Just as Zhang Beihai was lost in thought over Li Geyu, Wan Yining walked in and said, "Lu Youqi just gave a speech." Zhang Beihai turned to look at her. Her eyes seemed slightly red, as if she had been crying. Amid his surprise, Zhang Beihai suddenly realized that not only were her eyes red, but the outline of her body was glowing red as well—his glasses were signaling a threat, a red hue that had been masked by the room's faint sunset glow.
Zhang Beihai shouted for the guards. In a flash, Wan Yining suddenly lunged forward holding an inoculation injection pen, aiming straight for Zhang Beihai's throat. Zhang Beihai hurriedly raised his arm to block it; the tactical pen plunged deep into his forearm, and blood immediately spurted from the artery. In a mix of shock and fury, Zhang Beihai instinctively kicked Wan Yining in the abdomen, knocking her to the floor.
Two guards burst through the door, and Li Geyu immediately barked, "You two, drag her out of here, then hurry back with a medical kit!"
Both terrified and enraged, Zhang Beihai quickly scanned the room with his glasses. The guards before him and Li Geyu were all green. As the guards carried Wan Yining out, a red light gleamed on her body.
Li Geyu rushed over in a few swift strides holding an emergency tourniquet and said to Zhang Beihai, "Don't move. Let's stop the bleeding first."
Seeing the green light emanating from her, Zhang Beihai lowered his guard slightly and held out his arm. The next instant, he saw a flash of black light and felt a sharp pain in his arm. Before he could react, his knee was brutally kicked. Li Geyu leaped like a leopard. In the blink of an eye, she pulled out the tactical pen, kicked Zhang Beihai to the ground, and plunged the tactical pen into his carotid artery with surgical precision.
Zhang Beihai's eyes went wide. The last thing he saw was Li Geyu, still glowing with a green light, her smile as captivating as ever.
In the moment Zhang Beihai's life slipped away, he did not know that Lu Youqi had once been a member of the Paper and Pen Arts Association; he did not know that a handwritten letter from Lu Youqi had been delivered to Wan Yining's home; nor did he know that it was Li Geyu who had sent someone to deliver that letter.
Fate does not play jokes; history does not play jokes.
Even a soft sheet of paper can end the life of an ambitious man.
Ever since Herodotus began recording history, civilization seems to have been bound to the written word, and paper, in particular, bound to the radiant core of civilization. At this moment in history, it drifted down, soft as a falling leaf.