Chapter 0004: I Don't Want You Too Comfortable

Huizi was fuming!

Even though Ning Fan hadn't so much as touched a single hair on his head, Huizi was genuinely on the verge of coughing up blood from sheer rage!

Three consecutive nights without sleep — that alone was bad enough.

But he was the vice-captain of the mighty Hound Shelter, and he'd been run circles around by some little brat. If word got out...

What would people think of him?

That Huizi was a stupid moron.

How was he supposed to show his face in the Walker community after this?

"Kid, don't tell me you're trying to make me cough up blood just by pissing me off?"

Huizi's teeth itched with frustration.

"No," Ning Fan replied, shaking his head with a serious expression. "What Lin Chuan said was that I had to draw your blood using my Black Sword. Making you rage-vomit blood... that doesn't count as a win."

Huizi racked his brain, trying to recall the conversation from a few days ago.

Honestly, he hadn't been that strict about it. He hadn't paid much attention to the fine details in Lin Chuan's words.

"Hmph! Well then, too bad for you — if the condition is that you have to wound me with your own sword, then you don't have a single chance of—"

He stopped mid-sentence, suddenly frozen.

He'd just noticed something.

"Where's that broken sword of yours?!"

He realized that the Black Sword Ning Fan had been carrying on his back...

Was gone!

Huizi felt something was off, but he couldn't read the kid in front of him at all.

Ning Fan suddenly waved past Huizi's shoulder. "You're here?"

Huizi startled, but didn't turn around. Instead, he sneered. "Kid, that trick is way too obvious. You hid that broken sword on purpose, and now you want me to turn around so you can ambush me? Heh! A little brat is still a little brat — even your schemes are this childish. I thought you had something up your sleeve, but..."

"Huizi, heard you haven't slept in three days?"

Lin Chuan's voice came from directly behind him.

Huizi spun around — and there was Lin Chuan, already standing at his back.

Fuck!

He was so embarrassed he wanted to crawl into a crack in the ground!

"Brother Lin, what are you doing here so early?"

His face was beet red, and he could barely bring himself to speak to Lin Chuan.

But out of the corner of his eye, he noticed something in Lin Chuan's hand.

A sword. Coal-black and worn.

"B-Brother Lin, why is that thing...?"

Before he could process it, Lin Chuan flicked his wrist, and the Black Sword sliced across his forearm.

It was only a shallow cut, but...

Blood seeped through.

Huizi stood there in a daze.

He stared at Lin Chuan, motionless.

A full ten-plus seconds passed before he could confirm that the person in front of him was indeed his captain, Lin Chuan.

But why... why did he strike me?

"Does this count as passing the trial?"

Ning Fan's voice came from behind him.

Huizi turned around with bloodshot eyes to find Ning Fan wearing a faint, calm smile.

"What... what exactly is going on?"

Huizi was close to breaking down.

He'd spent days being played by Ning Fan, and now Lin Chuan — the captain he respected most — had struck him. He couldn't make sense of any of it.

The one who cleared things up was Ning Fan.

"Let me answer the question you left me a few days ago."

Ning Fan licked his dry lips. "The reason you didn't kill me that day was exactly like you said — not out of mercy, but because you had a commission today. Killing someone inside the zone isn't exactly a capital offense, but it still causes trouble. Under normal circumstances, you'd be taken in for seven days of Confinement. So if you'd killed me back then, it would've interfered with today's commission. That's why it wasn't worth it."

Huizi said nothing.

Ning Fan had guessed correctly.

There had been five days left until the mission back then. Killing Ning Fan would've meant missing the commission — too costly, and totally unnecessary.

That question wasn't actually too hard to figure out. What Huizi really wanted to know now was why Lin Chuan had cut him.

"After I worked through that, I went to the Wind-Slayer Squad."

The Wind-Slayer Squad was another Walker team in Zone F32, roughly on par with the Hound Shelter.

The two groups were also latent rivals.

"Why did you go to the Wind-Slayer Squad?"

Huizi was even more confused.

"To place a commission," Ning Fan said with a smile. "I went to ask them how much it would cost to wound you."

Huizi's mind went blank.

Before he could respond, Ning Fan shrugged. "I know I'm no match for you. I thought I'd timed the ambush that last time pretty well, but you deflected it without breaking a sweat. With only five days left, no matter how hard I pushed, I couldn't grow strong enough to beat you that fast."

"So my only option was to hire someone else to do it. The Wind-Slayer Squad quoted me eight thousand Sola — but they couldn't guarantee they wouldn't accidentally kill you."

Ning Fan continued, "You did say that from the moment I accepted the trial, we were enemies, and that I shouldn't go soft on an enemy. But I'm definitely going to join the Hound Shelter. Having their vice-captain taken out before I even joined... that'd be a little bad for team unity."

Sweat broke out on Huizi's forehead.

If Ning Fan hadn't told him, he never would have known that the Wind-Slayer Squad had almost been hired to come after him.

Given the relationship between the two groups, once the Wind-Slayer Squad accepted a job like that, they would very likely go straight for the kill.

"S-So then what?"

"After confirming the going rate for wounding you was eight thousand Sola, I realized my total savings only came to a little over six thousand. I was still short by more than a thousand."

A faint trace of exhaustion finally crept into Ning Fan's smile. "These past few nights, I went to work as a sorter at the Path of Grace. Three hundred Sola per night. Four nights of it, and I barely scraped together enough."

The pay for sorters at the Path of Grace wasn't low.

It required no particular skill, but there was one thing most people simply couldn't endure.

The exhaustion.

An almost incomprehensible level of exhaustion.

"You... these past few days, you were eating Shadow Hound Meat the whole time because..."

"Sorters get one piece of Shadow Hound Meat every three days."

Ning Fan smiled sincerely. "Since it was free, I didn't need to spend money on food. Every sola I earned could go straight toward hiring someone to cut you."

Huizi's lips twitched.

Did you really have to say that so earnestly?

And yet, at the same time, the sheer tenacity this kid had shown genuinely moved him.

Because it wasn't just the night shifts at Path of Grace. During the day, Ning Fan had also been keeping a close watch on him.

In other words, not only had this kid gone without sleep for days, he'd also been doing brutal manual labor every night on top of it.

"And the reason you were watching me during the day..."

"I was thinking — if you slipped up and gave me an opening, I could wound you myself and save the eight thousand Sola."

Ning Fan scratched his head. "Unfortunately, you're genuinely tough. You didn't give me a single opening."

"So the reason you kept me from sleeping these past few days..."

Huizi had no time to dwell on the compliment.

"Every time I thought about how I was working myself to death while you got to sleep soundly at home, I felt pretty annoyed."

Ning Fan grinned. "You taught me this — before I passed the trial, we were enemies. I never planned to kill you, but I didn't want my enemy to be too comfortable, either."

Huizi's face went pale.

He'd been played.

Ning Fan was out doing night shifts at the Path of Grace every night — when the hell did he have time to actually ambush anyone?

He'd spent three sleepless nights scaring himself.

That realization stung worse than getting slapped across the face a few times.

With everything laid out, Huizi now had a pretty clear picture of how it had all gone down.

He pointed at Lin Chuan. "So after you scraped together enough money, you didn't go to the Wind-Slayer Squad — you went to Brother Lin?"

"I figured, why let outsiders earn that money when it could stay in the family?"

Ning Fan glanced over at Lin Chuan. "I told Brother Lin — if he didn't agree, I'd go back to the Wind-Slayer Squad."

The result, naturally, spoke for itself.

Lin Chuan had taken Ning Fan's eight thousand Sola and cut Huizi.

At that moment, Lin Chuan tossed the Black Sword back to Ning Fan.

"Little stray, from now on, you eat from the same trough as us."

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Proofreader & Editor: Fat Goose 🪶