Taoist priest goes to America

Chapter 125 Cold-Style Barbecue

Anger welled up in the eyes of the veteran Boone, sweeping away the numbness and despair deep within them. His eyes, which had been as dry and empty as a well, were now ablaze, burning the cloudy old eyes red.

Boone's entire hunched body was trembling, tears still streaming down his face, his facial muscles taut, and his jaw clenched so tightly that the old scars from the Yue war on his face bulged out.

He grabbed Li An's hand tightly, his ten fingers gripping Li An's fingers like a drowning person clinging to a piece of driftwood.

"I do," the veteran Boone said in a hoarse but firm voice, as if answering a superior's order on the battlefield. "Thank you, my Saint Michael."

After saying that, he bent down, took Li An's right hand in his hands, pressed his forehead against the back of his hand, and then lowered his head to kiss the back of Li An's hand reverently.

Boone bent over with his entire upper body, like a medieval knight swearing allegiance to the monarch who had bestowed his title, solemn and humble.

Ang Lee looked down at the old soldier's graying head resting on the back of his hand and nodded in satisfaction. This was exactly what he wanted: an old soldier ignited by hatred.

Ang Lee had just seen the location Nigel sent. These cannibals from South Korea had no idea what death meant, and they actually stopped for a long time less than a kilometer from the crime scene.

According to the movement trajectory transmitted back by the tracking device, they have hardly moved since the incident. They are either incredibly audacious or incredibly stupid. After leaving V Park, they went straight there and have remained motionless ever since.

They were most likely enjoying their meal and had no idea that someone other than the police would come looking for them.

"Come with me." Li An pulled the veteran up from the curb and turned to walk down the road.

He led the veterans around monitored intersections and still-lit convenience stores, past a row of closed shops, and through a narrow alley piled with discarded furniture.

After several twists and turns, the secluded alley appeared at the end of the street.

The entrance to the alley is sandwiched between two abandoned red-brick apartment buildings. The streetlights have long been broken, and only a few flickering lights can be faintly seen from the depths of the alley.

The walls on both sides of the alley were covered with spray paint graffiti and moldy GG stickers, and several shared bicycles that had been dismantled and reduced to mere skeletons were piled up at the base of the walls.

The ground was covered in puddles, sewage that had flowed back up from the sewers, mixed with kitchen waste and the excrement of some unknown animal. Under the firelight, the water glistened with a greasy, rainbow-colored film.

The trash cans were overflowing, and black plastic bags were piled up like small mountains. The trash bags had been torn open by stray cats and dogs, and the leftover food inside was scattered all over the ground, emitting a foul stench from rotting fruits and vegetables and spoiled meat fermenting together.

However, amidst this stench that made it hard to open one's eyes, Ang Lee smelled the aroma of roasted meat.

The aroma was incredibly strong; the smell of meat sizzling at high temperatures, combined with the fragrance of oil, wafted from the depths of the alley, actually overpowering the stench of the garbage.

The alleyway echoed with the sounds of several people exchanging words in a cold language, occasionally punctuated by rough laughter and mumbled mutterings from people stuffed with food.

Ang Lee placed a hand on the veteran's shoulder, signaling him to calm down.

He pressed his body against the wall on the right side of the alley entrance, revealing only half of his face, and slowly poked his head out to look at the source of the fire deep in the alley.

Three Asian men were squatting around a pile of overflowing garbage cans, around a makeshift grill made of bricks and salvaged wire mesh.

Several pieces of dismantled wooden planks and ripped cardboard boxes were crammed under the shelf. The fire was burning brightly, and the orange flames licked at several pieces of meat sizzling and dripping with oil on the wire mesh.

The meat chunks were brushed with oil, and when the oil dripped onto the charcoal fire, it would explode into a spark.

The meat pieces were cut rather irregularly, varying in size; some were charred and curled at the edges, while others were still oozing blood.

The strongest Korean was squatting right in front of the grill, and he was twice as big as the two people next to him.

He was wearing greasy jeans, had a wide, flat face with high cheekbones, thick lips that turned outwards, and drool dripping from the corners of his mouth.

Her hair was greasy and matted, sticking to her scalp in clumps, and the skin on the back of her neck was a dull grayish-black due to not showering for a long time.

He kept wiping the drool from his thick lips with one hand, while with the other he pinched a handful of cumin powder from a torn spice packet and skillfully sprinkled it onto the pieces of meat on the wire mesh. Then the burly man muttered something in Korean, his tone full of excitement and anticipation.

Lee Ang could barely understand Korean. The man was saying, "Kidney, fragrant, crisp and tender, add some seasoning—"

Very good."

The other two were busy with their respective tasks. A South Korean man with an afro was squatting in front of an old, overturned tin trash can, cutting something with a dagger covered in bits of meat.

On the metal of the trash can lay a dark red organ, most of which had been cut off. The man with the afro skillfully peeled off the tendons attached to the meat piece by piece, then cut it into different thicknesses and pushed it to the side of the trash can. His knife skills were so professional that he didn't look like a homeless person.

He held a pair of barbecue skewers in his left hand and picked up slices of meat with his right, skewering them one by one quickly and skillfully, like a master chef who had worked in a barbecue restaurant for over a decade.

He held a handful of barbecue skewers, threading slices of offal from the man with the afro onto the skewers one by one, looking like a seasoned barbecue chef who'd been working at a night market for years. As he skewered, he impatiently urged the burly man in jeans, "Damn it, hurry up! I'm starving! Grill the liver first, it cooks faster. Your kidneys are overcooked, flip them, flip them! Don't overcook them!"

Ang Lee grabbed the shoulder of the veteran next to him. Veteran Boone's eyes had already turned red when he saw the organs spread out on the trash can. His whole body tensed up and a low sob came from his throat.

He squeezed out a few words through clenched teeth, which sounded like the name of his dead friend.

Ang Lee didn't let go of the veteran's shoulder. He stood up and picked up a half-empty glass bottle of Coca-Cola from the trash can next to him.

The bottle of cola had been there for who knows how long; the remaining half-bottle of liquid had completely deteriorated into a murky grayish-brown color, and mold had settled at the bottom.

Li An held the object in his hand, weighed it, felt its weight, and then aimed it at the burly man's face, throwing it violently.

The Coke bottle tumbled a few times in the air, splashing out the grayish-brown, rotten, foul-smelling liquid inside, which drenched the three people squatting on the ground.

The bottle smashed hard into the face of the burly man in jeans, making a loud thud, then fell and rolled under the barbecue grill, spilling a large puddle of foul-smelling water that landed right on the sizzling, oily kidneys.

The fire was extinguished, and white smoke and a burnt smell rose from the barbed wire at the same time.

"Hey!" Li An emerged from the shadows at the alley entrance, his hands in the pockets of his ill-fitting old coat, his steps casual, as if he were just passing by and saying hello.

"Hey guys, you're having so much fun grilling your meat, here's some Coke to brighten things up."