Even though I usually stayed at my parents' home on a Sunday night, this time I made up an excuse and told them I would be returning to the dormitory early.
That was a lie, of course.
Instead of going back to the dormitory in the Fourth Evolver Academy, I went straight to the Mu Rong manor for a direct confrontation. Using my newly upgraded stats, which were about 50 each now after I had put the points from my Kill Count into them. Only my Ability had 8 more points instead of 10 like the rest, but I had wanted better stats for now in case Mu Rong Shao had a bunch of assassins waiting for me at home.
Of course, I didn't plan to fight them. At least not at first. I needed to do something else first.
At the gate, I rang the door. The sentry at the gate frowned, wondering why I would show up so late at night.
"What are you here for?"
"Oh, Mu Rong Shao is expecting me." I smirked. "Tell him that a friend from Dark Shadow has sent me to meet him, and he should understand."
The guard looked skeptical and half-expected his young master to tell him to chase me away. But when he transmitted the message, he was shocked by the reply.
"Um, stay here. He'll be coming out to meet you shortly."
Mu Rong Shao and a butler appeared a few minutes later, the former looking flustered and furious. He glared at me and stomped off, away from his family's estate. Raising a hand, he gestured for me to follow him.
When we were finally far from the estate, he stopped. I paused and glanced around the place where he had brought me to, noting the dense trees. It was a private park owned by the Mu Rong family surrounded by trees and resembling a forest in its own right. Probably designed to imitate natural wilderness of old, to preserve a part of the past that no longer existed ever since the mutation of Earth's landscape.
"How are you still alive?!" Mu Rong Shao hissed viciously, turning on me. I cocked my head, feigning surprise.
"What do you mean? The way you put it, young master Mu Rong Shao, it sounds like you are expecting me to be dead. Why would I not be alive?"
"That's…!" Mu Rong Shao faltered, but at a glance from the butler, he was wise enough to blurt out anything that would incriminate him. However, I wasn't that naïve.
"Or perhaps you were the one who sent the assassin from Dark Shadow Guild after me?"
"W…what are you talking about?" Cold perspiration dripped down Mu Rong Shao's face. "Don't slander me for something I didn't do! You don't have any evidence that I'm related to any assassins!"
"I wonder about that." I brought my smartphone up and played a recording. Darla Yoo's voice hissed out.
"Young master Mu Rong Shao hired an assassin from Dark Shadow Guild to kill you! There's no way you could have survived that!"
Mu Rong Shao's face darkened. "That bitch!"
"That's why I'm here today." I kept my smartphone. "I want to know why you did something so extreme. I don't remember doing anything to you to the extent where you have to hire an assassin to kill me."
"Hah!" Mu Rong Shao began laughing manically. "Are you stupid? It's because you offended me! All those who offended the Mu Rong family must DIE!"
"What kind of stupid logic is that? And how exactly did I offend you?"
"You stole my girl!" Mu Rong Shao snapped. "Don't pretend you don't know! Acting like a hero and then seducing her right under my nose! Lisa is my girl, yet you stole her from me! Trash like you who isn't worthy of her! How dare you try to compete with this young master for a girl? Know your place, you lowly trash!"
This guy was playing the role of arrogant young master perfectly. It was almost as if he was cut out of cardboard out of the generic cookie cutter that mass produced antagonists from some sort of Chinese web novel factory or something.
"First of all, Lisa is not your girl. She rejected you countless times, and even reported you for stalking and harassing her. Secondly, you're hiring assassins and trying to murder me simply because you couldn't beat me in winning Lisa's affections?" I frowned and shook my head in disbelief. "That's like a super disproportionate response to what's essentially a trivial high school drama. Just how petty can you get?"
"All who offend the Mu Rong family must DIE!" Mu Rong Shao howled. I sighed.
"That makes no sense whatsoever. You do know murder is a crime, right?"
"So what?" Mu Rong Shao laughed again. "I'm from the Mu Rong family! We major families are above the law! But you! You should just die! You should have just let the assassin from Dark Shadow Guild kill you! Just die, trash!"
"What?" I stared at him, exasperated. "Who's going to die just because you tell them to die? That makes no fucking sense."
"All of you lowly, commoner trash are nothing compared to us of the major families. You're insects…no, worse than insects! Your lives are worthless! Nothing! If we tell you to die, then you must die! All of you lowly commoner trash exist only to be trampled beneath the feet of the Mu Rong family!"
This guy was delusional and insane. I mean, I should have expected such megalomania from the cliché arrogant young master from Chinese web fiction, but this was exaggerated to a point where I wondered if he was actually a real person, or just some idiot acting out a role. Surely nobody would have such a mentality in real life, right?
"Look, dude, today I just want to meet you to ask you to stop all this nonsense. Stop harassing Lisa, she's not interested in you. And stop sending assassins after me. I won't ask you for compensation and I'll pretend this didn't happen, so let's just not get involved with each other in future. Okay?"
"Do you really think I'll agree to that?" Mu Rong Shao sneered. He strode over and pulled out a gun. "Why do you think I brought you all the way here? It's because nobody will know if you die. This time, I'll make sure you're dead. That stupid Dark Shadow Guild assassin couldn't even do his job properly…I should have done everything myself!"
"Wait…" I began, but Mu Rong Shao pulled the trigger and shot me in the chest, blowing me off my feet and sending me crashing to the ground. He fired several times more, pumping my body full of bloody holes. Standing over my smoldering corpse, he laughed.
"Ha ha ha! Finally! I should have done this from the beginning!"
His triumph was cut short by shock when dozens of light shone upon his location. The next instant, a dozen cops rushed into the clearing of the park, their revolvers raised and pointed at him. Mu Rong Shao stared at them dumbly, but they were already apprehending him.
"Don't move! Keep your hands up! This is the police!"
"What? When…how…?"
"We're arresting you for murder." One of the cops confiscated the empty pistol from Mu Rong Shao's hands and slapped handcuffs on his wrist. The young master resisted stubbornly.
"Get your hands off me! Do you know who I am?"
"You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in court."
"I'm from the Mu Rong family! You have no right to arrest me! Get off me! How dare you…! Butler Zhe!"
Unfortunately, the butler was also being arrested for being his accomplice. The old man gave in quietly, raising his hands in surrender and allowing the cops to handcuff him.
"You just committed murder right in front of our eyes," the policeman told Mu Rong Shao. "Even the Mu Rong family can't protect you now."
"Hah! You underestimate the power and influence of the Mu Rong family! I can murder a hundred lowly trash commoners, and the law still won't be able to do anything to me! Let me go and I'll make sure my father will grant you a quick, merciful death!"
Was this guy for real?
"He has a point," one of the cops muttered darkly. "Wouldn't the Mu Rong family try to cover this up? They'll just bribe the court and pay their way out again."
"We'll just do our job," his sergeant replied. "There's no point worrying over whether other people will do theirs or not. As long as we accomplish our duty, that's all we need to care. We can't control what other people do or don't do."
Actually, we could. And I was doing that right now.
The lenses of my glasses whirred. Even though blood dripped down my face, one of Mu Rong Shao's bullets having smashed into the area between my forehead and temple, I had avoided having my glasses smashed. That was imperative because my glasses were key to everything.
Simply put, I had recorded the whole incident and uploaded it online, doing a live streaming. My brother had helped me out, along with Lisa, Pang Fei and the others, sharing the live video across social media and drawing in millions of viewers across the districts.
Basically, Mu Rong Shao's villainy had been uploaded online and broadcasted live for the whole world to see. Even if the Mu Rong family wanted to take down the video, they would be too late. Thousands, if not millions of people had already seen it.
"Zhi Ming!"
Lisa rushed toward me, tears spilling from her eyes. I raised a hand to wave weakly at her, and she shook her head in relief.
"You…"
"Don't worry, I'm still alive. I told you I wouldn't die."
Another key aspect to this stunt was my Ability, Cheat Death. Honestly, I could have avoided Mu Rong Shao's shots, but I allowed him to hit me. I wanted the whole world to witness him attempting murder. That was the only way I could get back at him.
Some people would be raging and demanding to know why I didn't just kill him. With my Strength and Willpower, I could. But that would be against the law. What, did you want me to spend the rest of the story being an outlaw on the run? Fuck that bullshit. I had family, I had other goals, I wasn't going to become a criminal and be on the run for the rest of my life because I committed murder. Sure, I could provide evidence that Mu Rong Shao tried to have me assassinated, but then the law would decree that the appropriate action would be me reporting this to the police (however ineffectual that might be) and not my taking the law into my own hands.
So either way I was screwed. Either I died at his hands, or I get executed for murder.
However, I would rather use the law to my advantage and have Mu Rong Shao pay for his crimes. It would be too easy to kill him, but I didn't want to just take his life. I wanted to see him despair when he realized that his belief that he was above the law was just a delusion. But I wasn't naïve enough to underestimate the power and influence of the Mu Rong family, aware that they could just cover it up.
That was why I prepared this live broadcast to the whole world. If the Mu Rong family tried to cover it up, they would be screwed…not by the law or the other major families, but by the masses.
Rich people tended to underestimate the power and movements of the masses, but historically speaking, it was the masses that overthrew regimes and carried out revolutions. If they weren't careful, they would find their short reign overturned by angry, rioting "commoners" – their power trampled upon by the very "lowly" people they looked down on.
"You're too reckless," Lisa reprimanded me angrily. Her hands glowed as she began to heal my wounds. I exhaled softly in relief. Even though Hades was a life-saving Ability, it did not negate the damage that I took from the lethal blows. It simply prevented me from dying. That didn't nullify any injuries I would have suffered, merely reduced them from fatal to severe.
If Lisa didn't treat me in time, I might still have died eventually.
"Sorry, but this was the only way." I grinned and watched Mu Rong Shao get manhandled and escorted by the police. "I can't wait to see what the public reaction would be."