165: Chapter 165 The Boning Knife Massacre

Zhou Sui's facial muscles twitched uncontrollably.

The twitching wasn't from anger, but a stress response buried deep beneath her skin for a long time, spiraling out of control after being forcibly exposed.

The blade of the Butterfly Knife slipped between her fingers, the edge grazing the base of her index finger and cutting a thin line of blood.

She was completely oblivious, or perhaps simply had no time to worry about such a superficial wound.

Jiang Feng didn't give her any room to recover her senses.

"Autumn, 2019. A home invasion robbery."

"A single boning knife. An entire family slaughtered."

"A family of five. Not a single survivor."

Gasps echoed across the square, one after another, faint yet stifled—the sound of dozens of people inhaling simultaneously, afraid to make too much noise.

Jiang Feng raised his right hand, his index finger tracing the air toward Zhou Sui before pointing vaguely at the three people behind her in turn.

A skinny guy with dyed yellow hair, a short, stout man in a black baseball cap, and a man with a buzz cut wearing camouflage pants.

"Those three are your accomplices."

Withdrawing his finger, Jiang Feng stuffed his hands back into his pockets.

"You're no 'Mutual Aid Society'."

"This place is just a gutter for you to hide from the Ministry of Public Security's wanted notices."

The weight of those words was even heavier than the string of numbers from before.

An uproar erupted among the crowd in the back rows of the Mutual Aid Society.

A fat man in a blue jacket took a large step back, his heel landing on a woman's foot behind him; the woman didn't even stop to cry out in pain, shrinking back herself.

The expressions of several older townsfolk shifted from confusion to sheer terror.

They turned to look at Zhou Sui, then at the three people behind her, then back at Jiang Feng.

After looking back and forth three times, their faces grew paler with each turn.

Zhou Sui gritted her teeth, pointing her Butterfly Knife at Jiang Feng.

"You're fucking slandering me."

Her voice was hoarse, her confidence far weaker than it had been ten seconds ago.

Jiang Feng tilted his head, looking at her with the same gaze he'd used for the thugs eating pork at the entrance of the Supply and Marketing Cooperative.

"Slander?"

He pulled his right hand from his pocket and slowly traced a circle in the air with his index finger.

"There are fifty or sixty of you in the Mutual Aid Society. When I used divination to check your backgrounds, the most I found was that you and your three accomplices have blood on your hands."

"The rest of them—some ran away from home after a fight, some were kidnapped by human traffickers and got lost after escaping into the mountains, others wandered in while exploring."

"They're all sorts of people, but they have one thing in common."

Jiang Feng lowered his voice slightly, his speaking pace slowing down as well.

"They all thought you, Zhou Sui, were a good person."

"Distributing food, assigning manpower, organizing a team—waving the banner of mutual aid and love."

"They're grateful to you, they respect you, and they listen to you."

"But from start to finish, you've just been using them as meat shields."

These words weren't meant for Zhou Sui.

They were meant for the fifty-plus ordinary people behind her.

The effect was immediate.

A young girl in her early twenties in the back row dropped the half-brick in her hand, turned, and walked out of the crowd, her walk turning into a run after three steps.

The iron chain in the blue-jacketed fat man's hand clattered onto the broken bricks. He crouched down, clutching his head and muttering something too low to be heard.

The Crew-cut Young Man who had encountered Jiang Feng at the Supply and Marketing Cooperative entrance was now standing in the middle of the Mutual Aid Society crowd, his face flushed bright red.

He squeezed forward two steps, leaning half his body out from the gap in the crowd, and began shouting at the back of Zhou Sui's head.

"You murderer! You used us as shields!"

That shout was like a ladle of cold water poured into a pot of boiling oil.

The crowd in the back exploded.

"A murderer? She's a murderer?"

"No wonder she stopped us from leaving, saying it's dangerous outside!"

"I've been eating expired instant noodles here for over six months, and you're telling me it's because she was afraid of getting caught?"

The shouts surged forward in wave after wave, growing louder and denser.

The crowd's dense formation began to loosen, like a wall hollowed out by termites, collapsing from within.

The machetes and steel pipes that had been pointed at Jiang Feng all turned in unison within a dozen seconds.

The blades pointed at Zhou Sui, and the pipes at her three accomplices.

Zhou Sui took a step back, her back bumping into the chest of the skinny guy with yellow hair.

The skinny guy's eyes were wide with terror, his lips trembling, unable to form a complete sentence.

The stout man in the baseball cap was already looking around for an escape route, but people were everywhere; they were being surrounded by the very people they once protected, trapped like a drum.

"Don't listen to his bullshit!"

Zhou Sui let out a roar, her vocal cords strained to the limit, her voice becoming shrill and cracked.

"Kill him!"

No one answered. No one moved.

The fifty-plus people stood their ground; not a single foot moved half a step toward Jiang Feng.

However, two pairs of feet did move toward Zhou Sui.

The Crew-cut Young Man and a burly man carrying a steel pipe charged directly into the inner circle of Zhou Sui and her three accomplices.

The burly man slammed his steel pipe onto the skinny guy's shoulder. The skinny guy let out a scream and collapsed to the side.

The man in the baseball cap dodged left, only to be tackled by three or four people from behind, his face pressed into the mud as they pinned his arms.

The buzz-cut man in camo pants turned to run but was tripped after two steps, falling onto a pile of broken bricks and cutting his chin.

Zhou Sui swung her Butterfly Knife, trying to cut a path out.

The blade flashed in the air, but before it could descend, two steel pipes slammed into her back from both sides.

The dull thuds were extremely heavy.

Zhou Sui lunged forward, her knees hitting the ground. The Butterfly Knife flew from her hand and plunged into a puddle of mud two meters away.

The Crew-cut Young Man stepped on Zhou Sui's forearm, bent down to pick up the Butterfly Knife, and threw it far away into the rock pile near the abandoned well.

Dozens of people surrounded the four, the sounds of shoving, tearing, and cursing blending into a chaotic mess.

In just a moment, Zhou Sui and her three accomplices were all pinned into the mud.

Zhou Sui lay in the mud, her hair disheveled and covering half her face. A trickle of blood mixed with muddy water ran from the corner of her mouth. Her eyes were frighteningly red as she glared hatefully toward Jiang Feng.

Jiang Feng didn't look at her.

He stood on the bluestone slab, his left hand resting on the outline of the foil-sealed bag in his pocket, while his right hand slowly brushed mud spots off his pant leg.

The largest faction had collapsed from within by his own hand with a single divination.

[Ding! Effective Divinations: 1/3]

Jiang Feng withdrew his gaze from the rowdy crowd and turned in another direction.

To the left.

Gu Yuanshan and his eleven gun barrels.

The Scientific Expedition Team's two-row combat formation remained intact, muzzles pointed at the ground. The veterans' faces were filled with a gravity they were struggling to suppress.

Gu Yuanshan stood at the front of the line, hands behind his back, his spine perfectly straight.

His gaze shifted from the pinned Zhou Sui on the ground to Jiang Feng's face.

Their eyes met under the gray sky.

Gu Yuanshan didn't speak.

But the fingers of his right hand, hidden behind his back, lightly tapped his left wrist twice.

It was a signal only a soldier would recognize.

Full alert.

Jiang Feng saw it.

His lips twitched—not a smile, but more like a sigh in his heart.

Xun Bai sat on the grand tutor's chair, hands pressing down on the armrests. His cloudy old eyes moved from Jiang Feng to Gu Yuanshan, then back again.

The Thin-faced Disciple leaned in and whispered something into his master's ear. Xun Bai didn't respond, simply leaning back against the chair.

The layout of the square had been reshaped within these few minutes.

The three factions had become two.

And Jiang Feng's index finger was already slowly rising.

"The next divination... I choose you!"