Catch The Bad Guys (Arc 4)

"We won't be going to the east end of town to play," Igino sighed at the kid in front of him.

"Don't you know what the east end is like? It's a place filled with crooks and gangs and thieves and bad guys. You think we'll play there?" he asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Well..." Feng Yongrui thought of the appropriate answer.

"Are we going to play 'Catch the Bad Guys', then?" Feng Yongrui asked.

"'Catch the Bad Guys'? What kind of game is that?" Igino's interest was piqued.

Feng Yongrui's brain was working at lightning speed as he made up a random game.

"Well, you know. We're going to dress up as angels, and when we go to the bad guys' homes and knock on the doors one by one..."

"And then you catch them and beat them up?" Igino asked. "That sounds fun," he nodded in appreciation.

Feng Yongrui gulped and shook his head.

"No, that's not how it works. When they open the door and let you in, you can't catch them immediately. You still have to play..."

Feng Yongrui quickly explained that they would play a game with the "bad guys", and if the bad guys lost, they would be caught, and if the "bad guys" won, then they would be granted immunity.

When he finished explaining the game (that he just made), Igino shook his head disapprovingly.

"That kind of game is too childish. Rather than going around and around like that, it's better to kill them straight away, right?"

Feng Yongrui felt a chill creep up his spine and he swallowed his dissatisfaction. Right now, he was in an assassination guild... If he acted like he was afraid or uncomfortable with killing, then wouldn't he be "unqualified" as the guild's successor?

"But, if we kill them right away, isn't that too easy?" Feng Yongrui countered.

"Anyway, for a large guild like ours, killing people is definitely easy... But it would be better if it's entertaining, right?"

Igino nodded his head slowly.

"What you said makes sense."

Feng Yongrui breathed a sigh of relief. Anyway, Igino's interest gauge had risen to 29 out of 100. This was a good sign.

"Then let's do it," Igino declared.

Feng Yongrui looked at Igino questioningly.

"Do what?" he asked, feeling baffled.

Igino looked at him as if the answer was obvious.

"Let's play that game you mentioned. Anyway, those people that we're dealing with are up to no good, so killing them can be considered as doing a good deed."

Feng Yongrui: =_=

No, wait... that wasn't what he meant!

Feng Yongrui swallowed the words that were at the tip of his tongue and regretted his words. Well, you reap what you sow, right?

Igino did not wait for Feng Yongrui to say anything. He directly went to the guild's stables and picked out a dark black horse. Since Feng Yongrui hadn't learned how to ride a horse yet, he had to ride the horse with Igino.

The two of them rode the horse and finally stopped in front of a worn-out house. This was the east end of town. The entire place was smelly and dirty. The roads weren't as well-maintained as the ones in the middle of town.

Igino jumped down from the horse and helped Feng Yongrui get down.

"Where are we going?" Feng Yongrui asked. He was extremely curious about this.

"We're going to a guy's house," Igino said curtly.

Feng Yongrui waited for the man to elaborate further, but he didn't say anything.

"Whose house is it exactly?" Feng Yongrui asked again.

"A bad guy's house," Igino declared.

Feng Yongrui: "..."

That's it? He wasn't explaining about who this person was, why the Enigma Guild was targeting him, and so on??

"Uhh... let me guess. Is he a bad guy who stole some of our guild's stuff?" Feng Yongrui asked. "Or, is he from a rival guild who provoked us? Or maybe he's from some sort of gang and he made you upset, so you're going to retaliate against him?"

Igino continued walking without saying anything, so Feng Yongrui continued to make a list of what he considered as "bad people". However, Igino's responses were always the same -- silence.

In fact, Feng Yongrui was feeling rather desperate. When he was listing all those ideas, Igino's gauge was going lower and lower, finally settling on 25/100. Feng Yongrui felt like this was very depressing.

Was it because he wasn't interesting enough? Why was this person so hard to understand? Feng Yongrui wailed inside his heart.

Igino finally stopped in front of a small, ugly house. The house looked as if it had been made in better days, but then was beaten up by a group of gangsters, and then patched up awkwardly by a novice seamstress.

Igino lifted one foot and then paused. He turned to Feng Yongrui and opened his lips.

"When we go inside later, no matter what you see or hear, you have to be quiet, alright?"

Feng Yongrui nodded his head obediently, and Igino gave him a nod in satisfaction. He kicked open the door and Feng Yongrui saw the people who were inside the house.

There was an old man sitting on a wooden stool, looking at Igino with cold dark eyes. There was a cigarette held between the man's fingers, and when he opened his mouth a puff of smoke flew out casually.

Igino pulled up a chair and sat down opposite the man, and Feng Yongrui stood behind Igino without saying a word. Finally, the silence was broken by the old man.

"Heh, never thought I'd see ya' here, heheh," the old man chortled.

Igino narrowed his eyes and spoke.

"I learned a new game today. It's called 'Catch the Bad Guys'," he said as-a-matter-of-factly.

The old man rolled his eyes and wheezed.

"Heh, what kind of crude name is that? Whoever made that game didn't have good naming skills, heheh."

Feng Yongrui, who had bad naming skills: "..."

"We'll do it like this. Do you have paper bags in here?" Igino asked.

The old man nodded his head and raised an eyebrow questioningly.

"What d'ya want those bags for, heh?"

Igino briefly explained the game that Feng Yongrui had taught him before. Six paper bags would be placed on the table facing down. Underneath one of the paper bags, there would be an iron nail, with the sharp part pointing upwards.

The "bad guy" or the player of the game would have to hit the paper bags until only one was left. Of course, the player couldn't hit the paper bag to the side, he/she had to open his/her palm and smash it downwards against the paper bag.

If the player was unlucky... Then, when his/her palm smashed downwards, the palm would be pierced by the sharp nail...

This was the game that Feng Yongrui had made up on the spot. It was inspired by a game that he had previously seen on Earth.

Igino was very efficient with words, and within a few sentences, he had explained the rules of the game to the old man. In response, the old man clicked his tongue and puffed out a ring of smoke.

"Heh, so now, not only you'll kill me, but you want to play around with me before I die, huh?" the old man scoffed coldly.

Igino shrugged his shoulders. "Isn't it more fun this way? Anyway, if you're lucky and you don't get the paper bag with the nail, I'll let you go scot-free. Isn't it a good deal?"

The old man sneered. "You've always known that my luck is bad. Why're 'ya pretendin' to be nice, huh?"

Igino ignored the old man's sarcasm and instructed Feng Yongrui to prepare everything. Since they couldn't find a nail in the house, Igino handed Feng Yongrui a dagger instead, and told him to place it upright underneath one of the paper bags.

To be completely honest, Feng Yongrui was feeling reluctant to do this. He wasn't completely averse to killing people. In the first world, which was a cultivation one, Feng Yongrui still remembered that he had killed many people, such as the bandits who were harassing people.

Those people were obviously bad, and since he knew that the cultivation world was a dog-eat-dog kind of world, he knew that he would have to kill someone.

Feng Yongrui wasn't a saint either, and he knew that there were bound to be situations where he had to kill someone. After all, being kind to the enemy was being cruel to oneself. If he didn't kill someone (that was supposed to die), and in return, that person killed him, wouldn't he fail his main mission?

By that time, not only would he get punished for failing a mission, the world that he was supposed to save would collapse, and everyone in that world would die....

So, in regards to killing people, Feng Yongrui didn't completely hate the idea. Of course, he had his own bottom line for things like this. If someone didn't provoke him, and unless it was absolutely necessary, Feng Yongrui wanted to resolve things as peacefully as he could.

***

Apologies for not updating yesterday, so today is a double update~~