SES Chapter 191 Part 1

Chapter 191: Epilogue

Luo Ren knew this fight couldn’t go on.

It was Mu Dai.

His weapon was a dagger—razor-sharp, capable of drawing blood with the lightest graze across skin. Her wounds were still bleeding, and he simply couldn’t bring himself to point a blade at her.

And besides that?

He specialized in close combat. Every strike he threw was heavy. In their earlier exchanges, if Mu Dai hadn’t been fast and clever enough to evade, she would have been crippled already. Now—where was he supposed to land his punches? She was so slender, so fragile; as Qingmu liked to say, thin enough to be blown over by a breeze.

Luo Ren wanted to laugh, but couldn’t. His fingers loosened, and the dagger fell to the ground.

Unlike him, Mu Dai’s thoughts and awareness seemed entirely seized by the command “Kill him.” Her gaze was cold and unfocused, as though she couldn’t feel the pain of her wounds at all.

She stared at him, tightened her grip on the snake-shaped blade, and lunged.

Luo Ren was hard-pressed on all sides, constrained at every turn. He took her punches and kicks, and also her blade. The blows weren’t too bad—Mu Dai wasn’t very strong—but a blade had no mercy. As long as it cut into flesh, blood would follow. The most dangerous moment came when his heavy punch reached her ribs—then he forcibly pulled it away. Beneath the ribs lay the body’s most vital organs. What if he broke a rib and it pierced her insides? She was delicate, frail—she couldn’t withstand that.

But she didn’t care. Using the momentum of his withdrawal, she slipped past him, spun, and slashed at his back. From his left shoulder downward, she cut clean across his entire back.

Pain blurred Luo Ren’s vision. In a daze, he saw Mu Dai spring onto the chain mesh, scaling it like she was running along a wall. Her body flipped, knees bending sharply as she crashed straight into him.

The impact nearly overturned his insides. Her knees slammed into both sides of his chest. Blood and breath surged chaotically in his chest as she almost pinned him to the ground. Through the haze, he saw her snake-shaped blade raised high, cleaving down toward his chest.

Luo Ren’s consciousness drifted. His gaze slid past her shoulder to somewhere high above.

There had been no one there before—but now, suddenly, he saw the black, yawning muzzle of a gun.

In a split second, it clicked.

Leopard was going to kill Mu Dai.

She still intended to torment him for a long, long time, but Mu Dai had always been a burden to her. Now that things had reached this carefully planned point, her goal of forcing them to kill each other had been achieved. She’d already enjoyed the climax of the game. All the cards had been laid bare. Mu Dai was no longer useful.

Luo Ren’s pupils contracted sharply. He didn’t know where the strength came from, but he wrapped his arms around Mu Dai, rolled over, and pinned her beneath him. The icy blade plunged into his left chest—and at the same instant, with a sharp click, a bullet entered just below the back of his neck, passed clean through, and buried itself deep in the ground.

For one or two seconds, his mind went completely blank, as though the entire world had vanished.

Then sound, smell, and sensation slowly returned. The stench of blood surged around him like a raging sea. From above came hurried footsteps—thud, thud, thud. Had Leopard finally appeared?

He only looked at Mu Dai beneath him, his voice hoarse, smiling as he spoke.

“Mu Dai, look at that. You wanted to kill me so badly—but I could never bring myself to let you die.”

Then he asked softly, “Little Pouch… can you recognize me?”

Mu Dai shoved him violently aside.

Luo Ren collapsed onto the ground. Blood poured from his wounds like hot liquid. He tried to press a hand to them, but his vision clouded red. Through the blur, he saw Mu Dai flip to her feet.

A disciple well trained by Madam Plum Blossom Nine—her movements were clean, flawless.

Mu Dai advanced with her blade. From afar, Leopard shouted angrily, “Stop.”

So she stopped, standing perfectly still.

His girl—just like his little daughter—now listened only to Leopard.

Luo Ren coughed with a smile. Bloody foam spilled from his mouth. Beneath the fingers pressed to his wound, he felt a fine chain.

It was the whistle he’d given Mu Dai, later returned by Leopard. It was soaked through with blood, the white pearl wrapped in crimson.

Luo Ren clenched the whistle and slowly brought it to his lips as consciousness flowed away like water.

That night, Leopard had been right—he had never truly lost, until he met her. Maybe he hadn’t even realized it himself, but deep down, he feared Leopard. One by one, she had taken away everything he cherished most in life. Again and again.

The hand hanging at his side trembled faintly, slowly closing around the dagger lying there.

The leopard was walking toward him. She wouldn’t miss his dying moments; she wanted to examine with her own eyes this beast whose fangs had been torn out.

This was his last chance to save Mu Dai.

Luo Ren smiled. Blood spread beneath him. Mu Dai’s figure grew blurrier and blurrier. It felt like he’d returned to that dream he often had back in the Philippines—his girl hacking through thorns to reach him, only to suddenly jolt awake in his arms and drift farther and farther away.

In the end, he couldn’t keep anyone.

—Luo Little Knife, if you miss me, just blow the whistle.

—What should I play?

—“I’ll play you something nice.”

—“One of a kind in this world. Qingmu and Eurys tried to learn it—never managed.”

—“I decided long ago: passed from father to son, not daughter; from son, not daughter-in-law. If you want to know, ask your son someday.”

The delicate melody trembled through the blood-scented air like a faint wave, like the weakest thread of hope—one note turning three times.

Calm. Peaceful. Stitching together every fragment of his and her memories, tracing all the way back to the moment they first acknowledged their relationship.

—“It’s past midnight. From today on, shall we?”

Outside, high above, the night seemed to be dissolving. Dawn was coming.

It began at midnight and ended at daybreak.

Little Pouch—after this, no one in the world will ever blow a whistle for you again.

…

Leopard unlocked the door.

She heard the whistle. Her hand hesitated slightly on the lock.

A whistled tune always felt like an omen that couldn’t be grasped.

She had tested Mu Dai with a whistle before—short or long, no matter how it was blown, Mu Dai never reacted.

Luo Ren’s whistle sounded no different to her. Her suspicious gaze swept over Mu Dai’s face. She still stood there, eyes unfocused, the snake-shaped blade in her hand gleaming coldly.

Good.

Leopard stepped inside, circling Luo Ren slowly. Once. Then again.

Suddenly, her face twisted savagely. She kicked the dagger from his hand, then crouched and leaned close to his ear.

Luo Ren’s chest heaved violently; spasms rippled through his body.

Leopard spoke softly.

“Luo, we’re all smart people. We all leave ourselves a backup plan. Is this your backup—this knife? Planning to die with me in one last struggle?”

“Do you know what my backup is?”

“You blocked the bullet for your little beauty. You think I wanted to kill her? You really don’t understand me, Luo. One bullet to end a life—how boring.”

Her voice dropped to a whisper. “I fed her a chocolate bean. Luo, you’re about to depart—so I’ll let you watch the most beautiful fireworks bloom.”

The veins on Luo Ren’s forehead bulged; his eyes flooded red.

Back in the Philippines, “chocolate bean” was their slang for a micro-bomb. Its blast radius wasn’t large, but once inside a human body, it was enough to tear the abdomen apart.

That was called “fireworks.”

Luo Ren let out a hoarse roar, summoning every last ounce of strength to choke Leopard. She threw her head back and laughed loudly, reaching for the detonator.

At that moment, Mu Dai—who had been standing motionless—suddenly charged forward. Without giving Leopard a chance to react, she wrapped one arm around her head and drove the snake-shaped blade at her throat. Leopard reacted instantly, arching backward; the blade skimmed her chest, carving a bloody line. Gunfire erupted from all sides, mixed with shouts of “Careful!” in English and local dialects.