Taoist priest goes to America

Chigur stepped across the threshold, his gun aimed at the man on the bed who was sitting up from under the covers.

The man was bald, with a vulture tattooed on his chest, its wings extending all the way to his collarbone. His eyes weren't fully open, and his mouth was only half-open as if he were about to shout something when Chigurh's gun fired.

The gunshot, filtered by the silencer, was extremely short, like someone tapping a wooden board with a rubber mallet.

The first bullet struck the man in the shoulder, causing him to lean back. The blanket slipped off his chest, revealing his bare upper body and a pair of red underwear.

Cotton flew out from the pillow torn open by the bullet, drifting in the warm yellow light of the bedside lamp, like a light snowfall.

The second bullet struck him on the forehead, causing his head to snap back and his skull to slam against the wooden headboard with a dull thud. His body remained seated, but he would not move again.

Cotton scraps drifted onto his face, where they were stuck together by the blood flowing from his forehead.

The bathroom door was kicked open, and another man rushed out. He was shirtless, with only a towel wrapped around his lower body.

His eyes had barely caught sight of the horrific scene before him, his mind hadn't even registered what was happening, and his mouth was agape as if he wanted to ask what had occurred.

But by then, Chigur had already turned his gun around, and the first shot hit him squarely in the chest. The man staggered backward and slammed his back against the wall near the window.

The second bullet pierced the back of his head and struck the windowpane. The glass shattered, and his body, along with the broken glass, fell out of the window, half of his body hanging from the window frame on the windowsill, head down, blood dripping from the edge of the windowsill.

Chigur was baffled. Both of them were white... Wasn't the target a yellow-skinned man from the East?

Just then, the sound of water came from the bathroom.

Chigur's gaze shifted from the window to the direction of the bathroom.

The bathroom door was open, and the light was white, much brighter than in the bedroom.

Steam seeped out from under the door, carrying the scent of shower gel mixed with the fresh smell of blood that had just appeared in the room. He heard someone crying, the sobs muffled and intermittent, as if someone had choked on water.

He went into the bathroom.

A woman is squatting in the bathtub, covered in foam, with a shower cap on her head.

The water in the bathtub was still flowing, and white foam piled up on her chest, some of it overflowing the tub and spreading on the floor.

She saw Chigur walk in, and her body jerked backward, her back slamming against the tiled wall.

Her mouth was open, uttering a series of broken, incomprehensible words—the kind of nonsensical sounds a person makes when they are terrified to the extreme.

"Please...please..."

Her voice trembled, and tears welled up in her eyes, mingling with the water and foam on her face as they streamed down her cheeks.

The shower cap was askew, revealing a wisp of soaking wet hair underneath.

Chigur stood in the bathroom doorway, looking down at her. The muzzle of the gun was pointing towards the ground, his finger still resting on the trigger guard.

His face was expressionless, and his brown eyes lingered for two seconds on the face covered in tears and foam.

Then he turned around and pulled the shower curtain closed.

A white plastic sheet closed between him and the woman, obscuring her face. Without turning his head, he pointed the gun through the shower curtain and pulled the trigger.

The gunshot, filtered by the silencer, was short and muffled, and sounded even muffled through the plastic sheet.

A pool of dark red liquid splashed onto the shower curtain, starting as a small patch and then slowly expanding, dripping down the folds of the plastic sheet and onto the bathroom floor tiles, mixing with the foam on the floor.

A muffled thud came from the bathtub, like the splash created when someone slipped into the water. Foam, tinged with a pale pink, overflowed from the edge of the tub and spread across the white tiles.

Chigur put the gun away and turned to walk back to the bedroom.

He sat down on the edge of the bed, leaving a dent in the soft mattress as he sat down.

The man's body on the bed was still in the same position, the back of his head against the headboard, the edge of the bullet hole on his forehead was blackened, and blood was flowing down his nose, dripping onto the white sheets, which had already soaked a large area.

Some cotton crumbs were still floating in the air, some had landed on the bedside table, and some had landed on the man's shoulder.

The air conditioner's outdoor unit was still humming outside the window. The man's foot, which was hanging on the windowsill, swayed slightly. The curtains were blown by the evening breeze, fluttering gently up and then falling back down.

Chigur lowered his head, looking at his hand holding the gun.

He killed the wrong person. He had confirmed the target's face clearly; the photo showed an Asian man wearing a Taoist robe.

When he entered, he glanced at the bed; the face there was different from the person in the photo. His target wasn't in this room.

Which part of the process went wrong?

His left hand moved away from the gun and rested on his knee, his fingers anxiously rubbing against it.

He mentally reviewed the entire process, obtained a floor plan from the front desk, identified the room with the strongest signal, opened the door next door, and conducted a simulation exercise: breaching the door, firing the gun—every step was correct.

He repeated himself: either the problem lies with the front desk, or the boss gave false information.

He stood up, walked to the window, and glanced downstairs. The light at the counter was still on, the receptionist was still fast asleep, and the television was still showing static.

Chigur walked back to the bedside, sat down again, and went through his thoughts once more.

Did the boss give false information? No, the boss had no reason to lie. The receptionist was just an ordinary person; he wouldn't lie about a room he knew nothing about.

So the owner was unaware of it either. The problem lies elsewhere: the target may have checked out early and moved to another room.

But how to explain the tracker? He pulled out the black tracker and turned on the screen. The red dot was still flashing; it was still in this room, the signal strength was the same as before, and the location hadn't changed.

He was sitting in this room, almost overlapping with the signal source.

Chigur paused his thumb on the tracker surface for a moment, unless—those trackers were no longer on the person.

Before he could finish his thought, a sound came from the doorway—the sound of metal clashing, very soft. A small iron ball bounced on the tiled floor, rolled twice, and stopped.

Out of the corner of his eye, Chigurh noticed something new on the floor by the door. It was black and oval, slightly smaller than a fist, with fine lines on its surface. The fuse was burning, emitting a faint hissing sound.

His killer instincts made him react very quickly. He flipped his body backward, braced his lower back against the mattress, and fell onto the floor behind the bed, with the back of his head almost touching the ground.

The grenade exploded, and the flash and shockwave rushed into the room at the same moment. The blast lifted the mattress, knocked the bedside lamp off the bedside table, and pushed the broken glass from the window and the body hanging on the windowsill out of the room.

Wood chips, bits of meat, cotton—everything that wasn't secured was pushed away from its original position at the same moment, then tumbled, collided, and shattered in mid-air.

The explosion bounced off the wall panels in the small room, creating a secondary impact that was longer and more severe than a single explosion, like someone setting off a firework inside a sealed metal box.

The mattress fell from the air and hit Chigur.

He didn't move, just gripped the gun tightly in his hand and used his other hand to push the edge of the mattress away from him. Broken glass fell from the ceiling, landing in his hair and on his shoulders.

Chigur's ears were ringing; the shock of the explosion had ruptured his eardrums and given him a concussion.

The lights in the room went out, and only the light from the corridor poured in through the blown-open doorway, illuminating the debris and mess on the floor.

The air was thick with the smells of gunpowder and dust, along with a pungent, burning odor, like that of burnt fabric.