the pain to discard the equipment she'd looted from the other bandits, afraid of revealing any flaws in her story.
But bandits weren't the type of creatures to let you go just because you were innocent.
Fu Chuan was dragged away by two bandits down a long, dark corridor filled with a foul stench. Soon, she saw other prisoners.
There were men and women, all looking disheveled, as if they had been locked up for some time.
She didn't need to think to know what these people were used for.
These people, of course, saw Fu Chuan too. Their numb expressions flickered with a hint of emotion, because they could tell he hadn't suffered much—after all, his clothes weren't even torn.
"Get in!" Fu Chuan was thrown into a pitch-black cell. She fell to the ground, landing on the wound on her chest, and cried out in pain.
Outside the door, the bandits were contemptuous: What a waste.
They left. In the darkness, Fu Chuan whimpered as she struggled to her feet. She touched the wound on her chest and sucked in a sharp breath, but her mind was cold and clear.
Would that bandit leader really be so kind as to let her live? While it was true that killing her offered no real benefit, there was still a hidden danger.
Meanwhile, in the main hall of the bandits' lair, the whole crew was gathered, inspecting the damage to nine mechanical horses. The mood was festive; the damage wasn't severe, and they could be sold for a good price. But the most important one had yet to arrive.
Li Kai was drinking. When he finished, a subordinate asked if he was really going to let the kid go.
"Let him go?"
Li Kai sneered. "If he were an ordinary person, maybe. But he's a noble's descendant. He's seen our faces. In the future, he could describe us for a wanted poster. If he ever rises to power, the consequences would be endless. We'd be living with his grudge hanging over us."
"In our line of work, you have to cut the weeds and pull out the roots."
The subordinate was confused. "But won't that bring trouble down on us?"
Li Kai swirled the wine in his bowl and chuckled. "Once we leave, we'll erase all traces of ourselves and leave behind evidence of those other kids. We'll make it look like they conspired with the kid's guards to kill him, but then had a falling out over the loot and killed each other. If we plant the clues right, the case will solve itself. But that's all on the condition that we get the money. Otherwise, setting all this up would mean abandoning our base here, which isn't worth it."
In other words, he still planned to kill Fu Chuan after getting the money.
Just then, a subordinate shouted, "Boss, it's back!"
The mechanical horse galloped toward them, as if it were a pile of glittering gold running on its own. The bandits' eyes gleamed with greed. Li Kai smiled too, thinking to himself that the little piece of trash really hadn't lied to him.
In the prison cell, Fu Chuan struggled to sit up. She felt for the rope binding her hands behind her back, and once she found the knot, she positioned it against the palm of her hand.
She sat in the darkness with her head bowed, still bleeding, and began to chant a spell in a low voice. Wind elements started to gather in her palm… swirling.
Arcane Missile.
The swirling wind element was rapidly cutting through the rope.
When the mechanical horse arrived, it was brought under control. The men crowded around, eager to open its belly compartment. As the boss, Li Kai naturally had the privilege of taking out the copper coins.
Li Kai put down his wine bowl and stepped forward to open the mechanical horse's abdominal pouch. He didn't see any copper coins. Instead, he saw the horse's internal engine, and on the engine was a display.
Countdown: 3 seconds.
Li Kai: "?"
He froze for a second, then suddenly understood.
That little piece of trash hadn't just input the command for the horse to return—it was also the command for it to self-destruct! Damn it!
His face changed drastically. He flung out his left hand and grabbed a subordinate to use as a shield.
It was too late.
Boom! It wasn't just one—all ten mechanical horses had simultaneously activated their engine's self-destruct sequence.
Explosion!
The blast, roughly equivalent to the explosives used to demolish a large villa, engulfed everyone in a halo of light.
Ten mechanical horses. Ten engines exploding.
The effect was equivalent to a third-level fire-type explosion Arcane, an instant kill…
Pulverized, scorched, blown away. Limbs flew everywhere, heads burst, and even the stone slabs of the main hall's floor were shattered into dust.
In an instant, this den of bandits, capable of wiping out a hundred Wasteland Wolves, was almost completely annihilated.
But… after the smoke cleared, a man with a severed arm staggered to his feet. Clutching his bleeding eye, he stared at the scene before him, and he understood.
Li Kai knew he had fallen into that damned piece of trash's trap. He had been tricked into losing his entire crew.
He gritted his teeth, his face contorted with rage. He spat out a mouthful of blood, hastily bandaged himself, and then rushed toward a small room, where he opened a hidden chamber to enter a secret passage.
Inside the prison, seen from behind, Fu Chuan was still sitting in the darkness. Li Kai reached the secret passage's exit, opened the door, and with a wave of his hand, hurled an Arcane spell toward her.
Bang!!
A second-level Arcane: Flame Blast.
A fireball resembling molten lava flew into the darkness and struck a chair draped with clothes.
The chair splintered and burst into flames. Li Kai was startled, a chill running down his spine… The next second, a figure emerged from around the corner of the secret passage behind him.
And sent an Arcane Missile straight into the back of his injured head.
That was all it took. Already severely wounded, Li Kai was finished off by the weakest of first-level Arcane Missiles.
He fell, his eyes wide with disbelief even in death. Standing behind him, Fu Chuan rotated her wrists, which were raw and bleeding from the ropes. Then she lifted her foot, planted it on his head, and ground it down several times with force.
Li Kai, before he died: "!!!"
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