Chapter 25 · The Black Nail Walks In

Chen's opponent had a face like a hatchet.

Not metaphor. Actual scar tissue running temple to jaw, the kind you get when someone opens you up and the underground stitcher does a hack job for fifty yuan. The man rolled his shoulders. Rust-colored wraps covered both fists. He didn't blink.

Chen stood on the opposite side of the ring. His palm still bled. The pin fragment pulsed under the skin, slow and wrong, like a second heartbeat trying to sync with the first. Forty-seven hours left. He could feel it counting down.

Steel Claw sat in the high box, one leg crossed. Su Mian's cage hung three meters to his left, suspended by a single chain. She gripped the bars. Her knuckles were white.

"First trial," Steel Claw said. His voice didn't need a microphone. The underground hall went quiet. "Kill him, or she drops."

The hatchet-face guy smiled. No teeth on the left side.

Chen flexed his fingers. Blood squeezed out around the pin. It hurt, but hurt didn't mean much anymore. What meant something was the way Su Mian looked at him. Not scared for herself. Scared of him.

"You don't gotta do this," she said.