I, the public enemy

Chapter 36 Emergency Escape Route

Without signing a drug trial contract, you get nothing if you lose, but for the players controlled by the Spider Gang's loan sharks, there's a 1,000 yuan appearance fee per game.

However, this money will not be given to the contestants; instead, it will be deducted from the interest on loans from money lenders.

This ensures that the "Torture Room Club" also has daily active users during the day, leading to a better word-of-mouth effect.

He was hit in the side of his waist by a knee strike in the ring.

Fu Jun lost consciousness.

I don't know how much time passed.

When I woke up in a daze, I found myself slumped in the corridor of the club's changing room, with a throbbing pain in my arm from the intravenous injection. Beside me was an empty disposable syringe and a jacket carelessly tossed on the floor.

The implanted chip in the back of the neck automatically operates with the help of the injected medicine, far surpassing the "Five Elements Qi Guiding Outline" and "Nourishing Yuan Secrets," enabling the patient to quickly recover from unconsciousness and heal injuries within a certain range.

The spiritual energy of heaven and earth has been monopolized by energy groups, and there is not a trace of it in the outside world, but it can be compensated for by injecting injections containing pure spiritual energy elements.

"It's so shameful to look like a dead dog," he thought, knowing that it was someone from the club who gave him the injection so he wouldn't die so easily.

He put on his coat, stood up, and went to the bathroom to urinate.

My urine is brownish-red, which is normal for this kind of work, and I'm used to it.

Fu Jun's phone kept vibrating in his coat pocket. He took it out and looked at the explosive 99+ text messages and missed calls.

Your loan from [Lianqi Le] is overdue for 128 days. According to the relevant provisions of the "Cangzhou Credit Information Industry Management Regulations", your overdue information will be reported to the Financial Credit Information Database by our company. Please cherish your personal credit.

[Tianji Good Loan], your loan is overdue for 160 days. An additional overdraft interest and a late payment penalty of 20% of the outstanding amount will be charged.

[Wudao IOU], you have repeatedly ignored our notices and warnings regarding installment loans on our platform, demonstrating a weak sense of repayment and credit. We will engage a law firm to prepare the necessary materials for litigation.

【We already notified you yesterday. Take the initiative to contact your family and relatives to try and find a way to repay the money. Don't wait for us to call; you'll only embarrass yourself then.】

[Hurry up, this is your chance. If things get out of hand, it'll be hard to clean up. I'll make you infamous at school. You'll have to pay back the money, and your reputation will be ruined.]

He was speechless, having already exposed his contacts. Just then, a call came in from an unknown number, not the usual virtual number, but... a real number.

"Feed".

Fu Jun answered the phone.

"You're immune now, aren't you? It doesn't matter who you call anymore. Honestly, those people who sent messages and made calls before were just operators in shell companies, sitting in front of computers all day making three or four thousand a month. They could only scare spineless cowards; they only got a fraction of a percent commission for each one they got."

"Of course I know, just say what you have to say."

Fu Jun didn't take it seriously.

[Heh, have you reached the tipping point? You might not know this, but many loan platforms, despite having many names, are actually run by the same person. Sometimes this does happen; if collection is impossible, the debt is classified as bad debt. Handling bad debts requires more professional people. They will directly acknowledge the loss, cut it in half or even lower, repackage the debt, and transfer it to someone else—that's me… My methods are completely different.]

Upon hearing this, Fu Jun's throat bobbed.

He understood what this meant, of course; it meant that these people were similar to the Spider Gang.

But strangely, the urine slowly turned from brownish-red to bright red.

For a long time, a low, hoarse roar seemed to be rolling in my throat, but it could not break through the skin and flesh, nor break free of the shackles. It could only turn into a muffled cough in my throat, which I swallowed down, fell into my stomach, and fermented with bile into an even heavier depression.

But in an instant, all the pent-up frustration vanished, and looking at the bloody urine in the pool, his mind cleared up a bit.

His voice trembled slightly, but he blurted out certain things without thinking.

"Come on if you dare, I'll kill your mother."

Fu Jun replied in this way.

The other party remained silent for a long time.

He hung up the phone, went to the washroom outside the bathroom, looked at the person in the mirror whose face was covered with bruises and bloodstains, turned on the tap of the sink, scooped up a handful of water and vigorously rubbed his face.

He immediately turned off the tap.

When she looked up again, a man appeared without warning by the sink beside her, walking silently. Their eyes met in the bathroom mirror.

He wore a faded khaki trench coat and a turned-up felt hat. He had an ordinary appearance, nothing memorable, and blended into the crowd.

Fu Jun didn't pay any attention and turned away.

"You exude a calm despair."

The man in the trench coat had a low, husky voice and spoke very softly, so that only Fu Jun could hear him. He didn't look directly at Fu Jun, but only at him in the mirror.

Fu Jun glanced back at him and scoffed.

As I approached the end of the corridor, I inexplicably turned back for another look. The man in the trench coat was still standing by the washbasin, looking at himself in the mirror.

Suddenly, Fu Jun felt an extreme chill. A cold wind blew by, and a chill ran from his spine to his scalp. He felt cold all over and quickly left the torture chamber club.

In the southern district of Gray Core City, this street is known as Kabuki Street, a red-light district alongside Underground Street, Alley Zero, and Red Archway.

On the streets of this chaotic neighborhood, the damp wind carries the smells of engine oil and perfume. Every lightbox is not a candle flame, but a red-hot weld point of machinery, sizzling and burning the festering parts of the city.

The battlefield under the neon lights was a bloodbath, where even the shadows carried the smell of blood and rust.

Fu Jun felt a bit cold, took out a pack of cigarettes from his coat pocket, shook one out and put it in his mouth. The school had taught him some basic Five Elements magic, but his spiritual energy was now depleted.

He reached into another pocket and found the lighter.

Strangely, he knew he only had one lighter in his pocket, but there were two in his pocket. He took out the lighter whose outline was obviously different from his own and examined it in his hand.

This is not a lighter.

It was an old-fashioned USB flash drive, all black. He could feel a raised layer on the back of the flash drive, which seemed to be a sticker. He turned it over to take a look.

The sticker only had four simple words written in bright red font.

[Run Offline]

After her brain processed the information, she recalled the mysterious man in the trench coat by the sink and realized she had forgotten what he looked like.

Suddenly, a buzzing sound exploded in my mind, and my hands started to tremble. I looked around to see if anyone had noticed me.

It was almost subconscious.

He walked to a trash can, threw the USB drive in, and then pretended to be calm while continuing to walk, his legs feeling a little weak.

I had been walking forward for a minute and still hadn't come to my senses.

Just then, my phone vibrated, and my body trembled involuntarily. I picked up the phone and saw that it was a text message from Yuanyue School. I had been absent for many days this semester. If my attendance rate did not meet the standard, my student status would be cancelled and I would not be able to participate in the college entrance examination.

Returning to the previous screen, I intended to turn off the phone screen, but as I scrolled down, I came across thousands upon thousands of threatening and harassing text messages sent from virtual numbers.

It seems they've made up their minds.

He turned back to the trash can, took out his USB drive again, shoved it into the inside pocket of his clothes, and left Kabukicho with a forced calm expression.

The man in the trench coat watched silently from across the street. A car drove past him on the road, obscuring his figure. By the time the car was gone, he had vanished from his spot.

One hour later.

Fu Jun returned to the community where the low-rent housing was located, and to save money on the coin-operated elevator, he slowly went up the stairs in the fire escape.

This dark passage spirals upwards, yet seems to fall downwards. There are no windows, no light, only darkness flowing down from the dome of the stairwell, thick like rotting liquid, and emergency lights at the EXIT exits, some bright red, some eerie green, resembling the underworld.

There are no road signs, no end in sight; every turn is a despairing, circuitous path mirroring the previous one.

In the boundless, suffocating, and dizzying haze, even the sound of footsteps was swallowed up by the cracks in the steps, and not even an echo was given.

Only his own breathing could be heard, heavy like iron chains dragging on the ground.

Use a key to open the door to the low-rent apartment, go inside, then lock it from the inside, and finally lock it with a chain.

I went to the computer and immediately unplugged the network cable.

For years, the damp darkness, the spread of moss, and the growth of rust have climbed up the eyelids, clouding the pupils with a gray haze. Birds cannot be seen, the wind cannot be heard, only deathly silence flows in the veins, like putrid water overflowing a desolate grave.

Suddenly, it became clearer and had a somewhat frightening luster.

He stared at the desktop for a few minutes, hesitating.

at last.

That devastating and horrific instrument was inserted.