Chapter Eighty-Six: The Female Assassin

Liu Jingye lectured the two of them like some seasoned elder, leaving both red-faced with shame.

“You stupid woman. We clearly had the same objective, so why did you strike at me? Now we’ve both failed.” Sitting on the floor with his own weapon buried in his shoulder and blood pouring from the wound, the ninja showed no sign of poisoning. He complained to the female assassin in Japanese. “I told you long ago, the one who grabbed your ass was him, not me!”

The female assassin shot him a glare. “Hell, how is that my fault? You Japanese are all such sleazy degenerates. Any woman who saw you would think you were filthy perverts!”

“That’s right!” Liu Jingye gave a thumbs-up in praise.

“You’re no better!” the woman snapped. “Was it you who jumped into my bed last night?”

“Misunderstanding. I just walked into the wrong room,” Liu Jingye blurted out with wide, innocent eyes.

“This is your inn. You’d walk into the wrong room?” the woman said irritably. “Cut the nonsense. What do you want, exactly?”

“What do I want?” Liu Jingye pointed at his own nose. “I just helped detoxify you, and as for you, Mister Ninja, I spared your life. And now you ask what I want?”

The two of them were instantly at a loss for words. Liu Jingye smiled and said, “By my usual standards, anyone who wants to kill me usually gets sent straight to hell. But the two of you look gentle and kind, and I feel a strange kind of affinity with you. I’d like to make friends. What do you say?”

“Don’t dream about it. I’ll never submit to you,” the Japanese man said coldly.

Unfortunately, before he could finish his hard-edged threat, a flash of dark light flickered in Liu Jingye’s hand, and a cross-shaped throwing star drove with perfect precision into the hollow of his other shoulder. Had it been any closer, it would have pierced his lung, perhaps even his heart. And that was his own weapon.

Watching the ninja scream in agony, Liu Jingye’s expression went cold. “I didn’t tell you to speak. Do you not understand what ladies first means?”

The ninja did not even look at him. He simply fished a small black pill from his body and swallowed it. It was the antidote. Liu Jingye had used exactly this direct method to neutralize the poison in the female assassin. Sometimes swallowing medicine worked better than any other route.

Then he turned to the female assassin on the bed.

Her brows were tightly knit, fear flickering in her eyes. The man said he would strike the moment he opened his mouth, without warning, moody and unpredictable. One moment he seemed to be smiling; the next, his killing intent had already taken shape. He was clearly trying to force a confession.

She chose her words carefully. “I was commissioned to kill you.”

“Who hired you?” This time, there was not a trace of a smile on Liu Jingye’s face, though he held several different kinds of throwing stars in his hand.

The woman hesitated for a moment. “Huang Guangzong!”

Liu Jingye froze. That was nothing like what he had expected. He had thought, as Yuan Xiaoying had said, that this assassin organization would return vengeance for every slight and had come to settle scores with him. He had never imagined that Old Huang himself was the one who had commissioned them.

He asked with a cold smile, “Girl, you’re not lying to me, are you? As far as I know, assassins have principles. They disregard life, but they never reveal the client’s identity. That’s basic professional ethics.”

“Assassins are people too,” the woman said bluntly. “We disregard other people’s lives, but we always value our own.”

“Aren’t you afraid of retaliation for betraying your client like this?”

“Being retaliated against is still better than dying right now!”

“Quick on the uptake. You’ve completely overturned my usual impression of assassins.” Liu Jingye praised her. “I like survivalists like you best. In this wide world, nothing matters more than staying alive. Believe me, you’ll live a long life.”

The woman snorted and ignored his mockery, but in truth she was terrified of death. The more often one saw death, the more one feared it, because only those people knew how precious life was.

Liu Jingye turned to the ninja. “And you?”

Blood still streamed from both of the ninja’s shoulders. He was already weak beyond measure, and with great difficulty he said in an awkwardly broken voice, “Huang Guangzong!”

“Well, isn’t that neat? Double insurance,” Liu Jingye said coolly. He had every right to look down on that arrangement. Huang Guangzong had bought double insurance, sending both a ninja and an assassin, yet both were now lying at his feet.

Then Liu Jingye suddenly went still.

Looking at the female assassin, he asked, “Not long ago, Huang Guangzong’s son, Huang Xing, also contacted your organization, didn’t he? He asked you to help him snipe a girl, and afterward your people arranged for him to flee?”

“Yes.” The woman answered every question without hesitation. “The first operative failed and has already returned to the organization. The other one was shot dead by you.”

“Then why does Huang Guangzong still trust you so much that he hired you again to kill me?” Liu Jingye asked, narrowing his eyes.

“He pays, we work. What he thinks doesn’t concern me,” the female assassin said coldly.

“Then why did he send that Japanese bastard after me as well?” Liu Jingye asked in return.

The female assassin said nothing. Liu Jingye continued, “My guess is that this was his way of killing two birds with one stone. Because your mission failed, his only son is now sitting in prison. He hates me, and he hates you as well, so he went ahead and hired you again without caring about the past. In the end, whether you kill me or I kill you, he still gets his revenge.”

“You’re saying he wanted to watch us kill each other?” The woman suddenly sat up, only then realizing she was bare from the waist up. She quickly ducked back under the covers, staring at him in shock.

Liu Jingye nodded. “That’s probably it. When your organization was helping his son, you botched the job twice in a row and got him sent to prison. If I were in his place, I certainly wouldn’t pay a fortune to take the risk of hiring you again. But now he has done exactly that. The only explanation is that he wanted to see us bleed each other dry.”

The woman quietly considered his words. It had to be admitted that what he said made a great deal of sense.

Suddenly, she sprang from the bed.

Liu Jingye was startled. “What are you doing?”

“That’s none of your business,” the assassin replied coldly.

She passed by him and, with her upper body still bare, walked straight to the ninja. The ninja, who had already been on the verge of death, suddenly heard footsteps and opened his eyes. A sharp light flashed in them as though he had sensed what was coming, and he struggled to rise.

But it was too late.

The female assassin raised both hands, and with a sharp crack, she twisted his neck and broke it outright.

“Ah...” Liu Jingye sighed. “In the end, a life was still taken.”

He had wanted to preserve the innocence of this house, but now that was impossible.

“Why did you kill him?” he asked in surprise.

The female assassin said coldly, “Anyone who has seen my body has to die!”

Liu Jingye paused. “Actually, I’m severely nearsighted. I can’t see anything beyond half a meter.”

The female assassin suddenly asked, “I have a red mole on my chest. How many hairs are on it?”

“Three!” Liu Jingye answered without thinking.

The female assassin flew into a rage, her killing intent surging cold and fierce, but she forced it down. She grabbed the blanket and wrapped it around herself, then said with studied aloofness, “I’ll keep your life in reserve for now. Sooner or later, I’ll take it.”

“Then thank you for your concern,” Liu Jingye said lazily.

The woman snorted and said nothing more. Liu Jingye thought to himself, What a talent for making excuses. You simply don’t have the ability to kill me, so why keep acting tough? You could at least say, “Go ahead and look however you like,” and let me enjoy myself a little.

The female assassin went upstairs, then soon came back down with a phone in hand. Right in front of Liu Jingye, she dialed a number. Once the call connected, she said coldly, “Tell Huang Guangzong at once that my assassination mission has failed and that I am already dead. Let’s see how he reacts.”

The other side immediately complied. The commanding tone in her voice carried a kind of unquestionable authority.

“Your standing in the organization isn’t low, is it?” Liu Jingye asked as he sat on the bed with a cigarette in his mouth, speaking in a relaxed tone. “We’ve got time to kill. Let’s talk.”

“I’m not familiar with you,” the female assassin said icily.

Liu Jingye exhaled a ring of smoke. “I want to ask you about two people. A few days ago, Huang Xing hired a female sniper with an incomparable pair of enormous breasts. Three days ago, another woman came to me claiming she had come from a bathhouse, insisting on staying here and working on-site, and she was just as full-bodied and imposing. As for you, you’re no worse than either of them. Tell me, are big breasts and a voluptuous figure your organization’s standard for selection, or are the three of you actually the same person?”

The female assassin had not intended to engage him, but the moment she heard this, she turned sharply and stared at him in astonishment.

Liu Jingye grinned. “A person’s face can be made up and even altered, but the other physical traits of the body cannot be changed.”

“You knew from the beginning?” the woman asked in surprise.

Liu Jingye nodded. “Not that early. Just now, actually. When I carried you to the bed, I accidentally touched your face. Your disguise technique is excellent, but your proportions are too distinctive. Still, it was only after you said all this that I became even more certain.”

“You were probing me?”

“Only trying to understand you,” Liu Jingye said with a smile. “Last time, when you were sniping from the rooftop, I told you that when carrying out a mission, it’s best to bind up your chest. First, the target is too large and too conspicuous. Second, it affects your movement. I never expected you to keep appearing before me again and again, swinging those magnificent assets around. Were you afraid I wouldn’t recognize you?”

The female assassin ground her teeth, her cheeks and eyes both red.

Liu Jingye said, “You must be thinking that if you could beat me, you’d kill me right now. Isn’t that so? Unfortunately, you really can’t beat me. Even if the phone in your hand can fire a bullet or a poisoned needle, it still wouldn’t do you any good.”

Unconsciously, the female assassin hid the phone behind her back and stared at him in shock, grinding out, “What kind of monster are you?”

“Not a monster. At most, just well-informed,” Liu Jingye said easily.

The female assassin let out a sigh, looking dejected, as though she had resigned herself completely. But at that very moment, she suddenly raised the phone in her hand and aimed the camera lens at Liu Jingye.

His reaction was even faster. He flicked the butt of his cigarette straight toward her, striking her wrist first. The seven-hundred-degree heat made her hand jerk instantly, and the phone almost flew from her grasp. In the next instant, Liu Jingye leapt up like a great roc spreading its wings.

He slammed the female assassin to the floor and pinned her limbs tightly in place, his movements no different from last night on the bed...