One Hundred Ten Seconds of Carnage

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“Xiaoxiao.”

“Tingting.”

Wan Mengting and Xiaoxiao called each other’s names, then asked in unison, “Did you notice it?”

The two women nodded together and said at the same time, “There must be an expert helping us!”

Hearing their exchange, the stall owner rolled his eyes. So they had only just figured it out? They were unbelievably slow on the uptake!

“Xiaoxiao, what do we do now?”

“It’s not what we should do. I’m more interested in what that expert helping us is going to do next!” As she spoke, the corners of Xiaoxiao’s lovely lips curled upward. She steadied the gun and put on an expression of anticipation, clearly ready to enjoy the show.

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Wan Mengting froze for a moment. Then she lightly pursed her cherry lips, nodded at Xiaoxiao, and pulled the trigger without hesitation.

“Pop!” “Pop!”

“Bang!” “Bang!”

The familiar sound of balloons bursting made the surrounding visitors tremble.

The stall owner’s face was as miserable as if both his parents had just died. He stared resentfully at Wan Mengting and Xiaoxiao, who were celebrating with high fives, and wished he could eat them alive.

The two women, however, showed not the slightest awareness that they had offended him beyond reconciliation. They first scanned the surroundings but saw no sign of the person who had been shooting for them. Then they glanced at the enormous target, which was gradually slowing to a stop. When they saw that every balloon on it had indeed been burst, they marched confidently over to the stall owner and demanded the largest stuffed toy.

The stall owner’s heart bled, but with so many eyes upon him, he had no choice but to hand the toy over to them.

Even after taking the toy, Xiaoxiao was still not satisfied. She deliberately raised her voice and said, “Tingting, why don’t we shoot another round?”

The stall owner’s expression changed dramatically. He nearly suffered a heart attack on the spot.

From a distance, Yang Tang watched through Eagle Eye. After reading Xiaoxiao’s lips, he could not help laughing soundlessly. Then he melted back into the crowd and disappeared.

The two women spent another 720 yen apiece and each bought another round of BB pellets. Yet after firing several shots, they failed even to graze the plump balloons that had been set up again on the target.

“The expert is gone!”

“This isn’t fun anymore.”

The two women quickly lost heart. Without even finishing the remaining BB pellets, they hugged the enormous stuffed toy and stalked away angrily.

Yang Tang wandered around the amusement park for another twenty minutes or so. Since most of the attractions exceeded his psychological tolerance limit, he had no choice but to follow the arrangement he had made with He Jiani earlier and head toward the vicinity of the main entrance.

There were plenty of people near the entrance as well. Visitors came and went in a bustling stream, making the place exceptionally lively.

From a distance, Yang Tang saw two women speaking with He Jiani about something. He was just about to activate Eagle Eye and read their lips when He Jiani followed the two women away.

“What are they up to?”

Yang Tang pushed his evasion ability to its utmost limit, weaving against the flow of people as easily as a fish through water. Before long, he had slipped in behind He Jiani and the two women.

After turning through two or three bends along a narrow path, he saw a building ahead that resembled a church. A van was parked beside its entrance, carrying a huge banner. Several people dressed as clowns stood outside handing out flyers. But the area was secluded, and hardly anyone came there—except people like He Jiani, who had been lured there under false pretenses.

Bamboo fences lined both sides of the path, providing ideal cover for Yang Tang. At first, he had not been particularly suspicious of the van. Under Eagle Eye’s ordinary conditions, it appeared pale blue. The problem was the enormous stuffed figure on the roof, nearly the size of a real person. It was far too conspicuous. Yang Tang had seen it only half an hour earlier and could not help wondering how it had ended up on the roof of the van.

Before he could figure it out, several clowns surrounded He Jiani and performed a short dance. Then He Jiani rolled her eyes, went limp, and fell toward the ground. Before she could touch it, one of the clowns caught her.

“Hurry up! Load this one into the van and we’ll have enough. Get ready to move!”

Although the clown was speaking Japanese, Yang Tang understood several of the crucial words—hurry, carry, move, and so on. When he saw the clowns toss He Jiani into the van as if she were a dead pig, he immediately understood what was happening.

Could it really be such a coincidence? Had he actually stumbled upon the legendary slave-trading syndicate?

In plain terms, a slave-trading syndicate was simply a human-trafficking organization. It was an occupation even older than assassination, and its enormous profits—no less than those of drug trafficking—had ensured that it could never be eradicated. Organized trafficking rings often targeted outsiders with no connections as their preferred victims.

For example, imagine a withdrawn young man who had been admitted to a prestigious university in the south. He had not returned to his impoverished mountain village for two years, merely calling from time to time to greet his parents, who scratched out a living in the fields. During summer vacation, he saved some money and took his girlfriend abroad. But throughout the trip, he was constantly short of cash, and eventually his girlfriend was seduced away by a foreign man. In a fit of rage, the young man squandered all the money he had left. That night, he ended up homeless, quarreling with local beggars in his halting foreign language. Soon afterward, members of a trafficking syndicate knocked him unconscious and carried him away.

Two months later, with the new semester already several days underway, the university finally realized he was missing and reported it to the police. Unfortunately, too much time had passed. In two months, a person could have circled the globe several times. And since he had disappeared abroad, the case could only be filed away as an unresolved missing-person investigation.

Tourists from every country had encountered similar situations, yet only a handful of such cases were ever solved. If Yang Tang had not personally witnessed He Jiani being knocked unconscious and carried into the van, he would never have been willing to believe stories about tourists simply disappearing.

The group moved quickly and efficiently. But just as they all climbed into the van, started the engine, and prepared to leave, Yang Tang sprang onto the roof like a nimble cat and threw himself against the enormous stuffed figure without making the slightest sound.

The van set off westward, taking one winding turn after another until even Yang Tang became disoriented. Fortunately, he had his phone for positioning, and he had memorized the detailed map of the Tokyo region. After carefully comparing both sources, he realized that the van had entered Suginami Ward.

In fact, Suginami bordered Shibuya geographically, rather like Shibuya’s outer perimeter. There were still plenty of entertainment clubs and singing lounges there, but the area was better known for the cheap rented rooms occupied by young people from outside Tokyo who had come to the city in search of work.

The van turned into a district of rented rooms and slowly entered a large compound.

The compound appeared to be an old samurai residence, with high walls and a deep courtyard. Sounds from outside could scarcely reach the interior, and sounds from within likewise could not escape.

Yang Tang had already climbed beneath the eaves when the van passed through the gate. While the compound echoed with voices and the unconscious victims were thrown from the van as if whole sides of pork were being unloaded, he had already made his way along the outside of the wall to the rear of the house.

He picked up two live ants from the ground and secured them with strips of tape. One went into his pocket; the other he stuck to the rear wall. Then Yang Tang retreated several steps and used Wound Shift on the living ant attached to the wall.

His vision blurred. The next second, he was standing inside the house.

With such a wall-piercing technique at his disposal, Yang Tang quickly followed the same method and silently located the basement where the traffickers were secretly imprisoning the captives they had abducted.

The air in the basement was so foul and nauseating that Yang Tang did not even want to describe it. More importantly, the place looked like a scene from hell. Above a long, dark-red metal table hung more than a dozen naked corpses. Some had had their hearts carved out; others had had their kidneys removed. No one could say what color the metal table had originally been.

The only people who were still relatively intact were the latest group brought in: five or six men and more than twenty women. Among the women were He Jiani, Wan Mengting, and Xiaoxiao.

Under such circumstances, Yang Tang could hardly negotiate with the traffickers or reason with them. His blood-heated mind had no interest in considering anything else.

Kill them. Kill every trafficker here, then get the survivors out.

That was his only thought.

Yang Tang drew the BB replica gun from the small of his back. He discovered that even the replica gun’s rate of fire was far faster than a bow and arrow.

“Class Two Mode!”

At his whisper, more than a dozen crosshairs on his retinas instantly locked onto the dozen-plus traffickers still able to stand and breathe in the basement.

Rat-a-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat!

Because the weapon fired BB pellets, its performance requirements were much lower. As a result, the replica Glock 18 was only slightly slower than a real firearm. Most importantly, Class Two Mode recognized its automatic fire as a volley.

Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!

The BB pellets, which had originally been capable only of bursting balloons, now popped the traffickers’ heads with astonishing crispness. Almost in the blink of an eye, every trafficker in the basement had been killed.

Yang Tang did not leave through the basement entrance, nor was he foolish enough to lock it from the inside. Instead, he caught a half-dead cockroach from the floor, taped it to the ceiling, and activated Wound Shift, vanishing from the basement.

The moment he appeared on the ground floor, Yang Tang activated Eagle Eye. Since he had already killed more than a dozen traffickers, all the remaining ones appeared red under Eagle Eye’s ordinary mode.

Even so, Yang Tang was not reassured. He directly marked everyone who harbored murderous intent toward him in gold, then continued his slaughter with Class Two Mode.

A standard Glock 18 magazine held fewer than twenty rounds, but the magazine of the BB replica gun contained more than a hundred pellets. Combined with Yang Tang’s precise marksmanship, it was a weapon of slaughter that no one could withstand.

Rat-a-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat!

The shots were pitifully quiet. More often than not, before the traffickers carrying guns could fire back, the light BB pellets had already drilled into their heads, leaving them to die horribly.

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