Chapter 57: The Taste of Death

The unprovoked strike-up, compounded by the bald man’s fierce and unusually bulky appearance, startled Bai Jing, who was completely unprepared.

In fact, Cao Kun could clearly sense that when the bald man approached, Bai Jing’s body shuddered involuntarily, and her hand—clasped in his—tightened its grip even further.

"Oh, no... No, thank you. I... I'm married," Bai Jing said, forcing an awkward smile as she waved her hand, intimidated by the bald man's massive size and fierce demeanor.

Seeing Bai Jing’s reaction and hearing her slightly trembling voice, the bald man’s smile only grew wider.

She was scared!

She turned out to be a little lamb!

According to research, among the numerous incidents of sexual harassment, fear and the inability to speak out or resist are precisely what encourage such behavior the most.

In fact, fear is the primary factor that escalates these incidents into something much worse.

For instance:

If a pervert rubs against a woman’s backside on a bus, and instead of resisting, she timidly chooses to dodge away, it will only make the pervert feel even more thrilled and stimulated.

Initially, the pervert might have only intended a minor touch, but because of the woman's fear and cowardice, he might end up reaching his hand all the way inside to commit a gross violation.

He might even thrust his member inside as well.

It is fair to say that not only in this kind of situation, but at any time and in any place, fear is the aphrodisiac for such criminal acts.

At this moment, in the eyes of the bald brute, Bai Jing’s reaction marked her as a helpless little lamb ready for slaughter.

"So what if you're married?"

The bald brute licked his lips with a lewd smile and rolled up the short sleeve of his tattooed arm to expose even more of the ink, making himself look all the more intimidating.

"I just want to make friends and get to know you. We can hang out together sometime. More friends mean more paths, right? When you're out and about, you've got to rely on friends."

Watching the bald man’s lewd expression and his gesture of rolling up his sleeves to show off his tattoos, Cao Kun was left speechless.

Why do some people genuinely believe that having tattoos makes them look badass and untouchable?

The real problem is that a large portion of people actually buy into this, thinking those with tattoos are not to be messed with.

Please!

Just take a look inside a maximum-security prison—none of the truly ruthless heavy hitters ever get inked up!

Only those lacking self-confidence, those who need to bluff and put on a facade to scare people, would ever get such tattoos.

In the maximum-security prison where Cao Kun served time, not a single top-tier tough guy had any tattoos.

In fact, those with tattoos had a collective nickname in their prison:

Spotted stray dogs!

In prison, these types usually amounted to nothing more than lackeys, lingering at the very bottom of the social hierarchy.

They held the kind of status where anyone could kick them or slap them across the face whenever they felt bored.

Of course, a truly vicious one would pop up every now and then.

Cao Kun remembered it was either his fourth or fifth year inside when a guy covered entirely in tattoos arrived. He was very strong and quite vicious, too.

However, he lasted less than three months. One night after lights out, the tattooed skin from his chest and back was peeled off his body while he was still alive.

Almost the skin of his entire upper body was stripped away, making for a miserably wretched sight.

Later, after spending half a month in the infirmary, he still died in extreme agony due to a severe infection.

There was no helping it; the tool used to slice open the skin was an iron scraper Cao Kun usually used to scrape his feet after soaking them. It was covered in rust and goodness knows how unhygienic, so getting infected was practically guaranteed.

Of course, while the tool belonged to Cao Kun, he hadn't actually done the deed himself. He merely served as the technical consultant, occasionally giving pointers on how to slice and casually witnessing the entire skinning process.

For that, he was locked in solitary confinement for a whole week.

He was wronged to death!

He hadn't even lifted a single finger!

Still, compared to those who were locked in solitary for ten days, half a month, or even a full month, his punishment was considered relatively light.

"Beauty, don't stop talking. Just add me on WeChat. I'm not a bad guy. How about this—you add me, and I'll send you a two-hundred-yuan digital red packet. I honestly just want to make a friend. What are the odds of us meeting on the exact same bus?"

"How does that saying go? It takes a hundred years of shared karma to ride in the same boat, and a thousand years of shared karma to sleep under the same cover."

"Since the two of us can meet on this bus, it means we must have slept together for at least a hundred years in our past lives."

"What does that tell you? We were practically husband and wife in our past lives! If you add me, who knows, we might even be able to rekindle our past romance."

Cao Kun had originally intended to observe how Bai Jing would handle such a situation. But the moment the bald man finished spouting this nonsense, he reached his breaking point.

Damn it!

Is that really how the saying about sharing a boat and sharing a pillow is interpreted?

Do you have any idea how much misinformation you're spreading to the youth?!

What are the youth?

The youth are the future of the motherland!

This was the equivalent of indirectly destroying his dearest motherland!

Faced with such a situation, Cao Kun believed that no descendant of the Dragon, no one with the blood of Yan and Huang flowing through their veins, could possibly tolerate it.

Those who dare to touch his motherland shall be executed, no matter how far away they reside!

Furthermore, the distance between the two of them wasn't even far—it was just separated by the aisle and Bai Jing.

That made execution even more mandatory!

Seeing Bai Jing blushing bright red from his teasing, completely paralyzed like a little lamb with no idea how to respond, the bald man grew even more excited.

Just as he was about to ramp up his verbal assault, Cao Kun, who had been sitting on the inner seat, stood up. He stepped right past Bai Jing, strode into the aisle, and smashed a fist straight into the bald man's face.

Despite Cao Kun’s build being far less massive than the bald brute's—his legs weren't even as thick as the man's arms, and their physical stature differed vastly—the moment his punch landed, the bald man puffed up like an inflated balloon, slamming flat against the floor with a loud thud.

Expressionless, Cao Kun bent down, grabbed the back of the bald man’s neck, and effortlessly hoisted his two-hundred-plus-pound body straight up into the air.

Meeting the bald man’s somewhat dazed eyes, Cao Kun delivered a vicious uppercut right to his jaw. With a heavy *bang*, the punch sent the man flying nearly a meter high.

When he crashed back down to the floor, the bald man’s nose and mouth were already covered in blood, two front teeth were missing, and blood gushed from his nose like a faucet.

Cao Kun squatted down and calmly stared into the bald man’s hazy eyes. "Hey, baldy, it takes ten years of shared karma to ride in the same boat, and a hundred years to share a pillow—that is not how you interpret it. Who the hell taught you literature?"

Meeting Cao Kun’s calm gaze, for some inexplicable reason, the bald man felt as though he were confronting a prehistoric beast.

It felt as though the opponent could chew him into tiny fragments with just a casual opening of his mouth.

Moreover, pinned down by those eyes, the bald man felt half the blood in his body instantly turn ice-cold, barely circulating at all.

It was the scent of death!

Unequivocally, the scent of death!

Survival instincts began to scream wildly inside the bald man's body, suddenly making him realize that he had provoked a ruthless character he could never afford to cross.

If he didn't handle this right, he was going to be beaten to death in the next second!

This guy was actually going to kill him!