Chapter 47#
Being called out by name out of nowhere, the person on the other end of the phone was stunned.
His bullying-the-weak-and-fearing-the-strong nature was fully on display. He Ask tentatively : “Who are you?”
Nie Xu: “Your brother Jin Hucheng was nothing more than a former manager of a branch hall. He was expelled from the core three years ago due to internal strife. You’ve been lingering on the periphery for three years—have you forgotten how your brother got in?”
The other end was silent for a long while. When he finally spoke again, he stuttered: “Bro… Brother Nie?”
“You’ve still got a brain in there, after all.” Nie Xu said.
Jin Husheng’s arrogant demeanor deflated in an instant. “Brother Nie, a misunderstanding—this is absolutely a misunderstanding. I heard that the Fourth Young Master had left the Ji family and thought I’d give us both an opportunity, lend him a hand. If I’d known Brother Nie was handling this, I never would have meddled.”
Nie Xu’s tone softened for just a moment before he scoffed: “You helped him?”
Jin Husheng hastily corrected himself: “Helped me—I meant I wanted the Fourth Young Master to help me.”
Nie Xu rested one hand on the top edge of the car window, glanced at the person sitting inside, and replied: “Whatever you’ve heard about the Ji family, pack up those filthy thoughts of yours. I’m only warning you this once, otherwise I’ll make sure every day that you go asking around the underworld whether there’s a second underworld for you to survive in.”
The other end fumbled: “Understood, I understand. The person you’re protecting, Brother Nie—how would I dare touch him?”
By the time Ji Yang took back the phone, the call had already been disconnected.
Ji Yang was quite surprised, and teased: “Isn’t Jin Husheng from Xilemen? People in the underworld all fear you.”
“He’s afraid of the police.” Nie Xu said.
Ji Yang recalled that he was indeed quite familiar with dealing with the police—whether it was going to the precinct to bail him out in the past, or that time when he’d called the police onto the cruise ship for Ji Mingyue, the ease he displayed was as if he dealt with them regularly.
Ji Yang commented: “No wonder people say officials and bandits are one family. You’re playing both the black and white sides. It’s no wonder Jin Husheng is afraid of you.”
Nie Xu neither confirmed nor denied this, still leaning against the car window, his gaze locked on the person as he spoke: “Xilemen switched to the entertainment business a long time ago. Jin Husheng is at most a minor figure. More than ten years ago, during Xilemen’s peak, the thing that provoked the authorities into cracking down on them was the kidnapping of a wealthy man’s son.”
Ji Yang knew about this.
Ji Chengyi, as the greatest victim of the incident, had his identity as an illegitimate son become widely known.
Ji Yang: “Were all the people involved caught?”
“More or less.” Nie Xu said vaguely. “The boss at the time was sentenced to multiple crimes and executed. Several others got life in prison. The lightest sentences were still ten-plus years.”
The punishment was far from light.
The fact that Ji Chengyi was kidnapped but not killed, yet the penalties were this severe, meant the crimes they had committed were absolutely no small matter.
Ji Yang thought of something else: “So this Jin Husheng isn’t that important. Who’s the current head of Xilemen?”
“You’ve met him.” Nie Xu said.
Ji Yang was surprised: “I’ve met him?” He furrowed his brows in thought. “How could I have met him?”
Nie Xu tapped the roof of the car to prompt him: “That night, the hotel lobby. The second person walking to the left of the old master.”
Following Nie Xu’s words, Ji Yang recalled that scene.
Yes, that was a rather plain-looking man in his mid-forties or so. At first glance, nothing seemed remarkable. But the mere appearance of Xilemen people at such an occasion was already a problem in itself.
Their grandson had been kidnapped by this organization. Yet over a decade later, they could sit at the same table, drinking from the same teapot.
Ji Yang: “How dark. Could the Ji Corporation and Xilemen have been cooperating over a decade ago?”
After dropping that remark, Ji Yang’s expression was no longer relaxed. The possibility turned over in his mind, that thread pulling at his temples until they throbbed faintly.
Nie Xu watched him in silence.
The seaside wind had picked up.
It blew sand into Ji Yang’s right eye. He pressed his hand against it and rubbed, then opened his other eye and asked: “Why are you looking at me like that?”
Nie Xu grabbed his hand, reached into the car and pulled out a bottle of water, and as he twisted it open, stared at him: “Not looking at anything. I just don’t really want to believe right now that all that medicine you took damaged your brain.”
Though it was meant as a compliment for his intelligence, Ji Yang still instinctively tried to pull away.
Nie Xu gripped his wrist, immobilizing him, and reminded him: “Head down. Rinse it with water. Don’t use your hand.”
Ji Yang was forced to comply.
He leaned his upper body out of the car window, caught two handfuls of water, and rinsed his own eye.
Done rinsing.
“Still bothering you?” Nie Xu asked.
Ji Yang straightened up, shook his hair that had gotten a little damp from the water, and kept his eyes closed: “A little.”
Droplets of water slid from the corner of his eye down to his chin, like tears, carried away by the salty sea breeze, drip-drop falling.
Nie Xu looked for two seconds before finally reaching out, lifting his chin slightly.
“Don’t move. Let me take a look.”
Just as Nie Xu’s fingertip barely grazed that thin eyelid, Ji Yang’s eyes snapped open. They brimmed with a pool of laughter, his voice lifted lightly, the tail of each word curling like a little whirl: “Just kidding you.”
Nie Xu’s hand stilled slightly. Looking into his eyes, he suddenly asked: “Do you have any photos of yourself as a child?”
“Huh?” Ji Yang didn’t quite understand why the topic had veered so abruptly to such an out-of-nowhere question. He shook his head—not exactly lying: “No. I heard from Aunt Mo that Ji Changshou and my… mom had a fight at one point, and Ji Changshou in a fit of anger burned all the photographs. The only two remaining were lost during the renovation of the main building. I’ve never seen any.”
Nie Xu nodded, a flash of something too quick to be anything but an illusion—absurdity—crossing his eyes.
Ji Yang asked, puzzled: “You should have known what I looked like as a child, right? You entered the Ji family in your teens, and I was about five or six then, wasn’t I? Or was it that I used to tease cats and kick dogs, and you’ve hated me since I was little?”
Nie Xu: “Not all the candidates for Building Four started out inside the estate.”
He didn’t need to elaborate further; Ji Yang could piece together most of it himself.
They must have had their own selection mechanisms and training systems, which also indirectly proved that the so-called childhood sweethearts foundation was even weaker than it appeared.
Nie Xu got back into the car and returned to the original topic.
“Over a decade ago, the Ji family did cooperate with Xilemen. The kidnapping case back then was actually triggered by an unequal division of spoils. It’s just that at the time, all the major families in Fanzhou were fighting for power, and the outside world magnified the kidnapping itself. Even if anyone tried to trace the source, it was easy to go down the wrong path.”
Ji Yang could imagine that.
In a time of chaos, when something like this happened, the vast majority of people’s first reaction would be that competitors or enemies were behind it. Who would have known the root cause lay with the Ji family itself?
Ji Yang: “So what’s the situation now? Back to colluding with wolves and jackals?”
Nie Xu looked at him deeply.
“It never stopped.”
Ji Yang’s breath stalled.
In just those few short words, Ji Yang felt a coldness like water seeping over stone steps—not thundering in a thunderstorm, nor lurking in an abyss. Evil breeds in the most ordinary of crevices, in every seemingly unremarkable sunrise and sunset.
They hadn’t stayed at the seaside for long before Nie Xu turned the car around and drove back.
They arrived at the hotel entrance at four in the afternoon.
Ji Yang’s mood was far from cheerful. For one, Ji Cheng’s matter still weighed on him. For another, he realized that the seemingly improving, ordinary life he was living now held far too many uncertainties.
This kept a restless emotion suppressed in his chest, as if he urgently needed to find an outlet.
Just as he got out of the car at the hotel entrance, someone crashed into him.
A black van screeched to a halt at the roadside.
A person with their hands and feet bound and mouth covered with black tape was shoved out of the van and dropped at Ji Yang’s feet.
Ji Yang: “…”
He studied the figure for a long moment: “Lin Yue?”
The person who had dropped him there looked like someone merely following orders, expression so blank it was almost vacant: “Fourth Young Master, our Boss Jin says this person is to trouble you.”
“Trouble me?” Ji Yang was utterly dazed, half-suspecting he wasn’t standing on the broad, sunlit street but rather at the mouth of a red-light district at midnight.
Ji Yang’s temple throbbed. He pointed at the person on the ground who was going “Mmm! Mmm! Mmm!” with tears streaming down his face: “He, Jin Husheng, beat this person up like this, and now it’s trouble for me? Trouble me for what? To take the blame for him committing violence on the street?”
The other party probably hadn’t expected this reaction. His expression stiffened for a moment. He hemmed and hawed for a long time before finally adding: “Boss Jin says he only roughed him up a bit—the person is still clean.”
Ji Yang clenched his jaw until his back molars ached.
Until the other party said one more thing: “Boss Jin says it’d be a favor to the Fourth Young Master if you could deliver this person to Brother Nie, as his show of respect.”
Ji Yang: “…”
That fire instantly got stuck in his throat, leaving him with a genuinely suffocating feeling of not being able to swallow it down or spit it up.
Deliver to whom? And show of respect?
Having parked the car, Nie Xu finally walked over.
Taking in the scene before him, a flicker of understanding crossed his eyes.
Ji Yang turned around, half-smiling, and said softly: “I can’t tell, but it seems Brother Xu must have received quite a few of these ‘shows of respect’ in the past.”
Nie Xu looked at the man who had spoken earlier: “Jin Husheng sent you?”
“Yes, yes.” The other party glanced up, then quickly lowered his head.
Nie Xu: “Roll back and tell him—if his eyes are still this useless, I’ll come over myself and dig them out for him.”
The other party trembled.
Nie Xu frowned: “Still not rolling?”
The other party turned to run.
Nie Xu: “Take your man with you.”
The other party immediately came back to pick up Lin Yue from the ground.
Half-dragged, half-pulled, the whimpering Lin Yue in the hands of that large-framed man looked like a broken, battered cloth doll.
“Wait.” Ji Yang called out, stopping them.
He paused. “Leave the person here.”
The other party glanced at him, then at Nie Xu behind him. After two seconds of consideration, he dropped the person and ran.
Ji Yang caught the person who could barely stand, and reached up to tear the tape from the corner of his mouth, frowning: “Do you really have to keep following that man surnamed Jin? Do you have something on him, or is your indenture contract in his possession? Are your legs broken like mine? Don’t you know how to run?”
Lin Yue let out a choked sob: “Fo… Fourth Young Master, thank you.”
“I never said I was helping you.” Ji Yang turned around to untie the bindings.
However the knots had been tied, they simply wouldn’t come undone.
Ji Yang was already thinking that if he couldn’t get them untied, he might end up being secretly photographed and posted online—people thinking he was beating someone up on the street in broad daylight.
Someone came over to take his place: “This is a hangman’s knot. The harder you struggle, the tighter it gets.”
Ji Yang stepped aside: “Jin Husheng is sick.”
Nie Xu untied the ropes. Freed, Lin Yue instantly scrambled a couple of steps away.
With the ropes dangling from one hand, Nie Xu made a phone call.
“Shut down both of Jin Husheng’s halls on Pan Street.”
“Why?” the person on the other end asked.
Nie Xu: “Because he can’t understand human language.”
Ji Yang stood there without moving.
Suddenly he felt a hand grab his arm, trembling all over.
“What are you doing?” Ji Yang asked.
Lin Yue was on the verge of tears: “Fo… Fourth Young Master, I don’t want to follow him. Please don’t give me away to someone else.”
Ji Yang pressed his hand to his forehead.
He pointed at himself, then at Lin Yue: “Between the two of us—one’s got a limp, the other’s a bruised mess. Where exactly do you get this confidence?”
Lin Yue said nothing, only hid behind him stubbornly.
Ji Yang looked at the approaching Nie Xu and asked: “What phone call?”
Nie Xu’s gaze swept over Lin Yue, then returned to Ji Yang’s face: “Didn’t you say you’re not a charity?”
“I’m certainly not,” Ji Yang smiled. “He said it himself—he’s a gift. For you.”
So he’d gone soft but wouldn’t admit it.
Nie Xu gave a soft hum: “All that temper directed at me, though.”
Lin Yue seemed to sense something.
He silently let go of Ji Yang.
Ji Yang: “You’re not sticking with me anymore?”
Lin Yue’s face turned ashen.
He didn’t dare.