Chapter 83 : Compensate Me for Medical Expenses
Compensate Me for Medical Expenses
"Ah!!!"
Seeing his right hand covered in blood, brother Dao's vision went black for a moment. In a panic, he hurriedly looked down.
At some point, a slit over ten centimeters long had appeared in his t-shirt around his lower abdomen. Warm blood was continually gushing from it, staining the surrounding fabric a deeper color.
This woman has a knife in her hand!
Damn it, this was just a little argument!
But she actually dared to use a knife right away!
The rapid blood loss made Brother Dao's face pale, and a sense of weakness surged up in his body, spreading through him like poison.
"Swish—"
In extreme fear, the tips of Brother Dao's fingers turned cold and he released the flyers he was holding. The white paper fluttered slowly to the ground, soon to be dotted with splashes of blood.
The total blood volume in an adult human body is about 4,000 milliliters.
Although no internal organs had been hit, if a large amount of blood was lost in a short period—once it reached around 800 milliliters—there was still a risk to life.
No matter how unwilling he was to admit it, at this moment, brother Dao, who prided himself on years of experience mixing in society, still shamefully chickened out.
Maniac! This woman is definitely crazy!
"Yellow Hair, that bitch's got a knife! Call 120 and get me to a hospital, quick!"
With a hoarse, broken voice, brother Dao shouted to Yellow Hair, the only one of the three who still retained full fighting strength.
However, his yell did not just alert Yellow Hair, but also reminded Cecilia, who was still on the ground.
"Mm..."
She let out a low groan and pushed herself up off the ground with effort. Her knees throbbed with stabbing pain, and when she casually touched them, she felt something sticky.
She was definitely bleeding, but luckily hadn't injured the bone and should still be able to move.
Seeing that Yellow Hair had his back to her and was running in Brother Dao's direction, Cecilia's ruthlessness flared. Not knowing where the strength came from, she leapt up from the ground. With a sharp stomp of her right foot on the pavement, her petite figure burst out at a speed as swift as a scene in a video game. Clutching the folding knife tightly, she covered the ground in two or three rapid steps, pouncing toward Yellow Hair's unprotected back!
However, reason ultimately restrained her impulse.
At the last moment, Cecilia drew back the blade just as she was about to stab it into Yellow Hair's back and instead used the hard, jutting butt of the knife handle to viciously smash it down on the back of his head.
The human occipital bone is a particularly vulnerable area.
Caught off guard, yellow Hair felt his vision go blank, as if countless small birds were noisily flapping inside his skull. He pitched forward over a meter, also knocking into Brother Dao, and with a crash both crashed onto the hard pavement tiles, faces smeared with blood. One of Yellow Hair's front teeth flew out.
"Ha...ha...ha..."
Bent over, supporting herself on her knees, Cecilia gasped for breath.
Even though she'd benefitted from surprise attacks several times, that burst of intense action was still extremely draining physically.
It took several seconds before Cecilia gradually recovered.
Further away, a couple who'd been about to walk past caught a glimpse of the scene and turned pale in fright. After anxiously whispering to each other, they hurriedly turned and took a detour.
Cecilia ignored the two innocent bystanders. She was still wearing her hood, and with the streetlights in the area so dim, she was not worried about anyone seeing her true appearance.
Now, it was time to deal with the three "society men" before her.
She took a deep breath and, under Brother Dao's fearful gaze, first picked up her phone. Only then did she slowly approach the men, unconcerned about potentially exposing herself under her skirt as she squatted down in an utterly unladylike manner. Playing idly with the folding knife in her hand, she looked up at Brother Dao and asked coolly:
"So, what do you think? Still want to keep fighting?"
"No...no more, little miss, I'm sorry, you're way too tough. I'll apologize...ah...please, I beg you, help me call 120..."
Already scared out of his wits by Cecilia's previous ruthless moves, brother Dao clutched his bleeding abdomen and spoke meekly.
"You bastard! I lost a tooth! Aaaah! I'm going to kill—"
At this moment, yellow Hair also recovered from the pain of his broken tooth. He got up with a roll, baring his teeth and roaring furiously.
Yet before the words were out, he suddenly stopped.
A flash of fear passed through the youth's eyes. With his mouth still bleeding, he clamped it shut and dared not utter another word.
Apparently satisfied with his reaction, Cecilia sneered and nodded, then put the folding knife down as well.
Clutching his bleeding stomach, brother Dao's expression was gloomy.
To be fair, although he'd made plenty of enemies in the past, he truly couldn't recall anyone with this girl's style—so ruthless and decisive.
Even for an old enemy seeking revenge, they would at least show up with a minivan crammed with more than a dozen guys to guarantee success.
Who the hell would have the guts to send a powerless little girl by herself?
And the craziest thing was, this frail-looking girl really had managed to take down all three grown men.
Thinking about this, brother Dao, wary as he was, became intensely curious about the girl's identity.
He realized that from the start of the fight until she completely disabled all three of them, Cecilia never uttered a word, as if the only reason she attacked was simply that she wanted to beat someone up to vent her anger.
Unexpectedly, her next words rendered Brother Dao completely dumbstruck.
"Tell me, who sent you to put up these missing person posters? You have three seconds to answer."
She didn't even wait for a response before Cecilia started to count down:
"Three..."
"Two..."
As the countdown approached zero, brother Dao felt a chill grip his heart and sensed something bad was about to happen.
"Wait!"
At the last second, brother Dao shouted as fast as he ever had in his life: "It was Brother Hu! He's our boss, the head man of this district! There's someone even higher above him—a rich young master from Donghai City. I heard Brother Hu call him Young Master Long!"
"Very good. Knowledgeable people like you deserve to be boss."
Cecilia smiled approvingly and silently stood up, then walked up to the other two men. Expressionless, she said,
"If you don't answer my questions, you each get a cut. Both of you, very fair, right? In our world, you have to be ready to take a knife now and then. Who wants to go first? Don't worry, I'll cut softer."
Seeing the girl raise the black folding knife high, both Yellow Hair and the tiger-headed youth instantly turned green with fear.
After all that had happened, they no longer doubted Cecilia's willingness to go through with her threats.
This girl really was a madwoman—other than outright killing in public, she'd do anything!
Seeing his badly swollen, blackened, and twisted fingers, the tiger-headed youth finally lost his nerve. Hot liquid ran down his leg and he broke down in tears, sobbing, "Please...let me go... I think my finger's going to fall off, let me get to a hospital...sob, I want to go home..."
Seeing this, yellow Hair was also overcome with emotion, bursting into tears as he collapsed on the ground, unable to say a word.
They were never real gangsters—at most just local hooligans, bullies who hustled students for pocket change. The phrase "take a knife for a brother" was just talk—for such a real-life bloodbath, they'd instantly become spineless.
"If you'd known this would happen, why'd you start it?"
Cecilia squatted down again, let out an exasperated sigh, and continued, "Forget it, since you cried so pathetically, I'll give you one more chance. Just answer my questions properly next time, and I'll let you go to the hospital as soon as we're done."
"... Really?"
The tiger-headed youth looked up with teary eyes.
"I always keep my word."
Enduring the pain in her left shoulder and knee, Cecilia continued, "Next question—who came up with the idea for the missing person posters? Your Brother Hu or Young Master Long from Donghai City?"
This time, the three of them became much more cooperative.
Cecilia hadn't even started her countdown before Brother Dao quickly answered, "It was Young Master Long! We just acted on Brother Hu's orders."
This answer didn't surprise Cecilia.
In her mind, that was exactly the sort of thing Dragon Abyss would do.
Raising her eyebrows, Cecilia fired another question: "How does Young Master Long usually get in touch with you?"
"Phone, by phone! Young Master Long rarely contacts Brother Hu directly—usually it's his secretary who passes along the message."
Brother Dao replied again.
"I'm very satisfied. Your cooperation has saved all of us precious time. Now for the last question."
She gave a light, approving laugh, then continued, "Listen carefully: if I wanted to meet Young Master Long in person, what's the best way?"
"Uh..."
All three hesitated at this, exchanging glances, not sure how to answer.
"Three..."
"Two..."
As Cecilia's tone grew sharper and the folding knife twitched in her hand, brother Dao, whose lips were already turning white, tried to respond:
"The person Young Master Long is looking for is Cecilia—the girl on the missing person posters. If you can find her, and then use her as leverage, Young Master Long will definitely agree to a meeting!"
Pulling out his phone from his pocket, which already displayed cobweb-like cracks on the screen, Cecilia frowned slightly, displeased:
"Give me your Brother Hu's contact information. Then pay for my screen repair and medical expenses, and you can go."
Although they had started the provocation, in the end, these three were just small fry carrying out orders. Cecilia didn't want to escalate things further and intended to recoup her losses before letting them go.
"We can cover the screen repair, but medical expenses..."
Hearing this, brother Dao and his two underlings were dumbfounded.
One got stabbed in the abdomen, another had all his index fingers broken, and the last had a huge lump on the back of his head and lost a tooth.
Who exactly owed who medical expenses here...