Chapter 79

Ye Xiao soon arrived where Ding Jinbo and the others were; it had been less than half an hour since he'd found Shao Ping.
After confirming everything was in order, and most importantly getting Bai Cheng's affirmative reply, he contacted Ding Jinbo: "I'm here."
It was in a building on the west side of the base, only four stories high and looking shabby; the surrounding houses rose and fell in a cramped jumble. It wasn't the worst neighborhood, but hardly a good one either.
They'd picked this place partly because of how the old base's turf was divided: Lu Jianping had mainly held the east, Li Qun the west. Now Li Qun was under Lu Jianping's control; his forces had been absorbed or disbanded. It'd only been a day, so things here were still in disarray.
Ding Jinbo wanted that chaos, and this spot was close to the base wall. They'd originally planned to seize Lin Tantan and just scale the wall and leave, it's not that high, anyway.
Of course, there was no need to climb the wall now. If all went well they could walk out of the base with their heads held high, carrying a load of important supplies and Ye Xiao himself. If things went smoothly they'd no longer have to endure those people in the capital; they could abandon the mission and make do with what they'd taken.
The thought fired Ding up, but the more excited he was the more cautious he became, he worried Ye Xiao might pull something.
So Ding Jinbo spread his men inside and out, watching everything. When Ye Xiao arrived, he was fully exposed to their gaze.
Sure enough, there was only one man.
Ding Jinbo said over the comms to Ye Xiao, "Walk up slowly, stop, stand there and don't move."
Ye Xiao obediently stood still. He was still over thirty meters from the building; nearby residents stared, and passersby couldn't help but cast him extra glances.
Ye Xiao usually operated on the east side of the base; this was his first time here. People might have heard his name but hadn't really seen him, so they didn't know who he was. From his clothing, looks, and bearing he simply didn't belong in such a messy place.
And now he just stood there.
Two short-haired women, neatly dressed and bearing small wounds, clearly survivors scraping by on their own, exchanged a look and considered approaching him.
Ye held the comm and looked up at the building. "I want to see Ming Ze," he said.
Ding Jinbo chuckled, "Don't worry, I'll let you see him. But Captain Ye, your wind ability is said to be too strong, Zhou Yan died at your hands. Well, he had it coming, but I do admit I'm wary of you. Letting you upstairs like this makes me a little uneasy."
Ye Xiao frowned. "I keep my word."
"Words are easy," Ding said. "Captain Ye, show some sincerity, why don't you maim one of your arms first?"
Ye Xiao raised an eyebrow. "Be clear: Ming Ze doesn't hold that much value for me. Of course it's better if he lives, but if your demands are too many and too troublesome, then if he dies, he dies."
Ding Jinbo's face darkened. From his concealed spot upstairs he watched Ye Xiao; even under threat he remained calm and composed, as if he were the one running the show.
Thinking of the setbacks since entering the base, irritation flared. "If that's how it is, then there's nothing to discuss. Captain Ye, you have to understand our concerns, you simply don't fit the profile of a proper hostage."
Ye Xiao understood that too. He lowered his eyes and, after a moment, sighed as if reluctantly conceding: "Fine. I'll stand here and let you attack me three times. How much you can impair my mobility is up to you. No matter the result, I'll go upstairs to trade for Ming Ze, and then you leave, no more complications."
Ding Jinbo laughed. His words came easy, but he was clearly desperate to keep Ming Ze. "Captain Ye really does value Lin Tantan, huh, willing to give in like this. Since you're so sincere, it's settled."
He rubbed his hands, ready to put on a show for Ye Xiao.
Ye Xiao smiled faintly too. The self-inflicted-suffering act, this was exactly what he wanted. Risking himself to rescue the woman he liked's beloved, willingly taking blows he could have handled head-on but instead enduring them to avoid collateral damage, touching, right?
It was cheesy, but as long as she had him in her heart, he didn't believe she wouldn't be moved.
How far to take the martyr act naturally depended on how capable he was.
He looked up at the fourth floor. Come on, show me your psychic attack, and while we're at it, let's see what level this first wave of mercenaries is.
The two women hesitated for a moment, then decided to go up and strike up a conversation. As they moved closer his face looked even more handsome, truly a high-quality man.
They were smiling to greet him when the handsome, unusually poised man suddenly went pale. He took three stumbling steps back, his tall frame wavering, then dropped to one knee, braced a hand on the ground, and with a choking sound spat out a mouthful of blood.
…
After Ye Xiao left, Lin Tantan couldn't muster any energy for anything; she kept drifting off. Luckily she had nothing pressing to do, so she sat in the living room watching cartoons on TV, absently pinching a mutated mouse toy in her hand as her mind wandered far away.
A sharp screech of brakes came from outside, followed by hurried footsteps. Bai Cheng rushed in, his face urgent.
Lin Tantan was jolted and sprang to her feet. Before she could ask, Bai Cheng blurted, "Ye Xiao's in trouble!"
Hearing those words, Lin Tantan felt her heart stop for a full two seconds; only when a choking ache pressed at her chest did she snap back, her face draining pale. "What happened? Is he hurt again? Where is he?"
If Bai Cheng was this distraught and could plainly say "in trouble," how serious must it be?
Lin Tantan could hardly breathe and grabbed Bai Cheng's hand.
Bai Cheng's hand… nearly got crushed.
He was surprised by her strength; the expression he'd managed to put on almost dissolved under the squeeze. Fortunately his acting was almost as good as Ye Xiao's, and he was genuinely worried. "Come with me," he said. "We'll talk in the car."
"Then let's go."
They piled into the car and sped off. Inside, Bai Cheng said, "About this… don't get ahead of yourself. Ye Xiao is okay for now, but…" He sighed, half performance, half real reluctance to say it.
Deceiving a girl, shameless enough, but Bai Cheng realized for the first time that Ye Xiao was even more shameless.
Lin Tantan was frantic. "Just tell me what happened!"
Bai Cheng said, "You were involved the whole time with Li Qun's matter yesterday, so you know the situation. Those men who haven't shown their faces claimed they were after Ye Xiao, but in reality they're most likely after you. Today they snatched Ming Ze to force you to go alone."
It was a lot to take in, and Lin Tantan understood most of it, but the part about kidnapping Ming Ze… she couldn't make sense of it. "They kidnapped Ming Ze to coerce me? What's that logic?"
Even though she wouldn't stand idle if Ming Ze were taken, that reasoning still seemed off, right?
Bai Cheng looked at her with meaning. "They say you like Ming Ze, that you wanted him for a boyfriend."
Lin Tantan: "…"
Lin Tantan: "I don't!"
"They planted a bug on Ming Ze and claimed they heard it themselves."
At last Lin Tantan connected the dots. So that's why Ming Ze had a bug on him this morning? But she had only made that one brief remark and immediately brushed it off, no lead-in, no follow-up, and they concluded she liked Ming Ze enough to risk going alone. Isn't that absurdly foolish?
These kidnappers are incompetent, aren't they?
But Bai Cheng quickly told her it wasn't just the kidnappers who were lacking; the boss this time wasn't much better.
Because not only did the kidnappers think Ming Ze was overwhelmingly important to her, Ye Xiao thought so too.
"…Ye Xiao intercepted them and learned about this. He was torn. He knew where they were; a direct assault could succeed, but it might endanger Ming Ze in their hands. I told him their target was you and suggested he ask your opinion. Ye Xiao said you're so kind and hate troubling others; telling you the whole truth would have only two outcomes: one, you'd force yourself to ignore Ming Ze’s danger and let us go in, if anything happened to Ming Ze you'd blame yourself forever. The second outcome would be you going alone, just as they want."
Bai Cheng sighed. "They don't know the number of people or their methods. How could he let you take that risk? So he tried to devise a foolproof plan."
Lin Tantan felt her panic rising. "And then?"
Bai Cheng roughly recounted the terms Ye Xiao and Ding Jinbo had agreed on. Lin Tantan couldn't believe it. "He'll go himself as the hostage? How could he do that? He has the strength, if there were another plan that would be one thing, but if he really intends to be the hostage, they'll certainly take measures to ensure he won't resist!"
"I said the same, but… he insisted he could handle it. He said it's someone you care about, and no matter what he must bring him back without a scratch."
Lin Tantan froze.
So that's why he asked those questions, whether she truly had no feelings for him, whether the type she liked was someone like Ming Ze.
So that was it.
Caught in a dilemma, hesitating over whether to take that risk himself, he came to ascertain her feelings.
He first asked if she really had no feelings for him; she said she didn't, dashing his hopes and chilling his heart.
Then he asked if she liked someone like Ming Ze; she didn't deny it, which he took as confirmation and it steeled his resolve.
Would he rather take Ming Ze's place? Just because he needed to be certain she liked Ming Ze, just because he feared she might risk herself, he took that danger on for her?
How could he be so… so…
A tightness clogged Lin Tantan's chest. She didn't know whether to call him foolish or single-minded; mostly she wanted to scold herself, why had she tacitly agreed? Why deceive him?
Although she'd be upset if something happened to Ming Ze, and guilty if it was because of her, selfishly she knew a hundred Ming Zes weren't worth a single finger of Ye Xiao's.
Her eyes misted and she sniffed. "And now?"
Bai Cheng watched her reaction and cursed inwardly. Ye Xiao, even if this plan succeeds in the end, have you thought about the consequences?
When the truth comes out, it's going to be explosive.
It wasn't a total deception, Ye Xiao had indeed done what needed to be done and taken the necessary risks. The only thing was to have him plainly announce his sacrifice at the right moment, and to play it up, making himself seem ever more pitiable.
Bai Cheng worried and worried, and finally decided he'd keep his distance from the two of them as soon as this was over, better to stay out of sight for a while and avoid being innocently dragged in.
Bai Cheng sighed. "A Xiao has already gone in and told us not to interfere. He's afraid that if the other side gets angry they'll hurt Ming Ze, our first priority is to make sure Ming Ze gets away safely. He said he'd act according to the situation, but if the enemy has prepared to sit back and wait, how could he possibly carry out his plan calmly? I couldn't convince him, so I came to you... On the way here I even heard they'd demand A Xiao cripple one arm before they'd let him upstairs. This is... Tantan, I can't do anything about it either. Ye Xiao is our backbone; he can't be harmed. And that head can't be allowed to open up, if someone can be randomly grabbed and used to control him, once word gets out it would be far too easy for the enemy to get at him."
Lin Tantan gritted her teeth. "I'll try to talk him out of it, we'll find another way. Can you get in touch with him now?"
Bai Cheng shook his head. "He won't accept contact. But there are a lot of people nearby; I had someone slip in to keep an eye on him and report any movement." As he spoke, his radio crackled and a voice came through: "Brother Bai, Captain Ye is in trouble."
"What's going on?"
"Ah, it's hard to explain, see for yourself."
Then Bai Cheng opened a laptop in the car and pulled up a feed, clearly a clandestine recording from the scene, and the man in the footage was, of course, Ye Xiao.
The equipment looked poor and the background was noisy, but Ye Xiao's words into his communicator, saying he'd allow three attacks, were still audible. After that he stood there like a man offering his neck to the blade, calm as if waiting for something. Lin Tantan's fingers were nearly raw from clenching; then the feed showed Ye Xiao suddenly go pale, stagger back, and cough up blood.
She stared at the screen with eyes rimmed in red, as if she could crawl right into the picture to protect him, or yank him out by force.
Bai Cheng felt exactly the opposite.
He had been genuinely worried about Ye Xiao, but after watching the footage he relaxed. They'd known each other for years, if he couldn't tell that the blood was forced out by Ye Xiao himself, he'd gouge out his own eyes. Ye Xiao even had the leisure to add a bit of blood to heighten the melodrama; this was all part of the act. Handling it would be easy.
Hmm, even that kneeling pose had been deliberately adjusted, hadn't it? Pretty well staged.
He glanced at Lin Tantan, clenching her teeth in ignorant anguish, and silently turned away, afraid he'd crack and give the ruse away.
…
Back at the scene, Ding Jinbo had unleashed his psychic assault at ninety percent of his strength.
His mental power was formidable. Against non-ability users he could implant his presence in another's mind and then trigger an eruption from a distance, causing real damage. Li Qun's coma had been caused by brain tissue injury from such a psychic outburst.
He had experimented many times on the unaware survivors around him. Some suffered irreversible brain damage, constant headaches, memory loss, or mental fog; some never woke up. Others would recover after sleeping it off. Reactions varied from person to person.
And yet, even so, it was powerful enough, what other ability could do this?
Against other ability users, however, his influence lost some of its edge, he couldn't stealthily probe their minds or leave his presence lingering indefinitely. So with Shao Ping he couldn't simply think him to death from afar without meeting him; unfortunately Shao Ping was inexperienced and cowardly, and so he fell for it easily.
Still, a full strike from him could kill or seriously injure someone. He worried about actually killing Ye Xiao and causing an uncontrollable mess, so he dared not use his full ability.
What he didn't know was that Ye Xiao was a master of exploiting weaknesses. Before he killed Zhou Yan, Ye Xiao had taken the time to study Zhou Yan's power.
Zhou Yan's ability differed from Ding Jinbo's. Though both were psychic, Zhou specialized in corruption, undermining the mind and causing people to lose themselves. It was a severe test of will, and Ye Xiao repeatedly let himself fall into that befuddlement and then fought his way back to clarity.
The process was agonizing. Ye Xiao harbored memories he dared not touch; what Zhou Yan's power did to others was merely an irritant, but for him it was a torment of the soul. Still, he kept half his wits about him and searched for ways to break such psychic attacks, and eventually he found one.
Ding Jinbo's mental strikes were sharp and swift, like a cold arrow, but compared to the soul‑torturing sort they were child's play.
Ye Xiao endured it completely, but to fool Ding Jinbo and for an unspeakable reason of his own, he put on an especially pitiful show: he coughed up blood, staggered as if dizzy, and couldn't even stand.
The two women who'd tried to flirt with him gasped and hurried away, and the bystanders skirted him at a distance, the scene looked terrifyingly real.
Ding Jinbo fell for it without suspicion, but that wasn't enough; his caution toward Ye Xiao ran deep. So he had Zhou Hong deliver a second strike.
Zhou Hong's power was telekinetic control of objects, also strong. She manipulated dozens of small blades and unleashed a rain of knives on Ye Xiao.
Countless blades flashed coldly as they came. Just as Ye Xiao had finally managed to stand, they reached him and sliced through every major joint.
With a series of thin, whistling slashes the fabric tore and flesh split; fine jets of blood mixed with a chilling gleam and spattered everywhere. Ye Xiao tilted his head slightly, then, as if unable to endure so many blades at once, stumbled back several steps and crashed into a wall.
It looked as if his joints had truly been damaged; the once‑erect, imposing figure slumped weakly against the wall, barely holding himself up. Multiple wounds bled freely, quickly soaking the shredded clothing.
His breath was heavy. He slowly turned his head, his gaze sharp and dark as if carved from ice. Two small streaks of blood appeared beneath the corner of his left eye, beads forming and then suddenly sliding down.
If he hadn't dodged in time, he might have lost an eye.
Seeing this, Lin Tantan cried out, "Aaaah!!!" She couldn't hold the low roar in, sprang up so abruptly she slammed into the car roof without noticing and nearly grabbed the driver's throat. "Drive faster, faster, faster!"