Chapter 159: Putting on a Show

The torture continued.

A-Zhe, like the other expendables, hunched his back and mechanically dumped barrels of garbage onto the conveyor belt in front of the incinerator. Sweat mixed with grime trickled down his forehead, dripping onto the filthy ground.

This appearance, thoroughly crushed by life, perfectly embodied the identity of "A-Zhe"—a gambler who had lost everything and could only come to this ghost place to eke out a meager existence.

Yet beneath his lowered lids, his eyes were exceptionally calm. His gaze invariably swept over a woman working not far away.

Sister Ping.

A "wasted butterfly."

Though she was a wasted butterfly, remnants of her youthful charm were still faintly discernible. But her eyes were long since filled with despair and numbness, frighteningly hollow.

The [Causality Resonance] in Chen Yu's mind passively fed back information. Every time he approached Sister Ping, a wave of resentment, almost solidifying into substance, would wash over him. That sensation was like having a basin of ice water dumped over one's head in the dead of winter, chilling one to the bone.

"Damn it, how many years has this ghost place been running?" Chen Yu cursed inwardly.

Judging by Sister Ping's condition, it must have taken at least three to five years to grind her down to this state. The mere thought that this hell had been operating for so long, devouring the youth and lives of countless girls, made Chen Yu feel as though his killing intent was becoming impossible to suppress.

However, he knew that any direct kindness or contact here was tantamount to suicide. Compassion was the cheapest and most fatal thing in this place.

To ignite the gunpowder keg of Sister Ping's nearly extinguished spirit, he needed a stage, and even more so, a weighty token of commitment.

For the remainder of the time, Chen Yu acted like a true bottom-tier laborer, taciturn and burying himself in work. Yet his brain was spinning frantically, mapping the operational patterns of the entire logistics zone into his mind.

The patrol routes of the overseers, the time gaps between shift changes, the scanning cycles and visual blind spots of the surveillance cameras...

"The panning camera on the left high point has a thirty-five-second cycle. When it turns all the way to the right, there is a three-second blind spot."

"That fixed-position camera on the right covers the entire entrance of the garbage dump, but it's a damn fake; even the power cord isn't connected."

Piece by piece of information was categorized and stored within his memory palace.

Soon, his stage was built. Now he just lacked a perfect lead actor.

No, a scapegoat.

Chen Yu's target was locked onto an overseer nicknamed "Scarface." The vicious knife scar on his left cheek gave his entire person an aura of hostility. He seemed particularly fond of making trouble for the wasted butterflies, especially those who still retained a shred of attractiveness. Obviously, his status was too low, forcing him to seek his pathetic sense of control among these used-up women.

More than once, Chen Yu had watched him use the tip of a stun baton to lift the chins of those numb women while spitting filth.

Crucially, this guy was emotionally extremely unstable; the slightest trifle could send him flying into a rage.

"Heh, you'll do, asshole," Chen Yu sneered inwardly. "You're a catalyst tailor-made for my script."

To make the persona of "A-Zhe" deeply ingrained in people's minds, Chen Yu began his performance.

He intentionally acted clumsy while working, either knocking over garbage cans or nearly tripping over the conveyor belt. Whenever an overseer passed by, he would shrink his neck in fright, like a startled quail. The persona of a wretch crushed by fear and despair was nailed by him effortlessly.

Soon, the surrounding expendables cast looks of disdain and alienation at him. No one wanted to get involved with a loser who might cause trouble at any moment.

This was precisely the effect Chen Yu desired.

At two-thirty in the afternoon, the sun was scorching. Everyone felt listless and drowsy.

The timing was right.

Carrying a heavy barrel of slop, Chen Yu walked with floating steps toward the conveyor belt. Out of the corner of his eye, he firmly locked onto two figures not far away: Scarface and Sister Ping.

Scarface was currently planting a kick in the back of Sister Ping's knee, forcing her to drop to her knees.

"Stinking bitch, making you slack off again! Are your bones itching because you haven't been disciplined in a few days?"

Scarface cursed as the stun baton in his hand raised, blue electric arcs hissing at the tip.

Sister Ping knelt on the ground without a word, her hollow gaze entirely unchanged. The surrounding expendables and wasted butterflies all kept their heads down, pretending not to see anything.

This was the daily routine of Butterfly Dream Manor.

Right at the moment when Scarface's stun baton was about to descend:

"Ow!"

An exaggerated cry of pain rang out.

"A-Zhe" suddenly slipped, as if tripped by an oil stain on the ground, losing his balance and tumbling toward Scarface. Meanwhile, the full bucket of swill in his hands drew a perfect parabola in the air.

*Splash—*

Viscous, foul-smelling kitchen waste mixed with rotting vegetable leaves and bones gave Scarface a solid, head-to-toe "surprise."

The entire garbage dump instantly fell silent. Everyone stopped what they were doing and watched this scene in horror.

In the air, that pungent, sour stench grew even richer.

Scarface froze in place, feeling the sticky liquid trickle down his neck and into his collar. Inch by inch, he turned his head. That already fierce face was now distorted out of human shape by fury.

"You... motherfucker... are asking to die!!!"

A roar squeezed out of Scarface's throat.

Chen Yu, or rather, "A-Zhe," had already climbed up from the ground, standing there in utter helplessness with a face full of terror.

"No... it's not like that... I didn't mean to... my foot slipped..."

His voice trembled, and his body shook; he looked on the verge of pissing himself.

"I don't give a damn if you meant to or not!"

Scarface completely snapped; he tossed the stun baton aside and charged fiercely at Chen Yu. A fist the size of a sandbag, whistling through the air, smashed savagely toward Chen Yu's face.

Chen Yu instinctively raised a hand to block, but his body "disobeyed orders" and staggered back a few steps, crashing heavily to the ground.

For this punch, he shed seventy percent of the force, but the remaining thirty percent was still enough to let blood seep from the corner of his mouth.

"I'll kill you! I'm going to fucking kill you, you piece of trash, today!"

Straddling Chen Yu's body, Scarface rained blows down like a storm.

Chen Yu hugged his head, curling his body into a ball while letting out incoherent, pleading cries.

"Stop hitting... I was wrong... spare me..."

His performance was flawless. A coward driven to desperate straits had brought disaster upon himself through a stupid mistake.

Amid the chaos, no one noticed that his eyes maintained absolute calm. He even had the leisure to calculate the force and landing point of every punch from Scarface, ensuring he was injured just enough to win sympathy without being genuinely fatal.

"Stop!"

Finally, the other overseers reacted, rushing over to pull away the out-of-control Scarface.

"Are you insane? Do you want to beat someone to death here?"

"If the boss finds out, you'll be skinned alive!"

Held back by others, Scarface still struggled frantically, spitting gobbles of saliva.

"Let me go! If I don't finish this bastard off today, my last name isn't Wang!"

Chen Yu lay on the ground like a dead dog. Covered in wounds with a bruised face and bleeding from the corners of his mouth and nose, he looked utterly miserable.

Yet he struggled, lifting his swollen eyes to look toward the source of the chaos.

Sister Ping was still kneeling in her original spot.

She no longer wore that numb expression.

She was looking at him.

In those deadened eyes, for the very first time, a trace of something different appeared. Not sympathy, not pity, but a kind of... appraisal.

Chen Yu knew that his token of commitment had been delivered.

Pulling back his bleeding mouth, he offered a smile toward Sister Ping's direction.

He had personally planted this seed.

Next, he would simply wait for it to take root and sprout.