Chapter 137: Marching to Their Doorstep

After a long while, Zhang Xiaoyu walked out of the bathroom with a flushed face, while two members of the Blood-colored Guard stood strictly on guard outside the door.

Not long after, a male and a female staff member wearing hotel uniforms slowly pushed a small dining cart toward the room.

"Halt, what are you here for?" A guard immediately reached out to block them and questioned.

The female attendant replied with extreme politeness, "Hello, we are staff from the hotel's dining department, here to deliver lunch to Ms. Zhang."

After carefully inspecting the dining cart and finding nothing suspicious, one of the guards waved his hand. "Go on in! Get out quickly when you're done."

Once inside, facing Zhang Xiaoyu—who had just stepped out of the bathroom draped in nothing more than a bath towel—the woman remained expressionless, but the man's gaze froze instantly, locking onto the fair, exposed skin of her breathtaking and curvaceous body, her slender, snow-white thighs radiating a crystal-clear sheen.

"Get to work." The woman glared irritably at her male companion, her fierce expression instantly baring as she rushed forward.

Before Zhang Xiaoyu could figure out what was happening, she suddenly felt a sharp pain at the back of her neck, followed by pitch-black darkness as she lost consciousness. As the man rushed forward and wrapped his arms around her delicate frame, trying to take advantage of the situation, the woman's cold voice rang out once again.

"Let me tell you, you'd better behave yourself. If anything goes wrong this time, neither of us will come to a good end. But if we pull this off successfully, aren't there plenty of other women out there?"

Reluctantly, the man pulled his hands back, his mind involuntarily recalling the instructions their boss had given them before departure. The gang they belonged to was only a mid-tier faction in Keelung, operating under the Ocean Breeze Hall, a branch established by the Four Seas Gang in the city.

Liu Ming, the master of the Ocean Breeze Hall, had long set his sights on Zhang Xiaoyu, the pristine pop diva. Now that the young starlet had arrived in Taiwan and was right on his turf, he naturally couldn't let her slip away. He had specifically spread word that whichever subordinate or sub-faction could deliver the diva into his hands would be rewarded with all the newly acquired streets in the far north.

Upon learning of this, the leader of the Heavenly Star Gang—the mid-level gang to which the man and woman belonged—hatched this entire plot, leading to the scene that had just unfolded.

The woman quickly opened the room's window, where a lifting platform was already waiting outside. The man swiftly hoisted Zhang Xiaoyu over his shoulder and carried her across. Everything happened covertly and seamlessly, taking only a matter of minutes.

A few minutes later, a lingering sense of unease gripped the guards. They called out at the door a few times, and receiving no response, they rushed inside, only to be greeted by an empty room with not a trace of a person left.

"Look, they escaped through the window!"

The two men sprinted over, leaning out the window to look down. There, a lifting platform was slowly descending, carrying an unconscious person slung over a shoulder like a slaughtered pig—none other than Zhang Xiaoyu.

Filled with towering anxiety and burning panic, the two men immediately notified Chen Erpao. Upon hearing the news, Chen Erpao's expression darkened and sank. Knowing that this was no time for reprimands, he quickly led the rest of his men in pursuit, hoping they could still intercept them in time.

The group reached the ground floor at maximum speed, but by then, Zhang Xiaoyu had already been hoisted into a black car that had been waiting there all along.

Just at that moment, two taxis pulled up, and Chen Erpao and his companions quickly piled into them.

"Follow that car in front."

Inside the black car, the man grew quite flustered upon seeing that someone was giving chase.

"Oh no, this woman's bodyguards are after us. What do we do?"

Glancing back with annoyance, the woman snapped, "What are you afraid of? We're heading straight back to the gang headquarters. Let them chase us all they want—once we're at the compound, can a mere handful of men possibly pose a threat to us?"

The man calmed down upon hearing this, realizing she made sense. The Heavenly Star Gang headquarters had thirty to forty men; no matter how many more the enemy brought, there was simply nothing to fear.

Lying in the car, Zhang Xiaoyu was jolted awake. Discovering that she had been kidnapped while wearing only a bath towel, her face drained of color, and she let out a terrified, piercing scream.

The woman glared at her coldly. "Scream again, and I'll rip off the only towel you have left."

This tactic proved remarkably effective. Zhang Xiaoyu instantly clamped her mouth shut, shrinking timidly into the corner.

After nearly twenty minutes, the car drove into a courtyard bearing a sign that read "Heavenly Star Trading Company." Chen Erpao and his men quickly jumped out of their vehicle at the gate and charged inside.

"Erpao, save me! Please save me!"

Carried out of the car, Zhang Xiaoyu caught sight of Chen Erpao and the others rushing in. Like a drowning person clutching at a straw, she screamed at the top of her lungs, only to be instantly knocked unconscious again by a karate chop from the woman.

"They're the woman's bodyguards. Stop them!"

In a flash, dozens of men poured out from the courtyard, surrounding them menacingly with hostile expressions. Clad in a black windbreaker, a middle-aged man stared at Zhang Xiaoyu's exquisite, unconscious body, his eyes brimming with lust. Yet, he dared not act rashly, as this woman held the key to whether his influence could expand exponentially in the future. He was none other than Li Axing, the leader of the Heavenly Star Gang.

Smirking triumphantly, Li Axing strode into the crowd. "Here is one hundred thousand. Take the money and get lost, and pretend you saw nothing. How much can you possibly make in a month being bodyguards? Why don't you stay and work under me instead? Good food and fine drinks await you—life would be far more carefree than whatever you're doing now."

"Haha." Chen Erpao burst into boisterous laughter. "You and what army? Even the Heavenly Dao Alliance, currently the most powerful force in Hong Kong, doesn't dare look down on me when they try to recruit me. You'd better return her to me right now, or I'll raze this little Star Gang hideout of yours to the ground."

"Audacious and ignorant. Take them down!" Li Axing swept his arm outward, and the dozen men stationed at the front immediately lunged forward.

Chen Erpao stood completely unmoving. Amidst a continuous barrage of heavy thuds, a mere dozen seconds later, all ten Heavenly Star Gang members were sprawled across the ground.

Clearly astonished, Li Axing widened his eyes and swept his arm once more. The remaining dozens of men surged forward, while he himself swiftly drew a gleaming machete and slashed viciously toward the nearest guard.

Chen Erpao circulated his Nirvana Saint Internal Qi, causing it to surge through his entire body. The incoming blade struck him as if hitting solid steel and bounced fiercely backward. Throwing powerful punches and sweeping kicks, he moved as if stepping through an empty realm, with not a single opponent able to withstand even a single exchange.

After knocking down several men in rapid succession, he closed the distance in a flash, transforming his fists into claws as he lunged toward the man and woman standing beside Zhang Xiaoyu.

Startled, the man threw a ferocious punch. Chen Erpao slightly altered his stance, moving with the fierce agility of a dragon. With a swift motion, he wrapped around the man's arm, locked onto his wrist, and channeled a surging wave of internal force. A sickening crack of breaking bone echoed instantly, accompanied by a miserable shriek.

The woman reacted much faster. From nowhere, a sharp dagger appeared in her hand, and shifting her blade technique, she thrust it directly toward his groin.

Chen Erpao hooked his leg, delivering a violent impact directly against the wrist holding the dagger, jarring her entire frame. He then abruptly altered his kick, snapping his leg straight out to deliver a fierce blow to her left breast.

"Damn, there's no bounce to it at all. It was already flat enough to begin with, and after that kick, I'm afraid there's nothing left."

Struck by excruciating pain in her chest, the woman might otherwise have struggled back to his feet; but upon hearing those words, her face turned deathly pale. After coughing up a mouthful of blood, she promptly passed out cold.