Hidden Assassin

Edit: IlkonEbi

TL Note: Bold is spoken in English.

It was the middle of the night and the wind quietly whistled.

On a certain small hill at the outskirts of Jianghai City, there was an old pillar sparsely surrounded by trees. A young boy was sitting next to the pillar; both of his hands doing repetitive monotonous training.

He was sitting cross-legged in a lotus position like a monk, both hands continuously moving through a series of Buddhist mudras[1]. He was training the sensitivity of his fingers through this set of never-changing motions.

By going through all the motions that were humanly possible, his fingers could feel the air friction when he went through the Buddhist mudras. After an unknown period of time, he finally stopped moving, opened both eyes, and let out a deep breath.

It was a starless night and the city’s glow could be seen from afar. It was the time of night where people slumbered deeply. Surrounded by grasslands, he could clearly distinguish the faint silhouette of a distant mountain as well as the clear distinct sounds of the wind and the earth. This type of sensitivity was definitely at the peak state of what an assassin would dream of.

He reached this state in only around three years of training on this pure body using the proper methods and focused mentality. It could be said that he had reached a better state than when he was chained to the assassin group. The fact that he could become a more terrifying assassin like this was extremely ironic.

His current body’s power naturally could not compare to his adult self, but with the identity of a child, the target’s wariness was generally lowered. However, that was not necessarily an advantage as his ability to sense other assassins had decreased as well. His current body’s sensitivity could be considered better than before, however…

“It’s a really simple and boring life right now…” He grumbled quietly to himself as he smiled helplessly.

A child’s world, to an adult like him, was quite boring at times. Even though he had already determined the importance of his two friends – Lingjing and Huaisha –, they would sometimes make naive suggestions and decisions that caused him to smile bitterly in response. However, he had become accustomed to playing an ambiguous and weak role, so he was subconsciously reluctant to lower their spirits. Thus he restrained himself to act like a child and his desire to grow up faster only increased in time.

Or perhaps it was only a naive desire, something he had in common with other children.

In order not to completely lose interest in everything, or maybe it was due to his acquired freedom, he persisted in training his assassin skills everyday.

He had broken free from the shackles of the assassin group, but the habit of training his assassin skills was already ingrained into him. Of course, he did not think of using this power as a tool to only kill people; to survive in this world, sometimes it was necessary to possess some sort of power. Also…

Freedom…

He greedily inhaled the fresh air, thinking that he would never get tired of this feeling of freedom. He spent a lot of his time daydreaming so people would often consider him silly. However, what did he want to do in the future? Shasha’s suggestion of being a doctor was really not that bad, but an assassin being a doctor… Wouldn’t that be like ‘Dr. Lamb’[2]?

In the dark, he skillfully assembled a pile of parts into a gun. As to the idea of being Dr. Lamb, a trace of smile appeared on his face. When he was an assassin, he felt restless, but now that he had become a civilian again, he felt it was too easy to fit the criteria of being ordinary.

Once the gun was properly assembled, he disassembled it and repeated the motions again. Suddenly, a noise carried over by a gust of wind made him perk up. It was… the sound of a gun…

He swiftly reassembled the gun in a few seconds, then closed his eyes, listening for the faint sounds of the situation the wind carried over.

About a mile away, in the woods, there was a group of people holding weapons ranging from pistols to machine guns. They were currently… being chased…

He abruptly opened his eyes, astonished. Although Jianghai City was currently in development and it had some chaotic areas, China’s gun control had always been strict. This group of people had a submachine gun, but they were only desperately escaping. After listening intently for a while, he could not determine who was doing the chasing. The pursuer most likely had a silencer on his gun… Just what kind of expert mercenary had come here?

The group was running in his direction and they were drawing closer. It was possible that they would not bump into him, so should he avoid this situation?

After giving it a little thought, he screwed a silencer onto his own gun.

His training was scheduled accordingly as planned, if he was reborn into this life just to avoid these types of people, then his training would have been pointless.

He positioned himself at the top of the pillar and became one with the darkness.

The sounds of the submachine gun within the woods faded as it seemed that the people chasing after them decreased. Not long after, Jiaming determined that there was actually only one person chasing after the group.

This could be interesting.

Both assassins and mercenaries would find using just a handgun to hunt a group of people pretty extreme, so this fellow must have thought very highly of himself. However, in the world of darkness, there were some crazies that were able to do that.

Not long after, the group of people that were being chased rushed out of the woods. Surprisingly, they were speaking English.

“Go! Go… F*cking——”

This group consisted of four people – at the front there were two females, the slightly taller female was blonde and even in the darkness of the night they resembled each other closely. They seemed to be mother and daughter while the two men behind them were likely their bodyguards. Suddenly, one of the bodyguards gave a loud shout, stopped, turned around, and started wildly shooting towards the forest they had just come from.

Jiaming wondered if this guy was brain-damaged. He had already run out of the woods, even though it was dark, if he looked carefully at the shadows, he would be able to see that there was nothing but trees there. Did he stop just to shoot trees?

Sure enough, just after the submachine gun stopped firing, a bullet flew out and hit him in the forehead. Two seconds later, the other bodyguard died to a headshot as well. Then a man clad in black materialized like a ghost and stepped out from the woods.

The two females were just running around aimlessly at this point as the assassin raised his gun. Pop! The bullet whistled past the blonde lady and landed onto the grass she was just about to step on. Startled by the ground exploding right in front of her, she let out a low cry, lost her balance and slumped onto the ground. The little girl running in front of her, instantly ran back and started sobbing, “Mommy! Mommy!”

“Run! Run!” The blonde woman pushed the little girl away as she struggled to stand up. Pop, pop! Two more bullets landed right next to her legs. Terrified, she let out a sharp cry and did not dare get up again.

“Hehe, run. Keep running…” said the gun-toting man in Chinese as an evil smile bloomed on his face. The little girl saw that her mother was unable to run and just stood there crying. Her mother tried to crawl away from her and as she looked to the side, she was suddenly startled.

Amongst the darkness, under the broken pillar, a faint silhouette of a person appeared.

Since all of her bodyguards had already died, who could this person be? He was just sitting there motionless. Was he dead or was he in cahoots with the assassin?

Her heart started beating faster. The assassin noticed this and turned to look, discovering the spectre-like figure sitting by the pillar.

Veteran killers had a sixth sense that allowed them to notice any enemies or danger in their surroundings even without looking. However, what surprised him was that this figure in front of him suddenly appeared out of nowhere. He quickly surveyed the area around the woods again but he did not feel anything emanating from the dark silhouette.

Since there was no sense of danger, he guessed it was probably a dead person so it had not triggered his sixth sense. Thinking that it’s better to be safe than sorry though, he pointed his gun at the figure. Just as his finger curled around the trigger, a spark flashed out in front of him.

Pop! Just like how he had killed those bodyguards, a bullet entered his forehead and passed straight through; the back of his head blossomed with red as his head exploded.

Thus, his life ended like a brief dancing spark.

“I hate it the most when someone points a gun at me…”

A child’s voice faintly resounded in the darkness of the night.

[1] Different hand gestures – https://www.buddhas-online.com/mudras.html for reference. ↩

[2] A movie where the mc is a taxi driver by day and twisted psycho on rainy nights. https://imdb.com/title/tt0104319/ It’s probably still rentable XD ↩

Pewpew~

On an off topic, watched The Greatest Showman yesterday, and the MUSIC IS SO GOOD!!! *sobs*

Next chapter release will be on Monday :3