Chapter 11: Four Against One

The time is now.

Jingniao's retreating figure dwindled into the distance and disappeared.

The books in the metal bucket had all burned to ash. Only a thin thread of smoke still rose, dispersing in the cold wind before it could drift far.

Tian Yi hadn't gone inside. He still stood at the door, apparently waiting for something.

“Jingniao didn't have to die,” he said suddenly.

But the street was empty.

“A few seconds ago, you forced me to change my mind.” Tian Yi sighed. “If I'd known, I would've killed Jingniao while he was here. Now I have to finish dealing with you, then make a special trip to his place.”

Suddenly, there were people in the street again.

Four of them.

“I don't understand what you're talking about, but you're clearly addressing us?” said the tallest and biggest of the four.

Tian Yi gazed at the sky, as though he couldn't be bothered to look at them. “I knew you were lying in ambush along this street while I was having my first coffee after waking up. I just wasn't quite sure of your ranks. When I came out to burn the books, you tightened your circle, and when Jingniao left, you moved closer still.” He gave a long sigh. “Ah... Just before I spoke to you, I could tell with complete certainty that you were all Normal rank. So... that also confirmed your identities.”

Another of the four said, “Even if you really did spot our ambush long ago, as you claim—and let's grant that you guessed right about us all being Normal rank—what makes you think you can ‘deal with us’?” He laughed scornfully. “Inverted cross, even if we analyzed every case over the past several years that might have involved you and made the most generous estimate, you still wouldn't have reached Strong rank, would you?”

Tian Yi replied, “I'm Paper rank. Also, my name is Tian Yi.”

The big man sneered. “Mr. Tian Yi, since you know your own rank, stop thinking about putting up a futile resistance. Surrender and you can keep your life.”

“Heh heh...” Tian Yi scratched his disheveled hair. “Are you all so sure that Paper rank can't possibly beat Normal rank?”

All four looked contemptuous. The big man's expression made it clear that he was the most arrogant and the strongest of them. He replied, “You can try to mystify us or delude yourself all you like. Even one on one, the chance of a Paper-rank fighter beating a Normal-rank fighter would never exceed 5%. Are you saying you can beat someone above your rank and take on four at once?!”

Tian Yi tilted his head and snorted. “Then I'll kill one first and show you.”

Before he had finished speaking, one of the four men's expressions changed dramatically. With a tremendous bang, his chest burst open from within, spraying metal fragments, organs and blood. The smell of charred flesh and blood spread instantly, settling over his three companions like a shadow of terror.

“Replacing organs and turning the body into a mechanical weapon is certainly a good idea. The fellow who thought it up decades ago deserves some admiration. He gave ordinary people with no great abilities, like yourselves, a chance to join the ranks of Normal-rank fighters.” Tian Yi spoke with perfect composure. “But people are people, and machines are machines. Ordinary people only need to eat and drink, but cyborgs need energy as well as food and water. Given the demands of combat, you couldn't possibly operate solely on your biological energy converters as you do in everyday life. So you must have charged up before coming here today.”

Tian Yi looked coldly at the corpse on the ground, its upper body blown apart. “A fellow has precision instruments inside him. Suddenly, a component shorts out, setting his mechanical parts on fire from within and causing an explosion... Heh heh heh... If you die such a ridiculous death, can you really count as Normal rank?”

The three survivors recovered their wits and spread out a few paces. Two raised both hands and held them level. The skin in the centers of their palms opened from within, and the muzzles of six-barreled rotary machine guns extended through the openings. These heavy weapons had replaced their ulnae and radii.

The big man raised only his right arm, a gun barrel likewise emerging from his palm. He turned sideways, aimed at Tian Yi and shouted, “Do it!”

A deafening, unbroken barrage erupted. In a sense, they really were “doing it” with their hands. Three men, five arms, thirty gun barrels. Within a minute, more than six thousand bullets flew at Tian Yi along three intersecting lines of fire.

But Tian Yi remained where he stood, completely unharmed, until they ran out of ammunition and had to stop firing.

“That's impossible!” The three could not believe what they were seeing.

Tian Yi said, “Of course it's possible. For example, every bullet along those three lines of fire that could have hit me might have collided in midair with a bullet on another trajectory and been deflected. And most of the bullets could have had their trajectories shifted slightly by recoil, tiny amounts of air resistance, even temperature and so on, so they weren't going to hit me in the first place.”

“You Paper-rank bastard!” The man who had called Tian Yi the inverted cross crouched and charged, a vicious look on his face. A sharp, shark-fin-shaped blade extended from the outside of his right elbow. Within seconds he had closed in.

But he rushed straight past Tian Yi and slashed at empty air with all his strength. Then he turned in confusion to look at the empty spot to his right.

With his back to the man, Tian Yi pronounced his fate. “If the tubes carrying chemicals through your body rupture after years of wear, those bright green fluids might flow into your brain. Under those circumstances, there's no point even trying to save you.”

“You... you... urgh... gurg...” Blood filled the man's right eye and spilled from its socket. Finally, even the eyeball burst out, trailing strands of tissue. Thick, murky fluid ran from his nostrils, red, white and green. He dropped to his knees and babbled a few incoherent phrases, his voice shaking violently as his body convulsed. Then a sound like a firecracker blowing apart a heap of cat shit came from inside his head, and he fell face down on the ground, never to move again.

The two survivors dared not move a muscle either, because fear is a human instinct.

The big man ventured, “How exactly did you do that...?”

“Hmph... What a stupid question. Telling you now would put me at a disadvantage, and once you're dead, I'm hardly going to explain it to your corpse. Can't you ask something more constructive, like what it would take for me to spare you?”

“Aah!!!” The man beside the big man turned and ran. He had no desire to die horribly here without even knowing why.

But before he had gone ten meters, he inexplicably fell. Within a few seconds, he stopped breathing.

“Now you're the only one left. Going by what you said earlier, what do you think the probability of this happening would be? 0%?” Tian Yi asked with a smile.

The big man looked back at his last companion's corpse, his face pale. “How is that possible... He broke his neck falling... On flat ground like this...”

Tian Yi sounded like a passerby watching a commotion in the street. “Yes, an unlucky fall down even a few stairs can kill you.”

“What would it take for you to let me go?” The big man swallowed his pride and asked a very practical question.

“Good question. You're reasonably clever. You know how to take advice.” Tian Yi raised his head again and gazed at the sky. “But... I don't intend to let you go under any circumstances. I just wanted to humiliate you a little before you died, for my own amusement.”

“You bastard!!” the big man roared savagely. His foot smashed the ground into a web of cracks, and in the blink of an eye he was right in front of Tian Yi. At that very instant, before he could attack, his body was sliced neatly in half along a line running through the groove above his upper lip.

His burly body, roughly two meters tall, split into two pieces that sailed past on either side of Tian Yi under their own momentum. From where Tian Yi stood, one half was all flesh, blood and organs, the other all machinery and metal.

“Ah, a fellow with only half a brain really is stupid...” Tian Yi looked at the dismembered remains strewn over the ground, his expression as listless and unmoved as ever. He picked up the metal bucket at his feet, tipped the ashes onto the ground and went into the bookshop, whistling. He closed the door.