Chapter 19 – The Rainy Alley

Before he could get home, the rain started to fall.

As soon as a couple of drops hit his face, Lu Yuan knew he was in trouble.

Sure enough, within seconds, the rain turned fierce.

“Whoosh•”

Huge raindrops came crashing down from the sky, as if someone was pouring buckets of water in the middle of the night.

Lu Yuan quickly ran under the awning of a roadside shop, shaking the water from his hair, and continued walking home along the narrow shelter.

After the heavy rain began, there were even fewer people on the street.

Occasionally, he could see one or two office workers who had stayed late, clutching their laptop bags and sprinting down the road.

Electric scooters and cars with orange headlights sped past Lu Yuan through the rain.

Suddenly, a minivan stopped at an alley entrance ahead of Lu Yuan.

He glanced over casually as he walked.

The minivan’s door opened, and four or five men in black short-sleeved shirts jumped out. Two of them seemed to be carrying something.

It was wrapped in black oilcloth, and Lu Yuan had no idea what it was.

After getting out of the van, two people quickly emerged from the alley to meet them.

The two groups met and immediately walked into the alley, leaving behind a young man in his twenties with dyed yellow hair, smoking a cigarette at the alley entrance.

The rain was pouring down.

Lu Yuan couldn’t understand why the young man chose to smoke in the heavy rain.

“Can he even light it?” Lu Yuan muttered to himself.

As he passed by the young man, the latter seemed to glare at him and muttered a few curses under his breath.

The young man threw the cigarette on the ground and turned to walk into the alley as well.

Lu Yuan walked another few dozen meters and was about to cross the road.

He looked at the flashing red light across the street, then absentmindedly glanced back at the alley entrance he had just passed.

“Three”

“Two”

“One.”

The red light turned green.

Lu Yuan stepped onto the crosswalk.

Even with his hand shielding his head, rainwater quickly dripped down from his hair.

He squinted, carefully avoiding the puddles on the road.

Halfway across, Lu Yuan stopped.

Lu Yuan stared at the little green figure on the traffic signal for a moment, something within him suddenly triggered. He abruptly turned around and sprinted back the way he came.

“Hopefully… I’m just overthinking this.”

Lu Yuan ran to the alley entrance where the minivan was parked and peered inside.

The heavy rain blurred his vision, and the alley was pitch black.

There wasn’t a single light.

This was one of the oldest parts of the city, with many houses still in their original rural state, hardly anyone lived here anymore.

Lu Yuan took a couple of steps into the alley.

Suddenly, he crouched down and picked up a pink hairpin from the waterlogged ground.

The hairpin looked very new, the kind that a senior high school girl would wear.

The more Lu Yuan looked at it, the more familiar it seemed.

His mind flashed through some fragmented images like a movie reel.

“Recently, our city has seen multiple cases of missing persons. The public security bureau has established a special investigation team.”

“Lu Hui, female, age 28, last seen wearing a white top. If you have any information, please call the following number. A substantial reward will be offered!”

“Lu Yuan, can we go back to class together? I want to compare the answers to yesterday afternoon’s mathematics test with you.”

“Who do you think you are, you little brat! Get lost!”

“Crack”

A flash of lightning suddenly illuminated everything in front of him.

Lu Yuan immediately connected all the clues in his mind.

“Could the missing persons case be a kidnapping involving Ling Yue?!”

He instinctively reached for his phone, but a faint whistling sound mixed with the heavy rain approached rapidly.

“Bang!”

A rusty steel pipe struck the concrete ground with a resounding thud.

Lu Yuan was half-crouched on the ground, his clothes soaked with mud from his rolling escape, making him look quite disheveled.

“Well, would you look at that? You actually dodged it?”

The blond youth holding the steel pipe looked at Lu Yuan with a surprised expression, the silver earring in his left ear glinting in the lightning’s afterglow.

Lu Yuan quickly stood up, his legs tensed slightly, ready to charge at the blond youth.

But in the next second, he forcibly stopped himself, spun around, and sprinted out of the alley.

The adult soul within him told him that in such situations, the best course of action was to first escape danger and then call the police.

Before Lu Yuan could run out of the alley, the minivan at the alley entrance suddenly lit up with two orange headlights, made a sharp turn, and charged into the alley.

“Vroom—”

The engine roared, and the vehicle blocked the narrow alley completely, its headlights glaring into Lu Yuan’s eyes, forcing him to turn his face slightly away.

Then he saw the minivan’s door open, and a middle-aged man of average build and ordinary appearance stepped out expressionlessly.

“Damn it!”

Only then did Lu Yuan realize that there had been someone in the minivan all along.

All his earlier hesitation, his return to the alley, and everything he did inside had been observed clearly by this man.

“Ha—”

Lu Yuan heard a chuckle, and then the sound of a stick slicing through the air came from behind him again.

He dodged to the side with all his might. As he spun around, he caught sight of a figure behind him and immediately launched a flying kick at the blond youth holding the steel pipe.

“Bang!”

The kick landed solidly.

The blond youth was sent flying three or four meters away, stumbling into the wall before collapsing to the ground.

The steel pipe clattered to the ground.

“This kid knows martial arts!”

The blond youth shouted, clutching his chest.

The middle-aged man blocking the alley entrance’s face changed slightly and charged at Lu Yuan.

Lu Yuan gripped the hairpin tightly in his left hand, his cheeks burning, feeling as if his blood was boiling.

In two lifetimes, this was his first real fight.

Basic fist technique, basic leg techniques, basic footwork, basic grappling.

Jab, left hook punch, right roundhouse kick, forward slide step.

All the martial arts techniques he had painstakingly practiced flashed chaotically through his mind, but he couldn’t grasp any of them.

He could only follow his instincts, lower his body slightly, and throw a straight punch at the man’s face.

His fist pierced through the heavy rain, but before it could land, the middle-aged man casually swatted it aside.

The man then followed with a punch aimed at Lu Yuan’s neck.

Lu Yuan had to twist his body, but his shoulder took a hit.

The two of them quickly tangled together, their fists and feet clashing with “pah-pah” sounds amidst the heavy rain.

This was completely different from sparring with Cheng Peng.

Without any protective gear, their punches landed solidly on each other’s bodies.

But with his adrenaline surging and the support of ten constitution points, Lu Yuan barely felt any pain.

The middle-aged man was clearly trained as well, with speed and strength far surpassing Lu Yuan’s.

In terms of combat experience, Lu Yuan was at an even greater disadvantage.

Almost as soon as they clashed, Lu Yuan found himself on the losing end, forced into a defensive position, relying solely on sheer willpower to hold his ground.

“Splash, splash—”

Suddenly, the sound of splashing footsteps came from behind him.

Lu Yuan threw a punch to break the middle-aged man’s attack, quickly pressing his body against the wall, then turned his head to look behind him.

He saw five or six figures in raincoats approaching, all wielding weapons, including sticks and shiny watermelon knives.

The blond youth, whom he had kicked away earlier, had also gotten back up.

He was now following these people, his eyes filled with a viciousness akin to stray dogs fighting over scraps.

“Hei-Ge!”

Someone shouted.

The middle-aged man who had been fighting Lu Yuan at the alley entrance smiled and responded in a dialect, glancing at Lu Yuan with a mocking look in his eyes from time to time.

Lu Yuan watched as the two groups converged, about to meet.

In the pouring rain, the tall cement walls of the alley seemed to merge with the dark sky.

A sense of inexplicable fear and despair welled up from within him.

Lu Yuan began to panic.

He felt as if he could hear his own heart pounding in his chest.

The raindrops hitting his face and body brought a chilling sensation.

“Huff—huff—”

His breathing grew increasingly heavy.

At the moment he was about to reach a breaking point,

“Bang!”

Lu Yuan slammed his fist into the wall behind him and lunged at the nearest middle-aged man like a wild beast.

In the heavy rain, the charging young man clenched his teeth, his handsome face twisted with exertion.

A fierce determination burned in his eyes.

No one saw it.

A faint blue virtual screen rapidly appeared.

On the screen.

Two available free attribute points vanished instantly, and the strength points attribute changed.

From the original 9, it quietly became 11!