Chapter 147 — The Long-Awaited...
Years of Heartflutter · Page 389 of 501
847. The Man Behind Zheng Shaopeng. The middle-aged man was genuinely getting irritated. This fellow before him truly would not respond to either carrot or stick—no matter what he was asked, he said he did not know, or that he was not clear on it. Many cruel methods had been applied to him, and still the bodyguard kept his mouth shut.
But his body was hardened by years of martial training, long since grown thick-skinned and calloused; this much pain of the flesh he could still endure.
"Fine. Since you won't talk, I'll use this knife to slice the flesh off your body, piece by piece, and see whether you talk then!" The middle-aged man was truly at his wit's end—otherwise he would never have resorted to slow slicing.
"Hmph." The bodyguard gave a cold snort. If he talked, then even if the middle-aged man let him go, he would still face certain death once he returned. Better to say nothing—there might yet be a way out. With that thought, the bodyguard studied the camper's structure from the corner of his eye, looking for a chance to escape.
The middle-aged man's eyes were sharp as could be. He saw the bodyguard's intent at once and sneered. "Don't even think about running. It's no use."
The bodyguard had been stalling for so long precisely to prepare himself. Yang Ce's kick had been no light matter; even after waking, he had been groggy and muddled, and only now had he finally recovered some of his strength.
While stalling the middle-aged man, the bodyguard was also sizing up his opponent's strength. After all, his external martial arts were not practiced in vain—the punishments inflicted on him earlier had been trifles in his eyes, mere stings that could not touch his core.
The middle-aged man knew something of interrogation techniques, but in the end he had never received Yang Ce's professional, systematic training in acupoint strikes. Apart from brute force, he had no other means at his disposal.
Such methods worked well enough on ordinary people, but against a bodyguard like this one, who did not fear a beating, they were rather like a man trying to cover himself with a garment too short for him.
The middle-aged man was in fact helpless. He had meant to pry something of value out of the bodyguard, but never expected his mouth to be this stubborn.
Just as the middle-aged man was pondering how to give this bodyguard a taste of something truly harsh, the bodyguard suddenly sprang up from the floor and swung his fist at him.
He had put nearly all his strength into that punch. If it landed on the middle-aged man, even without injury, he would not recover for quite some time. Just as the bodyguard was secretly exulting, however, the unexpected happened.
A dark muzzle was pointed straight at his forehead. The middle-aged man held the gun with a contemptuous sneer. "Move again and I'll shoot you dead where you stand."
The bodyguard had no choice but to freeze his fist in midair, unable to move. He had been careless. He had thought he could launch a desperate strike, never expecting the other man to have a gun. No matter how formidable one's fists and feet, they were no match for firearms.
In truth, if the middle-aged man had taken this bodyguard back to headquarters, there would have been many ways to make him talk. The difficulty lay in how to get him there. Returning on his own would have been no problem, but bringing a man along made things troublesome—there was no way but to smuggle him across.
The middle-aged man did not dare make the call himself. He first gave the bodyguard a shot of sleeping pills and let him drift off, then phoned Steward Mu. Steward Mu took the matter very seriously; after consulting the master, he told the middle-aged man, "Keep a close eye on this person for now. Don't let him get away, and don't let anything happen to him. The master will arrange for someone to meet you in Macau."