The Santana wound its way through a forest of neon-lit skyscrapers before finally slipping into the cross-harbor tunnel. In the dim, suffocating gloom, the yellow guide lights lining both sides of the tunnel streamed backward, like two long, sinister golden serpents.
Neither man spoke.
The car window was cracked open just a sliver; broken strands of wind poured in with a low, hollow whistling, echoing through the cabin.
They spoke at the same time—
“Not him…”
“What he said was all fucking bullshit!”
And then, just as suddenly, they both fell silent.
Xia Liuyi rolled the window down further, fished out a cigarette, and placed it between his lips. He was about to light it, but after a brief frown, he withdrew the lighter and put it away.
After a moment, He Chusan spoke again, slowly, carefully.
“It wasn’t him using me to drive a wedge between you and Master Qiao. If that were the case, he wouldn’t have risked his life to save me—he would’ve just shot me in the back. If I died, that’s the only way you and Master Qiao would truly fall out.”
Xia Liuyi said nothing. He merely rolled the cigarette between his fingers before crushing it irritably into his palm.
He Chusan spoke once for Sir Xie, then continued on Xia Liuyi’s behalf—
“That informant of his… it wasn’t you who silenced him. It should have been Master Qiao. That man tipped him off and saved me—you’d have thanked him if anything, not killed him.”
Xia Liuyi let out a cold laugh.
“So what? Aside from that, you believe all the other bullshit he said?”
He Chusan fell silent for a while.
“I don’t know.”
He didn’t know what to believe. There was no evidence, nothing to base a conclusion on. And he could not, would not, delude himself into painting Xia Liuyi as some forced outlaw with a pure and righteous heart—someone who had never killed, never committed evil.
He knew that wasn’t the real Xia Liuyi.
“Heh.” Xia Liuyi let out another laugh.
The tunnel stretched on endlessly, dark and oppressive, with no visible exit. The night was heavy and impenetrable—not even another car in sight.
He opened the window a crack and flicked the crumpled cigarette out.
“You’re right,” he said. “He didn’t lie. I’ve killed plenty of people. I sell ‘white powder’, run loan-sharking, operate casinos… I do it all. I’m rotten to the core. One day I’ll get what’s coming—die in the streets, my corpse left unclaimed…”
“You don’t have to talk about yourself like that…”
“That’s exactly what I am!” Xia Liuyi snapped. “I told you before—if you can’t stand it, then get the hell out! I never begged you to stay!”
“Brother Liuyi, it’s not that I can’t stand it… I mean, there are things I can’t accept, yes—but what’s past is past. From now on—”
“From now on I’ll still be like this!” Xia Liuyi roared!
“You don’t have to be!” He Chusan finally shouted back, unable to hold it in any longer!
For the second time that night, Xia Liuyi was yelled at. His jaw clenched tight.
Ahead, the tunnel exit appeared—a half-circle of light, flickering with neon, unreal and dreamlike, as if stepping out might lead anywhere… or nowhere.
Suddenly, he didn’t want to continue this conversation.
Didn’t want to hear another word from He Chusan.
But He Chusan had already burst out—
“You don’t want to go legit, because once you do, you won’t make this kind of money anymore! You won’t be able to support so many brothers, expand your power, make Xiaoqi Hall the number one gang in Hong Kong! You swore before Qinglong’s spirit tablet—you’d become the boss in his place, carve out a new world, lead your brothers who’ve bled for you all these years to rise above, to enjoy wealth and glory! You’re getting bigger and bigger, closer and closer to that goal—you can’t stop, and you don’t want to stop!”
“But Qinglong is dead! He’s been dead for two years! You’re doing all this for him out of your own obsession—do you think he can even see it?! Do you think he’d even want to—”
“Shut the fuck up!!” Xia Liuyi howled.
“Shut up! Shut up—!!”
The car screeched to a halt with a piercing shriek!
The seatbelts snapped tight, digging into their flesh before flinging them violently back into their seats. Xia Liuyi gripped the steering wheel with both hands, veins bulging grotesquely on the backs of his hands. His chest heaved violently, his entire body trembling.
He suppressed it—forced it down—every inch of that raging, bloodthirsty impulse clawing through him.
“Get out.”
“…”
“GET OUT—!”
He Chusan fell silent. After a moment, he slowly unlatched the taut seatbelt and pushed the door open.
One leg stepped out—then he stopped.
“Brother Liuyi… I don’t care,” he said softly.
“I don’t care about your past. I don’t care if we come from two different worlds. I don’t care if, in your heart, I’m not even worth a single strand of Qinglong’s hair. I only care about whether you’re doing okay… and how you’ll live from now on.”
“You’ve always lived in other people’s worlds—you don’t even know who you are. Xiaoman is afraid of fireworks, so you stay away from them too. She liked Qinglong, so you gave him up to her. Qinglong died, so you became the boss in his place. You’re living for them…”
A sharp click—the sound of a safety being disengaged—cut through the air.
He slowly turned his head.
The barrel of a gun was pointed straight at his forehead.
His lips trembled—not from fear, but from sorrow.
Still trembling, he continued—
“From the day you changed your name to Liuyi, that name gave you a new life… but it also became your shackles. You’ve never lived for yourself.”
Xia Liuyi’s eyes were bloodshot, the muscles of his face twitching stiffly as he forced out a savage sneer.
“What the hell does that have to do with you?”
“If it has nothing to do with me… then why won’t you pull the trigger?”
“BANG—!”
……
Around six or seven in the morning, dawn was breaking. The rising sun trembled faintly as it painted the sea of clouds with its first streak of blood-red light.
At the tunnel exit, shattered glass lay scattered across the ground.
He Chusan sat by the roadside, one hand pressed to his chest, head lowered as he stared at the spread of broken glass before him.
A steady set of footsteps echoed through the tunnel, approaching slowly.
A man in a disheveled, worn suit walked up, bent down, and picked up a spent shell casing from the shards.
“Were you shot?” he asked.
After a long while, He Chusan lifted his head. It was Xie Jiahua, his face still bruised—true to his word about “sober up,” he had actually climbed over the tunnel barrier and walked across the harbor on foot.
He Chusan shook his head and removed his hand from his chest—there was, quite plainly, nothing wrong at all.
“So you’ve fallen out?” Xie Jiahua asked.
“Isn’t that what you wanted?” He Chusan replied. Just a minute before encountering the drunken Xie, they had still been laughing together.
Bathed in the clear light of dawn, Xie Jiahua gave a faint smile. His usual cold severity was gone.
He hadn’t always been such a difficult man—he had simply been stretched taut for nine long years.
He lowered himself with effort and sat beside He Chusan, pounding his legs that had endured both a beating and three hours of walking.
“Even if I hadn’t said those things, you would’ve fallen out eventually,” he said calmly. “The first time I saw you, I already knew—you and him are not the same kind of people.”
He Chusan turned his head to look at him and gave a bitter smile.
“But Sir Xie… I’m not the same kind of person as you either.”
He Chusan said quietly,
“I’m just a selfish nobody—I only want to save one person. What you’re trying to save… is an entire city.”
Xie Jiahua laughed as well, then shook his head.
“Sometimes I feel like I can’t save anything at all—just a mantis trying to stop a chariot.”
He looked toward the horizon, where the sun struggled upward, its crimson light spreading in widening streaks across the sky.
“But that’s just defeatist talk,” he continued. “Evil cannot triumph over righteousness. One day, Hong Kong will become clear and clean. But it can’t depend on me alone.”
He turned to look at He Chusan.
In that instant, under the rising sun, He Chusan felt as though the man before him shone with a radiant brilliance—like the compassionate, halo-crowned deities painted on church walls, or those righteous, upright ‘star inspectors’ from police recruitment posters, calling on criminals to surrender and citizens to stand up.
But he shook his head.
“Sir Xie, I respect you… but I can’t help you.”
Xie Jiahua seemed unconcerned.
“One day, you will. Besides, Xia Liuyi acts with arrogance and excess—he has lost the way. Sooner or later, Heaven will take him. And you’re not his only weakness.”
Bracing himself on his knee, he stood up, stretched his stiff joints, and rolled his shoulders.
“Come on. Let’s go. This is the tunnel entrance—you won’t be able to get a cab here.”
……
“Boss! Boss—Boss!! Something big has happened!”
Xiao Ma dragged Big Scarhead along as he shouted all the way into Xia Liuyi’s office, slamming the door open with a bang!
Xia Liuyi was in the middle of discussing important matters with his strategist Cui Dongdong. Being interrupted, his face immediately darkened. His lips twitched slightly—before he could speak, Xiao Ma let out a yelp and dropped to his knees on the sofa, clutching his ears.
“Boss! Boss, I was wrong! But I really do have urgent news to report!”
“Close the door first before you talk!” Cui Dongdong snapped. “You’re embarrassing yourself!”
“Heh, hehe, Boss Dongdong… hehe, Boss…” Xiao Ma grinned sheepishly, hopping down to shut the door before pushing Big Scarhead forward. “Big Scarhead! You say it!”
Big Scarhead, looking utterly awkward, was shoved into the spotlight. After standing there dumbly for a moment, he confessed honestly—
“Boss… last night, I ran into Xiao He.”
“That Xiao He! From Tanxiang Pavilion!” Xiao Ma cut in. “The one who was ‘dating’ that He-surnamed punk—uh, that guy!”
“Cut the crap! We know! Get to the point!” Cui Dongdong snapped impatiently.
Big Scarhead continued hesitantly,
“I saw her arguing with a man on the street… well, not really arguing—he was the one yelling at her. They seemed to have been together for a long time, but he just found out she used to be a prostitute. He called her cheap, said she wasn’t a proper woman…”
“The point is!” Xiao Ma clenched his fist. “They’ve been together for a ‘long time’!”
“Shut up!” Cui Dongdong threw a wad of paper at him. “Big Scarhead, keep going!”
“Later, the guy even hit her and shoved her to the ground. I couldn’t stand it, so I stepped in, beat him up, and saved her.”
“Here comes the important part! The important—ow!” Xiao Ma yelped as another paper wad hit him.
“I saw that man wasn’t Mr. He, so I asked Xiao He what was going on. She couldn’t hide it anymore and confessed. Turns out she never dated Mr. He at all—everything before was fake,” Big Scarhead said, then hurried to defend her. “But Boss, you can’t blame Xiao He—Mr. He asked her for help, and she only agreed because she felt soft-hearted—”
“I say that He bastard threatened her!” Xiao Ma cut in again. “Anyway, this has nothing to do with Xiao He! It was all that guy’s plan—tricking her into fake dating him just to deceive our Boss and make a fool of him! That kid’s got ulterior motives! Boss, what should we do? Steam him or braise him?! Just give the order—I’ll act immediately!”
Xiao Ma finished his animated, exaggerated account and waited gleefully for orders—only to find Xia Liuyi staring at him expressionlessly, while Cui Dongdong wore a look that clearly said, “You idiot, this is old news—you’re only figuring it out now?”
“Uh… Boss?” Xiao Ma prompted uncertainly.
A heavy ashtray came flying straight at him—
THUD—!
“Ow—!!”
……
It was the third month of spring, bright and radiant.
Manager Ma stood outside a clinic, clutching Big Scarhead and wailing loudly, his head wrapped like an “Indian Ah San”—blood seeping through where the ashtray had struck him.
“Big Scarhead! Big Scarhead! Boss has been bewitched by a fox spirit! What do we do?! Should we call a master to exorcise him?! It must be bad feng shui in the company…!”
Whether the company’s feng shui was bad remained unknown, but Cui Dongdong could clearly tell that the Boss was in a foul mood.
That day, when He Chusan met her to set up his investment account, she asked bluntly,
“What’s going on between you and the Boss this time?”
He Chusan was reviewing the contract terms with her. His fingers trembled slightly, but his expression remained calm.
“What do you mean?”
“Since after the New Year, it’s been over a month—his face has been dark every single day, and he’s lost a whole circle of weight! Even I can’t stand watching it anymore! What, did you two sneak around on New Year’s Eve and your dad caught you and beat him up?”
He Chusan smiled faintly.
“My dad wouldn’t dare lay a hand on him.”
—That, of course, was modesty. If there were anyone in this world who would dare lay a hand on Boss Xia, it would absolutely be that tiger-plucking father of his.
Cui Dongdong sized him up from head to toe.
“You’ve lost weight too.”
“Tsk tsk—dark circles, bloodshot eyes,” she leaned in closer. “How long has it been since you slept properly?”
“I’ve been working overtime lately,” He Chusan replied calmly. “I’ve been sleeping at the office.”
“Your leg healed?”
“Almost. I’ve even been practicing boxing when I have time. Sister Dongdong, I heard you’re a master of Taiji? Could you give me some pointers?”
“Of course! Since you’re asking so sincerely…”
……
A man like Xia Liuyi was the type who wouldn’t turn back until he hit the southern wall—headstrong, willful, and deaf to advice. Trying to make him stop charging forward and calmly reflect on himself was exceedingly difficult.
He Chusan understood this well. So he forced himself to stay patient—to not bow his head, not take the initiative to reconcile, deliberately leaving Xia Liuyi hanging. He endured the frustration himself, and let Xia Liuyi stew in it as well.
He knew exactly how much he mattered in Xia Liuyi’s heart—from that bullet that veered off into “outer space,” it was roughly at the level of “infuriating beyond words, yet still unwilling to harm even a single hair.”
Letting things cool down would give both of them time—and give himself space to think of a solution.
On one hand, he expanded his network and built his career. On the other, he apprenticed under his “Second Master” Cui Dongdong and trained diligently.
As for Xia Liuyi—he truly spent night after night unable to sleep alone.
That day, in a fit of rage, he had fired his gun, shattering the car window, dragged the stunned He Chusan out, and sped home. After a night of cold wind and pent-up fury, he fell ill with a fever, shut himself in for three days under the pretense of an extended New Year holiday.
He claimed to have “slept through it,” but in truth, he hadn’t had a single full night’s rest. He woke frequently from nightmares, staring at the ceiling for hours with aching eyes.
Over and over again, his mind replayed the same scene—
He Chusan, eyes filled with sorrow, facing his gun and saying:
You’ve never lived for yourself.
Bullshit! Eat shit, you damn punk! Who the hell do you think you are?! I don’t need your pity!!
At three in the morning, Boss Xia squatted outside his village house, clutching a beer bottle, stabbing viciously at the dogtail grass He Chusan had planted with a small shovel—then pouring beer over it.
—Die! Drown! You pretentious, pathetic piece of crap!
“Brother Ma was right… Boss really is possessed,” A-Nan whispered, clinging to the window and trembling as he peeked outside.
“Shh,” A-Sen, crouching beside him, said. “What do you know? When a man dates a man, it’s definitely different from dating a woman. Acting a little abnormal sometimes is perfectly normal.”
Futile Devices Scans 
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