Chapter 6: Kidnapped at the Same Time as My Boyfriend’s White Moonlight

He’s safe right now.

Wen Tong lowered his head, his long lashes hiding the emotion in his eyes.

Delight. Overwhelming, giddy delight.

He was finally going to die.

Finally going to complete the mission!

Wen Tong bit down hard on the white cloth stuffed in his mouth, terrified he might accidentally laugh out loud.

Lu Fei watched him from close range, saw those lashes trembling without pause, felt the shift in his mood.

Shock? Disappointment? Resentment?

He narrowed his eyes, slipped a finger between Wen Tong’s lips, pushed into his mouth, then slowly curled his index finger, hooked the damp, soft cloth, and dragged it out.

The cloth hadn’t been tied tightly to begin with—one casual tug and it came free.

Lu Fei looked at his glistening fingers. His throat moved.

He didn’t let go of the cloth. His index finger made a lazy circle in the air, winding it tighter, letting the wet, warm fabric coil snug around his finger.

Then his face arranged itself into something like pity, while his eyes brimmed with ill intent. “Before you die—anything you’d like to say to Second Young Master Xie?”

Wen Tong was still floating on the joy of a mission about to be completed, his head full of: Thank you, bro.

Thank you, Brother Xie, for your great kindness.

Only when the cloth around his neck was pulled tighter did he come back to himself and look up at Xie You.

After a moment’s thought, Wen Tong decided to do his duty as a cannon fodder pawn and radiate one last burst of light and heat.

“It’s all right. Everyone dies. I’m just… going on ahead.”

“You two take care of each other.”

Lu Fei’s somewhat improved mood plummeted straight back into the gutter.

Giving up? With death staring him in the face, and he was still comforting Xie You?

His expression darkened. He jammed the butt of his gun against Wen Tong’s back and said coldly, “Do you even hear yourself?”

“Of course I do,” Wen Tong said.

He was laying bricks on the road to true love for the protagonist top and bottom.

“What the hell is going on in that head of yours?” Lu Fei snapped.

Seeing that the man kept yapping without pulling the trigger, Wen Tong couldn’t help saying, “None of your business. Are you going to kill me or not?”

Lu Fei’s brow was steeped in gloom. “Kill you. Of course I’ll kill you,” he said, voice dripping.

With that, he raised his right hand slightly and swung the muzzle around.

Wen Tong felt the gun at his back shift. He turned his head, noticed that Lu Fei’s right hand wasn’t aimed at him but angled toward Bai Yue, and his eyelid jumped.

He isn’t going to shoot Bai Yue, is he?

Having been burned once already, Wen Tong didn’t dare let his guard down. Seeing Lu Fei’s finger tighten on the trigger, he twisted sideways and rammed into him the instant the shot went off.

The muzzle jerked aside.

“Bang—”

The bullet meant for his skull tore into Bai Yue’s right arm.

Bai Yue swayed slightly. The white shirt on his right arm bloomed red.

Wen Tong’s eyes went wide. “You shot the wrong person!”

Lu Fei slid him a look and sneered. “I told him to choose one.”

He lifted his eyes and regarded Xie You without expression, his voice freezing cold. “I never said whether he was choosing who lives or choosing who dies.”

Wen Tong froze.

Xie You’s face darkened. “You gave your word.”

His black eyes flickered with rage and bloodlust.

But not a trace of shock. Not a flicker of surprise.

As if he’d known all along exactly what Lu Fei would do…

Something felt off. Lu Fei frowned. “The money. Then I release them.”

Wen Tong looked at the two kidnappers standing beside Bai Yue. They hadn’t moved an inch. No sign they meant to release anyone.

A second later, overhead came the sound of metal grinding against metal. Before he could react, a huge black shadow pressed down from above, kicking up a cloud of dust.

The container hanging from the crane had come loose, plummeting straight down at Xie You.

Lu Fei’s “release them” had never meant releasing anyone—it was their signal to drop the container!

It fell too fast. Wen Tong’s pupils contracted; he didn’t have time to make a sound.

By some miracle, a split second before it hit, Xie You kicked the briefcase away, rolled sideways out of danger, and ducked behind another container.

Wen Tong let out a shaky breath, face gone pale.

Then Lu Fei’s cold voice: “Green Face, go get him.”

And he raised his gun at Bai Yue again. “Today I’ll send you two lovebirds off to be a pair of doomed mandarin ducks.”

Wen Tong’s pupils shrank. He lunged to put himself between the gun and Bai Yue—

A whisper cut past his ear. A silenced round punched into the steel a few centimeters from Lu Fei’s arm.

“Fuck,” Lu Fei spat, expression changing. He shouted, “Xie the Second brought a sniper.”

“Find cover.”

At the order, the kidnappers scattered.

Wen Tong was hauled backward by the scruff of his neck; he twisted to look at Bai Yue.

Bai Yue glanced at him—then suddenly raised his left hand. Silver flashed at his fingertips. A wire shot straight for the great artery in Lu Fei’s throat.

Lu Fei had spent years living on the edge of a blade; his reflexes were fast. A heartbeat before the strike landed he wrenched his body aside, shielding his vitals.

The wire didn’t pierce him. It only sliced through his clothes, leaving a bloody line across his chest.

Lu Fei glanced at the cuffs—he had no idea when Bai Yue had gotten free of them—and his face went dark. He was about to fire when more shots came from a rooftop in the distance, forcing him back two steps.

One of the kidnappers beside Bai Yue took a bullet to the head and dropped.

The other lunged at Bai Yue and got the wire in his carotid for his trouble, clutching his throat and convulsing to the ground.

It all happened in less than a minute.

Wen Tong hadn’t even processed it before Bai Yue yanked him into the gap between two containers.

“You motherfucker, Bai Yue!”

He heard Lu Fei raging behind them, then a burst of bullets hammering the container’s steel skin.

Lu Fei didn’t give chase.

Bai Yue pulled him weaving through the containers. He didn’t know how many minutes passed before the gunfire at the docks fell silent.

Bai Yue stopped short.

Wen Tong smacked into his back, his nose stinging so sharply tears nearly sprang out.

Bai Yue lowered his voice. “I can’t hear anything. We can’t be sure where the others are. Move carefully.”

Wen Tong nodded and looked at his injury.

The bullet wound in his right arm hadn’t been treated. Blood had soaked the whole limb, the white shirt drenched crimson, the heavy stench of rust flooding the air.

“Your arm,” Wen Tong said quickly.

Bai Yue lowered his eyes, pulled the white cloth from Wen Tong’s neck, wrapped it around his own right arm, and knotted it one-handed to staunch the bleeding. “I’m fine.”

He looked at Wen Tong’s reddened eyes and added, “Don’t be afraid.”

Wen Tong didn’t realize he thought he was about to cry. “I’m not scared. I’m worried about your wound.”

A broken bone still untreated, and now a bullet in his right arm… the protagonist bottom really had a rough lot in life.

Bai Yue seemed to drift for a moment. He repeated softly, “Worried…”

He pressed his lips together. “Hands up.”

Wen Tong obediently raised his hands.

Bai Yue slid the wire from his left fingertips into the keyhole of the cuffs. A small movement of his fingers, and they clicked open.

Wen Tong’s eyes widened slightly. He’d guessed back in the factory that Bai Yue could pick the cuffs, but seeing it happen was still startling. Bai Yue’s movements were too practiced—practiced to the point of clashing with that young-master air of his.

Bai Yue tossed the cuffs aside and offered an explanation. “Found the wire in the car on the way here.”

Wen Tong came back to himself, let the handcuff business go, and said quietly, “Let’s go find Xie You first.”

Bai Yue looked puzzled. “Why would we look for Xie You?”

Wen Tong blinked, at a loss. “Why wouldn’t we?”

Bai Yue regarded him, eyes calm and flat. “The kidnappers’ target was Xie You from the very beginning. The two of us are just collateral.”

“Now that Xie You has shown himself, he’s the first one they’ll deal with.”

Wen Tong thought: Right, exactly, which is why we have to go help him, isn’t it?

“So this is the perfect chance for us to run,” Bai Yue said.

Wen Tong was stunned. Just… leave Xie You behind?

Was this a diplomatic way of saying “we go first, so we don’t slow Xie You down”… right?

Then a faint footstep came from ahead.

Wen Tong’s eyelid twitched. Bai Yue shook his head at him, signaling silence.

He nodded, listening as the footsteps drew closer.

A few seconds later, the toe of a sneaker appeared in their field of vision.

Bai Yue’s left hand snapped up, his elbow driving hard into the man’s temple.

The buzz-cut kidnapper, caught off guard, went down in one blow. As he tried to scramble up, Bai Yue kicked him in the Adam’s apple, knocking him out cold.

Bai Yue glanced at his face, recognized the kidnapper who’d hit him earlier, and his eyes went hard. He planted a foot on the man’s hand, bent down, and picked up the fallen pistol.

His left hand came up. A gunshot: “Bang—”

At point-blank range the bullet punched clean through the kidnapper’s skull, blowing out half the left side of his head; the mangled opening spilled a mess of red and white.

Bai Yue fired with crisp, clean efficiency, without a flicker of hesitation—like a cold-blooded machine running a preset program.

Wen Tong stood frozen.

For the first time in his life, he was watching someone die right in front of him.

And the protagonist bottom was the one who’d done it.

A nauseating wave of blood stench flooded his nose. His stomach heaved; he wanted to vomit, his mind a tangled mess.

How could Bai Yue kill someone?

Hadn’t the supervisor said this was a Novice World, that the main plot was a warm and sweet love story, that there was no danger at all?

He stood there blankly, feeling the plotline slip out of control.

Bai Yue’s expression hadn’t changed in the slightest. His brows and eyes were cool and distant, his bearing noble and aloof—as if he’d just crushed an ant rather than killed a man.

He glanced down at the gun and frowned slightly. “No suppressor.”

“The kidnappers will hear it and be here any second.”

He looked straight at Wen Tong, speaking faster. “We need to split up.”

“The kidnappers and Xie You’s sniper won’t shoot at you. All you have to do is run.”

“I’ll head right and draw them off. You go left, get out of the docks.”

“Remember—keep going left, until you reach the yellow crane, then turn right, until you see the Evergreen containers, then go left again, and that’s the dock exit.”

Bai Yue spoke rapidly, crouched to fish several magazines off the dead kidnapper, and turned right.

He took a step, then couldn’t help looking back at Wen Tong. “Once this is settled, I’ll come find you.”

With that, Bai Yue walked on without looking back, vanishing quickly into the dark.

A few seconds later, Wen Tong heard a kidnapper shout, “The kid’s over here!”

He came back to himself, took a deep breath, and forced himself to calm down.

Whatever Bai Yue had done, the most important thing now was completing his mission.

Wen Tong dug his nails into his palm, held his breath, swallowed down the nausea, and stepped over the body at his feet.

He didn’t go left as Bai Yue had told him. He followed the direction Bai Yue had gone.

He had to die by a kidnapper’s bullet.

Right now he couldn’t find the kidnappers, and he couldn’t find Xie You. Following Bai Yue and taking a bullet for him seemed the best hope.

Before long, that hope was dashed.

Bai Yue moved too fast. Wen Tong couldn’t keep up, and the towering, hulking containers closed around him like a maze—he had no idea where anything was.

Not only did he not know where Bai Yue was, he didn’t know where he himself was.

Standing in the narrow corridor between containers, Wen Tong wanted to throw his head back and shout, Open fire on me!

Then a hand reached out of the darkness and seized his arm.

Wen Tong assumed it was a kidnapper and didn’t struggle. But a familiar, gentle voice sounded by his ear: “It’s me.”

It was Xie You.

Xie You pulled him into a hidden corner, shielded him with his body, and slowly tightened his arms around him. “Tongtong.”

“Brother Xie, did you see Bai Yue?” Wen Tong asked at once.

“He said he was going to draw the kidnappers off and split up with me. I’m worried something might have happened to him…”

Xie You stroked his hair, lifted his eyes, and looked ahead.

A dozen meters away, Bai Yue’s figure was faintly visible weaving beneath the steel and concrete, fleeing in wretched, desperate haste.

Four or five men were chasing him. One of them fired—a poor shot that missed.

A flicker of regret passed through Xie You’s eyes. He withdrew his gaze and said to Wen Tong, “Mm. I saw him.”

“He’s safe right now.”