Free Web NovelChapter 1161: Chapter 355: Assassin Prologue
Chapter 355: Assassin’s Prelude
During that period, Li Yan and the others were forced to adapt to death, to adapt to corpses. The first time they faced a corpse, each person had to kill alone with their own hands. In a situation where it was either you die or I perish, they went from helplessness to ferocity, to terror... Finally, with the opponent’s flesh and blood blurred, they themselves collapsed on the ground; it was their high school years when they first faced a corpse.
The first time undoubtedly left a psychological shadow on them, but no one gave them psychological treatment. Instead, during the second time, faced with group brawls and chaos, ultimately facing more severed limbs, more flesh and brain matter, their psychological shadows magnified, making the scene of their first kill pale in comparison.
By the time they were prepared to fake death to leave, they had seen countless corpses. Everyone in that environment already knew their fate: either survive another exam or die on the examination field. Once a person was dead, whether they were eaten by dogs, buried, or cremated meant nothing. So, they never cared about what happened to their fallen comrades.
Perhaps this was somewhat of a fantasy, a fantasy left to themselves. If they knew the outcome of their corpses after death, if it was good, it might be comforting. But if they knew they were fed to dogs or something, they would feel disgusted while still alive. Rather than that, it was better to know nothing at all.
Li Yan and the others only had a few days to plan, leaving little time to gather much data or information. The final result was that after Li Yan shot Guan Ziyi, he held on with resilience, waiting for the verdict of fate!
Before shooting Guan Ziyi, Li Yan was highly focused, as he had to ensure his hand didn’t tremble, making sure his bullet would have the intended effect—shooting to ’death’ but leaving a thread of life. He was under immense pressure, but after shooting his friend himself, watching him fall in front of him, Li Yan began to feel mentally scattered, dazed, unsure if what he did was right.
Was this sending him out of this Hell, or sending him to the real Hell?
After staying behind, how should he deal with himself?
After personally shooting his friend, Li Yan did not form more friendships and returned to the initial stage. Having friends and watching them die in front of him was a difficult thing.
After that exam, he did not know where Guan Ziyi and the other deceased bodies were transported to or how they were disposed of. In the days that followed, he worked harder, whether for his own survival or for the slim hope of reuniting with Guan Ziyi outside, he dared not relax in the slightest.
With each subsequent exam, fewer and fewer people remained. Li Yan himself was covered in scars, but each time he held on to the end.
Finally, after the last exam, he was the only one left...
Surviving alone at the end, Li Yan felt extremely lonely and uncomfortable. Starting with hundreds of people with him, after years of hellish training, he was the only one left.
It’s said countless bones pave the way for a general’s success!
The mastermind behind the scenes sacrificed hundreds to stand as a stepping stone for training an iron-blooded demigod.
The first encounter could not be considered a unique selection, but by this time, he was the only one, the only one who fought his way out by blood.
The mastermind never revealed himself publicly, so much so that Li Yan wasn’t sure if he ever encountered him initially.
After being the only one left, he got a period of complete rest, during which he was once unconscious for a time. When he woke up, his body had undergone a skin graft surgery, and all the scars left from those days were gone. What remained was a robust and strong body.
In fact, he didn’t appreciate this result. Those scars witnessed that period of time, each scar perhaps representing a brush with death, perhaps representing a life...
But subconsciously, he seemed to welcome this result. Because he didn’t want to recall those days, memories might be stored with interest, but if there were scars left on his body, it would remind him of them at any moment.
Then he returned to the normal world. What the mastermind provided him was also another phase of training. It was no longer just assassin-related training, but teaching various social etiquettes in modern society, international knowledge, common phrases from major language systems, etc. For instance, although he had learned to drive during those years and honed his skills in adverse environments, he had no concept of various luxury cars, which needed to be supplemented by recognizing and contacting various car series and brands.
The modern assassin is no longer in the era of deathly assassins or ninja-like figures; more disguise is needed. Completing high-paid tasks naturally means the targets are significant figures, whether politicians, tycoons, or celebrities. In modern society, these are all successful people of the upper echelon. If he were a reclusive bumpkin, he would have no chance at all to get close.
They invested so much to cultivate such a super-assassin; how could they use him for one or two low-end assassinations? So, Li Yan’s second stage of training involved large amounts of cram-style education, packaging him into a versatile individual capable of conversing freely with presidents, adeptly interacting with female celebrities, and attending high society banquets like a nobleman.
Because of this, in terms of education, he hadn’t completed high school, but apart from academic formulas and the like, his knowledge wasn’t lacking. Even with a fake diploma in the Paradise Group, no one could spot it. He quickly adapted when encountering and learning many things.
...
After Li Yan had his own freedom, the first thing he did was to apply for an email account that only Guan Ziyi knew about, then sent an email to the account Guan Ziyi once mentioned.
Unfortunately, there was never a response. That email account became a private email he kept checking from time to time. He feared being discovered by the mastermind, especially after knowing the mastermind had many people below him, and he also encountered the highly skilled Guan Ziyi in computers. To avoid looking too special and being targeted, he registered several adult websites using that email, disguising it as a privacy email for that kind of information.
Guan Ziyi remained silent. By the time Li Yan received a message from Guan Ziyi through that email, a long time had passed. By then he had already made a name in the Assassin Realm, was referred to as the King of Assassins, and had switched to using the code name King. He had also established ’them’, taking in and nurturing Yue Yao.
Even when he received the message, Li Yan dared not easily believe it was from Guan Ziyi. After all, it was through a computer; even if the email and secret language matched, there was no guarantee it wasn’t orchestrated by the mastermind.
At the same time, Guan Ziyi was also very cautious. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that their first meeting after years apart was handled with more care than transmitting intelligence. When they saw each other, both were very excited. Guan Ziyi didn’t go into details about how he escaped back then, and Li Yan didn’t pry. It was imaginable that it must have been an unbearable experience, just as he didn’t want to recall those difficult days, Guan Ziyi surely didn’t wish to recount it either.
Following the joy of reuniting, what remained was their hatred toward the mastermind of those years. Because they had been away from home for many years and couldn’t return in their current state. Li Yan was already an emerging figure, managing a group of assassins. Guan Ziyi, covered in scars—having not undergone cosmetic surgery or skin grafts, with even the wound from Li Yan’s gunshot remaining—returning home would surely worry his parents to death. Moreover, with their hands stained with blood, they had a self-loathing kind of inferiority, afraid of facing their parents.
This ignited their desire for revenge, not only for themselves but also for the hundreds of people involved back then. The deaths of those people, although only a small part was directly by their hands, wasn’t the entirety, yet everyone was already a collective. Killing one person, ten people, a hundred people made no difference.
It could also be said their desire to take revenge on the mastermind was partly for revenge, and partly for a sense of redemption! By shifting the blame onto the boss, killing the mastermind who orchestrated everything back then, avenging the deceased would alleviate their own guilt.
Back then, Guan Ziyi still couldn’t expose his identity, a fugitive in exile. Li Yan also didn’t have the capital to challenge the mastermind openly. So, both continued to endure; the environment was at least much better than the training camp. Having endured back then, unsurprisingly, they could endure now.
A gentleman avenges, even if it takes ten years...
In the subsequent days, Li Yan discovered that due to the brutal training, injuries, or killings he had undergone, he could control people’s ’Heart Demon’. This allowed him not only to emerge unscathed but also to kill invisibly. The fame of the code name King grew, ascending to an S-class assassin recognized in the industry, becoming the world’s number-one ranked assassin. He accumulated not only points and fame but also experience and income. Of course, he had also completed many target eliminations for the mastermind. ’They’ also trained other C-level, B-level, and later A-level assassin groups...
Yue Yao also matured, not becoming a beautiful assassin, but rather his right-hand woman, managing ’their’ organization with the title of Queen as the second leader, eventually becoming a more capable actual leader than the spiritual leader King.
Guan Ziyi emerged in some country, using "Qi", the pinyin of his Yun Country name, as his code name. Later, as he rose, the industry generally assumed it was derived from the Yun Country "Qi". Following Yun Country’s rise, the mysterious and untranslatable terms like "Qi" and "Dao" in East Continent culture also became popular in the Celestial Continent. For this "Qi", hardly anyone thought of it as a Yun Country person; even the mastermind probably wouldn’t suspect it to be someone presumed dead from the training camp... (To be continued. For the continuation, please visit www.qidian.com, where more Chapters await, support the author, and embrace legitimate reading!)
