Hidden Assassin 221

Tall buildings stood majestically, cars crowded the streets, and colorful billboards lined the buildings on both sides of the road. As Christmas approached, the weather turned cold. The streets were teeming with people bundled up in thick winter clothes: busy salesmen in thick suits carrying briefcases, stylishly dressed tall women walking in pairs, young people in hip-hop clothes and sports caps, urban white-collar workers holding coffee, pausing for a moment in front of newspaper stands before quickly moving on after paying for a newspaper, white skin, yellow skin, black skin, blonde hair, black hair, hair dyed in all sorts of colors, oh, and bald heads… The flow of people paused slightly at the crowded intersection. As the tide of cars passed, the green light on the pedestrian walkway lit up, and the waiting people on both sides rushed towards each other, only to be separated by the flow of cars a moment later.

Shops near and far were already decked out for the upcoming Christmas. Across the street, a huge promotional sign for the Christmas sales was being slowly hoisted up. The colors were vibrant and particularly eye-catching, and the people walking underneath instinctively stepped back a distance. The sky was bright. From the side, the towering buildings seemed to cut the sky into long trapezoids. In this narrow space surrounded by huge, vibrant billboards, millions of people crowded between the street, like a valley, waiting, moving, stopping, like cells, carrying small, fragmented objects and fragmented lives from one place to another, maintaining the vibrant life of this giant beast of a city.

December 19, 1998. New York, Manhattan, one of the most bustling places in the world.

Wearing a white, thin patient gown and a pair of slippers, a woman with a delicate face and long black hair tied up in a simple red string, possessing a standard Oriental beauty, stood in the corridor. Her hands gently touched the transparent glass window that sealed off the entire space. She gazed at the street below. Her face was pale due to her illness, but her eyes seemed to be more vibrant. The swelling on her body had gone down, making her thinner. She appeared more slender and fragile than before.

This was a medical institution located in the most bustling area of Manhattan. Calling it a medical institution was perhaps more accurate than calling it a research institute. This medical research institute had long been renowned in the industry, but it was not a regular hospital. More often than not, they were only responsible for development and research. If you were sick and wanted to receive treatment here, you would inevitably have to spend a fortune, and preferably have a good family background. Because of this, the number of patients they admitted was not many, yet they still managed to occupy a place in the most expensive part of the world, equipped with the best medical equipment and a perfect medical environment.

She arrived here two days ago. In fact, her condition had already been controlled before she got here. Her body had already stopped swelling and entered the recovery stage. However, nephrotic syndrome was one of the most stubborn illnesses. One improvement did not mean anything, because sooner or later, it could relapse with a small trigger, such as catching a cold – which was difficult to avoid for patients who were already weak due to their illness. Zhang Jingan rushed her here in search of a better cure.

This trip was quite rushed for her. Her father had only mentioned the contact in New York once before, and then on that evening, he swiftly sent her on a plane. It wasn’t that she had anything to complain about, it was just that before this… she was still waiting for that person.

Well, well, she’d see him after she was cured…

The relationship between Ya Han and her father had not improved since they fell into a cold war a few years ago. While she understood her father’s concern for her, she also clearly recognized that her father, who put family interests first, would still treat her as a bargaining chip to be married off when necessary. Perhaps realizing the dissonance in this relationship, this time only her stepmother accompanied her to New York. Zhang Jingan stayed in Jiang Hai, checking in with her every day via phone.

Having lived in England for three years, Ya Han had no trouble adapting to the American environment. And for the past two days, she had been mostly staying in the hospital, undergoing various examinations, simple injections, and taking medication. She hadn’t been outside at all. During this time, her stepmother was already making preparations to take advantage of the Christmas season to do some major sightseeing and shopping in New York City. She was ready to temporarily forget her troubles and have some fun in New York, just like her stepmother said: shopping was a woman’s cure-all.

After watching the street scene outside for a while, she started to walk around the floor along the corridor. The majority of this floor was research labs, while the smaller part was the ward. There were few people, but there were still some. Along the entire corridor, counting the nurse she just passed, there were only about four or five people. She walked past the door of a ward and vaguely heard someone talking in English inside. The accent was slightly different from England, and she couldn’t quite understand what they were saying. At that moment, with a bang, the door opened and knocked her to the ground.

Two young men who clearly looked unhappy came out of the room, pushing the door open excitedly. They were startled when they saw Ya Han lying on the ground. They looked at each other and one of them, in English, started to question her. This time, Ya Han could understand clearly. The two of them probably thought she was eavesdropping on their conversation outside. As he spoke, he grabbed Ya Han by the collar and pulled her up.

“Tell us, who are you!”

“Why were you eavesdropping…”

“Who sent you, the Gambino family? Or the Colombo family…”

“What… are you talking about! Let me go!” The two of them were probably used to being arrogant, but Ya Han was not the type to be bullied. With her bodyguards not by her side, she put her hands together and struck the man’s elbow. As he loosened his grip, she grabbed his shoulder and collar, gave his legs a well-aimed sweep, pulled him with both hands, and threw him to the ground.

These simple moves were smooth, but she was still recovering from her illness and had no strength. She took a step back, her head slightly dizzy. Seeing his companion fall, the other man was about to charge at her. At that moment, a figure intervened between the two.

“Hey hey… what’s going on? Let’s talk things out, let’s talk things out…”

The figure held up his hands, blocking the two who were about to charge. He wasn’t particularly tall or muscular, only about 5’7″, wearing a yellow sports cap, but he somehow managed to block the two, simply saying, “Let’s talk things out. It’s a misunderstanding, it’s a misunderstanding, let’s talk things out, don’t hit me…”

As he spoke, the two men actually started hitting the guy who had come to intervene. However, this man dodged with two quick movements, and when one of them tried to grab Ya Han, he grabbed his clothes again. For a moment, with his seemingly disorganized dodges and pulls, the two men couldn’t reach Ya Han and couldn’t hurt him. Ya Han watched for a while and recognized that his footwork was clearly Chinese martial arts, although it seemed chaotic, he was clearly much more skilled than her.

“Don’t hit me… let’s talk things out, I’ll count to three, we’ll all stop, stop okay, I’m counting… one, two, three!”

Suddenly, as his voice fell, this chaotic scene, which had been as noisy as a market, fell silent in an instant. As he suddenly punched, the two men fell to the ground with a bang. The man chuckled and raised his hands, looking like a twenty-year-old yellow man. He wasn’t fat, but his face was round and he looked quite likeable, giving off an impression of being immature: “I told you it was a misunderstanding, don’t hit… ugh…”

“Fuck!” With a gun pointed at the man’s forehead, the Chinese man raised his hands, but at the same time, his other hand grabbed the gun barrel. Standing behind the round-faced man was a tall foreign man, dressed in a sharp suit, holding a bouquet of flowers, his brow furrowed: “What are you doing?”

“Ugh…” The two groups clearly knew each other. As the gun barrel was grabbed, the man with the gun was clearly flustered. “Jo, Joseph, this woman was eavesdropping on our conversation…”

“I wasn’t!” Ya Han exclaimed, her eyes wide.

“Where? Where?” The likeable man also raised his hands. “It was them who opened the door carelessly, knocking the lady down, and they’re slandering her for eavesdropping.”

Joseph looked at the group for a moment, then nodded at Ya Han: “I’m sorry, it was their fault… apologize!” The last part was clearly addressed to the two foreigners.

“But… ugh… sorry.”

“Sorry…”

The two were clearly very afraid of the man named Joseph. They hesitated for a moment, and reluctantly apologized. Joseph didn’t say anything else, took his bouquet of flowers and went into the room, closing the door behind him. Outside, the likeable man nodded to Ya Han and said in Chinese, “Chinese?”

Ya Han nodded slightly.

“It’s a coincidence, I wouldn’t have thought I’d see a Chinese person here. Me too, you can call me Mantou, I’m from Beijing.”

Mantou smiled and extended his hand. Ya Han smiled slightly and touched it symbolically: “Thank you.”

The man opposite her, called Mantou, seemed to want to say something else, but the beautiful woman in front of him nodded and turned to leave. He scratched his head in confusion for a moment, then looked around, couldn’t help but laugh at himself.

He walked to the side, took out an MP3 from his pocket, and pressed a button: “Boss, something happened, I’ve made contact with the target, but it failed. She seems to be uninterested in talking to me. Beauty is beauty, I guess my display of profound martial arts made her subconsciously wary… and why are there black hand people in this hospital? I just saw Joseph from the Salieri family. Although he usually manages legitimate businesses, will it have any impact on our mission?”

“It shouldn’t.” After a moment, a voice came through the other end. “It was Joseph’s brother who went inside, he was shot a while back. Joseph has a stake in this research institute, that’s why he’s staying here. They should just be a minor matter compared to what could happen. But considering you said before that your looks and temperament appeal to both sexes, and your current result of the beauty not being interested in you, on behalf of all the members of the anti-terrorism team, I would like to express my heartfelt eye roll and enthusiastic scorn…”

“Cut it out… Guohua ge, do we really need to be so worried? She’s just a little woman with no enemies, she just went abroad, why do we need to arrange so many people to protect her? I think, with me here, I’m enough to protect the head of state? Is it necessary to go through all this trouble to please a Flower-Picking Great Thief Yujinxia?”

“That’s right.” On the other side of the earpiece, Cui Guohua chuckled. “So Guolin and the others are already out sightseeing and relaxing, this glorious and arduous task is left to you, Mantou classmate. If there is any real danger, you’re on your own.”

“… You guys are shameless.”

“In the past, we were always on missions, missions whenever we went abroad to big places like this. Now that we finally have some free time, we have to make the most of it and do some sightseeing… hehe, actually, Guolin and the others are looking for information about Pei Luo Jia in North America based on your intelligence. As for the Flower-Picking Great Thief Yujinxia, you’ve been in America for all these years, you might not fully understand it until you experience it yourself. But since we happen to be in New York, and this is the order from above, go ahead and do your best. The Jiang Hai incident happened, it’s the perfect opportunity for us to show our sincerity to the Flower-Picking Great Thief Yujinxia. That person… I really want to see her too…”

“If she’s beautiful,” Mantou rolled his eyes, “I want to see her too, have a chat with her.”

While the two engaged in this pointless conversation through their special intercom system, at Kennedy International Airport, about 20 miles southeast of Manhattan, a plane from China landed on schedule. Not long after, a woman in a white stand-up collar windbreaker and light red sunglasses walked out of the airport gate, carrying a small suitcase, and hailed a taxi.

“Sheraton Manhattan.” She spoke softly, in a pure, authentic New York accent. The driver followed her instructions and drove onto the highway. Inside the car, the woman took off her light red sunglasses. Reflected in the rearview mirror was Jian Suyan’s delicate Oriental beauty, elegant, quiet, and spirited. Only in her slightly furrowed brow was a hint of sharpness, like the calmest clouds before a storm…

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