After the Crushing Defeat

Another sniper round hissed past Hou Rui’s shoulder and burst against the wall behind him in a splash the size of a rice bowl, but Hou Rui showed no reaction at all. He simply lengthened his stride and charged up the slanted corridor. In the blink of an eye, he was back on the second floor.

Gasping for breath, Hou Rui quickly darted his head out from behind the wall and snapped it back. In that instant, a muzzle flash flared from the leftmost window of the third-floor office, and a red round of “ink” skimmed past the bridge of his nose.

Having successfully drawn the other side’s fire, Hou Rui did not hesitate in the slightest. He burst from cover and kept sprinting forward.

He was now less than three hundred meters from the third-floor office, but that was still beyond the effective range of the P5, so Hou Rui could only keep pressing ahead.

A second later, another shot cracked out. Yet Hou Rui, still running in a straight line, suddenly leaped in a breathtaking evasive move. He lifted himself high into the air, cleanly avoided the round, and then crashed hard to the ground.

The swift-handed sniper in the third-floor office was already working the bolt, preparing to put another round into Hou Rui as he lay on the ground, but Hou Rui had already brought up his P5 and fired first.

Two bursts of three shots each rattled out in quick succession, pelting white paint rounds against the office window where the sniper was hidden. One of them nearly brushed the man’s head as it flew by, startling him so badly that he involuntarily shrank his neck. By the time he looked back through the scope, Hou Rui had already gotten back to his feet and was charging again.

“This kid’s like a rat! He really does run fast,” the frustrated sniper muttered as he removed the magazine from his P5. The ten-round magazine was already more than half empty, and he chose this moment to reload because he was afraid that he would run out of ammunition at the crucial moment. That small action alone showed that he had already begun to fear Hou Rui.

When the fleet-footed Hou Rui finally reached the third floor, the zigzag layout of the slanted corridor meant that he was actually at the farthest possible distance from the office where the sniper was hiding—roughly over a hundred meters away. Worse still, the entire stretch was an open straightaway with no cover at all, not even a single lamp post.

Inside the office, the sniper held his breath. A round was already chambered; he was merely waiting for the instant Hou Rui showed his face.

From the other side, Hou Rui did not expose himself. He only extended the muzzle of his P5 and fired three-round bursts at roughly the sniper’s position, shredding the office-side window and wall into a mottled white mess.

Having been fooled once already, the sniper had learned his lesson. He kept his patience and waited for Hou Rui to reveal himself.

With ten seconds left in the match, just when everyone—including the sniper, Zhou Xing, and the onlookers—thought Hou Rui had given up, the helmeted head suddenly appeared from behind the wall. The sniper, who had not relaxed for a moment, immediately fired.

With a thud and a rolling clatter, the helmeted head that had taken the shot squarely in front actually tumbled off the third floor. That left the sniper in the office and the spectators before the big screen completely dumbfounded.

Since Tomorrow Shooting Range opened its doors, there had been several injury and death incidents over the past decade, but no one had ever heard of someone being shot so cleanly that his head came off. Even if the P5 was formidable, this was still far too outrageous.

At last, someone reacted. A spectator with dyed red hair slapped his thigh and shouted, “That guy took off his helmet! He’s going for a naked rush!”

The words had barely left his mouth when Hou Rui shot out from the corner like a whirlwind. He was not running especially fast, but the P5 in his hands never stopped barking. Twelve-round bursts, over and over, sent a relentless stream of paint rounds toward the office where the sniper hid.

Realizing he had been tricked a second time, the enraged sniper worked the bolt and prepared to restore his honor with a single shot. But then, with another crack, Hou Rui somehow struck the P5’s scope. White paint exploded outward, and the sniper’s field of vision turned a blinding white.

“Yeeees!” The crowd erupted instantly. Applause, screams, the whole place came alive. But Hou Rui in the game did not stop. In the final second of the countdown, he rushed into the office and emptied the remaining rounds from his P5 magazine into the sniper’s tailbone just as the man turned to flee.

Not long after that, watching his own men being helped and carried out of the game zone, Zhou Xing’s expression darkened to the extreme.

When Hou Rui finally emerged, carrying Jin Shanshan in his arms, Zhou Xing’s eyes rolled, and he hurried up to them with a smile from afar. “Brother, your shooting is really something. If you have time, you’ve got to teach me. I—”

Ignoring Zhou Xing’s hypocritical smile, Hou Rui brushed past him without so much as a glance, walking straight on as though Zhou Xing were nothing more than air. Not only did he leave Zhou Xing standing there coldly ignored, he also accidentally dragged the sole of Jin Shanshan’s shoe across Zhou Xing’s tailored suit, leaving a streak of grime along the hem.

It has been said that being ignored is the greatest insult of all. At that moment, Zhou Xing undoubtedly felt it. A venomous, snake-like glint flashed behind his lenses, but Hou Rui had already carried Jin Shanshan into the women’s changing room. He then ran into the men’s changing room himself, quickly changed out of his black training gear, and came out with Jin Shanshan to leave Shooting Gallery Six in a grand stride, basking in the admiration of the male players and the flirtatious looks of the women, as though Zhou Xing were transparent air from start to finish.

Not long after, Little Bei, clutching his groin with one hand, also changed and came limping over to Zhou Xing with a twisted grimace. “Young Master Zhou, it’s not that we didn’t do our best. You saw it yourself—that kid is strong in a way that’s almost not human. Damn, it really hurts!”

“Strong? So what if he’s strong? Just watch how I, Zhou Xing, play him to death,” Zhou Xing said, then cast Little Bei aside and strode out of Shooting Gallery Six alone.

Half an hour later, Hou Rui’s forty was already on the road back to Capital City Police University. After the interruption at the shooting range, neither Hou Rui nor Jin Shanshan had any interest in continuing the date night. And since Jin Shanshan had been injured, Hou Rui decided to take her straight back to school.

“How are you? Does it still hurt?” Hou Rui asked with concern, one hand on the wheel.

“It’s fine. It’s much better already. I’ll sleep it off in the dorm, and tomorrow I’ll be a real hero again.” In order not to worry him, Jin Shanshan deliberately put on a heroic air, even puffing out her small chest.

But Hou Rui’s powers of observation were too sharp and too precise. A quick glance was enough for him to notice the bruises on her arm and collarbone. After all, taking dozens of paint hits was no different from taking dozens of punches; how could she possibly be without pain?

Zhou Xing! I’m keeping score on this today. If the place hadn’t been full of people, I would have crippled you on the spot!

Hou Rui gripped the steering wheel tightly, silently swearing in his heart. If he ever crossed paths with Zhou Xing again, Zhou Xing’s fate would definitely not be any better than Liu Hai’s.

Perhaps sensing Hou Rui’s dark expression, Jin Shanshan began deliberately steering the conversation elsewhere, trying to divert his attention and keep him from dwelling on the unpleasantness.

“Monkey, you were amazing in the match just now,” Jin Shanshan said, looking at Hou Rui’s profile.

“Amazing?” Hou Rui’s tone was full of self-reproach. “If I were really amazing, I wouldn’t have let you get hurt.”

“That’s different. I was the one who exposed myself, so they hit me. Besides, you alone took out five of them, and that last part where you dealt with the sniper was especially cool. It looked just like a Hollywood blockbuster to me. Come on, tell me how you trained yourself to do that?” As she spoke, Jin Shanshan’s interest rose too. She grabbed Hou Rui’s arm and shook it while pressing him for answers.

“Easy, easy, I’m driving,” Hou Rui said, pretending to be annoyed as he shot her a glance. When Jin Shanshan raised her fist in mock threat, Hou Rui immediately surrendered. “All right, all right, I’ll tell you. It’s nothing miraculous. You know I used to work part-time at Tomorrow. I played enough times, so naturally I got a little better.”

“That simple?”

“How much more complicated could it be? If I were really that good, I’d have been picked up by the military long ago and sent off to some Delta or Alpha unit.”

“You can go to hell. Those aren’t even our country’s special forces. Why would they take you?”

“Why not? Your husband here is pretty handsome, isn’t he? Oh, right, I almost forgot—you still owe me a kiss. When are you going to make up for it?” As he spoke, Hou Rui deliberately let a lewd expression drift across his face and swept his gaze down toward Jin Shanshan’s chest.

“Hey, you still dare to bring that up? I’ll beat the crap out of you, you rotten monkey!”

And so Hou Rui once again managed to change the subject, keeping Jin Shanshan from pressing him further.

Soon the two of them returned to the police university. Jin Shanshan got out at the school gate, hesitated for a long while, and in the end chose to lightly kiss Hou Rui’s cheek before fleeing at full speed. That left Hou Rui feeling blissfully happy inside and out.

But when Hou Rui looked again at Jin Shanshan’s stiff, awkward steps as she ran, the anger he had forced down once more surged in his chest.

Damn it! If not for the organization keeping me down, if not for the threat of the biochip, Hou Rui would have gone straight to kill that smiling tiger Zhou Xing. Compared with the hot-tempered and domineering Li Hai, this smiling bastard with his belly full of dirty tricks was even more detestable. So detestable that Hou Rui wanted to tear that smiling face to pieces.

After Hou Rui struggled to calm himself and was just about to drive back to the university, his phone suddenly chimed with a schedule reminder. He pulled it out for a look and realized that today was the final day for changing the wound dressing.