Volume 2, 4: This Bookstore’s… Part 2—Talent of the Innerworld

Translator: lucathia (proofread by Trespasserby)

Jiang Ziya bit and pulled and even rubbed his hand against the wall, but although the nylon rope around his hands appeared thin, the rope wasn’t loosening or breaking despite his relentless struggling. I won’t be able to break it.

The other person was truly a professional. There were no openings he could take advantage of.

Jiang Ziya could only give up on the idea of struggling free of the ropes. He turned to look toward the others. After Zhang Dongqi left, they began waking up one by one, baffling Jiang Ziya as to how the other person was making that happen.

Jiang Ziya’s target was Xie Peilun. He hadn’t forgotten that his goal was to find Fu Jun’s classmate. He just hadn’t thought that he would find several more people. From Zhang Dongqi’s tone, Jiang Ziya figured that these people’s capture had nothing to do with himself. So, why have they been captured?

He began taking measure of the other people. However, the dim lighting only allowed him to make out basic details. Xie Peilun was an elementary school student. The person huddled in the corner seemed to be female, and she wasn’t all that old. At least, she didn’t appear to be older than Jiang Ziya.

Other than her, there were also two males. One of them appeared not much older than Xie Peilun, while the other might be around Jiang Ziya’s age.

These people seemed like they didn’t know each other. If he had to connect them somehow, he could only say that they were all fairly young.

Not captured for mining, but maybe the sex industry. Jiang Ziya felt even worse about it.

He tried his best to nudge his body forward toward Xie Peilun. The latter was so scared that he kept shrinking into himself.

“Peilun, it’s me, the gēge from Jiu Ge Bookstore.”

Jiang Ziya spoke in a quiet voice. Thankfully, Zhang Dongqi hadn’t taped his mouth back up. From Xie Peilun’s expression, it was obvious that he was scared out of his wits. Don’t even mention the gēge from the bookstore, even if his actual gēge were here, he might not recognize him either.

Xie Peilun stilled. Finally, he calmed down and glanced at Jiang Ziya’s face. He recognized him. He was so emotional that he seemed to want to rush over, but his hands and feet were both tied, so he could only thrash around frantically.

Jiang Ziya immediately leaned forward, resting against Xie Peilun’s shoulder to comfort him gently. Only then did he stop struggling. The child’s soft wrists had turned bloody from his previous actions.

Xie Peilun’s tears dripped down his face like they weren’t worth anything. Even though this gēge was also tied up, as long as an adult he knew was present, he would feel that there was at least someone there for him.

Under the dim lighting, Jiang Ziya lowered his head and saw that Xie Peilun’s wrists were already an expanse of purple and black from the tight, nylon rope. Who knew how many times he had struggled? Right then, a surge of anger seized Jiang Ziya. How despicable, to treat an elementary school kid like this!

Jiang Ziya really wanted to ask Xie Peilun how he had arrived here, but the other’s mouth was still taped up, so he couldn’t speak at all.

“I’m going to use my mouth to pull off the tape over your mouth.”

Taking such an action toward a little boy would definitely look a bit perverted, so Jiang Ziya felt a need to clarify beforehand to avoid scaring Xie Peilun so much that he would frantically squirm backwards.

Xie Peilun immediately nodded his head hard. Only then did Jiang Ziya dare to approach and bite at his face. However, using only his mouth to rip off tape was, as expected, difficult. He felt like he had nearly slobbered a face full of saliva on Xie Peilun’s face before he finally managed to pull the tape off.

The moment the tape left his mouth, Xie Peilun let out a sigh of relief. He immediately asked, “Gēge, how did you get caught too?”

“Ah, actually, I was caught when I came out to search for you with Fu Jun.”

Xie Peilun’s eyes filled with tears again. Touched, he said, “Xiao Jun was searching for me?”

“Your mom is also frantically searching for you everywhere.”

Xie Peilun cried even harder.

Jiang Ziya could only use his tied up hands and his advantageous height to pat the other’s shoulder. He waited until Xie Peilun calmed down a bit and immediately asked, “Do you know why you were captured?”

“It’s all that alley’s fault! Xiao Jun said that that alley was bad news. I should have listened to him and avoided it, but I was a big idiot and didn’t listen to him. Sob, sob…”

Xie Peilun cried as he recounted what had happened back then. He resolved to obediently listen to Fu Jun from now on, even more than he listened to his mom!

At this time, the other people around them started taking notice of them and began closely listening in.

What had happened to Xie Peilun didn’t take long to recount. He finished talking about it in no time at all. Jiang Ziya couldn’t figure out much from it either. He only knew that Xie Peilun’s run in with danger should have nothing to do with that alley. What Fu Jun meant by “bad news” was that old beggar. However, Xie Peilun had never stepped foot into that barrier dimension, and he hadn’t met any old beggars.

He couldn’t get an answer from Xie Peilun, so Jiang Ziya could only turn to look at the others. The moment he saw the tape on their mouths, he felt a huge headache coming on. He could only pick out that guy who was around his age first. He looked to be calmer than the kid, and he was a guy. It was much better than slobbering over the girl’s face.

“I’m going to pull off the tape.”

The other person immediately nodded.

After the tape was removed, he blurted, “I saw the same thing as the kid, but I saw it in the parking lot of a building. I was also chased until I couldn’t run anymore. Then, I was captured.”

When Jiang Ziya heard that, he figured that the other two had experienced something similar. Just as he thought that there was no need to remove more tape, he lifted his head and saw the girl and the kid stare at him with imploring, tear-filled expressions.

“…Peilun, go pull off the tape over the big sister’s mouth.”

As for Jiang Ziya, he rolled over to the kid, and face against face, began slobbering… Ah no, it should be ripping off tape. At first, he had thought that it wasn’t a good idea to plaster his face against a girl’s, so he had told Xie Peilun to do it, but now, he abruptly discovered that it was simply even more perverted to plaster his face against a little boy’s!

After the tape was removed, both of them spoke of happenings that were almost the same. Only the location was different. The time frame was about the same. It had all occurred within the past few days.

It seems that these people really have nothing to do with me. Jiang Ziya was a bit confused over why Zhang Dongqi had kidnapped these people.

Jiang Ziya looked at the guy and asked, “How about we inch over to the other end of the room to take a look?”

“I’ve tried several times already. I couldn’t find the end of the other side at all. I only know that there’s a portable restroom to this side over here.”

Even though this man was calmer than the rest, his face was still full of fright. Besides having to face getting kidnapped, he also had to face all sorts of weird occurrences. It was already rather strong of him not to collapse on the spot.

Now that they had his left eye, the situation was of course different. Jiang Ziya held back his urge to say that. No matter if it were Yu Shu, Lu Yang, or the boss, all of them had uniformly told him that he was never to tell others about his truth-seeing eye. Therefore, he had to keep his mouth sealed tightly.

“I’m going to take a look anyway.”

After he said that, Jiang Ziya heard the guy give an unhappy snort. He didn’t pay him any mind. He used a fairly ridiculous pose to inch over, appearing just like a huge crab.

Having left the vicinity of the light bulb, it was truly very dark in front of him. Jiang Ziya nearly couldn’t see anything. In addition, the guy had said that he couldn’t find the end, so Jiang Ziya moved fairly quickly, until there was a “bang”—his head had knocked into a wall.

Jiang Ziya felt so much pain that he was nearly about to swear. Didn’t he say he couldn’t find the end? I didn’t even have to crawl for very long to find it.

He turned his head to look. He could even see their figures under the light bulb still!