Chapter 369: Blood Eye [Part 1]
Czedow’s calculation wasn’t wrong. This zone wasn’t just mostly bandit-free, even Hunters had to restrain themselves unless they wanted to land themselves in deep shit. It was because this zone belonged to the major families of Sector H, and right now their influence was positively oppressive. Only those with a death wish would dare to challenge their authority. It was why few people foresaw this happening at all.
Wheeze had taken off toward ground zero immediately after it felt the commotion, and Czedow had also decided to make his own move. Although the explosion had not taken place at the cabin where Cillin was, they were close enough that his presence might be necessary.
Cillin was enjoying a wonderful sleep up until that moment. He had calculating a couple of equations when the explosion had jolted him from his slumber. The passengers around him panicked quite a bit until the flight attendants rushed over to soothe them. It didn’t take much effort to do so because they all knew that they were traveling in a safe zone. They believed that someone would handle whoever or whatever had caused the commotion shortly.
Unfortunately, today was destined to be a day of disappointment. The passengers had just returned to their seats when the entrance to their cabin suddenly exploded inward. The next thing they knew, two men carrying guns in their hands and shoulder cannons on their shoulders had strode into the cabin like they owned the place.
The controls to the cabin doors were password-protected, and the ship captain had not told them the password. Moreover, the hijackers’ own jammers made the doors even harder to open than normal. They were in a hurry, so they chose to blast it open with their shoulder cannons.
Obviously, the appearance of the two hijackers caused the passengers to panic once more. It took a couple of warning shots before the cabin finally returned to silence.
Generally speaking, someone who would choose to fly in a passenger starship could not be rich or powerful. If they were, they would be flying around in a private spaceplane instead. That said, they were all richer compared to the ordinary citizens of most sectors. Most of them were here to better their prospects, and Sector H was considered to be one of the top 5 Sectors of the Ten Business Sectors.
Space bandits?
That was the collective reaction of most passengers thought when they saw the two hijackers.
They didn’t know what to do because neither the flight attendants nor the robot helpers were doing anything. In fact, the guards who should be protecting the ship were nowhere to be seen. The more perceptive ones already realized that they might never see them.
The defense system had also been taken out by the jammer, and the bridge had fallen completely under the hijackers’ control. The original pilots had been knocked out, bound, and left at a corner.
Oppressive silence reigned over the cabins for a moment. The ship captain hadn’t made an announcement, and no guards had shown up to save the day. By now, everyone knew there was no point hoping that help would not be arriving from inside the ship. They could only keep quiet and hope that the space bandits would spare them.
Suddenly, the space bandits did something no one was expecting. One of them walked up to a passenger, grabbed their wrist, and started pulling them toward the entrance.
“W-what are you doing? I don’t have much money on me, b-but I can give you everything I have! Just don’t kill me!” The guy begged. In that moment, he looked like a chicken who was being held by the neck by the butcher.
The space bandit didn’t show any reaction though. He simply walked back to the entrance with his prey and disappeared, leaving behind a bunch of confused passengers.
Although the space bandit was gone, there were still two of them guarding the entrance. No one, not even those who were deluded about their strength dared to make a move. Two fists cannot beat a shoulder cannon after all.
Cillin was seated next to an uncle. The shivering man shot the two bandits a glance and was about to pour his heart out to Cillin when suddenly, he realized that the young man was nowhere to be seen.
In fact, Cillin had concealed himself immediately after the cabin door was blown off. He didn’t have much presence to begin with because his seat was close to a corner. He was on already the move while everyone was still distracted by the noise.
In his opinion, these people looked more like terrorists than space bandits. The reason he said this was because the emotion behind their eyes were less greedy and more contemptuous. More specifically, they seemed to regard the passengers they were guarding to be little better than worms.
Assuming that they were terrorist, and this was an organized attack, then they could not have attacked the ship for wealth. In addition, the person they took away earlier was a doctor; an ordinary doctor with no extraordinary background whatsoever. What could they possibly want with him? Could they be trying to get their hands on every doctor in this ship, good or bad?
One thing for certain, these people had to access the passengers’ information. The terrorist would not have gone straight for the doctor without even making an inquiry otherwise. It was of no concern to Cillin though. The ID he used to purchase the ticket was fake.
The doctor was hauled to the private cabin where the ship captain and a few officers slept in. It was a privilege only the most persons-in-charge of the ship got to enjoy, although that privilege had obviously backfired on them today.
A woman was lying on a bed. She looked to be around her forties or late thirties, and it seemed that she was plagued by some sort of illness. Her complexion was pale, and her skin was dry to the point of cracking. There was a man applying a humidifier to her body in an attempt to alleviate her symptoms to no avail. She was beautiful once, but she was so sick that only a husk of that beauty had remained.
There were two people sitting next to the patient. One of them was the man who was applying the humidifier to her skin, and the other was probably a doctor judging from the vials in his hand. They were almost certainly on the same side judging from how casually they were acting around each other.
“I’ve brought him, boss,” The guy hauling the ordinary doctor said before pushing him forward.
The doctor was terrified to begin with, but his knees immediately failed him when he saw the people inside the private cabin. At the same time, the man using the humidifier finally stopped what he was doing and turned his head. He was an incredibly muscular man with thick, brown hair that covered up most of his head. It was just a sideway glance—his eyes weren’t even looking at them directly—but the poor doctor still felt like someone had cleaved him in the heart.
Not only was the man’s aura too powerful, it was an aura of immense pressure and brutality. He was like a sharp blade that reeked of murderous intent and the blood of his prey, and one look from him was enough to send most people fleeing.
“Come,” the man said.
It was just one word, but it felt like a mountain was sitting on his chest. The kneeling doctor was trembling so hard that he couldn’t even breathe. He took half a step forward before collapsing on the ground all of a sudden. He had blacked out from sheer fright.
The guy who hauled the doctor in raised his eyebrows. He didn’t think he was going to be useful, but he didn’t think he was so spineless as to pass out before he even managed to do his job.
“Do you want me to… deal with him, boss?” he asked while averting his gaze. He dared not look his boss in the eye.
“Toss him out.” The boss had already turned back toward the woman before he knew it.
It was just three simple words, but the man could clearly sense that his boss’ mood had grown even fouler. The only reason he hadn’t exploded yet was because of the woman’s presence. Otherwise, he had little doubt that the doctor’s brain would be sprawled across the floor already.
“Yes sir! We’re gathering the rest of the doctors on the ship right now. I’m sure they’ll be brought over very soon…”
He was just trying to console his boss, but his voice grew smaller and smaller as he spoke. In the end, he wanted to give his past self a few hard slaps to the face for his stupidity. He tensed and waited for the worst, but after waiting for a while and hearing nothing, he carefully looked up and found that his boss had resumed his care of the woman. It wasn’t until the doctor beside the bed had shot him a look did he finally snap out of his stupor and hauled the unconscious doctor out of the room in a hurry.
After the duo was gone, the doctor preparing a medicine shot both the woman and his boss a look and let out a quiet sigh. Everyone in their group had gotten used to death a long time ago. They were always prepared to go to heaven or hell in the next second. When the moment actually arrived though, when the person who was about to depart this world was a loved one, they could not help but feel despair anyway.
Everyone dies someday, but no one liked being helpless before death.