Rising from the Ashes (Andrew and Lauren)

"Andrew, wait... is someone trying to kill you?" Freya's face turned ghostly pale, and her voice was shaky. She could barely get the words out.

Andrew let her go and frowned. "You need to lose weight, Ms. Freya."noveldrama

Freya flared up. "Excuse me? Are you saying there's something wrong with my figure?"

Andrew replied flatly, "It's not about looks. It's about the weight. If it had been someone else, they wouldn't have been able to carry you and run. They'd be dead already."

Freya was livid. "You-"

Andrew ignored her. He quickly headed down the fire escape with Freya in tow, pulling her into the shadows near the stairwell exit.

From below, a series of whooshing sounds suddenly echoed upward. It sounded like something was moving at high speed through the air.

Freya looked absolutely terrified and deeply unsettled. Meanwhile, Andrew remained expressionless, and when the wind pressure reached his ears at maximum intensity, he simply kicked out into thin air.

A dull thud rang out, and the wind pressure abruptly stopped.

Caught completely off guard, a dark figure let out a muffled grunt and slammed into the narrow stairway wall. The concrete wall immediately cracked with a massive dent.

Freya stared in shock. "Holy crap, this construction quality is total garbage! They're charging me over a million a month for this place? I'm definitely moving out!"

Andrew felt a headache coming on. He could not help but think Freya was an idiot.

Did she seriously think the wall cracked because it was poorly built? No. That damage came from the sheer force of his kick.

And the guy he kicked? He was no ordinary thug.

Dressed in a black trench coat with the collar turned up, the man looked plain and unremarkable, but he was nearly at the level of a martial king.

With his battle-hardened body, hitting the concrete wall was like an ordinary person bumping into a sponge-it didn't faze him at all. He cracked his neck from side to side, making popping sounds.

The assassin sneered. "Guess I underestimated you. You actually caught me off guard, but it doesn't matter. You're still dead."

He spun a knife in his hand until it blurred like a fan. Then, he roared and lunged at Andrew.

Freya gasped and screamed, "It's a hitman! Andrew, run!"

She bolted without hesitation, abandoning her purse. But after just two steps, she slammed face-first into the metal emergency door at the stairwell, collapsed backward, and passed out cold.

Andrew raised his arm, blocked the assassin's strike, and drove his knee up in a brutal uppercut to the man's ribs.

The assassin pushed off the floor with both legs and leapt back, dodging the blow. Then, he swung his blade again and again, slashing within two centimeters of Andrew's face.

The stairwell was only about six feet wide. With two men engaged in mortal combat in such a confined space, it was easy to imagine how cramped the fighting conditions were.

Nonetheless, it was precisely because of this limitation that the assassin with his deadly weapon had the advantage in close-quarters killing He figured that within three seconds at most, Andrew would be carved up into pieces.

However, the assassin gradually realized he was dead wrong.

No matter how close he pressed his attack or how frantically he spun his knife,

Andrew always managed to dodge by mere millimeters.

"Too slow and too weak!" Andrew's

cold voice reached the assassin's ears just as he was beginning to doubt himself. "Tell me who sent you. Give me a straight answer, and I'll let you die peacefully."

The assassin roared back, "Stop running your mouth. I'm Eagle Eye. Do you think someone like me is afraid of you?"

Andrew's punch came from a strange, low angle. It was completely out of Eagle Eye's blind spot, and a massive chunk of the stairwell wall exploded, concrete flying everywhere.

However, the strike did not lose a bit of its momentum.