Chapter 155: Extorting a Confession

"Cough, cough, cough... You! If you've got the guts, don't let me ashore!" Han Xue must have swallowed a good amount of seawater. That stuff was bitter and astringent, and once it went down, her mouth and respiratory tract felt like they were on fire. It was only natural that she was furious.

"Then I'll grant your wish!" Hong Tao didn't hold back at all. Supporting Han Xue's body, he actually swam further out into the deep water.

"Ah! I'm not going... Let go of me! I'm not going! If you don't let go right now, I'm going to scream for help!" Han Xue, a complete landlubber who couldn't swim, was utterly panicked. She couldn't even control her own body, let alone resist. The layer upon layer of oncoming waves was already enough for her to handle, leaving her with only verbal threats against Hong Tao.

"Oh my! Aren't you fierce! Are you trying to channel Liu Hulan? Refusing to confess even under the torture of chili water? Fine, I'll humor you. Let me hear you scream." Hong Tao didn't coddle Han Xue in the slightest. As soon as he finished speaking, he directly withdrew the hand supporting her body.

"Ah!... Sob... Help..." Han Xue's body felt like an iron weight, sinking instantly. She began to thrash frantically, managing to poke her head above the water every now and then, but she had no chance of shouting a complete sentence. The moment she opened her mouth, seawater would immediately flood in.

"Come on, take a breath. Look, right ahead is the anti-shark net. If you don't answer me honestly today, I'll take you outside the anti-shark net. Out there, it's full of sharks! By the way, do you know what a shark is? They're as long as a car, with hundreds of teeth in their mouths, and each tooth is as big as a cigarette pack. They like to tear people to pieces and eat them." Hong Tao waited until Han Xue had swallowed another couple of mouthfuls of seawater before hoisting her back up. Then, he continued to swim with her toward the deep sea.

Actually, he had chosen his direction long ago; he wasn't swimming straight out into the deep ocean, but rather diagonally toward the side of the anti-shark net. Because of the waves, anyone who couldn't swim would no longer be able to see the shore once they were more than a hundred meters away. Looking around, there were only surging waves everywhere—how could one not feel terror?

"I don't want to go!... I'm not going!... Let me go!..." Han Xue had probably never learned about animals like sharks, having at most seen them in *People from the Bottom of the Atlantic*, and now, with Hong Tao's vivid description, she couldn't hold back any longer, her tears squeezed out by sheer fright.

"Alright, then I'll let you go..." Seeing that Han Xue's breathing had evened out, Hong Tao withdrew his hands once more.

Just like that, letting go for a bit, supporting her for a bit, letting go again, supporting her again. When Hong Tao brought Han Xue to the point where they were about to approach the anti-shark net, Han Xue actually managed to stay afloat. Although her swimming motions resembled those of a newborn sea turtle, she was finally able to keep her head above water and propel herself forward.

"Don't thrash your hands and feet around so wildly. Lower the frequency, increase the strength, and make each stroke longer. Breathe through your mouth, count for yourself, and take a breath every two or three strokes. Don't force your head up; the higher you lift it, the further down your body sinks... Hey... That's it, keep it up, only ten meters left, swim the rest yourself!" Seeing that Han Xue was now able to swim on her own, Hong Tao simply stopped supporting her and instead stayed by her side, coaching her on the basic techniques of swimming and encouraging her to finish the final stretch on her own.

"Hoo... hoo... hoo..." At last, Han Xue grabbed hold of her lifeline, clinging to the anti-shark net and panting heavily.

"You see, in this world, many things require taking risks to reap rewards, and you can only choose to move forward. Once you give up on yourself, no one can save you. Now you've learned to swim, but you still haven't answered my question. Don't think that just because you can swim, you don't have to be afraid of me anymore. I can drag you from this anti-shark net back into the ocean in a split second." Hong Tao also leaned against the anti-shark net, continuing to pressure Han Xue into telling the truth.

"Why don't you just go die?! You bastard! I'll let you torture me! I'll let you torture me!" Having recovered a tiny bit of her stamina, Han Xue suddenly exploded. She swung one arm to splash water at Hong Tao's face, and feeling unsatisfied, she grabbed the back of Hong Tao's head and forcefully pushed him down under the water.

"Aiyah, a fish bit my foot... Ah..." Hong Tao struggled for a moment, let out a strange cry, and was then pushed underwater by Han Xue, disappearing from sight.

"Get out here!... Get out here right now!!" After a few seconds, Han Xue finally panicked. Setting aside whether Hong Tao had drowned or not, the surrounding waves and the tales of shark attacks were enough to chill her heart to the bone.

"Ah... Help... Don't bite me!!!" Suddenly, Han Xue felt something brush against her foot, and then something fiercely clamped onto her waist. Terrified, she frantically clawed at the anti-shark net, trying to scramble to the other side. Unfortunately, her feet were entirely in the water, giving her no leverage whatsoever, and she could only struggle futilely against the net.

"Stop climbing. It's even more dangerous over there—it's full of sharks..." At that moment, Hong Tao's voice sounded from right behind her. A head popped out of the water, and he wrapped his arms around her waist, leaning against her back.

"Stop scaring me, will you... I'll talk, okay?! Get off me first..." Han Xue was completely worn out from dealing with Hong Tao. She decided to surrender, though she wasn't used to having a boy embrace her from behind, with his legs even resting across her thighs.

"This is pretty comfortable just like this. Go ahead and talk. I'm not covering your mouth, and don't worry, the people on shore can't see us..." Hong Tao certainly wasn't going to pass up a chance to take advantage of the situation. He simply climbed up a bit higher and rested his chin on Han Xue's shoulder.

"I have a boyfriend. He's currently in a re-education camp. We were junior and senior high school classmates, and back in high school, the two of us... had a child..." Unable to beat Hong Tao in the water, Han Xue had to rely on the anti-shark net to steady herself, letting Hong Tao lean on her back as she began to recount her personal history.

"Oh... How old is he?" Hong Tao was slightly surprised. He didn't think Han Xue had a body that looked like it had given birth, but he didn't make a big deal out of it.

"Twenty-two..." Han Xue answered whatever she was asked.

"I'm asking how old the *child* is, not you!" Hong Tao almost burst out laughing.

"The child was aborted, and both of me and him were expelled from the school..." As Han Xue spoke, she started wiping away tears again.

"It's fine, you'll have more in the future. How many years was he sentenced to?" Hong Tao didn't bother trying to comfort her; some things simply couldn't be comforted.

"Three years. He'll be out next summer."

"Then what about the guy who came with you when you went to get your hair permed last time?" Hong Tao remembered that Han Xue seemed to have accompanied a tall boy into his grandmother's courtyard.

"That's one of his buddies. The two of them run together on the streets. My boyfriend is the boss, and he's the second-in-command. There are probably more than twenty people under them." Distracted by Hong Tao's interjection, Han Xue forgot about the child and stopped crying.

"Oh, I more or less get it. Your boyfriend got beaten up by that group of educated youths, got stabbed, and got arrested too, right? ...Don't look at me like that, I heard it from the second floor in Xidan. And now your boyfriend's buddy has taken over as the boss, but he doesn't seem very loyal—he even wants to take over his friend's turf, while you have nowhere else to go and can only endure humiliation to survive, right?" Hong Tao pieced the whole situation together roughly, and the basic plot emerged—very cliché.

"I have to wait for him to come out, and I have to take back his old position. People like us, once we lose the brothers underneath us, we can't survive on the streets..." Han Xue's voice grew softer and softer. She probably realized how foolish she must have seemed at the time.

"You should understand by now that even if your boyfriend gets out, that position won't be his anymore, and people probably won't even hang out with him, right? And even if he becomes the boss again, how many more years do you think you can survive like this? Relying on street fights and petty thievery to scrape by... Fortunately you didn't have a child; even if you did, you couldn't afford to raise it, could you? Are you going to keep fighting until you're forty?" Hong Tao understood the psychology of these people. In his past life, although he hadn't crossed into this circle, he had interacted with them plenty. Their mindset didn't even extend to what they would be doing five years from now; they probably didn't even think two years ahead, just living day by day.

"What else can we do? Going back to school is impossible, nobody wants to hire us, and our families won't support us. What do you expect us to do? Starve to death? Go beg on the streets?" Having laid everything out, Han Xue suddenly felt less embarrassed. That's how things were: sometimes you always feel like other people will judge you a certain way... and you try desperately to hide things, but once you finally say it out loud, you realize that people didn't care nearly as much as you thought.

"Alright, let's get back to business. Those questions I asked you earlier—have you thought them through?" Hong Tao felt that what Han Xue said made sense; at the time, she genuinely had no way out.

"I didn't really take part in their fights; those were guy things, and at most I just tagged along to watch a few times. As for stealing and robbing, I never participated—not even once. But I did help him manage the money for a while. The origins of that money definitely weren't legitimate. Does that count?" Han Xue herself had no idea what constituted breaking the law and what didn't.

"Aside from that? What about... romantic relationships?" Hong Tao wasn't being particularly nosy; he had to ask clearly to decide how to handle the situation.

"What kind of person do you take me for? I'm no loose woman!" Han Xue snapped, provoked by the question.

"Don't rush to snap at me. I'm just trying to figure out your current situation, nothing more. I'll say it again: this conversation between the two of us stays strictly between you and me. I will never breathe a word of it to anyone for the rest of my life. For the sake of your own future, you'd better tell me everything. Besides, I'm still just a kid, you don't need to feel embarrassed." Hong Tao knew that any woman would find this topic difficult to broach, but it had to be figured out, so he could only guide her along.

"Drinking and dancing happened, and he kissed me once, but after that, I didn't let him go any further..." Han Xue bit her lip, hesitated for a brief moment, and finally spoke.

"Alright, you must be freezing. Come on, let's head back. Once we're back, don't carry any psychological burden; just keep living life like you usually do. But let me give you a piece of advice: you'd better cut all ties with that side, as cleanly as possible. I'll figure out a way to handle the rest." Even in the height of summer, the seawater's temperature was still quite low, especially in the deep-water zone. Hong Tao noticed that Han Xue had already started shivering involuntarily. (To be continued...)