NOVPUB52: Chapter 52: Meeting Again (Please Favorite, Follow, and Vote)
52: Chapter 52: Meeting Again (Please Favorite, Follow, and Vote)
The young man who had been resisting Liu Nan was about to turn around when he suddenly felt a stabbing pain in his right shoulder at the joint with his elbow.
Following that, his entire right arm lost its strength from top to bottom, falling into a numb tingle, and even the upper half of his body started to feel a bit numb.
Before he could react to what had happened, as he was about to turn and look back, Liu Nan forcefully broke free from the control of his numb right hand, slipped away from his body, and then dashed toward the direction of a streetlight without looking back.
As she ran, she shouted loudly, “Help!
Help!
Somebody is abducting me!”
A dark object slid down the young man’s right shoulder, and looking down, he discovered it was a small taser.
Liu Nan had just used this taser to numb his arm.
Liu Nan glanced back at the young man and hurriedly ran forward even faster.
This taser was a custom model she carried after an attack she experienced a while ago; it could only discharge once but had the power to knock out a fully-grown man.
However, it only caused the young man’s arm to become numb.
The reason she had not used it earlier was because, in the dark environment her vision was not as good as the young man’s, and the chances of successfully escaping in the dark were far lower than in a lit area.
While running, she looked up toward the source of the light in front of her.
It was not a streetlamp, but a large solar-powered light mounted on the wall of a house.
Although she could see the light now, she was still quite a distance from the light source, and the young man behind seemed to have regained his senses and was close to catching up to her in just a few strides.
Liu Nan had to push her physical limits and sprint.
She had never felt she could run so fast; her legs were still in pain from where the young man had grabbed her, but she could no longer care about the pain.
In this moment her mind was blank, with only the thoughts of ‘run’ and ‘run faster.’
It was at this moment that Liu Nan’s loud cries for help took effect.
A household turned on their lights, and a young man in pajamas stuck his head out from a second-floor window to look outside, “Who’s there, making a racket in the middle of the night?”
Just as he saw the young man chasing Liu Nan, he immediately became half sober from sleep and shouted loudly, “Hey, what are you doing, I’m calling the police!”
The young man turned around and glared at him angrily, his muscles swelling rapidly as he punched through a nearby house’s garden wall, sending bricks flying everywhere.
The man who peered out the window trembled in fear and quickly withdrew, but after hesitating for a moment, he still picked up his phone.
Meanwhile, the young man, seeing that his intimidation had worked, smugly turned his head to continue the pursuit of Liu Nan, only to realize that she was nowhere to be seen.
——
Liu Nan leaned against the wall of the alleyway, gasping for air, with a piercing buzzing sound echoing in her mind; her lungs felt like a ragged bellows being furiously pumped.
This was the consequence of engaging in intense physical activity after a long period without it.
After resting for a short while, she glanced at the light from the streetlamp on her left, hesitated for a moment, and then looked to the right, which was pitch-black and led to an unknown alleyway.
In a moment of quick thinking, she had sharply turned right into the alley next to her, escaping the young man’s line of sight.
She wouldn’t be able to outrun him in a lit area and was sure to be caught, so her only chance was to use these interconnected alleys to see if she could elude him.
She wondered if Yuan Nannan had found He Ao and whether they had called the police.
Would He Ao come to save her?
For some reason, Liu Nan had great faith that He Ao could save her from the young man, perhaps because of He Ao’s mystique, which made her subconsciously raise her expectations for him.
Her phone and smartwatch had been taken and crushed when Bull captured her; she now had no way to contact the outside world and could only hope for rescue.
She gently squeezed her left sleeve, where another taser was hidden; she had brought two, with one concealed in each sleeve.
The young man had been overconfident when he first caught her and hadn’t searched her properly.
Immediately after that, she cautiously and quickly walked into the dark alley.
Liu Nan had thought about calling out loud for help, but making noise would mean revealing her location.
She couldn’t be certain whether help would arrive before the young man rushed over and caught her.
She planned to walk a little further in and see if she could slip into a house with an unlocked door or without a garden wall.
The walls around here were too high, and she didn’t know how to climb them.
——
Ding——
He Ao answered the phone, sprinting down the path while hooking the Bluetooth earpiece over his ear.
Captain Liu’s voice came through from the other end, “He Ao, someone just called in, saying they saw a burly man chasing a woman and even smashing a wall with a punch.”
“Mhm, I heard, I’m not far from there, I’m on my way now,” he responded.
As he spoke, he vaulted over a wall and walked in a straight line along its edge towards his destination.
“Alright …” Captain Liu obviously did not expect this response; he fell silent for a moment before adding, “Be careful.”
“Alright.”
He Ao paused, nodded, and then hung up the phone.
—-
Liu Nan continued to delve into the alley, which seemed especially secluded.
The absence of the footsteps of the youth behind her proved she had not been found yet.
After making several turns, she seemed to come upon a pile of abandoned buildings, the surrounding area overgrown with weeds, implying it was rarely visited.
She kept walking forward, encountering a fork in the road that split into two paths.
Right then, a slow palpitation began to emanate within her,
Take the right, something lies to the right.
She didn’t know what was on the right, but the pulsation in her heart grew stronger, compelling her to head down the path to the right.
The weeds on the right were evidently denser than the ones on the path she had traversed before; Liu Nan sometimes even had to push away the weeds in front of her to proceed.
The path seemed to run along the wall of an old house.
Even though Liu Nan could not make out the details in the dark, only seeing a blurry shadow, she could still vaguely discern that the architectural style of this old house was different from the other buildings.
After walking for a minute or two, a somewhat spacious red iron gate appeared in Liu Nan’s field of vision.
The gate seemed unlocked, ajar, leaving a gap.
Liu Nan pressed her eye to the gap, attempting to see what lay within.
Suddenly!
A powerful arm shot out from behind and forcefully grasped her wrist, then quickly seized her other hand.
The owner of the arm pulled Liu Nan’s hands behind her back, stacking them together, and bound them with a strip of cloth found who-knows-where, then pinched open her mouth and stuffed a wad of cloth to gag her.
“Run, where do you think you’re running to?”
The youth was clearly agitated; he hoisted Liu Nan up again, spat, looked around for a moment, and then ran back the way they came.
Crossing one more alley would take them to the riverbank where they had concealed a small boat, ready to cross the river.
There were no bridges or ferry points nearby, so the police wouldn’t think of crossing the river for a while.
By the time the police realized it, he would have made his escape.
The youth sprinted along the alley, and as long as he reached the riverbank, half of his mission would be accomplished.
He encountered no obstacles along the way and rushed through effortlessly, already able to see the rocky riverbank in the distance; the place where his boat was hidden wasn’t far ahead.
His boat wasn’t hidden in the water; there were no aquatic plants nearby, and it would be conspicuous.
Therefore, he had tucked the boat amidst the straw stacks in a field some distance from the river.
For others, it might be difficult to carry the boat such a distance, but for him, it was simple.
However, just as he was charging enthusiastically towards the field, he was shocked to discover a vague figure lying atop the very straw stack where he had hidden his boat.
“We meet again.”
The figure slowly stood up, revealing a smile.
Though Liu Nan couldn’t see the figure, she recognized the voice very well.
