Chapter 20: Killing His Way Out

Whether by coincidence or not, on the morning after his conversation with the warden, Zuo Dao was transferred back into the rotation through the ordinary holding blocks.

Fortunately, Zuo Dao had encountered Blood Owl on his very first transfer and passed along the escape date and plan. Otherwise, he would probably have had to wait until the day itself and search for him by sensing his energy amid the chaos in the prison.

May 30. Another lousy day.

At noon in the cafeteria, Zuo Dao had collected his daily ration of cornmeal and was carrying his tray toward a table when a leg suddenly shot out, blocking his path less than two paces ahead.

This was pretty much the standard setup for a prison fight. As someone walked past, you caught him off guard by sticking out a leg to trip him. Then you used that as your excuse to start fighting.

Who would have thought this flashy bit of footwork would fail to trip Zuo Dao?

Looking straight ahead, he stepped over it quite naturally, without so much as shifting his shoulders…

The man who had tried to trip him froze. Even after Zuo Dao had walked past, he still hadn't worked out what had just happened. The fellow's previous few steps had been perfectly normal, but almost the instant the leg came out, he had changed his gait, lifting his feet high and setting them down lightly, and stepped straight over it.

Zuo Dao kept his eyes and ears open in every direction at all times. Forget trying to trip him by pretending to stretch out a leg. Even if you crouched down and swept a leg at him, he could still dodge it. To put him on the ground, you either had to launch a proper attack at more than three times his speed or get at least three people together and surround him.

Humiliated and a little angry, the man slapped the table and stood up. “Hey, kid.”

Zuo Dao paid him no more attention than a fart and kept walking, farther and farther away…

“Hey, I'm talking to you, you piece of shit!” the man roared at his retreating back.

Zuo Dao lowered his head and broke into a run, taking care to keep his tray balanced so his lunch wouldn't spill.

What kind of person does that?! The inmate who had tried to trip him suddenly felt thoroughly embarrassed himself. Naturally, he didn't voice that thought aloud.

Zuo Dao made it to the table where the Laundry Gang had gathered, found a seat, and calmly reached for his spoon.

Everyone at the table gave him peculiar looks, at a loss for words…

A dozen seconds later, a large hand landed on Zuo Dao's shoulder. The inmate had caught up with him, accompanied by five or six others. “You're pretty quick on your feet, kid.”

Zuo Dao turned with an utterly innocent expression, looked at the man and his collection of lackeys for two seconds, then sprang to his feet.

Startled, the man took a wary step back.

Zuo Dao suddenly raised both hands. The man took another step back.

The next second, Zuo Dao spoke. “Abba… abba abba abba…” As he did so, he gestured in a sign language only he could understand.

The Laundry Gang members at the table had just begun to feel the tension rising. At Zuo Dao's first “abba,” more than half of them nearly fell face-first into their trays.

The troublemaker and his lackeys were speechless. They hadn't expected the bastard to pretend he couldn't hear or speak.

“You think pretending to be deaf and mute will get you out of this?” the man said, glaring viciously at Zuo Dao.

“Then may I ask what business you have with me, sir?” Zuo Dao replied at once, enunciating every word perfectly.

Now he's suddenly talking! Five seconds ago he was doing such a convincing job! I was almost starting to believe him!

The corner of the man's mouth twitched. For the moment, Zuo Dao had left him with nothing to say. He was only following orders, after all. He could hardly answer, “Someone higher up ordered me to beat you up.”

The awkwardness lasted a full thirty seconds before the man finally squeezed out, “I called you just now. Why did you run?”

At that, Zuo Dao immediately slapped the table, making the men jump again.

“What's my name?” Zuo Dao asked.

“What the hell are you asking me for? How should I know your name?!” In fact, the man knew Zuo Dao's name, but he had to pretend he didn't.

“If you don't know my name, how could you have called it?”

“I…”

Zuo Dao pressed him aggressively. “What exactly do you want?”

Losing his patience, the man grabbed Zuo Dao's collar with both hands. “I just don't like the look of you, and I'm going to beat your ass…”

“Heeelp… meee!!!” Zuo Dao bellowed without warning. Everyone in the cafeteria turned toward them, stunned.

Then Zuo Dao turned toward the nearest guards and shouted even louder, drawing out the words. “I'm… being… molested!!!”

Under immense pressure, the guards had no choice but to come over. “What's going on here? No fighting! Let go! Let go!”

Generally, they didn't bother much with fights unless they turned into group brawls. Today, they had even received instructions from above to stay out of it if the fellow named Zuo Dao got beaten up, no matter how many people were involved. But under the circumstances, the guards had no choice.

With every inmate in the block staring them down, the troublemakers could only slink away.

Zuo Dao straightened his collar and sat down to eat as though nothing had happened. The Laundry Gang members around him shifted farther away, some openly and others more discreetly, pretending they didn't know him.

After two transfers between blocks, none of the people now at this table had seen how imposing he'd been when he joined the gang, so he didn't care. Besides, in three days he planned to escape from Hell Island. If the escape failed, he'd be dead anyway. What was the point of keeping up appearances?

Zuo Dao thought as he ate. Those men were obviously members of the Guards Gang. They wouldn't pick a fight with me for no reason. Someone must have put them up to it. There's more than a seventy percent chance the warden had the Guards Gang send people to test me. Which means getting out of it this once won't do any good. They can easily come back and cause trouble during free time this afternoon. Am I going to have to fight…? But if I get injured, or kill someone and end up in a cage coffin, either could interfere with the June 2 escape. I'll have to think of something.

…

That afternoon, things went exactly as expected. Every Guards Gang member in the block came over and surrounded Zuo Dao.

Taking on more than twenty people alone, with none of them about to show any mercy, could very well get him killed. And Zuo Dao knew perfectly well that even if he did get killed, the warden wouldn't give it much thought. At most, his reaction would be something like, “Oh… so he really was small fry. I misjudged him.”

Zuo Dao wasn't expecting the Laundry Gang members in his block to save him, either. There were more than ten of them altogether, but the Laundry Gang's rule was to help only when they could. Given the force the Guards Gang had mustered today and the tacit approval of the guards nearby, anyone with eyes could see how things stood. All we can do is collect your corpse.

“So, kid, are you going to scream for help now, or keep pretending you can't talk?” The inmate who had led the group at noon stepped to the front of the crowd again, his face vicious.

Zuo Dao, however, was unusually calm. “Since he wants to test me, I might as well give him an answer.”

“What did you say?”

“I want you to take a message to the warden for me.”

“Oh? You think you're still in a position to make demands?”

“I'm not making a demand…” Zuo Dao replied. “And I'm not really asking you to deliver a message. Your corpse will get my meaning across.”

Before he had finished speaking, Zuo Dao's hand flashed across the man's forehead.

The top of the man's skull began to slide off. The brain inside had also been sliced clean through, and a lump of mush dropped to the ground.

The Guards Gang inmates around him didn't know what to say. They simply dispersed, keeping their distance from Zuo Dao.

The guards hadn't expected anything like this either, and couldn't help feeling a little afraid. If that killing blow had been aimed at one of them, could the shock ring on the inmate's wrist really have activated before the attack landed?

For those few minutes, the entire block was suffocatingly quiet. Everyone, including the Laundry Gang members, was giving Zuo Dao very strange looks. This kid still had some of his abilities under the mist? Why hadn't someone like him been sent to the special holding blocks? All sorts of speculation spread among the inmates.

Several guards approached Zuo Dao cautiously and escorted him out of the block. A senior guard who had witnessed the whole thing from the second floor immediately contacted head guard Sean through the radio built into his armored uniform.

In fact, Zuo Dao had acted this way because he had already thought through the possible outcomes. He had to kill someone before the fight began, and do it instantly. Only then could he avoid being mobbed without suffering any harm himself. He had no desire to get into a melee with so many vicious men. God knew what might happen in a fight. With the escape so close, he absolutely could not afford to be injured.

With the medical technology of the day, even someone whose hands and feet had been cut off, or who had suffered damage to one or two vital organs, could be saved if treated in time. Only destruction of the brain put someone beyond all help, killing them immediately. Zuo Dao therefore had to choose this extreme method to leave everyone around him with a powerful impression… He was an unfathomable expert concealing his strength, someone who could kill as casually as he chatted. Step forward if you dare. He'd have you dead in two seconds.

The result proved that Zuo Dao had conveyed his intended message very successfully. He had thoroughly intimidated everyone in the block. Even the Strong-rank ability users, who were theoretically more powerful than he was, knew they couldn't do what he had just done.

One killing meant forty-eight hours in a cage coffin. That was essentially a fixed rule. Multiple offenses could earn you a discount. Kill two people, for example, and you might still get forty-eight hours. Only with three killings did the minimum rise to seventy-two. Once, Blood Owl had killed five in one go, and the warden had simply picked a number at random and locked him up for a hundred hours. By that reckoning, Blood Owl had come out a hundred and forty hours ahead.

This was exactly what Zuo Dao had been counting on. He had decided he might as well kill someone and spend forty-eight hours in a cage coffin, where no further complications could arise. By the time he was released and went through another round of “disinfection,” it would be nearly the evening of June 1. The next day was the escape.