Chapter Two Hundred Sixty-Two: Seven Years
Nian Yufei understood that Li Yan would leave once he got the ticket, so as she handed the ticket to him, she said to Li Jie, "Sister Li, could you please step outside for a mont? We have sothing to discuss..."
Li Jie nodded. If it were anyone else, she might have been suspicious, but with Li Yan, no matter how displeased she was with him, she trusted him. Leaving him here posed only a risk of flirting, not a life-threatening danger. She couldn’t help but scoff inwardly; this guy is truly shaless. While I protected Xiao Di, he flirted with her. When we protected the two girls from Beihai, he lured them away. Now, I’m just protecting this young pianist, and he’s already flirting with her...
She also began to doubt inwardly whether it was all just a coincidence or if this guy had ulterior motives. If it were a coincidence, then he must flirt with a lot of girls to have so many overlap. If he had ulterior motives... was it against Jie Rui? Against ?
After Li Jie left with a heart full of doubts, Li Yan, who had put the ticket away, spoke frankly, "The last ti soone tried to kill you, it was two people from the Republic of Li. Seeing how calm you were, you must know who wants you dead. Yet, you still dare to invite guests from the Republic this ti?"
"Please sit." Nian Yufei pointed to a chair. They had just co in and were standing while talking.
Li Yan thought for a mont and then went over to sit down.
"Thank you for saving last ti. You were right, I do know soone wants dead..." Nian Yufei sat down on another chair, with a bitter smile, "It’s not that I’m calm, but that I’ve experienced life and death so many tis before, I’ve beco numb to it..."
At this mont, her deanor no longer showed the tranquility of others, nor the grace of a pianist, nor the vitality and liveliness of a young girl, only revealing helplessness and sorrow.
"I don’t know if it was the Republic of Li people who want dead, and even if I did, it doesn’t matter... Actually, I t you before." Nian Yufei thought, after this, he probably wouldn’t co to find her again, so she might as well speak out.
"You’ve seen before?" Li Yan was slightly surprised. This one sentence also implied more anings. Last ti, with a piece of beef, he saved Nian Yufei at gunpoint, but that wasn’t necessarily as an assassin, it could have been as a martial artist or sothing. But now, this statent suggested that she might have known his identity as an assassin for a long ti! "How co I have no impression?"
"Of course you forgot ... because it was many years ago. Back then..." Nian Yufei began to zone out a bit, "Back then, I was only this tall... that was seven years ago, and I was only ten years old then."
Seven years ago?!
For a seventeen-year-old girl, seven years is more than half of her morable life. And Nian Yufei’s life is different from others; for her, that was a fork in her life’s path, and these seven years occupy most of her life’s mories.
For Li Yan, seven years is also a very distant point in ti. There are always so things that are habitually forgotten, so things that are to be abandoned in the mories of life. These days, he can barely rember what he looked like seven years ago, or what he did because he doesn’t want to recall it.
But the human brain is mysterious, and about mories, even if faded and even after decades when conditions are ripe, it can suddenly bring back mories.
These keywords were combined in his brain, successfully recalling fragnts of Li Yan’s mory and piecing them together into a recollection of an event.
"I rembered."
"You rembered?"
"At that ti, I was there to kill you."
"Yes, you were there to kill ..."
This should have been a tense atmosphere, yet when talking about this matter, both were so calm. At least, on the surface, they were calm.
...
Seven years ago, Li Yan didn’t have a great reputation, just considered an erging talent. At that ti, ’their’ organization had just ford, and there weren’t many people. He took on many assignnts then, primarily C-Class and B-Class tasks, with fewer A-Class, and he hadn’t touched an S-Class task yet. It was a period of rapid developnt for him.
One of these tasks was to hunt a target on Cloud Island. The task was only C-Class in difficulty, but the reward was quite high, higher even than so B-Class tasks, so it attracted many assassins to compete. At the peak of his rapid ascent, Li Yan naturally wouldn’t miss such a good opportunity. So, he was practically the first to find the target, yet once he found the target, he hesitated for the first ti!
The client’s target was to kill everyone in a villa. After sneaking into the villa, Li Yan saw that besides the nanny and servants, the owners were a beautiful young woman and a girl under ten years old. No one would spend money to hire assassins to kill a nanny; the owners were the real targets. But faced with a powder-faced, jade-carved little girl, he really couldn’t bring himself to do it.
An assassin isn’t the sa as an executioner; an executioner carries out orders with less psychological burden than an assassin motivated by profit. And this burden can sotis skew so assassins, making them perverse, but for most assassins, it instead makes them calm, gentle, and even willing to do good deeds for ntal balance.
For assassins, there’s no target with less psychological burden than infamous politicians, martial arts figures, or rich people lacking conscience. The elderly, the weak, won aren’t too difficult, except for children; unless devoid of humanity, it is generally difficult to take action.
However, humanity does have its price.
Those who hire killers basically have temporarily shielded away their humanity; extermination of the entire family, killing witnesses, is their purpose. A professional killer with so savings might have the luxury of pondering over what to do and what not to, but when in urgent need of a sum of money, perhaps just a few thousand yuan can make them sell their humanity.
Back then, Li Yan hesitated. He was the first to arrive, yet he lurked in the villa for a whole day and night. Initially, he waited for the male owner to return, thinking only killing both the male and female owners was sothing he could do.
But many others were also competing for this job; he didn’t wait for the male owner to return, yet other assassins arrived one after another.
Facing competitors, he struggled at that ti, but ultimately did not take action first.
Thus, the nanny, servants, and the beautiful young woman were all killed by assassins’ bullets. At a crucial mont, the little girl, whom he couldn’t bear to kill, gave him his first taste of ddling.
—If he didn’t save her, his day and night of hesitation would have been aningless, rely allowing her to live one more day.
He hid the little girl in the attic, holding off several rounds of attacks from the assassins himself. At that ti, no one knew it was him, only assuming there was a martial arts expert in the villa protecting the little girl. He picked up the female owner’s phone but couldn’t contact her father. After guarding for another day and night, with no police involvent, the young girl finally received a call from her father. Knowing everything, her father sent soone to pick her up.
Li Yan didn’t say much to her, he let her see his face, hesitated whether to kill her, but at that ti, he still had his principles and beliefs. Ultimately, he protected her until rescue arrived, then quietly left.
It was his first and only failure!
Or perhaps it wasn’t a failure because he essentially didn’t make a move. He simply abandoned that assignnt and even played the part of a bodyguard for a mont. Afterwards, he continued his rise, completing A-Class tasks, S-Class tasks, mostly appearing as accidental deaths, leaving those aware in the Assassin Realm moved. The na King began to spread, and "they" began to rise... And as for the little girl he rescued on Cloud Island, he never paid attention again, not even probing into her father’s identity or the client’s identity back then. Everything was just a past experience for him.
...
"You ca to kill , but in the end, you saved . If it wasn’t for your protection for a day and night, I would have died many tis at the age of ten..." Nian Yufei said softly.
A person who witnessed her mother die in front of her at the age of ten and almost died several tis would no wonder be indifferent to death.
Li Yan didn’t know what to say, never expecting that the little girl he saved in his hesitation back then had beco a beautiful young pianist and still rembered him.
"The ones who wanted dead that ti were my brothers... born by the sa father. You can probably guess what kind of person my father is and also imagine... I’m actually an illegitimate daughter. My mother and I always had a good living condition, but I seldom had opportunities to see my father. Although he loved dearly, in the first ten years when I needed fatherly love the most, I didn’t get much...
Perhaps out of compensation, in addition to providing for our living expenses, my father was reportedly ready to leave so of his assets to , which angered my brother with the sa father but a different mother. At that ti, he had already been working alongside my father for a while. He considered the family business rightfully his alone, and the sudden appearance of a... ’bastard’ sister to share it wasn’t sothing he could accept. In a mont of impulse, he took soone’s suggestion and hired killers..."
While hearing Nian Yufei’s story, Li Yan didn’t feel much because, over the years, what hadn’t he seen? Reality is often more exaggerated than novels or films, and stories like hers are quite common — just by hearing the start, one can guess the whole process.
But he still listened to her words because... Nian Yufei probably didn’t have the chance to confide these to others! Though he didn’t know her specific process of growing up, undoubtedly, her father had smoothed everything, took very good care of her, and protected her. Even so, it couldn’t make her grow like an ordinary person.
How many close friends could one have with such a life? Can such experiences be casually talked about? He, as soone in the know, allowed her to speak without reservation.
"Everything has already passed, it’s useless to dwell on it. Living your life now may be what your mother wanted for you!"
Li Yan said as he stood up, no matter her current situation, it wasn’t sothing he wanted to understand, let alone get involved with. Leaving was the most suitable choice. (To be continued, to know what happens next, please visit qidian, for more Chapters, support the author, support genuine reading!)
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