Mu Dai tensed. “Was it those guys coming for revenge?”
Luo Ren turned and smiled, pinching her cheek. “No. It was a talent scout—there to recruit me.”
Then he nodded toward the snacks. “Open the chips.”
Mu Dai bent down, pulled the chips out of the shopping bag, opened them, and handed him two pieces.
He leaned over and took them with his mouth, chewed. “Not bad.”
The man leading the group was scar-faced, with a tattoo, and asked him if he wanted to make real money.
Mu Dai asked, “Did they want you to be a mercenary?”
“Not yet. Not that direct. They wanted me to fight underground matches.”
He wasn’t thrown into the ring right away—they started with training. Scarface patted his shoulder and said: ‘Bleed more during training, and your odds of surviving in the ring go up.’
Luo Ren remembered that clearly.
“At the time, I had no other choice. I didn’t want to die. If you don’t want to die, you fight harder. Prize money was high. There were a lot of rigged matches too. Sometimes you got paid for winning, sometimes you had to intentionally lose so someone else could win more money. A broken arm or leg even had a price.”
Mu Dai’s lips felt dry. She looked at Luo Ren without speaking.
He seemed to know what she wanted to ask, and nodded. “Yes. I broke one. My arm.”
Mu Dai lowered her head, fingers twisting together. She suddenly felt as if the car had stopped.
She looked up—it really had. Luo Ren had pulled over into the emergency lane.
He asked, “Is it too hard for you to hear? We can stop talking about it.”
Mu Dai shook her head. Her chest felt tight. After a pause, she unbuckled, leaned over, and buried herself against him.
Luo Ren laughed softly and held her. “If I’d known someday a girl would feel sad for me, I’d never have let it break.”
“Which arm?”
“Left.”
She reached out and gently stroked his left arm—very lightly, almost cautiously.
Luo Ren rubbed her hair. “It healed well. We were used to the process. The moment an arm broke, they’d drag you off, the doctor was waiting to set it, and herbal pastes wrapped it up. Brutal, but fast. It was over before you even processed it.”
At that same time, he’d often hear the crowd roaring from the front—certainly the victor parading the stage, spectators throwing cash onto the ring, a bikini girl presenting a flower garland as a hint he could have her for free that night.
…
They couldn’t stay in the emergency lane long. Soon they were back on the road. The sun had begun to lower, and the heat was no longer as harsh as noon.
Mu Dai curled up in the passenger seat, quiet. Eating chips slowly, piece by piece.
Luo Ren glanced over. “Want to sleep for a bit?”
She shook her head. “So… how did you go from underground fighting to becoming a mercenary?”
That began with a death match.
Death matches were even more brutal than underground fights—higher required fatality rates.
But because of that, the tickets were even more expensive, drawing crowds of fanatics willing to pay huge sums just to witness someone die.
Luo Ren never played the death matches. He rarely even injured people unless they tried to maim him first, or when they needed someone to take a fall for a payout. By then, he was already sick of that life. But some circles… you can’t leave just because you want to.
That night, Luo Ren was the third to go on.
Before the match, one of the organizers pulled him through the back door, whispering urgently: bets were placed, even the arena boss put money in. This match had to end in death. His opponent wasn’t as strong as him—Luo Ren had to finish him.
Luo Ren said, “You know I don’t do death matches.”
The organizer said, “It’s a last-minute change; no one expected it. The boss bet millions. That’s why I’m negotiating with you.”
“No negotiation.”
The man’s expression darkened. “Luo, you’re looking to die. Just wait.”
He stormed off. Luo Ren irritably kicked a stack of wood by the door—sending logs rolling. A figure rose from behind the pile.
Luo Ren didn’t care. Underground arenas were full of shady characters.
Under the hallway light, he noticed the man’s sleeve was rolled up, and on his forearm was tattooed Chinese text:
Silver bowl holding snow, a white horse entering reed flowers.
Luo Ren felt a flicker of familiarity. “Chinese?”
“Japanese. Japan, Hokkaido.”
Oh—Japanese. All goodwill instantly vanished. Luo Ren turned and walked away.
When he went onstage, he realized something was wrong.
The opponent had been a white guy named Schuman.
But when the announcer yelled into the mic, “Welcome, challenger Schuman!”, the person walking out from the opposite tunnel was a ninety-kilogram Thai man—taller than Luo Ren, dark-skinned, bare-chested with muscles stacked like steel.
Luo Ren stood still, internally cursing: What the hell.
Spectators protested, shouting, “That’s not Schuman!”
The organizer laughed. “No, he is Schuman—just not the one you expected! Surprise!”
The crowd erupted again, waving their arms and shouting: “Kill him! Kill him!”
That Thai fighter—who may or may not actually have been named Schuman—later turned out to be a national champion from Thailand.
And a champion title is never given lightly.
The skill gap was enormous. Luo Ren managed maybe ten rounds before one heavy punch nearly knocked him out cold. As he fell, the crowd thundered with applause, and a black shadow loomed over him—
Then gunfire erupted.
Short bursts—like a compact submachine gun. Bullets hit walls and lights, never people. Plaster crumbled, bricks flew, glass shattered and rained onto the ring like a storm.
Chaos. Screaming. People stampeding. The Thai fighter disappeared instantly. The arena’s guards shouted from above, firing wildly.
Eventually, silence.
Luo Ren, eyes swollen and bloody, forced himself to look up. Two blurred figures approached the ring.
One was the man from behind the woodpile—the one with the Chinese tattoo. Thin, polite, always smiling. A Japanese man named Aoki.
The other was a small Black man—Euris. Carefree, wearing a headscarf threaded with gold lines, holding a compact SMG in his right hand and a lollipop in his mouth.
He walked up to Luo Ren, tucked his gun under his arm like a stick of sugarcane, curled his left hand into a fist, pulled up Luo Ren’s hand to form a fist too, and tapped the two fists together.
He said, “Oh yeah!”
Luo Ren passed out.
When he woke again, it was to strange sounds.
He was lying in a wooden hut. The back window was open, showing a dense forest. In the deep woods, the slanting sun glowed gold. Birds chirped. A melody played—ukulele notes mixed with irregular drumbeats…
He struggled out of bed, leaning against the wall, inching toward the door and pushing it open.
Aoki was sitting on a large rock, playing a ukulele and singing a Japanese song. Later, Luo Ren learned it was a “pillow song”—from Aoki’s hometown in Hokkaido, where his fisherman ancestors sang it before going to sea:
“Tonight I sleep on a silk pillow; tomorrow, at sea, my pillow will be the waves. I ask my pillow whether I am asleep or awake; the pillow answers—I’m already asleep…”
The drumbeats came from Euris, who was dancing wildly with a hand drum, like a tribesman from a primal African ritual.
Cooking smoke rose in the distance. The kitchen smelled like dinner. People walked in and out, curious eyes glancing at him. Mangoes, bananas, durians—and guns of various shapes—were piled haphazardly on the wooden floor.
Luo Ren leaned against the doorway, chest still aching faintly from the Thai fighter’s punch.
He thought: What kind of people are these…?
Loveguy On CFRFGC Chapter 7