Lin Xi confirmed she was being followed on the third day.
The first day, she thought it was her imagination. A man in a gray jacket appeared at the entrance of the convenience store across from the repair shop, bought a pack of cigarettes, and stood there smoking for five minutes. Lin Xi glanced at him through a gap in the rolled-up metal door—around thirty, close-cropped hair, lean build. His eyes didn't have the vacant look of an ordinary passerby; instead, they held a deliberately suppressed sharpness.
She showed no sign of anything unusual and continued working on the car, head down.
The second day, the same man appeared at the alley's entrance. This time he wore a dark blue coat, but his gait was unchanged—his left foot turned out slightly when it landed, a habit left over from an old injury. He stood at the alley entrance for ten minutes, his gaze sweeping toward the repair shop three times.
Lin Xi was changing a tire on a car, her back to the alley. She could feel that gaze on her back, like an icy needle tracing down her spine.
The third day, he appeared downstairs from her rental unit.
Ten at night. Lin Xi returned from the repair shop. Passing the stairwell entrance, she caught a whiff of cigarette smoke. Not the cheap brand Old Lady Wang usually smoked, but something stronger, with a sharp, pungent finish. The cigarette butt lay on the concrete floor at the stairwell landing, still faintly warm.
She didn't turn around, didn't pause, didn't even quicken her pace. As usual, she went up to the third floor, opened her door, stepped inside, and closed it.
Then she leaned against the door panel and closed her eyes in the darkness.
Someone was following her. Not Liu Dayong—that coward lacked both the nerve and the capability. It was someone sent by the organization. Perhaps Scarface Liu had tipped them off, or perhaps they'd sensed something through other channels.
Either way, they were starting to suspect.
Lin Xi stood in the darkness for thirty seconds, letting her heartbeat return to its normal rhythm. Then she walked to the window, used a fingernail to lift a corner of the black plastic sheeting, and peered down at the street below.
The alley was dark, but her eyes had already adjusted. The man in the dark blue coat stood in the doorway of the building across the way, leaning against the wall as if sheltering from rain. But there was no rain tonight.
He was waiting for her to turn off her light.
Lin Xi let the plastic sheeting fall, turned, and walked to her bed, sitting down. Her movements were light, silent.
She was thinking.
Who was this tail? A low-level scout for the organization, or a higher-grade observer? He'd been following her for three days—why hadn't he acted yet? Was he confirming her identity, or waiting for backup?
Whatever the answer, one thing was certain: she couldn't let him keep following her. He would discover her routine, notice her habit of going out late at night, see the subtle connection between her and Liu Dayong. Any one of these details could be the last straw that broke her disguise.
She needed to eliminate this obstacle.
But not tonight. Tonight, she needed a plan.
Lin Xi lay on her bed, turning off the light as usual. She heard faint footsteps from below—the man had left the doorway and moved to a deeper spot in the alley. He thought she was asleep.
She opened her eyes in the darkness, staring at the ceiling.
A screwdriver.
She thought of the modified screwdriver on the tool wall. She'd made it during her first week at the repair shop—sharpening an ordinary Phillips screwdriver, tempering it, then filling the handle with lead for extra weight. It looked no different from any ordinary repair tool, but in her hands, it was a deadly weapon.
She chose a screwdriver because it was ordinary. No one would find it strange for a female mechanic to carry a screwdriver. If she used a knife, a gun, or any other obvious weapon, a single search would expose her.
But a screwdriver was different. It was a tool. And a tool could be anything.
The next day, Lin Xi went to work at the repair shop as usual.
She showed no sign of anything unusual. She fixed cars, organized tools, chatted with Old Zhou, ate her boxed meal. In the afternoon, she even helped Xiaomin fix her bicycle, which was always losing its chain.
But before leaving work, she did one thing.
She took that modified screwdriver from the tool wall and slipped it into her work uniform pocket. The movement was natural, like any worker taking their own tool. Old Zhou was doing a wheel alignment on a car and didn't notice.
At six in the evening, Lin Xi finished work. Instead of going straight home, she bought a bowl of wontons from a food stall at the alley entrance and sat on a plastic stool by the roadside, eating slowly. Her gaze casually swept the street, but in reality, she was noting every detail—the tail's position, the pedestrians in the alley, the range of the streetlights, the blind spots ofthe security cameras.
The man stood by a newsstand fifty meters away, a newspaper in his hand, but his eyes never left her direction.
Lin Xi finished her wontons, paid, and stood up to walk toward her rental unit. Her pace was the same as always, neither fast nor slow, like a weary working girl.
As she went upstairs, she smelled cigarette smoke. The same brand, the same spot. He was confirming she'd gone home.
Lin Xi entered her room and closed the door. She didn't turn on the light but stood behind the door, waiting.
Ten minutes. Twenty minutes. Thirty minutes.
Footsteps sounded again downstairs. The man emerged from the doorway, paced a few steps in the alley, then moved toward a deeper spot—a recessed doorway that had become his usual hiding spot these past few days.
He thought she would be like the previous nights: lights out, sleep, a dreamless night.
But tonight was different.
Two in the morning. The old town had fallen completely silent.
Only one streetlight at the alley's entrance remained lit, its glow scattered by the humid air, casting a blurry amber light on the ground. In the distance, a dog barked once or twice, followed by long stretches of silence.
Lin Xi sat up in bed.
She made no sound. The bed frame was an old iron one that creaked with the slightest movement, but she used a special technique to rise—first turning on her side, supporting her weight with her palms, distributing it evenly, then slowly placing her feet on the floor. The entire process was noiseless, like a shadow moving through the dark.
She put on her dark gray hoodie and pulled the hood low. The screwdriver, taken from her work uniform pocket, was now gripped in her right palm. The lead weight in the handle shifted its center of gravity back, giving it a solid, substantial feel.
She walked to the door and turned the lock gently with her left hand. She had replaced the lock herself; she knew its temperament better than anyone—the third pin was a bit sticky and required slightly more force to turn. She opened the door in five seconds, without a sound.
The stairwell was pitch black. Lin Xi used no light source; her eyes had fully adjusted to the darkness. She could see every step of the stairs, every crack in the walls, every piece of debris on the floor that might make a sound.
She walked barefoot on the concrete. The moment the soles of her feet touched the ground, she could feel the contours of every grain of dust. This was one of the techniques she'd learned in the organization—walking barefoot was quieter than wearing shoes because the skin of the feet provided more tactile feedback, letting you know where to apply pressure and where to relax.
First floor. Stairwell entrance. Iron door.
Lin Xi opened the iron door just as silently. She pressed her hand against the door panel first, applying gradual pressure, letting the door swing slowly under gravity rather than pushing it open all at once. The iron door made an extremely faint scraping sound, swallowed by the night wind.
The alley was dark. The moon was hidden behind clouds, leaving only the dim glow from the streetlight at the entrance. Lin Xi's gaze swept both sides of the alley and quickly located the man.
He was in a recessed doorway midway down the alley, leaning against the wall, head bowed, as if dozing. His breathing was steady; his body swayed slightly but he wasn't fully asleep—the basic discipline of a professional operative, maintaining a minimal level of alertness even while resting.
Lin Xi moved toward him along the wall.
Her steps were light, each one placed in the shadows beyond the streetlight's reach. Her body leaned slightly forward, her center of gravity low, like a feline stalking its prey. The screwdriver was held in a reverse grip in her right hand, blade down, handle pressed into her palm—this grip allowed for the quickest stabbing motion and wouldn't slip due to sweat.
Ten meters. Five meters. Three meters.
She stopped two meters away. At this distance, she could close in and strike within 0.3 seconds, yet the man remained unaware of her presence.
She observed him for three seconds. His posture—back against the wall, arms crossed over his chest, chin lowered. It was relatively relaxed, but not completely unguarded. The way his arms were crossed was key: right hand on top, left hand underneath. In an emergency, he could draw a weapon from his waist in half a second.
But half a second was more than enough for her.
Lin Xi moved.
Her right foot stepped forward, and her body shot forward like a released spring. Two meters compressed to zero in an instant. Her left hand struck first, faster than her right, clamping precisely over the man's mouth. Her palm sealed his lips, her fingers hooked into his jawbone, and she pulled back sharply—this single motion simultaneously covered his mouth and stabilized his cervical spine.
At the same instant, the screwdriver in her right hand stabbed upward from below, piercing through soft tissue and muscle, finding the gap between the third and fourth ribs with surgical precision. The blade slid into the chest cavity without resistance, pierced the lung, and stopped with its tip against the outer wall of the heart.
She controlled the force, not pushing deeper. She didn't need him to die instantly; she needed him to die quietly.
The man's eyes flew wide in the darkness, pupils contracting violently. His body instinctively tried to struggle, but Lin Xi's body had already pressed against him, using her weight and strength to pin him firmly to the wall. His limbs twitched a few times, like a fish nailed to a cutting board, then slowly lost their strength.
The whole process took less than three seconds.
Lin Xi held the position, feeling the changes in the man's body. His heartbeat thrashed wildly beneath her palm for a few beats, then began to slow. Each beat was weaker, slower than the last, like a clock gradually winding down.
His lung was pierced; air leaked from the wound, producing an extremely faint hissing sound mixed with bubbling blood. Lin Xi could feel his chest collapsing; each attempt to breathe only drew more blood into his windpipe.
Thirty seconds later, his heart stopped.
Lin Xi waited another ten seconds, confirming no further response, then slowly released her grip. The man's body slid down the wall, slumping onto the ground in the doorway, his head lolling limply against his chest. His eyes remained open, but they saw nothing anymore.
Lin Xi looked down at him, silent in the darkness for a moment.
His face was young, younger than the photos suggested. Perhaps twenty-five, perhaps twenty-six. There were calluses on his palms, at the base of the fingers and the web between thumb and index finger—the kind of marks left by someone who'd held a gun for a long time. A Glock pistol was tucked behind his waist, the safety still on, indicating he hadn't had time to react.
Lin Xi crouched down, wiped the blood off the screwdriver with his clothes, then took the pistol from behind his waist, removed the magazine, ejected the round from the chamber, and scattered the components in three directions down different sewers.
She checked his pockets. A mobile phone, a wallet, a pack of cigarettes, a lighter, a simple map of the old town. The map had several circles drawn in ballpoint pen—the location of the repair shop, the location of her rental unit, and several spots where Liu Dayong frequently appeared.
Lin Xi pocketed the phone and the map, leaving the other items where they were.
She stood up and gave the man one last look.
"You shouldn't have followed me." Her voice was very soft, like the whisper of night wind through the alley.
Then she turned and walked back along the wall toward the stairwell entrance. Her steps were still soundless, her figure still hidden in the shadows. The iron door closed silently behind her, the stairs bore her weight without a creak beneath her feet.
Back in her room, Lin Xi placed the phone and map on the folding table and went into the bathroom, carefully washing the blood from her hands with soap. Water streamed over her fingers, washing the faint red color down the drain, disappearing without a trace.
She looked at herself in the mirror. The unfamiliar face in the darkness appeared pale and hard, only her eyes remaining her own—those eyes burning with cold fire in the dark.
This was her first kill since returning to Binhai.
It wouldn't be the last.
Lin Xi turned off the faucet, dried her hands, and returned to the main room. She powered on the phone and began browsing its contents. The phone had no passcode—perhaps he'd thought no one would ever get hold of it.
The contact list contained only five numbers, all labeled with code names—"C1," "C2," "C3," "C4," "C5." The text message history was sparse, mostly brief instructions with times and locations. The last message, received three days ago, was from "C1": "Target confirmed. Continue observation. Await orders."
Target. In their system, she was merely a "target."
Lin Xi copied all the data from the phone onto her own basic phone, then disassembled the phone, snapped the SIM card in half, and smashed the motherboard with the screwdriver, disposing of the fragments in three separate trash bags.
She kept the map. The circles marked the organization's surveillance coverage in the old town—useful intelligence.
After finishing, Lin Xi sat on the edge of the bed and looked at the photographs on the wall.
Thirteen faces. Now one was missing—not from the wall. That tail wasn't on her list; he was merely an unnamed pawn, a tool that could be replaced at any time.
But the people on her list—every one of them was irreplaceable. Each was an essential piece of her revenge puzzle.
Liu Dayong. Scarface Liu. The "Courier." Ah Gui. "Old Man."
And those whose names she hadn't yet uncovered.
Lin Xi picked up her red pen and wrote a line in her notebook: "First obstacle eliminated. Organization has begun to suspect. Must accelerate actions."
She closed the notebook and lay down on the bed.
Outside the window, the sky began to lighten. The outline of the old town gradually sharpened in the dawn. From a distance came the sound of sanitation workers sweeping the streets, the soft rustle of brooms against the pavement, like some ancient lullaby.
Lin Xi closed her eyes.
In the last second before sleep, a picture surfaced in her mind—the deep sea three years ago, freezing seawater filling her lungs, moonlight distorted by the water's surface above her head like a melting silver coin.
That image no longer frightened her. It only reminded her why she had survived.
For this day.
For every name marked in red.
For the ordinary life that would never come again—the life that had belonged to Ye Qingzhou.
Lin Xi sank into sleep. Her breathing was very light, her body completely relaxed, like an ordinary young woman spending an ordinary night in an ordinary rented room.
But beneath her pillow, the modified screwdriver lay quietly, its blade still bearing a rust-like smell that washing couldn't remove.
That wasn't rust.
It was the smell of first blood.