chapter 43

Li Xin sighed in resignation as futile excuses flashed across her mind . It was impossible to hide anything from him; but still, she would do all she could to distract him from finding out what she’d actually done .

Qi Mo huffed and grabbed her hand, yanking it back violently . She muffled a yelp of pain at the movement . She noticed his shirt sleeve against her wrist and froze, letting out a silent curse in her head . Her wrist was still covered in the other girl’s blood; she’d forgotten to clean it off in her haste .

Qi Mo’s eyes darkened at the sight and regarded her icily, saying, “No one has ever lied to me and lived to tell the tale . ” His hand tightened painfully around her wrist .

She winced at his tone and knew that she’d crossed the line this time . It was impossible to ignore the deadly glare he fixated upon her . The man was impossible to lie to . She opened her mouth, flustered: “I’m not lying to you, really! I promise— ow!”

The hand around her wrist drew into an even tighter snare and turned it over . “I’ll ask you one more time,” he warned .

Li Xin felt like her wrist was going to snap; her eyes began to water from the pain . “Stop it, you’re going to break my wrist,” she said in between breaths .

“Hurry up and spit out the truth already . Boss hates people who lie to him more than anything . If you want to live, you’d better tell us what you were up to earlier,” Yellow Falcon said, looking at them through the rearview mirror . From his position, he couldn’t see Li Xin sprawled below, but he could see anger clouded across every inch of Qi Mo’s face . He wasn’t trying to lecture Li Xin, but to explain why the overlord was so extraordinarily angry .

“Who asked you to speak up?” Qi Mo inserted coldly .

“She doesn’t sound all right,” Yellow Falcon replied quickly . “She’s still wounded and can’t handle the impact of your strength . Let’s hear what she was up to first; if she really did something wrong, then I’ll punish her in your place . “

“Hurry and spill it,” Li Hu added quietly . “Unless you really want to piss the boss off? Just tell the truth, we aren’t maniacal serial killers . “

In truth, they were all aware that Li Xin wouldn’t do anything to betray them, and they knew that Qi Mo was aware of this fact as well . Otherwise, he would have killed her a long time ago . Whatever had just happened, they were sure there were reasons behind it; Li Xin’s lies fooled no one . The Qi Clan overlord despised liars more than anything in the world . In the clan, if anyone did something wrong, they were either reprimanded or punished according to clan rules . Qi Mo wouldn’t throw unjust punishments on his own people — but lying was a different story; there was no way out of it . The fact that Li Xin had been caught in a lie but hadn’t yet been killed was an act of mercy . If she still refused to tell the truth, then there was no one that could save her .

Qi Mo ignored Yellow Falcon and squeezed Li Xin’s wrist again . “Are you going to speak or not?”

“Okay, okay! I’ll tell the truth . ” Li Xin wasn’t so stupid that she didn’t hear the implications behind Yellow Falcon and Li Hu’s words . Qi Mo was angry more because she had lied than what she’d done; thus, she decided to just tell them the truth . To be honest, what she’d done wasn’t really such a huge deal to begin with . It was just that she had no idea how Qi Mo would react .

“Speak . ” He loosened his hold on her wrist, but still kept her in place .

“That woman didn’t deserve to die . It’s not like she did anything terrible to you . You might be able to see her killed just like that, but I can’t,” she confessed, glaring at Qi Mo spitefully .

He frowned and grabbed her from below her ribs, flipping her around so that she faced him; her face was filled with pain, but she showed no sign of remorse for what she’d done . “You went against my orders for a woman?”

She sat on Qi Mo’s legs, her wrist burning . Yet the ridiculousness of his question stumped her nonetheless . She looked him in the eye . “It’s a life . Your life is worth money — well so is everyone else’s . No one should have to die when they haven’t done anything wrong . It wouldn’t matter if I didn’t witness it, but since I did, I wasn’t going to do nothing . “

Being abandoned as a child had educated her on the value of life; not only her own, but other people’s as well . It was for this reason that she never resorted to killing; in all her years of racing, she did not have a single death on her record . As for people who did deserve to die, however, she spared no mercy .

Qi Mo stared back at her silently . He took in the righteous expression on her face; a few drops of liquid still clung to her lashes like morning dew . Once again, the juxtaposition of her resoluteness and her weakness gave him pause .

He felt nothing for the woman who had violated his personal space and touched him . To him, anyone who crossed him in such a way deserved to die — life existed only to be exterminated . His life was worth what it was worth because he had worked his way up to make it priceless . So what if he considered all other lives as worthless as an ant’s life?

“You are mistaken,” he said eventually . “People who make errors only deserve to live if they have the ability to turn their wrongs into rights . The inability to do so is an error in itself and warrants death . This world only recognizes the strong, not the weak . “

For in his world, there were no should or should nots, only strong or weak . He had learned from the time he was a young child that in order to live, one could only rely on oneself . Relying on others was out of question and impossible . He had grown up on a perpetual battlefield that lay on the brink of death — did he deserve to die back then? But the world was cruel . It did not let a person live just because they did not deserve to die . If you wanted to live, you had to fight for the opportunity to .

Li Xin’s gaze didn’t move . She fixed her stare upon Qi Mo’s stone-cold features: cruel eyes filled with a murderous intent that cut like glass, void of remorse, of pity, of empathy . They stared directly into each other’s eyes like that for several long moments .

It was then that she suddenly understood that the concept of the weak being prey to the strong was the founding principle upon which the world of crime built itself . It was how much power you had and how well you could wield it that mattered . An unwritten, but nevertheless formidable, law of nature . It was complicated and dangerous, yet it was also blunt and essentially the most natural law in the world . Here, there was no room for pity or appreciation .

They were two people who had grown up in two different worlds and thus had developed very different perspectives on life . Li Xin knew subconsciously that Qi Mo wasn’t exactly wrong . Here, concepts such as pity and whether someone deserved to die were ignorant; this was a place that required absolute brutal strength and it was independent of those should or should nots . However, Qi Mo’s perspective did not represent her own . There was, unfortunately, no way for her to get him to see where she was coming from .

“You have your views, I have mine,” she said finally . “In mine, people don’t die when they’ve done nothing to deserve it . “

Qi Mo swept a glance over her pained face and held her by her waist tightly . “Only one time,” he warned, his voice short and brusque .

She looked at him strangely then, for she had had her heart in her throat, prepared to lose her life over this . Yet he had let her go just like that . Her heart returned to its proper location . From the front of the car, Yellow Falcon and Li Hu shared a glance filled with bemusement and understanding . Qi Mo detested being touched by women more than anything — that he had just let Li Xin go made it undeniable that she was something else .

I have to say, this is my favourite chapter thus far . Why? Because we finally get some introspective conversation between the two leads instead of just constant action and we get some insight on their life principles . Especially Qi Mo . I’m less into the romance and more into how these two are supposed to interact .