Bored.
Living was boring.
To him, living was simply because he hadn’t died yet, so he might as well keep going.
A person could die at any moment in this world.
That was him—bored, utterly empty, his eighteen-year-old self unable to find any meaning in existence.
And before this, Shen Sixing had never imagined that fate would quietly gift him something, nor that he would have to give something back in return.
...
The winter weather was unusually cold. Wind funneled in from the mouth of the alley, scraping against faces.
Shen Yi had followed her cheap foster parents from place to place, city to city—packing up in the dead of night and leaving at dawn, like a family of startled rats.
Finally, they temporarily settled somewhere.
It looked like an old urban district, but it was actually a scattered hub for an underground organization. Many households were quietly passing messages and handling tasks.
There were other kids around her age in the neighborhood, all adopted as cover, mostly locked in a single room.
But Shen Yi wasn’t locked up with them.
Her foster mother thought she was well-behaved, so she was allowed to stay in the corner of the living room.
Having followed these two foster parents across many places, Shen Yi had now been in this time period for two months.
Her crazy foster parents seemed to have finally settled down, no longer packing their bags at the slightest sign of trouble.
“This bunch is chasing us like mad dogs. Who’s in charge?” the man asked, his voice low, raspy from smoking.
“The Shen family’s heir, probably. They handed this mess to a brat who just turned eighteen,” the woman sneered, her tone dismissive but her voice trembling at the end. “And damn if that kid doesn’t have a heart black as coal.”
Of course, they had investigated thoroughly before daring to hit the Shen family’s arms depot.
Logically, the Shen family’s business was spread too wide. The arms depot explosion, while a heavy loss, was just a drop in the bucket for them.
It shouldn’t have provoked such a relentless pursuit.
But they were unlucky—their timing coincided with the Shen family using this incident as a training exercise for their heir.
That young man was clearly ruthless. In less than two months, he had systematically dismantled the organizations connected to the members involved, tightening the net of pursuit until they could only flee night after night, hiding and running, until they finally caught their breath at their hideout in this old district.
Shen Yi listened as the two started rehashing various operations, feeling bored out of her mind. She hung her head, picking at a loose thread on her sleeve.
This time, she caught something more interesting.
The Shen family.
So they had bombed the Shen family’s arms depot.
Shen Yi tilted her head. Based on her knowledge of her family, escaping their pursuit was basically impossible for these people.
The only difference was whether they’d die sooner or later.
As her father once said, they were the underworld, not a charity. Anyone could come and provoke them—but at their own peril.
An eye for an eye was the most basic rule of the underground.
These people had gambled on the fact that the Shen family’s enterprises were too vast, their business chains too tangled, for one single incident to matter.
But they had run straight into Shen Sixing.
This was the first task thrown at him to sharpen his skills. That guy, no matter how lazy or indifferent, couldn’t let these people off. After all, Shen Sixing had to prove his worth.
Shen Yi easily pieced together the logic and realized something.
—She had to escape too.
Shen Yi didn’t think for a second that the Shen family’s underworld forces, when they stormed in to wipe out the organization, would spare the children. They’d just think, “This child must not be left alive.”
Eliminating the roots was the simplest approach.
Shen Yi shivered.
She wanted to run, but this place was a stronghold for the organization. An eight-year-old like her couldn’t get out on her own.
Killing her foster parents and escaping would only lead to her death.
She’d have to play it by ear when the time came.
Huddled in the corner, her chin resting on her knees, she stared at the frost patterns on the window glass and thought quietly:
What if, what if her father was a decent, good person when he was young?
She thought for a moment, then sighed.
Yeah, no chance. Her father could never have been a good person at his core.
...
Shen Sixing groaned as he hung up on a call from his subordinate and tossed his phone onto the desk.
He stood up, grabbed a black trench coat from the back of his chair, and draped it over his shoulders, the hem swaying at his side.
Two months in, Shen Sixing was completely worn out by this so-called task.
It wasn’t that the job was hard, but he had no one competent around him.
Every deployment had to be pushed forward by him personally, while his subordinates knelt before him with their heads bowed, waiting for him to speak.
Like a flock of chicks waiting to be fed, not even knowing which way to open their mouths without direction.
He toyed with the gun in his hand, his gaze sweeping over those trembling subordinates kneeling on the ground. He couldn’t even muster his usual pretense of politeness.
To him, any subordinate or even friend was disposable.
Keep them if they’re useful, discard them if they’re not, and get rid of them if they get in the way.
Being a subordinate of Shen Sixing was a high-risk job if you weren’t smart enough—one wrong step and you’d die without knowing how.
“Mr. Shen, it’s right here,” a subordinate stepped forward, clutching a tablet displaying a location map and internal structural scans. “The signal ultimately pinpointed this area. We’ve already gotten a good read on the internal situation.”
He spoke quickly, desperate to prove his usefulness, afraid of being slotted into the “to be eliminated” list if he hesitated.
“I believe we can finish the mission quickly today. We just need to send a few people in first to scope things out.”
Shen Sixing glanced sideways at him.
“Then you go in. Prove yourself to me.”
The subordinate’s face turned pale instantly.
Who knew how many guns were aimed from those windows deep in the alley? One step in and he’d be riddled with bullets.
No one dared to go in.
The air froze for a few seconds.
The man stood rigid, his lips twitching without a sound, until his knees gave out and he dropped to the ground.
“...Mr. Shen.”
Shen Sixing watched him, let out a soft laugh, and couldn’t be bothered to make an example of him, generously letting him off.
The young man stepped forward, unhurried, walking on the wet brick pavement, his footsteps echoing.
