At two o’clock in the morning, Xie Jia Hua was driving along the desolate night roads.
He had just finished processing a suicide case. The deceased was a fanatic stock investor who had borrowed astronomical sums from high-interest loan sharks to play the market. Following the recent massive upheavals in the stock exchange, he had lost everything, fleeing in pathetic disgrace. With debt collectors incessantly hounding his doorstep, the man had led his wife and son to the roof to jump. In a final moment of rediscovered conscience before the leap, he had shoved his wife and son back, plummeting alone to the earth. From twenty-five stories high, he had been reduced to a smear of bloody mire.
Hong Kong is a global financial center and an offshore legal jurisdiction with no restrictions on the inflow and outflow of foreign capital; tens of billions of funds circulate through various financial markets every day. The economic takeoff since the sixties and seventies had given local citizens more capital to pour into the markets. The passion of retail investors rose like a surging tide, everyone hungering for that single hit, that overnight fortune. Simultaneously, unregulated management, the impact of foreign capital, the hidden manipulations of financial predators, and the blind sheep-mentality of the public caused the local markets to suffer constant turbulence and conflict.
Since entering the profession, Xie Jia Hua had dealt with countless bank runs and riots at financial institutions, and had personally handled—or heard his colleagues mention—innumerable suicides of failed traders…
Even after witnessing many death scenes, he still found it hard to forget those blood-spattered corpses and the haunted gazes of the bereaved. The survivor he just saw, the wife of the deceased, had clutched her son tightly throughout the police investigation, her face a mask of frozen, wooden numbness devoid of even grief—the man was gone, but the mountain of debt, the lack of livelihood, and their homelessness remained. For this mother and son, it was hard to say if surviving was a blessing or a curse.
Xie Jia Hua had his subordinates contact social work organizations for the pair. Having finished the field work, he drove home carrying a shroud of exhaustion and the lingering scent of iron and blood. He planned to steal a quick shower and collapse into bed; tomorrow, a mountain of cases would be waiting on his desk.
To his surprise, the moment he stepped out of the elevator onto his floor, his professional intuition screamed that something was wrong: there were sporadic traces of what looked like blood on the ground, snaking intermittently from the stairwell all the way to his front door.
He rested his hand on the pistol at his waist, cautiously approaching the door. Observing the closed lock, he noted faint scratch marks—it had been picked with a tool. He gripped his gun, fished out his keys, and turned the lock as silently as possible. He listened for any movement inside, then kicked the door wide with his weapon drawn!
The hallway lights illuminated the living room; no one stood at the end of his sights. Xie Jia Hua stepped warily into the apartment, finding the trail of blood winding onto his sofa—where it left a slumped, humanoid stain—before snaking further into his bedroom.
A heavily wounded person, bleeding out, had bypassed the security downstairs in the middle of the night, taken the stairs, picked his lock, made himself at home on the sofa, and then crawled into his bed…
Xie Jia Hua had already guessed who the intruder was. Holstering his gun, he hurried into the bedroom and flicked on the light. Lu Guang Ming lay slumped and bloody across his bed, his waist draped with the duvet, his shoes still on. A massive amount of fluid—blood or water, it was hard to tell—soaked the sheets and blankets. Accompanied by the pungent stench of blood and the salty brine of seawater, the scene looked like a gruesome murder!
Xie Jia Hua’s heart skipped several beats! He rushed forward to check him; Lu Guang Ming was ice-cold, his face masked in gore, his hair soaking wet. His lips were the pallid blue of the dying, and blood was everywhere—it was impossible to count how many wounds he had!
“Lu Guang Ming! Lu Guang Ming—!” Xie Jia Hua called his name repeatedly with no response. Feeling a faint breath at his nose, he bent down to gather him up. Yet the moment he moved, Lu Guang Ming knitted his brows and mumbled, struggling out of his embrace back onto the bed. He rolled over, wrapping himself in the duvet, and curled into the corner of the mattress.
“Zzz…” A soft snore escaped him.
The blood in Xie Jia Hua’s veins turned to ice. “Lu Guang Ming!”
“Mm…” Lu Guang Ming mumbled again in a daze.
Xie Jia Hua climbed onto the bed and stripped the man of his blood-drenched clothes, pulling out over a dozen blood bags from his person—some burst, some still intact. Beneath it all, Lu Guang Ming wore a bulletproof vest embedded with several blank rounds. Xie Jia Hua swiftly stripped him buck-naked from head to toe, even yanking off his underwear, and inspected him meticulously—aside from some bruising where the bullets had hit and a few minor scratches from hard objects, he was perfectly fine!
Xie Jia Hua sat back on the bed, eyes wide with disbelief. As his heart finally settled back into his throat, he sat in a daze for a moment, then delivered a sharp slap to Lu Guang Ming’s face!
Lu Guang Ming was jolted awake. Clutching his cheek, he opened his eyes, squinted at him, mumbled “What’re you doing?”, and closed his eyes to go back to sleep. Xie Jia Hua shoved him violently. “Get up! Get out!”
“So tired… don’t be noisy…”
“Look at what you’ve done to my bed! Get to the bathroom and wash up!”
Lu Guang Ming plugged his ears and played dead. Xie Jia Hua grabbed his arm, dragged him off the bed, and shoved him into the bathtub. Xie Jia Hua’s hands were shaking with fury. He returned to the bedroom and peeled back the sheets—even the mattress beneath was soaked through with fake blood!
He flipped the mattress over, laid out fresh sheets, and threw a new duvet onto the bed. After cleaning the house, he hurried out to scrub away the bloodstains in the stairwell, lest he terrify the neighbors and security in the morning. When all was done, drenched in sweat and with a darkened face, he went to the bathroom to check on Lu Guang Ming.
The water from the tub was overflowing onto the floor; Lu Guang Ming sat inside, head lolling, sound asleep.
Xie Jia Hua patted his face to wake him, but noticed his previously cold skin was now burning. He splashed water to wash away the gore and the pale, deathly makeup. He found Lu Guang Ming’s face flushed crimson; he had started running a fever.
“…” He truly wanted to drown this brat in the tub.
Xie Jia Hua quickly scrubbed him clean, hauled him out, blow-dried his hair, and tucked him into bed, then took his temperature and fed him fever suppressants. After much more fussing, he finally washed up and lay down himself, casting a weary glance at the alarm clock—it was already six in the morning.
This was his usual time to wake up for morning exercise.
To hell with exercise! Xie Jia Hua reached out and pushed the alarm back two hours. He would wait until he woke up to strangle this little bastard!
…
Poor Senior Inspector Xie slept for less than half an hour before being awakened by his phone. A new homicide had occurred in his district. He left the fever medicine and a glass of water by the bed, splashed his face to force some spirit back into himself, and headed out to start a new day of work.
By evening, he returned home once more. Pushing open the door, he saw Lu Guang Ming wrapped in a duvet, sitting cross-legged on the sofa like a squirrel, crunching on a block of dry instant noodles while watching television.
He walked over and felt Lu Guang Ming’s forehead. “Did you take the medicine?”
“Mm. Crunch, crunch.”
“Why didn’t you order takeout?”
“Didn’t bring money. Crunch, crunch.”
“What happened last night? Why are you hiding here instead of going home?”
“Crunch, crunch. None of your business.”
“…”
“Hey, I have a fever. Have a heart, you’re not allowed to hit a sick person.”
“Once the fever is gone, get the hell out!”
Lu Guang Ming struggled to swallow the crumbs in his mouth and blinked. “Brother Jia Hua, I’m so hungry. Can you order some takeout? I want roast goose.”
“…”
“Help! Police brutality!”
…
The setting sun was like the color of blood, piercing through the floor-to-ceiling windows and casting a crimson hue over the private ledgers in He Chu San’s hands. He sat alone in his office, staring expressionlessly at the red-marked negative figures on the sheets, but before his eyes flashed the bloody scenes from the previous night: the torrential rain, the gunshots, the body wrapped in a gunny sack, and the dark, eerie expanse of the sea.
The papers drifted from his hand onto the desk. He looked at his slightly trembling palms; it felt as though they were covered in bloodstains.
He knew he had fallen deep into his role.
To play the part of a triad “Accountant” who kills for the first time without blinking an eye, a traitorous conspirator who betrays his Big Boss to usurp power, and a sociopath obsessed with money who views human life as grass—without falling deep into the role, it would have been impossible.
Last time, he had gambled with his own life. This time, he was gambling with the lives of others.
Even though he had made all necessary preparations yesterday—applying death-makeup to Lu Guang Ming, dressing him in a bulletproof vest with blood bags, and loading the gun with low-powder, low-lethality blank rounds—firing blanks at close range could still cause injury. Furthermore, Lu Guang Ming had to be bound and weighed down with stones to be sunk into the sea. Although Kevin had men in diving gear waiting beneath the surface, the wind and waves were heavy last night and there were jagged reefs below. One wrong move, and the lives of those men would have been in peril.
Moreover, if his acting had failed to cow the proxy of the Old Shopkeeper, and the ruse had been seen through, with only blanks and his clumsy marksmanship, he could not have guaranteed the lives of himself or Lu Guang Ming, even with hidden bodyguards nearby.
He had known these risks clearly, yet he had done it anyway.
Was what he was doing truly right?
To risk his own life, to risk Lu Guang Ming’s life, to use a method he deemed more “stable” and “clean” to avenge Brother Liu Yi and Lu Guang Ming—was it truly right?
If it were right, why was Brother Liu Yi’s gaze so sorrowful yesterday morning? How hardened was his heart back then to ignore that trembling plea of “Don’t go”?
Was reaching this stage truly right?
He Chu San leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes, letting the bloody hues fade into the darkness, slowly letting out a long sigh.
But he had no path back now. For this war, he had gambled everything and paid every price. He had to win.
Futile Devices Scans 
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