Chapter Eighty-Three: Heavenly Soldiers and Generals

Blind Wu was a thin, wiry man with a slight hunch to his back. He had lost sight in one eye, while the other gleamed with a cold, sinister light; at a glance, it was plain he was no harmless sort.

"Not bad. I never thought you'd actually dare to show up. I don't know whether to call you a fearless calf newly born, or a man with a screw loose."

Blind Wu lounged in a private room, idly swirling a glass of red wine in his hand. A provocatively dressed woman clung to his side, and around the room stood dozens of men in black.

Yang Jiekai had come with only Qin Feng and Old Cudgel, yet he showed no fear at all. In his eyes, bodyguards and the like were nothing but decoration, not worth a second thought.

Without waiting for anyone to invite him, Yang Jiekai sat down grandly on the sofa and said, "As for whether I'm a fearless calf or a lunatic, that's none of your concern. I'm here today to talk about compensation."

"And how do you think this loss should be compensated?" Blind Wu likewise did not take the young men before him seriously.

"I won't waste words with you. I'll take one of your arms over this. From now on, don't come looking for trouble with me again, and we'll call it even."

He was not putting on airs when he said this. He simply did not regard the other party as a threat, and at this moment he had not yet sensed danger closing in.

"Hahahaha..."

Blind Wu burst into laughter. "Interesting. Truly interesting."

Then, with an amused smile at Yang Jiekai, he said, "I don't think you understand the situation yet. If you want to make a name for yourself on my turf, you have to follow my rules. You injured my men; do you really think you can still walk out of here unscathed?"

Yang Jiekai smiled and stood, rolling his shoulders. "Then let's see whether you have that skill!"

With that, he kicked the tea table hard, sending it crashing to the floor.

More than a dozen bodyguards nearby immediately drew knives and rushed forward. Yang Jiekai sent the first man flying with a single kick. Old Cudgel was no less formidable; though he looked like a perpetually half-asleep opium fiend, his hands were astonishingly quick. His fists and feet flashed in a blur, and before long he had dropped a whole stretch of men.

Qin Feng was not trained in martial arts, but he was bold and ruthless, and with masters like Yang Jiekai and Old Cudgel at his side, he came through the fight without a scratch.

They had thought this would be enough to frighten the other side into submission, but Blind Wu's expression did not change in the slightest. Instead, he clapped and laughed. "Good! Not bad at all. You've got a few tricks."

Yang Jiekai privately found this strange. Since returning to China, he had resorted to violence a few times, but every time, beating down a few men had been enough to scare the rest senseless. Blind Wu was the first of his kind, and judging by that easy expression, it did not seem forced at all.

"Now it's your turn." Blind Wu still looked relaxed, but Yang Jiekai was not intimidated. "I said I'd take one of your arms."

After laughing for a while longer, Blind Wu suddenly said in a low voice, "You really can fight. Fine, I'll give you a chance. Come work for me, and we'll forget what happened before."

Yang Jiekai truly could not understand where this man's confidence came from. He wondered if his skull had been squeezed at birth, and no longer cared to talk. He stepped forward, ready to rip one of the man's arms off.

Just then, the door was kicked open. A dozen black-clad men stormed in at once and surrounded Yang Jiekai and the others, but they were not carrying machetes, steel pipes, or any other brutal weapon.

They had pistols.

In an instant, more than a dozen guns were aimed at the three of them.

Yang Jiekai froze. An uneasy feeling surged in his chest. If it were only himself, he might still be able to gamble on a fight, but with Old Cudgel and Qin Feng beside him, a volley from so many guns at such close range would leave him able only to protect himself, with no way to account for the others.

Though he was a top expert, he was not a superhero from the movies. With more than a dozen guns pointing at him from so close, even if he cared only about himself, he still had less than a fifty-fifty chance.

"Break one leg each and throw them out!" Blind Wu swirled the red wine in his glass, one eye glinting with viciousness. "I was going to cripple both arms and legs, but since you're such a good fighter and you've got some nerve, I'll give you a discount. Leave one leg each, and you can get lost."

As he spoke, one of the black-clad men advanced toward Yang Jiekai with a ferocious look on his face, a steel pipe in his hand. "I've broken ninety-nine men's legs before. With you, it'll make an even hundred."

The chance had come.

The moment the man drew close, Yang Jiekai suddenly thrust out a hand like lightning, a palm-knife strike slashing hard across the man's neck. At the same time, his other hand lifted lightly and snatched away the pistol from the man's other hand.

Then he blurred forward like a streak of shadow, darting straight toward Blind Wu and pressing the gun against his forehead. "誰敢動!"

Everything happened in the blink of an eye. The situation reversed beyond all imagination, and the others had not reacted at all.

At the same time, Old Cudgel also moved with lightning speed and seized another man's gun.

"Blind Wu, you've gotten happy too soon!"

With a gun in hand, Yang Jiekai immediately relaxed. Even if the men nearby disregarded Blind Wu's life and fired all at once, he was confident he would shoot faster than they could.

Blind Wu was clearly stunned, but not as panicked as one might expect. Instead, he fixed Yang Jiekai with a vicious glare from his one good eye. "If you've got the guts, then shoot!"

"You think I won't?" Yang Jiekai smiled coldly. Blowing a man's brains out with a gun was something he had done before he was even ten.

"If you dare fire, you'll all be riddled like sieves!"

Blind Wu had clawed his way to where he stood today, single-handedly and with nothing but a broadsword in hand, so naturally he was no coward. He said viciously, "I know your background. You've got a wife at home, and you've got friends around you too. If I die today, someone will take all my wealth and use it to wipe out your family and all the people beside you!"

Then Blind Wu laid bare Yang Jiekai's background. He knew not only that Yang Jiekai's wife was Han Ning, but also that Han Wei and Aunt Wang were close to him.

At that, Yang Jiekai was suddenly stunned.

Indeed, though he himself was powerful, this was not some world of fantasy. He was not a superhero. The instant he pulled the trigger, the dozen guns around him would fire at the same time. By then, he, Old Cudgel, and Qin Feng would all be dead.

What worried him most was that if he were gone, Han Ning, Han Wei, and Aunt Wang would be dragged into this because of him.

People like Blind Wu, since the day they entered the underworld, had long tied their lives to their belts. If they spoke it, they would certainly do it.

"Let me go today, and we'll forget everything that happened before!"

Though Blind Wu was a ruthless man, that did not mean he cherished his life not at all.

After weighing it for a moment, Yang Jiekai slowly lowered the gun. "You win."

With that, he left the private room with Old Cudgel and Qin Feng.

Back at the company, Yang Jiekai lay in his chair and smoked one cigarette after another. This was the first time since returning to China that he had backed down.

Only then did he truly understand what Long Xiaoman had meant. The underworld in China was far more complicated than he had imagined.

Killing Blind Wu would not be difficult for him, but as Blind Wu had said, the moment he died, someone would take all his wealth and use it to wipe out everyone around him.

"Jiekai, what do we do about this? Just say the word, and even if it's a mountain of blades or a sea of fire, brothers will follow you in!"

Qin Feng was hot-tempered and still brooding over what had happened.

"Why don't we go back now and fight Blind Wu to the death? If your head falls, it's only a scar the size of a bowl rim!"

Though Qin Feng was not from the trade, he had a fierce streak of his own.

Yang Jiekai let out a long sigh and waved him off. "If your head falls and leaves a scar the size of a bowl rim, what about Shishi? Can you watch her get harmed?"

Qin Feng opened his mouth, but not a word came out. His worries were the same as Yang Jiekai's. He was not afraid of death, but he feared the people around him getting hurt.

After smoking several cigarettes in a row, Yang Jiekai got up and went to Dragon Palace Bar to find Long Xiaoman.

"So, you hit a wall, did you?"

The moment Long Xiaoman saw Yang Jiekai's expression, he knew what had happened.

Yang Jiekai downed a glass of wine in one gulp. "Damn it, why are you people from the black road so ruthless? You don't follow any rules at all, always threatening people's families."

Long Xiaoman smiled. "What else? Those of us who make our living this way are always competing over who is darker, who is more ruthless. As long as there's profit in it, they'd even stab their own families."

"Then tell me what I should do. Is my company really supposed to close right after opening?"

This time, Yang Jiekai was truly disheartened. He had certainly faced danger plenty of times in his mercenary days, but he had seldom dealt with gangs. His first collision with the Chinese underworld had already given him a splitting headache.

"That's not quite necessary."

Long Xiaoman took a small sip of red wine and looked at Yang Jiekai. "You have two choices now. First, shut the company down and honestly go back to being your little security guard."

"And the second?" Yang Jiekai asked.

Long Xiaoman gave a teasing smile. "The Chinese underworld is more complicated than you think, but there is a way to deal with it. Ruthless men like Blind Wu are only special cases. If you want to keep the company running, you'll need a backer who lives by the rules of the underworld."

Yang Jiekai thought for a moment, then suddenly said, "Then be my backer. Aren't you one of them too?"

Long Xiaoman nearly spat out his wine. "Me? I'm only dabbling here and there, making a living by watching over a few places. I'm nowhere near Blind Wu's level. If he wanted to deal with me, it'd be no different from stepping on an ant."

"Fine, forget I said anything." Yang Jiekai's face darkened. "Never mind, let's talk about this another day. I need to go home for dinner."

"Wait!"

Long Xiaoman stopped him. "I haven't finished yet. What's the rush?"

Yang Jiekai said gloomily, "Do you expect to summon heavenly soldiers and generals to help us or something?"

Long Xiaoman gave him an amused look. "True enough. If I really had heavenly soldiers and generals, I might just be able to go toe-to-toe with Blind Wu!"

Yang Jiekai blinked, then pointed at himself. "You want me to join you?"

Long Xiaoman smiled. "Exactly. You are my heavenly soldiers and generals."