Chapter 183 Evil

Gao Yuan drew his mace and swung it, breaking three legs with each strike.

Watching the three men wail as they clutched their legs on the ground, Gao Yuan turned to leave, but after just a few steps, he suddenly stopped.

"What a nuisance..."

Gao Yuan felt it was troublesome, so he turned back.

The three men scooted backward on the ground, and Gao Yuan stood before them, demanding, "Tell me where the rest are."

"Right there! Just over there!"

One of them pointed towards a restaurant in a mall, and Gao Yuan glanced at it before he strode directly towards the restaurant in the mall.

Then, a man ran out of the restaurant, coming face to face with Gao Yuan.

Gao Yuan reached out his hand, seized the man running blindly in the darkness, and with a push, slammed the man to the ground, bellowing, "Where are the others?"

Gao Yuan took out a flashlight with one hand and switched it on, not to see others, but to be seen.

The man pinned down by Gao Yuan was skinny, in his thirties, with a face full of panic and confusion.

A sense of foreboding suddenly rose in Gao Yuan's heart, so he shouted sternly, "Where are the others?"

"There's no one else, no one else left," the man trembled on the ground as he spoke, and then he said with a face full of desperation, "Are you here to save us? I knew it, I knew someone would come."

The desperate look on the speaker's face wasn't one of joy or excitement after being saved, indicating that he did not expect rescue.

"How many people were there originally, speak!"

Gao Yuan pointed his mace at the man he had knocked down to the ground. He didn't really want to know what had happened, but he needed to know, because he didn't want to let a guilty person go, nor did he want to wrong an innocent.

But it seemed there were no innocents here.

"Originally there were... eleven people."

"How many are there now?"

"Four people, including me, four. But I'm not with them, really I'm not!"

The man from the restaurant began to cry in agony. He wasn't resisting, instead, he broke down in tears, "I really wasn't with them, I couldn't help it."

"Where did the others go? Never mind, don't speak."

"They were all killed by those three!"

Gao Yuan didn't want to hear any more, but the man he was pressing down pointed at the other three and yelled, "They killed them all! There were originally eleven people: sales associates, two waiters from our shop, and the cashier. Those three were security guards. We didn't have time to run out, and we got trapped here. At first, everything was fine, but then they killed everyone."

"You killed people too!" yelled one of the men with a broken leg.

Now, nobody should expect to survive. Gao Yuan's style and actions distinctly reflected this, but the person who stabbed Gao Yuan with a knife still wanted to take someone down with him before the end.

Shall I go on?

The person pinned down by Gao Yuan seemed crazed, frantically saying to Gao Yuan, "I committed murder, but I was forced! Listen to me, there were originally nine of us, six men and three women; only the three of them were security guards. In our restaurant, there was only me and the proprietress, plus another restaurant owner. At first, they were quite nice..."

He pointed at the three security guards and continued, "At first, we had stock in the restaurant, we had food to eat, enough to last us a very long time, but then the power went out quickly. The ingredients in the freezer would spoil, we consumed a lot of food, and then... not even ten days had passed when they began to bully us, stop us from eating, beat us..."

After morality had decayed, the breakdown of order really wasn't worth listening to anymore, because once the evil of human nature is unleashed, it becomes impossible to rein back in.

"We started to resist, but the three of them were together. At first, it was just a quarrel, then they ganged up and killed the other restaurant owner! But later on, there was nothing to eat, nothing left... We drank the beverages stocked in the restaurant, but with nothing to eat, we couldn't resist, and my proprietress fell severely ill, so they killed her..."

Someone screamed, "It was you who killed her, it was you!"

"If I didn't kill her, you would have killed me; you forced me to do it."

Indeed, beneath an avalanche, not a single snowflake is innocent.

Gao Yuan picked up a mace and looked at the man who came out from the restaurant, lost in thought for a while before he spoke softly, "What about the other two women?"

"One... died from illness, the other jumped off the building to commit suicide. If she hadn't killed herself, then I would definitely have been the first one to be killed."

"And you? What did you lack?"

Gao Yuan shook his head and said in a deep voice, "So, you were forced, but did you participate in all their evil acts with those three?"

The man from the restaurant was silent for a moment, then he screamed frantically, "I didn't want to, I was forced! Forced!"

Gao Yuan sighed and said, "I don't want to save you anymore, you all disgust me. Killing you would feel like soiling my hands, but I can't just let you live like this."

After speaking, Gao Yuan stepped back and said indifferently to the man who came from the restaurant, "They can't move; there is a knife here. If you can settle everything, consider it letting you vent."

"Can you let me go?"

"No, you either do it yourself, or I will. Make a choice."

Gao Yuan took two steps back and simply watched the four people quietly.

Insults, arguments, howls - these are the responses of human nature under desperation.

In the end, the man from the restaurant still picked up the knife, and then, very calmly, but only after a struggle, he killed the three people. Finally, holding the bloodied knife, he looked at Gao Yuan as if he very much wanted to fight it out with him right there.

Gao Yuan said nothing and did not move, just coldly watching.

The expression on his face changed several times; holding the knife, but after several eye contacts with Gao Yuan, the man from the restaurant eventually let go of the knife, allowing it to fall from his hand, then retreated with a blank, soulless expression, stepping back, back, until his back hit the railing.

He climbed over the railing, then head first, fell to the first floor of the mall.

With all four people dead, Gao Yuan suddenly found it all very ridiculous. If he hadn't gone through great difficulties to return to Ji City just to save people, maybe these few wouldn't have had to die.

Gao Yuan took a deep breath; now he just felt the mall was disgusting, so even though there were useful supplies all over, he didn't want to take anything.

Gao Yuan didn't want to be constantly reminded of the mall and anything that happened here, so he turned around and quickly went downstairs, then fled the mall as if escaping, not willing to even look back once.