Monster - Chapter 46

Chapter 46: Humanistic Concern

When Liu Wu heard the sound of a beer bottle shattering, he called out twice. Getting no response, he immediately sensed something was wrong. He put on his shoes, grabbed his pistol, and left the room. As he passed Tu Shiyi's room next door, he knocked lightly a few times.

"Who is it?" Tu Shiyi's somewhat hoarse voice came from inside at once.

"It's Lao Wu. Something's not right downstairs."

Tu Shiyi opened the door. He was tall, about 1.85 meters, and dressed in casual indoor clothes—a short-sleeved shirt and long pants. But he already had sneakers on his feet and a pistol in his hand.

"I heard the beer bottle shatter too."

Liu Wu didn't linger. He gestured diagonally forward, signaling for Tu Shiyi to go ahead of him.

The two went downstairs one after the other. The lights in the first-floor living room weren't all on, and some areas were still shrouded in darkness. Only the sound of a movie playing could be heard; otherwise, there was silence.

Liu Wu followed slowly behind Tu Shiyi. He saw the back of Chen Shi, who was supposed to be on duty in the living room, still leaning against the sofa. Next to his head sat a red apple with a few bites taken out of it.

Frowning, Liu Wu glanced toward the kitchen and saw light spilling out, as if someone was busy inside.

Tu Shiyi saw this too. The familiar scene was now enveloped in a strange atmosphere, making him swallow involuntarily and tighten his grip on his gun.

The instant Tu Shiyi's right foot touched the living room floor, a hand shot out from the dark corner of the stairwell. The hand grabbed Tu Shiyi's wrist, jerking the barrel of his gun upward.

"Bang!" Tu Shiyi's gun fired a shot toward the ceiling. It was followed by two more bangs. The person holding him used his body as cover, raised a pistol with their other hand, and fired one shot into Tu Shiyi's abdomen and another under his chin. The resulting spray of brains and blood splattered onto Liu Wu, who was standing behind him.

Seeing his companion killed in an instant, Liu Wu watched as the attacker, who had used Tu Shiyi as a shield, crouched down with the collapsing body. As a flash of black hair went by, he smelled the thick scent of blood mixed with a delicate fragrance unique to women. Still standing three or four steps from the bottom of the stairs, he didn't hesitate. He kicked hard at Tu Shiyi's back, sending the heavy corpse crashing toward the attacker. But the assailant was like a snake; after shooting Tu Shiyi, they turned and vanished back into the darkness.

It all happened too fast to react. Liu Wu felt his adrenaline surge, and his breathing grew heavy. Gripping the handrail, he fired a few wild shots into the corner of the stairwell.

"Heh~"

Amid the noisy soundtrack of the movie, a woman's light chuckle emerged.

The hair on Liu Wu's body stood on end. He took a deep breath, forcing himself to calm down. He was no inexperienced rookie. If he let himself be scared by such a bluff, he wouldn't be worthy of the name Liu Wu.

Slowing his steps even more, Liu Wu let his eyes adjust to the light in the living room. He wasn't sure how many people had infiltrated the villa, but so far, only one woman with an obscured face had appeared. He decided without hesitation to take her down first.

He descended the stairs, stepped over the dead Tu Shiyi, and glanced sharply at the corner of the stairwell before quickly pulling back. It was empty now.

"BANG!!" A deafening gunshot suddenly erupted from the movie, momentarily distracting Liu Wu. In that brief instant—the woman couldn't even have known if the virtual gunshot would affect him—she had already grabbed a decorative candlestick from the living room and swung it at Liu Wu's wrist. The gun was knocked from his hand. His reaction was just as swift; the moment the pistol fell, he immediately kicked out hard at his attacker.

The kick landed squarely, but the impact didn't feel as solid as he'd expected. It was as if most of the force had been deflected.

Giving his opponent no time to react, Liu Wu stepped forward and threw a vicious punch.

The opponent's excellent reaction made Lou raise an eyebrow. She took half a step back and kicked at the side of Liu Wu's knee, where the patellar ligament and collateral ligaments stabilize the joint. The fierce kick made him stumble, and his punch went wide, grazing the tip of Lou's nose.

In that same moment, Lou raised her free right hand, pressing a stun gun crackling with electricity against Liu Wu's side.

Liu Wu, who had been about to press his attack, trembled violently for a few moments before collapsing softly to his knees.

Seeing that he wasn't unconscious, Lou pressed the stun gun to his chest and activated it again.

Miu the crow watched as Lou went from infiltrating the villa to subduing everyone in less than ten minutes, with most of that time spent tying them up. It gave Miu a few new thoughts about her.

No wonder she wasn't afraid of having no Guide willing to work with her. She simply didn't need one. No… partnering with her, a Guide could also learn a lot, as long as that Guide had a good temper.

As Miu was thinking, it heard Lou ask, "What's the situation outside?"

"No one's approaching for now. The people in the surveillance room were spooked by your little note and haven't decided to come out yet," Miu said.

After tying up Liu Wu, Lou dragged him and the man who was still on the sofa into the kitchen for a convenient interrogation.

She tied the three trussed-up, unconscious monsters to chairs in front of the kitchen counter. Lou then sat on the stove opposite them and put on the black leather shoes she had taken off before entering.

Once her shoes were on, she took out a medicinal oil with a strong, pungent smell and waved it under the noses of the three monsters, shocking them awake.

"Ta-da~" Lou put on a surprised expression and gave the three monsters a friendly smile.

When Liu Wu saw Lou's face, his expression shifted several times. He had once spent an afternoon with the other owner of this stunningly beautiful face. How could he possibly forget? But the woman before him, who had taken his companion's life in an instant, was definitely not that person named Lin Sandie.

"You know me?" Lou noticed his expression and fixed her gaze on him.

"I once chauffeured a woman who looks exactly like you," Liu Wu answered grimly. He tried to move his wrists and found that his hands and feet were bound to the high-backed chair with zip ties, impossible to break free from quickly.

"Oh~ Then let's start with you. I have some questions, so please answer honestly." Lou took out a small, two-finger-wide recording box and placed it on the counter.

"Just kill us," Liu Wu replied coldly, making it clear he had no intention of cooperating.

"Bang!"

The moment Liu Wu finished speaking, Lou's other hand suddenly shot up. The gun in her hand fired at him. The bullet grazed the top of his skull above the temple and hit the wall behind him, shattering bone and scalp. The sudden shot caught Liu Wu completely off guard. His ears were ringing, but his companion sitting next to him screamed in terror, because he could see white brain matter exposed beneath Liu Wu's blood-and-flesh-matted hair.

"Ahhhhhh—"

Liu Wu slumped in his chair, thinking he'd been shot in the head.

"Don't scream~" Lou quickly advised. "I didn't blow its head off."

"But I have a decent understanding of human anatomy. Were you guys thinking of having a midnight snack? Lemon-fried brain slices? Chili-fried kidney flowers? Perhaps you could order dishes based on your own body parts. I see your kitchen is quite well-equipped. But I really don't have much time. Could you please consider my feelings for a moment and answer my questions first?" Lou looked at Liu Wu kindly.

"I'm sure that scene would be much more popular than Lin Sandie fighting with other people."

"What do you want to know? I'll answer, I'll tell you everything." Before Liu Wu could speak, the man next to him had already burst into tears from fear. Staring at Liu Wu's pulsating brain matter, he stammered, trembling like a leaf.

A beautiful woman in a maid's outfit, standing in a brightly lit kitchen, talking about frying brain slices and asking him to consider her feelings… it was enough to scare him to tears.

"What do you want to ask?" After his initial terror, Liu Wu forced himself to calm down. He endured the excruciating pain in his temple and asked with a pale face.

"Now that's a good boy. My questions are actually very simple."

Lou composed herself and asked, "Why did you take up this line of work?"

"…"

After she asked this question, the scene fell silent for a moment. Liu Wu stared speechlessly at the woman sitting on the stove. He had thought she was going to ask about some classified information, not something so bland.

"It was be-because I had no money," the man terrified by Lou said. Seeing that the question wasn't about any secrets, he was visibly relieved and rushed to answer with a stutter. "This job pays really well."

"I also did it for the money," Liu Wu answered, enduring pain so intense he was close to fainting. The third man, sitting at the end and equally terrified, quickly nodded in agreement.

"Why didn't you have money? What I mean is, you should know that much of what you do is illegal, so why break the law knowingly? You first." Lou pointed at the terrified man.

"Because… because…" If Lou hadn't knocked them out, tied them up, and then abruptly shot a hole in Liu Wu's skull, the terrified man might have actually fallen for the delusion that she was a gentle maid.

"I'm patient. You can tell me your story."

"Uh…" He had never encountered an enemy who said, "You can tell me your story, I'm patient." Wasn't it usually something like, "I'm not interested in your sob story, now die"?

This scene made it difficult for everyone present to process their emotions.

"What did your parents do?" Lou coaxed patiently.

"…They were fishermen. I also have an older brother, but one day he raped a woman and got caught." As he said this, a look of utter disgust appeared on the man's face. "A person like him, whether he gets the death penalty or whatever, it should have nothing to do with our family. But the people around us started pointing fingers. People came to our house to cause trouble every day."

"Mm-hmm," Lou listened intently, imagining the helplessness of a criminal's family being ostracized. "No one would want their child or sibling to commit a crime."

"My family couldn't stay where we were, so we moved to Center City. But living here costs more money. My parents' health got really bad because of my brother's incident, and I only graduated from middle school, so I couldn't earn enough. Gradually, I got into this line of work."

"So, do you have a girlfriend or a boyfriend?" Lou asked next.

Hearing this question, the man telling his story flushed red with a mixture of anger and humiliation. He looked up, wanting to yell at Lou for asking such random questions, but then he saw the silenced pistol in her hand twitch. The image of the hole in Liu Wu's head flashed in his mind, and he gritted his teeth and said, "I used to have a fiancée. She broke off our engagement because of what my brother did."

"Okay, I understand. What about you? Your story." Lou gestured to Liu Wu with her eyes.

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