Jiang Che’s forehead slammed into the hard solid-wood tabletop with a dull thud.
The stench of tar from cheap tobacco mixed with the sour reek of stale sweat and seeped straight into his nose.
He held the back of his head and sat upright.
His neck was stiff as rusted iron.
His vision was still a little blurry.
Just a moment ago, he’d been drinking chilled champagne at a victory party on Wall Street.
Now he was clutching a chipped enamel ashtray.
A bald man was squatting on the long sofa opposite him.
The man was bare-chested, with a Descending Tiger tattoo across his chest.
The tiger’s tail ran all the way into his belt buckle.
The bald man was picking at his teeth with his thumbnail, making a series of clicking sounds.
Looking to the side, he saw seven or eight men gathered around a long conference table.
Some wore floral shirts, some had thick gold chains, and some had knife scars on their faces.
Not one of them looked like a decent person.
Jiang Che pressed a hand to his throbbing temple.
This wasn’t an investment bank’s conference room.
An unfamiliar scene was forcibly crammed into his mind.
It pierced him like a needle, making his brain ache.
Jiang Che closed his eyes and gripped the edge of the solid-wood table with both hands.
A sheen of cold sweat slowly broke out across his back.
His cotton shirt clung to his skin, clammy and sticky.
He had transmigrated.
The old-fashioned calendar on the wall displayed the date in red: May 2008, Songjiang City.
The original owner was also named Jiang Che.
He was a hotheaded street thug who’d been in the game for five years.
He could fight, didn’t fear death, was loyal, and had even taken the fall for someone else.
But that was the extent of it.
He wasn’t very bright; give him a little bait, and he’d risk his life for you.
This smoke-filled room was the top-floor conference room of Songjiang City’s “Ding Sheng Labor Security Company.”
Outsiders called it Dingsheng Group.
But every local in Songjiang City knew the truth.
It was the biggest underground syndicate in Songjiang City.
Just three days ago, the syndicate’s Boss, Brother Biao, had summoned the original owner to this office.
Brother Biao held a cup of Moutai, his face flushed red.
“Che, my health’s failing. I have to go to Aodao for treatment.”
“The company’s yours from now on.”
The original owner had been so excited his hands trembled, thinking that after five years of waiting, he was finally moving up.
Without even looking closely, he’d signed more than a dozen thick transfer agreements.
Then he’d pressed his thumbprint onto them.
Change of legal representative, transfer of equity, assumption of debt.
The entire process had gone smoothly and quickly—far too quickly to be normal.
The next day, Brother Biao vanished.
Along with him went the sixty million yuan in cash from the Ding Sheng Company safe.
And the passwords to all the offshore accounts.
He hadn’t left behind a single cent.
Jiang Che’s fingers clenched tightly beneath the conference table.
His knuckles turned white.
What an idiot.
A fall guy through and through.
He opened his eyes and glanced at a crumpled 《Songjiang Daily》 on the table.
The bold black headline on the front page was glaring.
“Municipal Public Security Bureau launches Operation Thunderclap, vowing to eradicate criminal gangs root and branch.”
The date on it was today.
This was the real reason Brother Biao had fled.
The crackdown was tightening.
The authorities were serious this time; they’d even dispatched a joint task force.
As Songjiang City’s biggest scourge, Ding Sheng Company was sure to be the number one target on the crackdown list.
Jiang Che clenched his back teeth.
A faint taste of blood filled his mouth.
He was now Ding Sheng Company’s sole legal representative.
A figurehead boss.
The moment the police stormed the building and found the loan shark IOUs in the second-floor finance office— the ledgers from the South City underground casino— and the illicit smuggled goods in the warehouse— he wouldn’t even have the chance to find a lawyer and argue his case.
This was the 2008 Thunderous Crackdown.
The harshest possible treatment.
Even being shot would count as leniency.
Jiang Che reached into his pocket and pulled out a worn Nokia candybar phone.
He lit up the screen.
No signal. The battery had only one bar left.
He tossed the phone back onto the table with a sharp clack.
Several men by the table stopped talking and turned to look at him in unison.
More than a dozen hostile gazes fell on him.
These men were the Hall Masters of Ding Sheng’s various gang branches.
Or, according to the company organization chart hanging on the wall, department managers.
Jiang Che’s gaze swept over them one by one.
The bald man squatting on the sofa was Chen Dao, who ran four underground casinos in South City.
He had several cases involving people left disabled hanging over his head.
The man in the floral shirt was Lei Bao, who controlled seventy percent of Songjiang City’s sand and gravel building-materials trade.
His monopoly depended entirely on sending men to smash his competitors’ transport trucks in the middle of the night.
The tall, thin man beside him, who’d been looking down and fiddling with a Zippo lighter, was a loan shark who lent money for a living.
Together, these men had more than three thousand enforcers and street thugs under their command.
More than three thousand mouths to feed.
Every day, they needed food, drink, and money to settle down.
The company’s books were now cleaner than a blank sheet.
There wasn’t a cent of legitimate income.
If these men learned Brother Biao had run off with the money and left them all as pawns— if they learned that by next month, they wouldn’t even have money to buy cigarettes—
Jiang Che would bet he wouldn’t make it out of this office alive.
The Municipal Public Security Bureau’s officers wouldn’t even have to act.
These Outlaws could tear him apart right there.
They’d stuff him in a sack with a few bricks and dump him under Songjiang Bridge in the middle of the night to feed the fish.
The police were closing in from the front, and his underlings wanted him dead from behind.
A dead end.
A dead end through and through.
Jiang Che picked up the chipped glass mug in front of him.
The water was cold, and a few blackened leaves of cheap tea floated on its surface.
He ignored them and tipped his head back, gulping down a mouthful.
The cold water slid down his throat into his stomach, making him shiver.
He forced his trembling hands to still.
He had to keep calm.
What kind of storm had he not weathered on Wall Street?
He’d turned around even the most hopeless bankrupt assets.
The biggest problem with this mess was that every single business was in violation of the Criminal Law.
But those three thousand capable subordinates were a ready-made workforce.
All he had to do was lead them onto the straight and narrow.
All he had to do was give the company a completely legal makeover before the police came to seal the place.
Jiang Che rapidly ran through the business opportunities in mainland China in 2008.
Smartphones were only just beginning to emerge.
The food delivery industry was still a blank slate.
Ride-hailing didn’t even exist yet.
And mobile payments were out of the question.
This was a wild era where gold lay scattered everywhere.
All you needed was guts, and you could make anything take off.
He could take these men into the internet business.
Even sending them out to do Intra-City Errand Service or food delivery would be better than sitting here waiting to die.
Run a legitimate business, pay taxes, and earn clean money.
As long as they made enough money and paid enough taxes, they could wash the mud off their hands.
The conference room was quiet for a long time.
Only the exhaust fan in the corner hummed.
The air grew more and more stifling.
The men below exchanged glances.
They didn’t know what had gotten into their newly installed boss.
He’d been sitting there since morning without saying a word.
He hadn’t even given them the slightest instruction.
The man sitting closest to the door stood up.
He was 1.9 meters tall, with a close-cropped buzz cut.
A shoulder dragon tattoo writhed across his right arm, its blue-green scales rendered in lifelike detail.
Ding Sheng’s top Double-Flower Red Pole, Xu Hu.
He had two serious-injury cases behind him and was the kind of ruthless man who got excited at the sight of blood.
Xu Hu kicked his chair aside and strode to the head of the long table.
He reached behind his waist and pulled out a long object wrapped in old newspaper.
Smack.
He slammed it down onto the solid-wood tabletop.
Several layers of old newspaper fell away.
Revealing a gleaming machete.
The blade was notched in several places, and dark red stains still clung to the blood groove.
Xu Hu braced both hands on the table’s edge and leaned his broad upper body forward.
His brutish, fleshy face loomed close to Jiang Che’s.
A half-smoked Hongtashan hung from his mouth as he exhaled a thick cloud of white smoke.
The smoke blew straight into Jiang Che’s face.
“Boss.”
Xu Hu’s voice sounded like two sheets of coarse sandpaper rubbing together.
“The brothers have sharpened their blades.”
He tapped the back of the blade with his calloused fingers.
It rang out with a metallic clank.
“Just give the word.”
“Who are we cutting down tonight?”
Xu Hu’s eyes gleamed viciously as he jabbed a finger hard at the map of Songjiang City on the table.
“Are we taking that street in the West City?”
The temperature in the conference room plunged to freezing.
The dozen or so men stopped moving.
No one smoked. No one picked their teeth.
Everyone stared intently at Jiang Che.
Waiting for him to issue his first jianghu death warrant.