Chapter 82#

Outside had already devolved into absolute chaos.

The deafening crash of vehicles colliding, the piercing shriek of shattering glass, and the cursing in local dialect woven through the confusion—all of it poured in through every crack and seam in the prefab building like a pot of boiling oil.

Footsteps clattered heavy and erratic. Someone outside bellowed: “Shit! What the hell happened?! Which direction did they crash in from?!”

Then came the sound of running, closer now, practically right against the exterior wall of the building—rapid, breathless. Someone yelled: “Where the fuck do you think you’re running?!” A dull thud followed, like a heavy body slammed against a wall, then a groan and the sound of someone sliding down.

Nie Xu didn’t give Ji Yang much time to collect himself.

He glanced toward the door—outside, people were still locked in close combat—then swept his eyes over Ji Yang’s bleeding wound. Without a word, he pulled a roll of compressed hemostatic gauze from the side pocket of his tactical pants, ripped the packaging open one-handed, then gripped Ji Yang’s wrist and turned it palm-up. He laid the gauze over the wound, pressed down, wound it around—fast, steady, precise—and knotted it off. As fluent as if he’d done it a thousand times.

Only then did he release the pressure. He looked at Ji Yang, as if wanting to say something, but swallowed it back down. Instead, he turned and pressed himself against the doorframe, picking up a short blade from the floor. The blade caught a cold gleam of light in the darkness.

“Can you walk?” Nie Xu asked.

Ji Yang nodded. “Yes.”

Nie Xu reached up and cupped the back of Ji Yang’s head. “Good boy. Stay on my right.”

The words good boy hit Ji Yang like a system crash to the brain.

Thankfully, he snapped back quickly and shifted one step to the right.

The moment Nie Xu pulled open the door, a dark figure was lunging inward—a local enforcer who’d earlier claimed to be the consignee. He still clutched a crowbar in his hand, face twisted into a snarl, and swung it down wildly before he could even see what was inside.

Nie Xu sidestepped, seized the man’s wrist and yanked it forward, while simultaneously slashing the short blade across—the flat of the blade struck the man’s radius bone with surgical precision. With a sharp crack, the crowbar flew from his grasp. The man screamed. Nie Xu kicked him away.

The entire sequence was so fast Ji Yang hadn’t even finished blinking.

“Go.” Nie Xu glanced back, a quick signal.

Ji Yang didn’t hesitate. He stepped out after him.

The light outside was blinding. With all that commotion, Ji Yang had assumed the police must have already swarmed in.

But once outside, he saw only a black jeep—its front end nearly buried in the prefab building’s steel frame, the hood crumpled and buckled, wisps of pale smoke rising from it.

There was no grand arrest scene. The melee amounted to seven or eight people against a dozen or so.

Seven or eight people who had put on the appearance of an entire mountainside’s worth of assault.

Across the road, beside the rubble—two or three bodies sprawled at odd angles. Most were curled up clutching their stomachs; some were still wrestling, chasing and grappling, trampling across rusted steel framework that let out bone-grinding, ear-splitting screeches.

The dull thud of fists and feet hitting flesh echoed everywhere.

Jiang Lei came around from behind the jeep, dragging someone by the collar. The man’s face was caked in blood. Jiang Lei looked up, spotted Nie Xu and Ji Yang, let out a breath of relief, and gave them a quick nod.

Desperate people fought hardest when there was no way out.

Ji Yang scanned his surroundings. Something felt off. “Where’s Ji Chengyi?”

“Lu Li covered his escape.” Nie Xu nodded toward the back slope. “This was just a temporary site. The police have already set up a perimeter ahead. They intend to take down this entire trafficking line in one sweep.”

Ji Yang followed his gaze.

All he could see was a plume of dust vanishing over the horizon.

A drone overhead changed course. In the distance, police sirens converged from three different directions, bearing down on that spot.

“Fan Zhou is involved—shouldn’t we pursue?” Ji Yang asked Nie Xu.

The killing edge that clung to Nie Xu’s body gradually softened once Ji Yang was standing beside him. He glanced up at the sky. “No rush.”

In a direction Ji Yang and the others couldn’t see.

The car making its desperate getaway had taken on the ragged look of flight.

The tension of being surrounded from every direction without being able to see a single pursuer made the driver tremble all over. His eyes darted everywhere. He could barely keep his grip on the steering wheel.

In the back seat, Ji Chengyi’s eyes burned with rising fury. “What are you panicking for?! If you can’t drive, get out!”

The car stopped on a riverbank.

The driver practically crawled out of the driver’s seat.

Ji Chengyi pulled a gun from his grip, got out of the car behind him, loaded it, and pressed the barrel to the driver’s head.

The driver’s legs nearly gave out from sheer terror.

Lu Li stepped forward and pushed the gun down, incredulous. “You want to kill him?”

“Keeping someone like this around will only expose our position.” Ji Chengyi stared back without a trace of fear. “What? You think that now I’ve lost the Ji family, I’m nothing? Think there’s no future in following me?”

“I’ve never thought that.” Lu Li kept his hand clamped on the muzzle, unwilling to let go. Blood still trickled steadily from the wound on his side where a steel rebar had pierced through. “I just don’t want you to go down this road. We had better options, didn’t we?”

“Better options?” Ji Chengyi looked as though he’d heard the most absurd joke in the world. “Go abroad?” He shook his head. “Impossible. I don’t have that chance either. But nothing’s over. I haven’t lost. This is all because of Ji Yang. I just need to—”

“Ji Chengyi.” Lu Li spoke his name, cutting him off.

He tried to find some trace of the past on the face of the person who had always seemed so beautiful in his heart. “What happened to you? Weren’t you always the one who didn’t fight or compete? Didn’t you tell me you didn’t care about the Ji family’s wealth—that you just couldn’t accept your mother’s humble existence there? When did you become so driven by ambition?”

Ji Chengyi seemed to finally regain his senses.

His eyes turned red in an instant.

“I didn’t want this either, Lu Li. I didn’t want any of this.”

He reached out and grabbed Lu Li’s arm. “Ji Yang took everything—everything, including Nie Xu. Have you forgotten how hard it was for us to survive when we were children? I don’t care that Nie Xu is going after the Ji family, but he mobilized all these people to hunt us down—for Ji Yang. He was the first to forget what we meant to each other. And now even you want to betray our past?”

Lu Li closed his eyes.

His voice came out muffled. “Sometimes I wonder—do you really can’t let go of our childhood bond, or do you just can’t stand the thought of any single person beside you looking away from you?”

Back in the Ji family, Ji Chengyi had been the young master on high.

Even as an illegitimate son, he still enjoyed chauffeured rides to and fro, an exalted status others couldn’t easily touch.

Like the moon in the sky—visible, yet forever out of reach.

Now the moon had fallen into a well, and only then did he realize that so many things had been nothing but illusion—shatter at the slightest touch.

Had he truly ever known this person at all?

Lu Li had asked himself this question countless times recently.

But the water and flatbread pressed to his lips that year were real. The hand placed on his forehead was also real. Nobody cared whether he lived or died—by all rights, he should have died that year. it was because of those two people that he survived.

Now one had become a mortal enemy. The other…

A helicopter appeared overhead.

A rope ladder dropped.

The police sirens behind them sounded as though they were right around the corner.

Ji Chengyi made a split-second decision. He holstered his gun and began climbing the rope ladder.

“Freeze! Hands up!”

A wave of police officers was rushing along the riverbank.

Lu Li pushed the man up a length of the ladder, then glanced back, about to raise his head and say you go first. But before the words left his mouth, he heard: “Lu Li—you wouldn’t betray me, would you?”

Lu Li met the gaze of the man above him. In that instant, he almost wanted to laugh.

But all he said in the end was: “No.”

“Mm.” Ji Chengyi climbed another rung. “Be careful. I’ll send someone back for you.”

Lu Li thought: No need.

He turned to face the police, sensing the helicopter growing ever more distant behind him. The exhaustion in his heart seemed to drift away with it, leaving only the hollow blankness of settled dust.

If I can give my life back to you, at least it will have come full circle.

Bang!

Lu Li dropped to one knee on the stony riverbed.

He looked down at the wound—the bullet hole through his chest, having entered from behind. A flicker of shock crossed his eyes before it settled into grim understanding.

He just didn’t understand.

Why, at the very end, had the choice still been to deceive him?

“He’s not going to die, is he?”

When Lu Li faintly heard these words, he was reminded of that year—that small voice asking another person, “Brother, is he going to die?”

Only the person asking was no longer the one from his memory.

Lu Li forced his eyes open and thought that heaven didn’t feel very pleasant.

An ordinary room. The walls were just plain white plaster over putty. Pain radiated from his chest, and his breathing sounded like a broken old bellows.

“He won’t die.” That voice was all too familiar.

Lu Li turned his head and saw his “nemesis,” Nie Xu.

Nie Xu came back wringing out a towel and shoved someone aside. “You’ve got a wound on your hand. Don’t touch water.”

The person being shoved leaned in from over his shoulder and met Lu Li’s eyes.

“Well, look who finally woke up—the unlucky bastard.”

Lu Li’s grip on the edge of the bed went white-knuckled. The feeling of being on the brink of death still lingered in his chest before being shoved roughly back to reality. The scene before him struck him with a particularly strange sense of dissonance—one treacherous and treacherous, one useless young master—impressions that had been nailed solid in his mind, now flipping entirely on their heads in this single moment.

Especially Ji Yang.

He’d changed into a clean, plain T-shirt and jeans—an ordinary university student’s outfit that looked completely natural on him. His face still carried a pallor, but the wound on his hand had been carefully and meticulously bandaged.

Gone were the cold sarcasm on the road and the composure in the face of armed robbers. Now he smiled without a trace of burden, and when he mocked someone, even his barbs carried an exuberant upward lilt.

Nie Xu ignored the person draped over his back and addressed Lu Li: “You’re awake? Then get up. This wound isn’t going to kill you.”

“Where—where is this?” Lu Li rasped. “Even if I’m not dead, shouldn’t I already be in custody?”

Ji Yang walked around the bed, tugged the corner of his mouth into a cold smirk. “You kind of are. Nandao has been completely dismantled. I lost seven figures’ worth of assets this time, and on top of that, I have to cough up money to take care of you—special treatment, recovering under my roof. You owe me.”

Lu Li felt like his brain had been hammered by his words.

“So where is this?”

Ji Yang spread his hands. “Welcome to my happy hometown, Zhouleng.”

The moment he said it, an angry shout came from outside.

“Ji Yang! This is my brother’s house—since when is it your hometown?!” You Li’s voice rang out from the courtyard. “Also, Grandma said you weren’t allowed to get out of bed. Why did you sneak out?!”

Ji Yang had already gone outside; his voice drifted in from the courtyard: “Uncle You told me last time to treat this place like my own home. Got a problem with that?”

You Li: “Can you answer my question directly?”

Ji Yang: “Even Nie Xu doesn’t control me. You’re just out here doing your internship—maybe don’t overstep.”

Inside the room.

Lu Li: “Right. The route from Nandao to Zhouleng—the gravel yard that came out of it, the closest point to it was exactly Zhouleng.”

Nie Xu moved through the room with practiced familiarity. He picked up a thermos from beneath the table and poured a cup of hot water.

Lu Li: “Even if you saved me, I’m not going to reveal anything.”

Nie Xu set the cup on the bedside table and glanced at him.

His voice was flat. “What you did—the law will determine on its own. Ji Yang said you took care of him along the way.”

Lu Li froze outright.

Nie Xu straightened up. “That’s all there is to it.”

Nie Xu left.

Outside, the sunlight was at its peak.

Lu Li replayed the words that’s all there is to it, along with the dynamic between Nie Xu and Ji Yang just now. An absurd notion surfaced in his mind. So absurd that he didn’t dare to think it a second time.

That was Nie Xu.

Lu Li had known him for years. The only person he had ever treated with that kind of patient, possessive care had always been exactly one person.

The atmosphere in the courtyard was relaxed and easy. Not a trace of shadow had crept here.

“I can’t control you?” Nie Xu asked.

Ji Yang surrendered on the spot. “You can. You can control me. Having you in charge is way better than that old lady forcing me to drink that pitch-black folk remedy.”

You Li had rushed back overnight after getting the news. Seeing Ji Yang’s cowardly display, he snorted: “You’re actually complaining? You know that medicine of my grandma’s? Kids within a ten-li radius come begging at the door for her to make it for them. Cures everything—you know that?”

Ji Yang stood close to Nie Xu and asked in a low voice: “Did you drink it when you were a kid, too?”

“Did.” Nie Xu nodded.

Ji Yang looked skeptical. “Does it actually work?”

Nie Xu nodded. “It replenishes qi and blood. At worst, no harm done.”

Ji Yang muttered a curse and touched his own face. “No wonder I was so restless I couldn’t sleep half the night.”

You Li was splitting firewood in the courtyard and caught the tail end of the conversation.

He turned around sharply.

“Even a kid’s tonic has you reacting like that?” You Li looked at his brother with suspicion, then turned to Ji Yang. “If you can’t handle a tonic, you must be pretty damn weak. Just how weak are you?”

Ji Yang gritted his teeth. “Get lost!”