But before she could move away, she was budged down again. "Don"t try any funny business cause you won"t a chance to leave anymore." A domineering voice said from behind of her and a heavy hand held her tightly. Not having anymore strength after swimming and drifting to the sh.o.r.e, the girl didn"t get a chance to retaliate. She was on the bank of the river but couldn"t do anything after being surrounded.She was knocked unconscious when the culprits had arranged for a new vehicle and pushed her in the trunk. The felons brought her to a warehouse after a drive that felt like eternity. Xi Jingfei was then tied to a chair.
As she regained her consciousness, she looked around only to find herself confined in a chair while a table laid there in front of her forming a shadow as the bright light on it blurred her vision. She heard sounds of people outside which felt more like whispers to her as she hadn"t yet awoken completely. Soon the sounds became much clearer and she heard the culprits talking,
"What should we do now? Boss isn"t here yet." The voice sounded the same as the one who held her at the bank of Ishin. "Call Boss and ask him when"s he going to be here?" The same guy continued.
"Okay." There was another man with heavy voice, supposedly the one the previous guy was talking to.
*Focus Jingfei, focus. You only have yourself to depend on now. You have to get out of here.*
Determined to leave, she scrutinized the place. A bit farther from her things like axes, a lengthy gun, ropes, chains etc were kept. Iron nets resting on the walls, making one unable to use them to climb over as there were a few cuts between them that could significantly hurt the climber. Only one door to enter and exit and one skylight to avoid suffocation in that damp place. No particular things around that could help her understand where exactly was this warehouse looking s.p.a.ce was located except for a pungent smell that seemed to be reaching from outside or the pipes above, on the ceilings of the room.
*It feels like a chemical warehouse so it must be in the suburbs or some city, hopefully it"s still the City U so that after I run from here, I can go back to my place.* Xi Jingfei was trying to understand and deduce the location she was at. Soon a man came and took another chair placed next to the table in front of her and looked at her with dark expression in his green fleeks eyes and a cut on his eyes that made him look scarier, and said, "Ms Xi Jingfei, is your hand hurting, being tied up there for a whole day?"
Giving him a once over, the girl reverted her gaze to the surroundings. Glaring at him with her amber shaped dark hazel eyes, the girl look straight at the man and replied, "Get to the point. Why did you kidnap me and bring me here?"
"Exactly like the file tells about you, you don"t like to beat around the bush and talk straightforwardly. Very well. Then I won"t waste my time. Last night, did a shabby looking person give you anything? A Hard Drive for example." The man inched closer.
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"No." Looking straight in his eyes, the girl replied without any hesitation as if she had long prepared herself to answer him.
"Don"t test my patience. Tell me, where is it? Because I know it"s with you." The culprit signaled his lackey who brought a black suitcase and flung it open on the table. In it, there were a few different sized guns and pistols, a hammer and an iron chain were resting with a few bloodstains on each of them. Xi Jingfei shuddered silently as her heartbeat was racing a marathon and her hand balled perspiring, but on surface she showed no difference.
"There are only two ways out for you. Either you tell me nicely and we can get over it or I can let you know what being in h.e.l.l means and torture you. But I guarantee you, I"ll get what I want." The man looked at the suitcase and then at the pet.i.te girl sitting in front of him, the table separating the two. The girl was scared and her eyes quivered but even then she did not move her eyes and kept gazing the man before saying with slight smirk, "Humph! Try me and your opinion will change. I will tell you what I want, but no one can force me otherwise."
Not long later, the voice of a girl shrieking and yelping in pain was heard breaking the dead silence of the abandoned vicinity.
-------
--Present day--
After her escape from the abandoned chemical factory storage, the girl gave the whole place a once over the place where she had burnt 4 people alive, just like they had done to her family, before striding away in the best of the speed she could maintain with all the bruises, cuts and injuries on her body.
Wounded, injured and hurt, she was reeling down the streets unsteadily. Stumbling on her feet a dozens of times and getting up again with a burning heart and excoriated knees. From the chemical factory, it took her about an hour of staggering, to reach the highway nearby. As she was walking on the sidewalk of the highway, she looked at the bridge over the River Ishin.
"When I was young, Dad brought me and Bro Jiang to watch the fireworks on your bank, River Ishin and told us that you are the lifeline of many and never give away the secrets anyone tells you. He said that both of us, me and Bro Jiang, can come and talk to you whenever we feel overwhelmed with our lives. Though at that time, we both made fun of this statement, but today I finally know what he meant. Now that he is no longer here, now that Bro Jiang isn"t by my side anymore, now that Mom isn"t here to listen to my non stop chattering, I finally know that everyone leaves, but you continue to be there. Be my strength, okay? Guide me to remain strong so that I can avenge my family. River Ishin..." With tears in her eyes she looked at the river and said between her sobs. The girl remained there for a few minutes and compiled herself and her thoughts before beginning her journey again.
She once thought of getting a lift but that was a risky adventure to make at the moment for she didn"t know how many more criminals of the same group were there looking for her. Hence she continued to wobble around on the sidewalks of the highway.
Her blood had dried over her sweaty skinny face. Hands and legs were no exception, textures of desiccated blood all over them. Her eyes were empty as if all the feeling had drained the previous night, as if she was only a sh.e.l.l and nothing was left inside. But at the same time, she was holding on to that one thing that she had to protect, those people that she had to avenge. So, she continued down the path.
A few of the drivers stopped in their tracks and asked her if they could help but Xi Jingfei refused. She continued to hide here and there in the bushes whenever she sensed a danger approaching her. A near death experience had sharpened her reflexes or maybe because she was being a paranoid and thinking that everyone in the world was looking at her, to catch her, to trap her, to break her.
After wobbling for a few hours on the highway that seemed eternity long to her, at a roadside restaurant on the highway, from a distance, she looked at the owner who was busy serving the customers . By now, she had started to feel her stomach calling out for help and her energy had begun to give up on her. As such, she looked at the food that was being served to others, voraciously. As the owner looked at her sorry state, out of humanity, he offered her food. She hesitated for a moment but then again, she needed energy and she needed to be alive to seek justice. Not minding her manners, she sat in a corner of the restaurant, where she could see everyone present in there but anyone would hardly be able to see her, somewhere she can quickly run in case the felons come there looking.
The owner of the restaurant first intended to call the police seeing the condition of the girl but she asked him otherwise because she was not sure if those criminals had any connections in the police department as well. In case they did, she would be sold out with no escape ever again. The owner was kind and understanding. He thought maybe it was a case of domestic violence and that the wife did not want her husband to be legally punished, thus, he didn"t report her appearance.
The next few days, Xi Jingfei survived by eating the left out food from hotels, restaurants or food stalls or some other times she would have to be fasting. Though she needed to tend her injuries but she did not have anything on her that she could buy herself some medicine and her fear of getting caught back, kept her from going to any hospitals. She sometimes rested in parks, or outside a building. But every time the horrified memories of her loved ones death came rushing to her, not letting her get any sleep.
...…...
After a few days of limping around the roads, she reached her home at last, to pay her last respects to her parents and family and to determine her path ahead.
Her home was in City L, a city about 50 kilometers from City U where she was an Administrative Chief. The abandoned factory was on the outskirts of the other side of City U, which increased her number of days she needed to walk to reach back to City L. Moreover, the girl did not enter the city and instead took a longer route going from the suburbs, to avoid any mishaps along the way.
Xi Jingfei arrived at her home to witness another scene. A lot of people were going back and forth the dwelling. There were police, media, some of her relatives and neighbors. They had found the bodies of her family including her parents, brother, her two uncles and aunts and her one cousin, and were investigating the incident.
Xi Jingfei earlier wanted to go and see them once. She wanted to go to her home and ask it how did it survive the night? To ask he home if it will ever welcome her back, the girl who caused her whole clan to die. but surprisingly and subconsciously she only stood in a distance and watched the episode unfolding there. She couldn"t bring herself to go there in person.
"I"ll come back only after I have avenged all of you. I would return ten folds of what you all went through to all those who killed you and to those who collaborated with them. Wait for me." She determined.
...
But now question arose as to where to get the money to satisfy her daily needs. She couldn"t contact her friends because she did not want them to risk anything for her, and her family had already been annihilated. With injured hands and legs and bruised and lifeless face without any certificates, getting even a small job seemed like a far fetched dream to her.
Though she was injured, but she got to do what she got to do. Though her physical condition didn"t allow much, but a person on the edge of life and death, could care less about anything else. Though it was painful, but she had set her mind to it, and at this very moment it wasn"t her luxury but necessity.