Chapter 368: Avenger

During the day, Xiao Zhang is a good‑for‑nothing.

Or rather, he's a discarded component spat out by the entire system.

He rented a single room for eight hundred a month in an old residential building in the east of the city; the window faced a wall, so the light was virtually nil.

The room contained only a folding bed, a plastic chair, a box of instant noodles, and the items spread out on the floor.

Medical records. Death certificates. Hand‑copied backups of sewage data.

Zhou Weiguo's old police badge.

His daily routine was rigid. At nine in the morning he left, ate a bowl of wontons for three yuan five jiao at the breakfast shop beside the market, then returned to lie down. In the afternoon he went out for a walk, sometimes standing for a long time in front of the ruins of the family‑building.

Neighbors who saw him would walk around him. A man whose face was still wrapped in gauze, whose ten fingers were bound with cheap bandages, who never spoke and whose eyes were hollow, made anyone who looked at him shiver.

The landlord once pressed for rent; seeing his appearance, the words stuck in his throat.

"Kid, where are… your family?"

"None."

Those two words made the landlord step back three paces.

No one knows—

After eleven at night each day, this man who seemed dead weight by day would pull a black canvas bag from under the bed.

The items inside the bag were packed neatly.

A utility knife bought at a hardware store, its blade replaced with industrial‑grade tungsten steel. A roll of medical tape. A bottle of industrial alcohol. A box of disposable gloves. A pair of anti‑cut sleeves scavenged from a safety‑gear shop. Three baseball caps of different colors. Two combat jackets of different styles.

And a tattered notebook.

The first page of the notebook bore a line of text:

"Qin Team once said, the Core of counter‑reconnaissance isn't concealment; it's making the opponent not even realize anyone was there."

The second page: "Zhou Team once said, the essence of criminal investigation is a time lag. Arrive a step before your opponent and you win."

The following dozens of pages, dense and cramped, were filled entirely with names, timelines, activity patterns, addresses, license‑plate numbers, and social‑relationship charts.

One month.

He spent a month, using every channel accessible to a suspended police officer, to trace the chain that extended from the chemical‑plant boss, node by node.

There were two arsonists.

One was named Ding Meng, a two‑time felon who specialized in "dirty jobs" and used a car‑wash shop in Xicheng District as a front. The other was Zhao Xiaolong, Ding Meng's cousin, who followed him for a living, was timid, and after each job moved to a new residence three times in a row.

When Xiao Zhang found Zhao Xiaolong, the kid was holed up in a rental room in Chengzhongcun, playing mobile games.

The door was unlocked.

When Xiao Zhang pushed the door open, Zhao Xiaolong looked up, his eyes rolling twice, and didn't recognize him.

"Who are you? You've got the wrong door, right?"

Xiao Zhang said nothing. He closed the door and deadbolted it.

"Hey, what are you—"

When Zhao Xiaolong stood, a wet towel soaked in industrial alcohol was already pressed to his face. He struggled for about twelve seconds, kicking his legs a few times before going limp.

Xiao Zhang dragged him into the trunk.

Ding Meng was more troublesome.

He was highly vigilant; the car‑wash's back door had two cameras, and he carried a switchblade at night. Yet he had a fatal weakness.

Gambling.

Every Tuesday and Friday he went to Lao Li's underground poker game in the north of the city, playing until three or four in the morning. On the way back he always took the unlit alley, because it was close.

Xiao Zhang waited for him in that alley on two Fridays. The first Friday he scoped the area, noting his walking speed, which side he favored, how bright he set his phone, and whether he wore earphones.

The second Friday he made his move.

Ding Meng lost money, muttering as he walked back, and when he passed the alley's corner his left foot stepped into a shallow pit.

It was shallow, about five centimeters, but enough to make a drunk, wobbling person stumble half a step.

In that half‑step's time.

A cotton pad soaked in alcohol was pressed to his mouth and nose from behind. Ding Meng reacted much faster than Zhao Xiaolong—elbow strike, spin, grab the knife—in one fluid motion. But Xiao Zhang was quicker. His left hand seized the wrist holding the knife, twisting it outward while his knee drove into the kidney area.

Qin Team's grappling technique.

Thirty‑seven seconds.

The abandoned auto‑repair shop in the western suburbs had been derelict for four or five years; the iron roller‑shutter door was rusted shut. Xiao Zhang had surveyed it a week early, clearing a small patch inside and laying two layers of waterproof canvas on the ground.

When the two awoke, they found themselves bound with wire to the pillars of the repair lift.

Zhao Xiaolong cried first.

"Brother, brother, if you need money I'll give it; I have over three thousand in my phone—"

Xiao Zhang crouched before him and took off his baseball cap.

A streetlamp's light slipped through the cracked window and fell on his face; the gauze had been torn, revealing an unhealed burn scar beneath.

Zhao Xiaolong's voice got stuck in his throat.

He finally recognized him.

"Remember?" Xiao Zhang's voice was very soft, so soft even he found it strange. "That building, fourth floor, the leftmost window. When my sister called me, you should have seen it, right?"

Zhao Xiaolong's teeth chattered.

"It wasn't me… it wasn't me who set the fire… it was Brother Meng…"

"I know," Xiao Zhang stood. "But the gasoline was bought by you. The south‑city gas station, paid in cash, no record. You were quite meticulous."

A patch of Zhao Xiaolong's trousers was soaked.

Ding Meng gritted his teeth in silence, the blue veins on his neck tightening one by one. He stared at Xiao Zhang for half a minute, then suddenly laughed.

"You, a dismissed police officer, kill two people and think you can get away? You think Boss Chen can't find you? You touch a single hair on us, and—"

He didn't finish.

Because he remembered, the person before him no longer had a home.

Xiao Zhang pulled a tin bucket from his canvas bag. He unscrewed the lid, and the smell of gasoline expanded in the sealed space, choking both of them into coughing at the same time.

"I originally wanted you to die more satisfyingly."

Xiao Zhang poured the gasoline spoon by spoon onto the waterproof cloth under their feet, his movements neither hurried nor slow.

"But when my sister died it wasn't satisfying. When my mother died it also wasn't satisfying."

Zhao Xiaolong let out a scream like a pig being slaughtered. Ding Meng twisted the wire frantically, his wrist bleeding.

Xiao Zhang retreated to the doorway and fished a lighter from his pocket.

It was Zhou Weiguo's. It had come back from his belongings, an old kerosene lighter with a brass case, polished to a shine. After Zhou Weiguo quit smoking, he didn't need it, but kept it in his pocket out of habit.

Snap.

The flame flickered once in the darkness.

Xiao Zhang closed the lighter.

Then opened it again.

Zhao Xiaolong was already sobbing to the point of convulsing, tears streaming, his mouth repeating only one phrase: "Please... please..."

Ding Meng fell silent, panting like a bellows, his eyes bulging as if they would split open.

"You ask whether I can get away," Xiao Zhang tossed the lighter onto the gasoline, "I never intended to run."

He didn't look.

As he turned to leave, the firelight behind him stretched his Shadow long.

After the metal wall of the auto repair shop caught fire, from a distance it appeared as a small orange‑red dot, flickering in the suburban night, like a cigarette butt about to burn out.

No one called the police.

That area, within a one‑kilometer radius, had no residents.

Xiao Zhang sat on a dirt slope three hundred meters away, watching the fire burn for forty minutes.

Zhou's lighter was gone, and he felt a little sorry. But that thing couldn't be left behind; leaving it would be evidence.

The crime tool must not have any traceable link to a person. Single‑use, destroyed after use, never reused.

Change clothes according to the scene, use public transport without leaving blind spots on video, wear gloves on all contact surfaces; no fingerprint, hair, skin cell may be left.

Xiao Zhang complied with every rule.

He even did it cleaner than the textbook.

Because his teachers were Qin Zhixia, ranked among the top three in the city's criminal investigation system, and Zhou Weiguo, who had spent a lifetime handling homicide cases.

He simply applied what he had learned in reverse.

But there were some things these two hadn't taught him.

For example—how to deal with oneself after killing someone.

He sat on the dirt slope, his hands smelling of gasoline, blood scabs from when the twisted wire had cut his fingers still clinging between his digits.

The wind blew in from the suburbs, carrying a burnt smell.

He didn't vomit, didn't shiver, didn't experience the moral interrogation and soul struggle portrayed in movies.

There was nothing.

It was empty.

After finishing this, he found that the thing that had been blocking his chest cavity loosened a little.

It only loosened a little.

Because these two were just hands.

The knife was still there.

Chen Guoliang. Boss Chen. The actual controller of the East Suburb Chemical Plant, a provincial political consultative conference member, one of Jiang Hai City's top ten tax‑paying entrepreneurs. Assets under his name total 1.4 billion, his actual net worth exceeds that amount.

His legitimate business looked pristine, but the waste water he dumped into the river poisoned the groundwater of seven villages upstream and downstream, causing forty‑seven deaths.

He lives in a luxury residential area on the coastline. A detached villa covering two thousand square meters, with a sea view. Supposedly the security system alone cost over three million, and he hired overseas retired mercenaries.

Xiao Zhang spent three weeks mapping the villa area's security layout.

Which cameras had blind spots, which infrared sensors scanned at fixed intervals, which section of the wall had settled fifteen centimeters lower, and the guard shift change times down to the minute and second.

A night of torrential rain.

He chose this day because the sound of rain could mask footsteps, and the standing water could wash away traces.

The power distribution box was in a distribution room outside the east side wall of the villa area, with an ordinary padlock on the door. Xiao Zhang pried it open with a paperclip for seven seconds.

The external network surveillance was cut. The infrared alarm was cut. The villa area fell into a brief electronic vacuum.

As he climbed over the wall, the torrential rain was at its fiercest. Raindrops struck the ground, spraying a white mist, making it impossible to see a figure three meters away.

He skirted the garden, avoided patrol routes, and slipped in through the kitchen side door's vent.

The villa was huge and brightly lit.

When Xiao Zhang reached the living‑room doorway, he smelled cigars. The scent mingled with red wine and some expensive perfume, so strong it became cloying.

He pushed the door open.

Then all the lights turned on simultaneously.

Not the indoor lights.

They were six military‑grade handheld spotlights, activated simultaneously from the four corners of the living room and the stairwell corner, white beams crossing onto him, blinding him instantly.

Xiao Zhang's pupils hadn't yet adjusted to the glare when a boot‑clad foot already kicked his chest.

His whole body was thrown two meters, his back slamming into a coffee table, the tempered‑glass tabletop shattering.

"Surprised?"

A middle‑aged man who had put on some weight sat on the sofa, crossing his legs, twirling an unlit cigar in his hand. He was wearing a silk nightgown and burgundy deer‑skin slippers.

Chen Guoliang.

Four people stood behind him, all in uniform Black Combat Suit, Tactical Vest, and standard pistols holstered without even the safety engaged, because they didn't need it.

Xiao Zhang rolled over and came to his senses.

A muffled thud came from his knee.

A bullet pierced his right knee joint.

He didn't hear the gunshot. It was silenced.

The pain didn't reach his brain until three seconds later, and the sour, swollen feeling of metal piercing bone made his vision flash white. He fell onto broken glass, bracing with his left hand, and shards of glass pierced his palm.

Another bullet ripped through his left shoulder.

Xiao Zhang collapsed on the ground, a taste of rust flooding his mouth. He still tried to reach for the utility knife strapped to his waist.

A combat boot stepped on his right wrist.

Crack!

The bone shattered.

"Enough," Chen Guoliang stood up from the sofa, his slippers scraping the broken glass with a squeaking sound. He walked to Xiao Zhang, crouched, and yanked Xiao Zhang's hair to lift his face.

"I tell you, Xiao…."

Chen Guoliang tilted his head and examined him, as if looking at a cockroach that had crawled into a villa.

"Your master Zhou Weiguo is dead. Your file, your personnel connections, your career—everything is over. Your father, your mother, your sister—sorry about that, my men were a bit rough; we only intended to scare you."

He pulled a lighter from his pocket, lit the cigar, and then pressed the still‑burning tip against the edge of the bullet wound in Xiao Zhang's knee.

Sss—

The sound of muscle being seared.

Xiao Zhang's body arched; his jaw clenched so hard that a canine cracked, and blood‑foam dripped from the corner of his mouth.

"Who do you think you are? A superhero? A petty man whose anger splatters blood five steps away?" Chen Guoliang exhaled a ring of smoke, laughing heartily. "Your little three‑legged cat detective tricks, the petty tricks the Qin family miss—who's missing now—taught you—are they useful?"

He jabbed Xiao Zhang's chin with the tip of his shoe.

"In the face of absolute money and absolute power, you can do nothing. You set fire to my two dogs? I'll raise two more. And you? What else can you burn?"

Xiao Zhang lay in the pool of blood, the corner of his eye catching his severed right wrist twisted at a strange angle.

The techniques taught by the Qin Team.

The skills passed down by Zhou Team.

All of them were used.

And then?

Then his limbs were broken, and he lay like a dead dog in the living room of a murderer's villa.

Chen Guoliang stood up and brushed the dust from his nightgown.

"Drag him down."

Two mercenaries hoisted Xiao Zhang and dragged him toward the basement. Xiao Zhang's patella was shattered, and his leg dragged two bloodstreaks across the marble floor.

The basement door opened.

Cold air surged in, carrying the smell of disinfectant and concrete.

Xiao Zhang was thrown onto the cement floor. The overhead fluorescent tube buzzed, its white light blinding him.

Chen Guoliang stepped down, treading on his face; the rubber sole of his slippers stuck to his blood.

"What are you after? Justice? Fairness?"

He pressed the cigar out against Xiao Zhang's nape.

"That thing doesn't exist in this world. It never has."

Xiao Zhang's face was pressed to the cold cement. His vision blurred as blood and sweat mixed, coating his left eye.

His right eye could still see a little.

He saw the round wall clock hanging on the basement wall.

A white dial. Black hands.

The second hand was moving.

Tick— tick— tick.

Chen Guoliang turned and nodded at the mercenaries.

"Take care of him."

One mercenary drew his holster.

At that moment—

The second hand stopped.

It wasn't slowing down, not lagging.

It was as if something pressed it directly, fixing it at exactly twelve o'clock, motionless.

The fluorescent tube's hum also vanished.

The basement fell into a strange silence. The air itself grew dense, as if an invisible layer was pressing in from all directions.