Chapter 8: The Awakening Beast

When Gambling Snake first opened the book, he thought it was a joke. A few pages later, he began to wonder, and the farther he read, the more alarmed he became. Besides the unexpected detail of its contents, he noticed something strange. The number of pages bore no relation to the book's thickness. Judging by eye, however thin the paper, it could hold no more than a thousand pages, yet opening it at random in the middle revealed page numbers above three thousand. He assumed the numbering skipped ahead, but when he lifted a corner and quickly riffled through, he could find no large gaps. Turning the pages carefully, one by one, he could detect no appreciable change in thickness either.

It felt like the map system in Diablo II, generating and extending endlessly just a few inches beyond your field of vision. Within arm's reach there might be a path, or there might be only a wall. It was like the future ten seconds from now, right before your eyes yet still beyond your grasp.

Humanity had entered the twenty-third century, and these days a single e-book could hold roughly half a library. Yet Gambling Snake could find no scientific or logical explanation for the seemingly ordinary paper book before him.

The mere fact that its contents were not constrained by its thickness defied physics. That it was filled with the workings of a person's mind was even more incredible.

Before long, Zuo Dao was ready to take his leave. The delivery was complete, and it was time for him to go into hiding. Whether Tian Yi would pay him a middleman's commission, he neither knew nor wanted to know. What Zuo Dao most hoped for now was to open the newspaper one day and learn that Tian Yi and Blood Owl had killed each other. Only then could he rest easy.

Gambling Snake had no intention of asking him to stay. As the verse went, long stretches the road to Luoyang; in what year shall we meet again? Men like these two, who lived outside the law and above ordinary mortals, could never know from one day to the next whether they would survive. Saying “see you again” held little meaning.

Gambling Snake did not even thank him. If the book really contained Gilson II's innermost thoughts, Tian Yi was the one he owed his thanks to. And if it was a fake, some sort of trap, then Zuo Dao's role was open to question.

Why do they say a friendship between gentlemen is as plain as water? Because the better you know someone, the more deeply you realize what a piece of shit he really is.

There had only ever been one person Gambling Snake truly trusted, and that person was dead. Had been dead for years. He had thought the death avenged, but judging by this Book of the Heart titled Gilson II, the matter was not over.

Half an hour passed, and Gambling Snake's doubts gradually faded. The book's authenticity was beyond question. From childhood to middle age, forty years of life came alive on the page, with all their innocence, stirrings of desire, debauchery, greed, brutality, and hatred. There was conscience too, of course. Even evil men knew remorse, sympathy, and kindness, and had once known genuine love. Human nature was complicated. Every individual was full of contradictions and unpredictable variables.

Even Gilson II himself could not have produced a book like this, so there was still less chance of anyone else forging it. Gambling Snake could only conclude that the Book of the Heart before him had been created by an ability user. For now, that was the only reasonable explanation.

Setting aside the question of the book's very existence, who exactly was this man named Tian Yi? What was his identity, and what did he want? That was an even more intriguing matter.

But none of that was urgent. The most important thing before him now was clear enough. Killing.

Killing an enemy. A mortal enemy.

A home, a job, a legal identity. Leaving aside life's petty details, these three things were the foundations of a place in modern society. Seven years ago, Gambling Snake had thought he needed them too, so he had left the organization and gradually grown numb. The beast within him had fallen asleep.

Then, four days ago, Jordan had come to his door and spoken the name Gilson II. That night, he had also revealed that the count was still alive. Gambling Snake had shown little outward reaction, but even then he knew he urgently needed to kill.

His rule of keeping a weapon hidden within five meters, his skill at subduing three bank robbers in under a minute, his cool judgment, decisive action, disciplined habits, deeply ingrained ways of behaving... None of these could be discarded. A sword in its sheath was still a sword. The beast would awaken eventually, its fangs as sharp as ever.

Compared with the peaceful life he had worked so hard to obtain, the satisfaction of killing his enemy with his own hands was plainly more appealing. The fire of vengeance had been lit. Only a drenching of blood could put it out.

And just then, someone had sent him a book like this, as though they had already seen through his intentions and offered the most powerful support possible.

From the book, Gambling Snake learned that Gilson II had done far more over the past seven years than simply recruit men. His cunning and capacity for intrigue had grown beyond recognition. Though he had lost most of his bodily functions, his mental powers had increased considerably.

On that night seven years ago, Gilson II had lost consciousness after being suspended by ropes against the outer wall of the bell tower. By the time his thoughts resumed, two weeks had passed since the night of Qianming's assassinations. The local HL commander must have been a shrewd and capable man. He had released no precise casualty figures, nor any definite word on whether the prominent figures involved were still alive. He had simply transported all the bodies and survivors to other regions in secret. Presumably he feared the assassinations would continue inside the Empire's medical facilities and had chosen this cautious approach.

That caution had been a great help to Gilson II, but ultimately, his escape from death could only be put down to his being hard to kill. As the saying goes, murderers and arsonists wear belts of gold, while those who build bridges and mend roads go without even a grave. In reality, evil men do not necessarily come to a bad end, while good men often suffer lives worse than death.

For a time after regaining consciousness, Gilson II had been quite mad. His physical injuries had changed his life, a painful transformation anyone would have found unbearable, let alone a nobleman in his prime who had always lorded it over others. Such a tremendous fall could easily break a person's will.

But Gilson II had the makings of a man who could rebuild himself from ruin. He rallied and turned his anguish into strength. He engraved Gambling Snake's face in his mind, concealed the fact that he was still alive, left his homeland, and lived under an assumed name, rarely making personal contact with anyone. All of it was to find the assassin from that year and repay the suffering inflicted on him ten thousand times over.

Through his investigations over the years, Gilson II had gained a deep understanding of the world of ability users, a world ordinary noblemen would never touch, and of the darkest corners beneath the Empire's facade of a “golden age of peace.” Naturally, Qianming was the organization that concerned him most. He had also learned the codename Gambling Snake.

Yet his enemy, just like him, had vanished off the face of the earth without a trace. Zuo Dao had done a very thorough job indeed. Without that bank robbery, Tom Stall, the office worker in Maple Leaf Commandery, would never have been connected to Gambling Snake, the Qianming assassin.

...

Gambling Snake sat like that in his room all day, reading Gilson II's Book of the Heart. Not every thought in a person's mind had value, but he did not skip a single line, seizing on every scrap of potentially useful intelligence and piecing together everything the man had done over the years.

After nearly eight hours, Gambling Snake's concentration had not diminished in the slightest. He had eaten only a sandwich at noon and gone to the toilet twice all day, yet he still looked alert and energetic. His gun lay close at hand, and he was still seated facing the angle between the door and the window.

Suddenly, Gambling Snake stopped and closed the book. He had not finished it. He had sensed something amiss.

He slipped the book inside his suit, picked up his gun, and walked to the door. This time he opened it and went straight out into the parking lot. There were few pedestrians on the nearby street. Before anyone could notice the man walking around with a gun and react, shots rang out.

Gambling Snake came out, raised his gun, and fired. The bullets passed through tinted glass into a car outside the little hotel. Both struck vital areas with precision, killing the men in the driver's and front passenger's seats on the spot.

The pedestrians fled in panic from the gunfire. Several car alarms blared for nearly thirty seconds, then fell silent one after another. Then came applause. One person's applause.

The man stepped out from around a corner. He looked to be in his forties, slightly overweight and balding, dressed in loose, casual sportswear, like an ordinary local resident out for an evening jog.

“Nice shooting. Just what I'd expect from a Qianming assassin. Is everyone in your organization as good as you?”

Gambling Snake put away his gun. He knew the man was most likely an ability user, and a fairly powerful one. A gun posed virtually no threat to anyone of Strong rank or above. Attacking rashly before his opponent revealed his ability could very well put him at a disadvantage.

“Those two weren't police or soldiers, I take it. Nor were they troops directly under HL.” He did not answer the man's question.

The balding man smiled. “Jordan's failure led the count to put me in charge of taking you alive. Personally, I don't much like relying on others. Besides, repeatedly mobilizing the local government forces is a great deal of trouble.”

“So from this moment on, I'll be facing large numbers of the Gilson family's private troops. Is that it?”

“Of course not. You'll only be facing me. If you think you can escape me, you're sorely mistaken.”

“Then I'll kill you and step over your corpse.” Gambling Snake was entirely unmoved by the man's swaggering confidence.

“Hahaha! Good, Gambling Snake. We already know plenty about you. Let's see if you're really as formidable as the rumors say.”

“Rumors... Hmph. What use is an empty reputation? Better to let my skill speak for me. With inkstone and books consigned to the flames, zither smashed and paintings torn, I can only return to the path of slaughter.” The look in Gambling Snake's eyes changed. Once again, he was the cold-blooded creature he had been years before. “Taking your life is only the beginning.”