Daomu Biji: The Southern Archives

****

Merebear note: This is the censored version from here, which skips a few big points (especially towards the end)

****

He Jianxi hid in the lifeboat. The place was very cold as he huddled in the corner next to the seat.

He had been an accountant for a private winery. Every day, he had to withstand other people’s negative emotions whenever he collected the accounts. Then, his boss suddenly committed suicide. After getting on a barge, he was quickly robbed and then thrown off the ship. He floated on the sea for a long time with no island in sight. He then climbed onto an iron ship and became a stowaway. Ten minutes after that, he witnessed a mass murder and then turned into an abductor.

He had been cautious all his life. There were some flaws with working in the bootleg business, but he was frank and had a clear conscience. But in the span of three or four days, he had committed a lot of serious crimes.

No matter how honest he was, he didn’t have the confidence to explain everything clearly.

He couldn't even imagine how this kind of situation would end anymore. He could still blame Zhang Haiyan in the beginning, but now that he was in a daze, he understood it all clearly. He had encountered this kind of change because he was born unlucky.

What else would happen? Would he be shot dead? He thought of his boss. Death wasn’t unusual in this kind of world, right? Or could he get away and act as if everything had been a dream?

At this moment, he suddenly heard a noise outside. He secretly opened a gap in the canvas covering the lifeboat and saw Steven walking outside. He was dragging a girl behind him.

When Steven reached the corridor, it happened to be the moment Zhang Haiyan killed the assassin.

The gunmen walked by, not realizing that there were people on the pipes. As Zhang Haiyan breathed a sigh of relief, he noticed that the assassin’s eyes were wide open, seemingly glaring at him. Zhang Haiyan shook his head and thought to himself, you were even fooled at such a critical moment. You deserve to be short-lived.

At this time, he suddenly realized that something wrong. It wasn’t the gunmen who were walking by. It was He Jianxi.

The bastard was leaning against the wall and moving forward with trembling limbs. He was just a few steps away from the entrance of the cargo hold. If he reached it, the gunmen would riddle his body full of holes.

Zhang Haiyan immediately hung from the pipe, grabbed He Jianxi by the neck, and quickly pulled him up.

He Jianxi was startled and wanted to scream, but then he saw that it was Zhang Haiyan.

“Can’t you listen to me for once?” Zhang Haiyan scolded him.

“I can’t kill people,” He Jianxi said.

Zhang Hayian sighed. He never expected He Jianxi to kill people, either.

He Jianxi finally noticed the gunmen up ahead, “What are they doing? Stop looking at them. You should go back quickly and figure out what to do.”

"This is the cargo hold. The killers fled and went in there, so Miss Dong followed after them. I’m trying to find a way to put a few corpses on the lifeboat. You did a good job earlier. If that Bai Zhu woman has died in there, then that’s one less person for me to kill,” Zhang Haiyan said while pointing to the corpse nearby.

He Jianxi was no longer surprised, but at this moment, he suddenly thought of something. “Wait a minute, cargo hold?”

He wanted to say, “The cargo hold is a trap,” but just as he was about to speak, he suddenly smelled something strange. He became tongue tied and ended up blurting out, “There’s a burnt smell.”

“What?”

He Jianxi looked above Zhang Haiyan’s head and asked, “What’s burning in there?”

Zhang Haiyan looked back and found that there was an iron cover above the area where he was lying. He also smelled something at this time and immediately opened the cover. There was a fuse box inside, on top of which was a string of earthenware pots with sparks coming out of them.

It was a string of six or seven old-fashioned grenades. They were used by warlords to attack watchtowers during melees.

Zhang Haiyan was shocked when he realized that the killer hadn’t been hiding here. He was planning on blowing up the fuse box instead.

****

Uncensored version of Chapter 36 is here.