[City Under Siege / Zhang Dachu / Sunny * Sun Hao] Ambushed on All Sides

At the moment when victory or defeat, even life or death, hung in the balance, Sunny found it strange that he could still calmly raise his head and look at Sun Hao. Sun Hao, hovering silently in the air, was looking back at him just as calmly. Their gazes met from above and below. The cries of surprise at that very moment reminded Sunny of the muffled thunder during a torrential downpour one year. In the woods outside the little seaside cabin, rain had washed his face and eyes without restraint. The person before him then had been the same man he was looking at now. That man was Sun Hao. After a brutal training session that had left him physically exhausted, he had once made Sunny stammer out the word "Master." Sun Hao seemed to have fallen into memories from even further back. He said that the old lady had called him Master at first, too, though it sounded quite different in Cantonese. The final syllable rose slightly, as if what followed should be an ellipsis rather than a full stop, as if she had never quite finished speaking. Of course, Sun Hao never said that last part of the analysis. He always thought it was just an illusion people experienced when their thoughts began to grow muddled.