MtnChineseNovelHub

Nie Jiuluo drove her knee into his groin and grabbed for the gun with her left hand in the same breath. Yan Tuo was fast. He clamped down on her left hand and pinned her knee, then slid his fingers down to her calf and wrenched it outward. Her grip on the gun never closed. The moment her fingertips grazed the barrel, she already knew it was gone. He was too strong. She couldn't pry it loose. She shifted. Her eyes caught the belt at his waist. No thought, just motion. She hooked two fingers into his waistband and used the leverage to launch herself upward. One breath, and her arms were wrapped around his head and neck from behind, body pressed flush against his back. She pressed her finger into the groove of his cervical vertebrae, found the right notch, and leaned close to his ear. "Die." She twisted. Yan Tuo felt it the instant her weight shifted onto his back. He knew exactly what that position meant. A bad angle on the cervical spine meant dizziness at best, dea...

Lin Xirou studied him. "Old Qian said you crashed your car and ended up in a coma. What aren't you telling me?" Yan Tuo kept his voice easy, deliberately scrambling the timeline. "That was before the accident. I'd been running on no sleep for days. Fatigue driving, hit the roadbed, went out hard. Long enough that people thought I was in a coma." He paused. "I used the needle on Sun Zhou while I was out there. Same one you told me to bring back if dog-teeth ever scratched him. You said the outside doctors couldn't handle that kind of wound." Lin Xirou's expression didn't move. "Banya doesn't attack people for nothing. Did you do something, even by accident?" "No." He shook his head. "While they had me, I caught a few words. Something about my car. They said it had a smell. A sexy smell." He watched her face. There it was — just a flicker, but it was there. "Aunt Lin," he said, "you kn...

Jiang Baichuan smiled. "I'm angry. But angry or not, it's done." Quecha glared at him. "You're so cold-blooded. Yan Tuo's crew are vicious. What if they come after her? You said yourself she was useful. You used her to flush out their people." He switched off the bathroom light, wrapped an arm around Quecha's waist, and walked her downstairs. "You don't see it. I have three of their people in hand and I can't get anything out of them. What's the point of holding them? If you want the big fish, you muddy the water. You let someone go. You make the deep pool move." "And since when is that cold-blooded? She got pushed out, yes. But I warned her in advance. I promised full backing. She can shelter with me as long as she wants. I'm her Bodhisattva." Nie Er is a good blade, but this blade wants to stay in the sheath. If you want to use her, you have to ask. That makes her hard to use. The situation was still mu...

The cold snap came quietly and left the same way. By morning the sky had cleared, the sun hard and bright, turning the snow into something almost painful to look at. In the courtyard, crabapple branches drooped under the weight of white. Here and there, pale pink buds pushed through — tender, stubborn, impossibly delicate. Wei Rao stood at the window in her cloak, one hand raised to shade her eyes, watching with a faint smile. Two or three days of sun like this and the ground would be clear. The snow would melt into the soil and leave it moist, easy to plow — a gift to the farmers, whatever anyone tried to say about omens. Even if someone wanted to spread gossip that the snowfall was heaven's punishment on her grandmother's birthday, the fields would tell a different story. Grandmother no longer cared much for reputation. But there was no harm in shrinking the slander where she could. "Come freshen up, miss. We're going out of the city today — might as well enjoy t...

A cold wave rolled in from the dark, carrying fat goose-feather snowflakes, and swept the capital without warning. In Cheng'anbo Mansion, old Lady Wei exhaled a slow breath, rubbed her aching knees, and reached for the bronze bell beside her pillow. The night-watch maid, Jade, had been sleeping thin. Her quilt was no match for the chill, and she had drawn herself into a tight ball without realizing it. The bell snapped her awake. She threw back the covers, dressed, and lit the lamp — all in one unbroken motion. Two or three quick steps and she was at the old lady's bedside, lifting half the curtain. "Are you uncomfortable, my lady?" Old Lady Wei shook her head and looked toward the window. "Late spring cold," she murmured. "Wind's picked up. Go fetch another quilt from the chest, then boil water for the soup warmers. My knees hurt. I doubt I'll sleep tonight." Jade had served the old lady long enough to move without thinking. She opene...

At 3:30 a.m., the wind and rain showed no sign of letting up. The temperature in the mountains had dropped even further. Whether it was the cold or the exhaustion, Yan Han's face had gone unusually pale, lean almost to the point of gauntness. Only his eyes held steady — pitch-black, hard, and watchful. Zhen Nuan did the math in her head. They'd been running for nearly sixteen hours, from yesterday's missing person investigation straight into tonight's sudden homicide. No one here was fresh. The fact that they were all still standing, still thinking, was its own kind of willpower. She felt a brief, quiet sympathy for her colleagues. Only a moment. She thought through what Yan Han had said and understood at once. Agricultural vehicles crawl on rainy mountain roads. A police car in full sprint could cover the stretch from the mountain entrance to here in ten minutes. A farm truck would need twenty to thirty. Factor in the time the killer drove out at top speed — and ...