“Bang, bang, bang! Bang, bang, bang!”
“Brother Liuyi!”
Xia Liuyi jolted awake from a nightmare and frowned toward the door. Xiao He sprang up with him. She quickly stripped off her clothes, mussed up her hair, and made herself look disheveled, as though they had just finished having sex.
Xia Liuyi pulled open the door. Xiao Ma nearly crashed headfirst into the room, his face filled with panic.
“Brother Liuyi! Something terrible happened! Big Brother and Sister-in-law had a fight. Sister-in-law stabbed Big Brother…”
“How badly is Ah Da hurt?!” Xia Liuyi interrupted anxiously.
He did not even stop to put on a shirt. Wearing only a pair of dress trousers and with his feet bare, he rushed out of the room.
Xiao Ma hurried after him. “She didn’t hit any vital organs. He’s already been taken to the hospital! But Sister-in-law…”
“Which hospital?!” Xia Liuyi roared.
“Jiaocheng Hospital, the one beside the Walled City! Brother Liuyi! Sister-in-law, she… she…” Xiao Ma followed him outside and anxiously reached out to grab him, but hesitated to continue.
“What happened to her?!” Xia Liuyi shouted furiously.
“After she stabbed Big Brother, she jumped off the roof of the villa…”
Xia Liuyi had been bending down to get into the car. His body suddenly froze, and the car key slipped from his hand with a clatter.
The sedan hurtled down the road, speeding like the wind as it plunged into the night. At the end of the road stood a fork. The left road led to Jiaolong’s seaside villa, while the right led to Jiaocheng Hospital.
At the intersection, Xia Liuyi slammed on the brakes. He drew a breath, his face expressionless, then wrenched the steering wheel around and took the left road.
He threw the car door shut behind him and rushed barefoot into the villa. Several servants who had remained behind hurried over to stop him.
“Brother Liuyi! Brother Liuyi!”
“Move!”
Beside the swimming pool behind the villa, a white sheet covered a small, slender body.
Xia Liuyi rushed over to the corpse and dropped to his knees. He lifted the white sheet and took one look. The hard mask on his face shattered in an instant.
Trembling, he bent over and collapsed across Xia Xiaoman’s body. He remained motionless for a long time before a single, suppressed breath escaped him.
“Sis…”
The butler and several servants came running after him, but they stopped far away, hesitant and afraid to approach and provoke him.
Xia Liuyi knelt there for a long time, his eyes bloodred and his entire body trembling.
In a low voice, he asked, “What happened?”
The butler hesitated. “I only arrived afterward. Ah Wen, you tell him.”
One of the servants who had been present at the time answered fearfully, “Madam and Master started arguing. I… I was outside the door and heard them. It sounded as though Madam suspected Master of keeping another woman outside. Master said he wasn’t, but Madam didn’t believe him. She even called Master a ‘pervert’ and ‘shameless.’ At the end, she said something like, ‘The person you really like is…’ Before she could finish, Master slapped her. Madam then stabbed Master with a fruit knife. We were in a hurry to take Master to the hospital. Just after we carried him to the entrance, we heard a noise. Madam had jumped…”
Xia Liuyi curled in on himself and lowered his head. His hands clutched the white sheet tightly, as though heaven and earth had suddenly collapsed around him. A hoarse, agonized growl tore from his throat.
A long time later, Xia Liuyi sniffed hard. When he raised his head again, his face was expressionless.
Bracing one hand against the ground, he slowly rose to his feet and told the butler, “I’ll leave this place to you for now. I’m going to see Ah Da.”
He walked away slowly, stumbling with one uneven step after another. Not a single person dared to call out to him.
At that moment, one of the servants slipped away from the others, secretly entered an inner room, and made a phone call.
…
Xia Liuyi drove back along the same road. When he reached the fork again, he turned in Qinglong’s direction.
By the time he stopped outside Jiaocheng Hospital, a crowd of underlings from every branch of Xiaoqi Hall had already gathered at the entrance. Xiao Ma had arrived as well. He followed behind Xia Liuyi with several brothers and said, “Brother Liuyi, Brother Xu is inside. He won’t let us in.”
“Xiaoliu, your sister stabbed Big Brother. It wouldn’t exactly be proper for you to go in and see him, would it?” Xu Ying said, blocking the door to the hospital room.
“My sister was having an episode. She had no control over herself.” Xia Liuyi’s face was icy, and the whites of his eyes were densely threaded with bloodred veins. “I started following Ah Da when I was ten. At fourteen, I kowtowed and formally joined the gang. Ah Da’s kindness toward me is as weighty as a mountain. I would never harm him. I only want to go in and see him. Move.”
Xu Ying held his gaze for a moment, then suddenly smiled.
“That’s true. You’ve always been utterly devoted to Big Brother. I shouldn’t stop you. Go in. Big Brother just fell asleep, so don’t wake him.”
The room was shrouded in darkness. It was filled with the smell of blood and the sharp, choking odor of medicine. A floor lamp glowed in one corner, its light falling across Xia Liuyi’s bare feet.
Qinglong lay quietly on his back upon the bed. His eyes were slightly closed, as though he had been too exhausted and had merely dozed off.
Xia Liuyi closed the door. Moving as quietly as possible, he circled the bed and sat down beside the window.
He raised his head and looked at the dark, swaying silhouettes of the trees outside. The night wind battered them savagely, and their trembling branches and leaves struggled toward the sky.
“Ah Da,” Xia Liuyi said softly, “was I wrong?”
“Back then, I shouldn’t have begged you to marry her.”
“Neither of you was wrong. I was the one at fault.”
He lowered his head and buried his face in both hands.
In a hoarse voice, he said, “But what else could I have done? She loved you so much. She thought about you every day. She couldn’t live without you. She was my sister. She treated me so well and protected me ever since we were little…”
He could no longer continue. His mouth opened, but no sound came out. He drew several rapid, ragged breaths, and his fingers dug deeply into his hair.
After a long time, he barely managed to force his emotions back under control. He raised his head slightly.
“Ah Da…”
Then his breathing stopped.
In his blurred, dim field of vision, something was steadily dripping from the edge of the bedsheet.
He lunged forward and threw back the blanket. The raw, metallic stench of fresh blood struck him full in the face.
Qinglong’s half-open eyes stared toward the ceiling, his expression frozen in shock.
The Azure Dragon Twin Blades, which Qinglong had specially commissioned at enormous expense and given Xia Liuyi for his twentieth birthday, had been driven into his body. One was buried in his chest and the other in his abdomen. Both had pierced through the bed frame, their blades sunk completely into him until only the handles remained visible.
Trembling, Xia Liuyi placed his fingertips beneath Qinglong’s nose.
A moment later, he suddenly released a shrill, grief-stricken, almost deranged scream.
“Ahhhhhhh!”
Then he violently shoved the iron bed bearing Qinglong’s corpse against the door.
At the same moment, violent kicks struck the door from outside. Xu Ying roared, “Big Brother!” as he tried to smash his way inside.
Xia Liuyi half knelt on the floor, both hands desperately braced against the bed frame. As the door shook beneath one violent impact after another, he lowered his head and looked deeply at Qinglong one last time.
Then, in agony, he turned his face away and clenched his teeth.
He abruptly released the bed, wrapped both hands around the handles of the blades lodged in Qinglong’s body, and ripped them out in a single motion.
Blood splashed across his face.
He spun around and shot away like an arrow, smashing through the window and tumbling from the second floor.
Xu Ying and his men finally broke through the door and rushed into the room, only to be struck head-on by a gust of cold wind.
With a complicated expression, Xu Ying glanced at Qinglong’s corpse, then at the shattered window frame.
Through clenched teeth, he roared, “Pass down the order! Xia Liuyi murdered Boss Qinglong to avenge his lunatic sister! Mobilize every member of Xiaoqi Hall and capture the traitor. Dead or alive!”
As soon as he finished speaking, another window shattered outside with a loud crash.
“What happened?!” Xu Ying shouted furiously.
“It looked like one of Xia Liuyi’s lackeys jumped out a window and ran too!” a subordinate beside him reported.
“Fuck! What are you still standing there for? Chase him!” Xu Ying cursed.
When it came to slipping away and running for his life, Xiao Ma had always been number one.
The instant he heard Xu Ying spouting nonsense, he made a decisive move and jumped out of the corridor window. The several lackeys under him had also inherited their boss’s true expertise. Taking advantage of their low status and unfamiliar faces, they swiftly split up and disappeared into the crowd, disguising themselves as innocent bystanders.
They then blended into the mighty Xiaoqi Hall force pursuing Xia Liuyi before slipping away halfway through the chase.
…
Holding one blade in each hand, Xia Liuyi ran at full speed through the woods.
He had no shoes. Sharp stones and debris in the forest tore into the soles of his feet, leaving them covered in wounds. Even so, he seemed incapable of feeling any pain. His face remained expressionless as he charged straight ahead.
The place that hurt was not his feet.
It was his heart.
His heart had already hurt so much that it had gone completely numb. In a single night, within the span of two hours, the two most important people in his life had both died before his eyes.
Xia Xiaoman’s empty eyes staring toward the sky.
Qinglong’s half-open eyes.
They had died with their eyes still open.
They had died unable to rest in peace.
Xia Liuyi’s fingers dug deeply into the handles of the blades, producing a harsh creaking sound.
He clenched his teeth, held his breath, and continued running madly. Faint, distant cries of pursuit drifted from behind him.
Although Xu Ying’s men were chasing him relentlessly, Jiaolong Walled City lay at the end of the woods. It contained more than five hundred high-rise buildings and a population of thirty thousand. It was dark, deep, and seemingly boundless. The moment he disappeared into it, finding him would be like searching for a stone that had sunk into the sea.
A sudden, violent pain shot through both his knees.
His entire body pitched forward, and he crashed heavily to the ground.
A row of ropes meant to trip horses had been tied between several large trees near the forest exit.
A group of men carrying machetes emerged from deep within the woods. The man in front had a broad forehead and an enormous mouth. A curved saber rested across his shoulder.
He was Cheng Dazui, Xiaoqi Hall’s “Straw Sandal.”
Swaying unsteadily, Xia Liuyi braced himself against a tree and forced himself upright. His knees trembled. He had been running too quickly when he struck the ropes and had nearly broken both legs. Now, everything below his thighs was numb, and even supporting his own weight was difficult.
“Dazui,” he said through clenched teeth.
Cheng Dazui patted the flat of his blade with his palm.
“Brother Liuyi.”
“I have no grudge against you,” Xia Liuyi said between ragged breaths. “Why are you helping Xu Ying?”
“I don’t have any grudge against money either,” Cheng Dazui replied. “Naturally, I follow whoever pays the most.”
Xia Liuyi drew a deep breath.
“The antidepressants my sister took were prescribed by a Western-trained doctor you introduced. You tampered with them.”
“Oh, it wasn’t me,” Cheng Dazui said. “Brother Xu arranged it. I was only following orders. I heard your sister was quite happy taking them?”
“Cheng Siquan!” Xia Liuyi released a hoarse, furious roar.
Cheng Dazui tilted his head, swaying delicately as though he were a frail willow that could not withstand the wind. Then he lazily reached up and picked at his ear.
“Xia Liuyi, you can’t even stand steadily. Save your strength. Come back with me obediently, accept three blades and six holes, then kneel before Big Brother’s memorial tablet and beg the elders for mercy. Maybe you’ll still have a chan…”
The final syllable of the word “chance” scattered into the wind.
None of the underlings around him saw what had happened.
In the blink of an eye, Cheng Dazui’s enormous open mouth had been sliced apart horizontally by a razor-sharp blade, splitting his head into an upper and lower half.
The flying Azure Dragon blade embedded itself deeply in the tree trunk behind him. The upper half of his head was caught and held upon the blade, while the lower half of his head slowly collapsed together with his body.
Leaning against the tree, Xia Liuyi used the remaining blade to support himself.
In an icy voice, he asked, “Anyone else?”
The underlings sucked in sharp breaths and shook their heads one after another. Their legs trembled even more violently than Xia Liuyi’s.
They could only watch as he used the blade like a walking stick and limped toward Jiaolong Walled City.
At that moment, chaotic footsteps sounded from deep within the woods.
The pursuers had arrived.
Xu Ying’s distant shout carried faintly through the trees.
“Whoever kills Xia Liuyi will be rewarded with one hundred thousand!”
The underlings looked at one another. Their blood had been stirred, and the reward had gone to their heads.
No one knew who moved first, but one of them shouted loudly, and the group charged toward Xia Liuyi’s back with their blades raised.
…
It was exam season, with the end of the semester fast approaching.
He Chusan woke early and climbed the dim stairwell to the roof of the tenement building. Surrounded by the households’ brightly colored old clothes and tattered bedsheets, he held a horse stance for half an hour.
Afterward, he practiced palm strikes at a tortoise-like pace for a while. Feeling that he had trained enough, he went downstairs, returned home, gathered his books, and prepared to go to school for self-study.
With his small schoolbag on his back, he turned into the familiar dark alley.
It was the very alley where several large men had once thrown a sack over him and carried him away.
Every day when he reached this place, he became uneasy. He worried that those villains might suddenly feel inspired to film a sequel and, without another word, throw him into another sack.
He straightened his back and hurried forward while pretending to be calm.
Just as he was about to emerge from the alley and rush toward the light, his foot caught on something. With a muffled thud, he fell flat on the ground like a sprawled frog.
He pushed himself upright on his elbows, looking utterly miserable. Just as he was about to stand, a chill touched his shoulder.
A freezing blade rested against his neck.
Someone in the darkness was breathing heavily in a low, restrained manner.
He stiffened and did not dare move. He could only feel the person searching his body, apparently looking for something. When the person’s hand reached his old, battered schoolbag, the movement abruptly stopped.
By then, relying on the faint outline in the darkness and the sound of the man’s harsh breathing, He Chusan had recognized him.
“Brother Liuyi?”
“Fuck, it’s you,” Xia Liuyi cursed breathlessly, his voice very low.
There was a clatter as the Azure Dragon blade fell to the ground.
Xia Liuyi pitched forward and lost consciousness against He Chusan’s back.
He Chusan carried a blood-soaked underworld boss home, nearly frightening his father into suffering a cerebral hemorrhage.
His father was an unlicensed dentist who had spent several decades honestly keeping his head down in this dark and lawless district. Faced with such a notorious and powerful thug, he was completely at a loss.
He Chusan, however, had once been cruelly and mercilessly tormented by Brother Liuyi. His nerves were therefore much stronger than his father’s.
He hurriedly instructed, “Dad, close the door. Don’t let anyone see.”
“How did you get involved with this kind of person? You even brought him into our home!” Father He locked the door from the inside, trembling as he paced frantically around the room. The air stirred by his movements made the candle flame sway.
He Chusan had no choice. Steeling himself, he confessed, “He saved me before.”
“What did you do that required someone like him to save you?!” Father He asked anxiously.
“I was stopped by several people. They tried to rob me.”
He Chusan did not want his father to worry, so he still told him only half the truth.
“Tsk, tsk, tsk, tsk…” Dentist He was anxious, angry, and flustered. That sound was the only response he could manage.
“Dad, hurry and examine him. Is he going to die?” He Chusan asked.
Dentist He rolled up his sleeves and temporarily took on the role of an unlicensed veterinarian.
He counted seventeen or eighteen blade wounds across Xia Liuyi’s body, some deep and some shallow. His kneecaps were also slightly displaced, but none of those injuries were fatal.
The truly dangerous injury was a bullet hole beneath Xia Liuyi’s shoulder. The bullet remained lodged inside. The wound appeared to be one or two days old and was filled with pus. The flesh around it had split and curled outward, presenting an extremely gruesome sight.
“Tsk, tsk, tsk, tsk…” Dentist He said.
He Chusan hurried back and forth, bringing water and gauze as he helped his father treat Xia Liuyi’s wounds.
In truth, he had no favorable feelings toward a vicious villain like Xia Liuyi. Jiaolong Walled City was full of bastards like him. If one died, then he died, and another bastard would soon step forward to take his place.
Still, this man had saved him once.
Besides, He Chusan was an innocent, law-abiding citizen. He truly could not stand by and watch a living person die right before his eyes.
Dentist He held up a magnifying glass and studied the wound for a long time.
“Ah San, my eyes are getting old. I can’t see clearly. You remove the bullet for him.”
“Will it hurt?” He Chusan asked uneasily.
“Of course it’ll hurt!” Dentist He replied. “But he’s unconscious, so we can even save the anesthetic. Hurry over here!”
He Chusan pushed the forceps into the wound. Xia Liuyi released a hoarse moan in his unconscious state, and He Chusan immediately grew nervous and stopped moving.
He closed his eyes and drew a deep breath.
With all his might, he recalled how Xia Liuyi had seized him by the collar several months ago and slammed his head against a table, how Xia Liuyi had kicked him through the air, how he had beaten him with the leg of a stool, and how he had said, “Even if you died by the roadside, I wouldn’t spare you a single glance.”
When He Chusan opened his eyes again, his heart surged with tremendous courage.
With one hand, he covered Xia Liuyi’s mouth, muffling his unconscious moans. With the other, he resolutely thrust the forceps deeper into the wound.
Dentist He watched with his own eyes as his gentle-natured son calmly extracted the bullet from amid the spurting blood without the slightest change in expression.
His son looked so steady and composed that a deep chill ran through him. He began to wonder whether something had gone wrong with the direction of his parenting.
Perhaps his son ought to study medicine?
When Xia Liuyi regained consciousness, he was lying on the narrow iron bed in He Chusan’s small room on the second floor.
A single candle burned inside the room. The damp ceiling was covered in black mold and gave off a rotten smell.
He lay facedown on the bed, with a pillow beneath his chest to prevent the gunshot wound near his shoulder from pressing against the bedsheet.
He Chusan had his upper body sprawled across the wooden stool beside the bed, while his bottom rested on another, shorter stool. He was studying by candlelight.
Xia Liuyi drew a deep breath and discovered that, apart from his fingers, he could not move any part of his body.
“Hey,” he said hoarsely.
He Chusan leaned closer and heard the first thing Xia Liuyi said after waking.
“Beef offal.”