Chapter 38: Xu Feng is a law-abiding citizen, a truly upstanding citizen!
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“Impossible! This is absolutely impossible!”
Wang Erhu’s voice turned shrill. He could not accept the truth. “The Soviet troops... How could the Soviet troops possibly let you out? Aren’t you a traitor? Isn’t your wife a Japanese spy?”
Xu Feng walked over to the greasy table, pulled out a bench, and sat down unhurriedly.
That simple action left Wang Erhu more suffocated than a direct beating would have.
Crossing one leg over the other, Xu Feng brushed at some nonexistent dust on his trouser leg. Only then did he raise his eyes toward Wang Erhu, who was sprawled on the floor. He even smiled, though the movement tugged at the wound on his chin and made him hiss in pain.
“Of course I could come back,” Xu Feng said in a tone as casual as if he were discussing household matters. “After a thorough investigation, the Soviet comrades discovered that I’m an honest citizen. Not merely an honest citizen, either—I’m an exceptionally honest citizen.”
“They even praised me. They said I had a high level of political awareness and an unwavering position, and that I was a trustworthy comrade.”
Not even Wang Erhu, let alone the three thugs beside him, believed a word of this nonsense.
Yet when they looked at Xu Feng’s battered but utterly composed face, none of them dared contradict him.
Wang Erhu continued shaking his head. “I don’t believe it! I don’t believe it! You must have used some kind of sorcery to fool them!”
“Whether you believe it or not is unimportant.” Xu Feng’s smile faded, and his gaze once more turned indifferent. “What matters is that I’m back. And you still owe me.”
He extended a finger and tapped the basin of meat on the table, then pointed toward the hunting bow in the corner.
“I came today for one thing and one thing only.” He leaned forward slightly and stared into Wang Erhu’s eyes. “Compensation.”
At the word, Wang Erhu seemed to find his backbone. He scrambled up from the floor, thrust out his chin, and shouted, “Compensation? I’ll give you compensation, you old bastard! You broke three of my ribs, and I haven’t even settled that account with you yet! How dare you come asking me for compensation?”
“Your ribs?” Xu Feng looked as though he had just heard a joke. “You know perfectly well how your ribs were broken.”
He paused, then changed his tone. “Still, I’ve always had a merciful heart. I don’t like quibbling over such things. We’ll forget about your ribs.”
Wang Erhu stared at him uncertainly. “Really... really just like that?”
“Of course.” Xu Feng wore an expression of complete sincerity. “Do I look like the sort of man who lies?”
He pointed to the hunting bow in the corner. “That bow counts as mine. I’m taking it back.”
“As for the meat...” He glanced at the basin of ruined stew, then swept his eyes over the three thugs beside him, who were cowering like quails.
“You’ve all eaten it. It isn’t realistic to have me reach into your stomachs and take it back now. What’s eaten is eaten. Consider it my treat.”
Wang Erhu and his three underlings exchanged bewildered looks, completely dumbfounded.
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Could being taken away by the Soviet troops have damaged Xu Feng’s brain?
He was not only letting Wang Erhu’s betrayal go; he did not even want the meat that had been stolen from him?
“You... you’re really that kindhearted?” Wang Erhu asked, still unable to believe it.
“I told you, I have a merciful heart.” Xu Feng sighed. Then his tone shifted, and that chilling menace returned.
“Still, while the death penalty may be pardoned, punishment in life cannot be escaped. Forget the meat. But the door to my house was kicked in by you, and the weather is getting cold. When my wife and I live there, it always feels as though something is missing.”
He looked at Wang Erhu and spoke each word distinctly.
“My house is missing a heated bed.”
“A heated bed?” Wang Erhu’s mind momentarily failed to follow.
“Yes, a kang.” Xu Feng nodded as though it were the most natural thing in the world. “The room in my house is completely bare. There isn’t even a place to sleep. You seem to have nothing better to do, so why not go build a heated kang for me? Then we’ll call the matter settled.”
Wang Erhu was the local strongman of the village. To make him work as a bricklayer for Xu Feng, building a heated kang?
That was more humiliating than beating him outright—or even taking his money.
Wang Erhu’s face instantly flushed the color of liver, shock and fury warring in his expression. “Bullshit! Where am I supposed to get the money to build you a kang? Besides, I don’t know how to build one!”
“The money and the craftsmanship are your concern.” Xu Feng rose and walked to the corner, where he picked up the familiar hunting bow.
He tested the bowstring. It gave a deep, muted twang.
“I don’t care how you manage it. Steal, rob, or tear down your own house for the materials, if you have to.”
He turned and looked down at Wang Erhu. “Ten days. Within ten days, I want to sleep on a warm kang in my own house.”
“If ten days from now I still haven’t seen a kang...” The corner of Xu Feng’s mouth lifted once more into a curve that made Wang Erhu’s blood run cold. “Then we’ll settle our new and old accounts together, with interest.”
At that point, the fat man with a face full of bulging flesh could no longer restrain himself.
He thought Xu Feng was merely bluffing. One man, and a wounded one at that—how much could he possibly do?
“Brother Tiger, what are you afraid of?” The fat man snatched up a wooden bar used to brace the door and cursed viciously. “He’s only one man! The four of us are supposed to be afraid of one cripple? Kill him!”
Before the words had even left his mouth, he was already swinging the wooden bar toward the back of Xu Feng’s head.
The other two thugs reacted as well. One reached for the wine bottle on the table, while the other circled around to seize Xu Feng’s legs.
Seeing this, Wang Erhu summoned his own vicious courage and roared, “Kill him!”
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Yet the scene Wang Erhu had imagined—Xu Feng being beaten to the ground by a flurry of blows—never came.
At the instant the wooden bar was about to strike the back of his head, Xu Feng did not even turn around.
He merely shifted his body slightly, as though he had eyes in the back of his head, and effortlessly evaded the blow.
Then, pivoting on his right foot, he spun around sharply. The longbow in his hand seemed to come alive, sweeping out at a treacherous angle.
Bang!
The bow slammed solidly into the fat man’s wrist.
Crack!
The fat man let out a shriek no human throat should have been able to produce. The wooden bar flew from his hand, and his wrist bent at an unnatural angle.
Before the other two could react, Xu Feng twisted his wrist and sent the bow sweeping upward. With a thud, the pointed tip struck the throat of the thug holding the wine bottle with pinpoint accuracy.
The thug’s eyes rolled back. The bottle slipped from his hand. Clutching his throat, he opened and closed his mouth like a fish flopping on dry land, unable to make a sound, before collapsing limply to the floor.
The last thug, a skinny man who had circled around to the side, had only just lunged forward when Xu Feng drove a kick into his lower abdomen.
The skinny man flew backward like a boiled shrimp, body bent double. He crashed heavily into the wall, slid to the floor, curled into a ball, and began vomiting sour liquid.
The entire sequence unfolded as smoothly as flowing water and as swiftly as lightning.
From the fat man’s first attack to all three men lying on the floor, no more than a few breaths had passed.
The final echo of Wang Erhu’s shout—“Kill him!”—was still hanging in the air, yet all three of his helpers were already down.
Wang Erhu stood rooted to the spot, utterly stupefied, staring at the man before him who moved like a ghost.
Only now did he understand how terribly mistaken he had been.
A cripple? Was this damned man a cripple?
His skill was fiercer than a tiger in the mountains!
And Xu Feng’s wife—she was terrifying when she beat people too!
That couple wasn’t human!
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