The bun shop in the urban village opened early in the morning and closed at noon, doing business for only half the day.
There were still fifteen minutes left until noon, and only the final steamer of buns remained.
The buns were packed into a plastic bag along with two sealed cups of millet porridge and handed to Lin Yi.
The owner had been careless and hadn’t marked which cup of porridge contained sugar. A child was bent over a table doing homework, so Lin Yi pushed one of the sealed cups beneath his nose. “Make a mark.”
The child froze. Once he realized it was Lin Yi, he immediately grew timid and picked up a pen nervously. “What kind of mark?”
Lin Yi gave the question serious thought. “Draw a heart.”
Before long, the black-ink pen had drawn a black heart across the plastic seal.
The longer Lin Yi looked at it, the more awkward it seemed. He rubbed it with the pad of his finger, smearing the heart into a patch of black.
The bun shop wasn’t far from Zhou Ruo An’s old house. He only needed to cross an open lot. In the densely packed urban village, such open ground was rare. The surface was gravel and sand with almost no vegetation. In summer, people gathered there to shoot the breeze. In winter, it stood mostly empty, occasionally occupied by children playing football or stray dogs fighting over food.
Spring Festival had already passed, but the cold wind had yet to relent. Lin Yi walked with his head lowered, his footsteps against the gravel unusually clear.
Suddenly, the roar of a car engine came from ahead.
It was moving very fast.
Lin Yi looked up and immediately frowned. The car speeding toward him in the distance was his own ordinary commuter car.
Dust covered the gravel, and a long plume trailed behind the vehicle. The accelerator had been pushed to its limit as the car, carrying hatred like an arrow loosed from a bow, charged straight toward Lin Yi.
Lin Yi looped the hanging plastic bag upward and closed it so dust couldn’t get inside. Watching the car come at him at full speed, he took out a cigarette and placed it between his lips.
The open lot wasn’t large. In an instant, the car had already drawn close. A brown handmade leather shoe seemed ready to stomp straight through the gas tank as the vehicle tore through cold wind and dust toward Lin Yi.
His thumb depressed the lighter. Amid the harsh noise, a trembling flame sprang to life.
Inside the driver’s seat, veins stood out across the hand clenched around the steering wheel. The car moved faster and faster, the distance shrinking. When the cold wind dragged behind the vehicle began shaking the little flame, Lin Yi raised his head and looked at Zhou Ruo An behind the wheel.
He suddenly remembered the abandoned warehouse.
Back then, Zhou Ruo An had hated him just as fiercely.
“Lin Yi, one day you’re going to die because of this.”
The man with the cigarette remembered his own answer clearly.
“I hope so,” he had said.
Ten meters.
Five.
Three.
Wind-whipped sand and gravel stung his eyes. Just as the yellow-brown dust obscured his vision, Lin Yi suddenly heard the piercing screech of brakes.
At the very last instant, Zhou Ruo An violently wrenched the steering wheel aside. The front of the car skimmed past the edge of Lin Yi’s clothes, and the cold wind swept over the flame and finally extinguished it.
The gravel created heavy resistance, so the car’s braking distance wasn’t long. Zhou Ruo An collapsed over the steering wheel, breathing hard. Only when he heard a light knock against the window did the fury in his eyes gradually cool into something colder.
He straightened, lowered the window, and looked directly at the man standing outside.
The tall man bent slightly and asked calmly, “Why didn’t you hit me?”
“It’s not worth throwing my life away for you.”
Lin Yi nodded. “True. Not worth it.”
The hand that wasn’t holding the buns reached into the car. Zhou Ruo An immediately leaned backward, his eyes full of vigilance and anger.
“Button your collar.” Lin Yi pushed the button at Zhou Ruo An’s collar back through its hole, concealing the bite mark over his throat and the mottled marks across his neck.
The faint touch of fingertips against his skin instantly dragged Zhou Ruo An back through every humiliation of the previous night. He pressed down on Lin Yi’s hand and leaned slightly forward, his breath striking the other man’s face. “Lin Yi, I’m not going to let you off.”
Once the button was fastened, Lin Yi withdrew his hand without lingering. “I know. Young Master Zhou holds grudges like nobody else. How could you possibly let me off?”
He put the buns inside the car. “There’s ointment in the bag. Apply it three times a day.”
The fingers around the steering wheel went stiff and white. Expressionless, Zhou Ruo An started the car and pressed down on the accelerator.
The car roared away. The plastic bag of buns was violently hurled out the window, and one of the porridge cups burst, leaving a complete mess behind.
Lin Yi walked over, untied the plastic bag, took out a bun, and stuffed it into his mouth as he watched the car disappear into the distance.
……
It took Lin Yi three days to find his car.
It was parked in a back alley near an elementary school, filthy and covered in “injuries.”
He crouched beside the car smoking when several students passing by after school gathered around it, giggling as they began undoing their trousers.
“Hey!” Lin Yi looked especially vicious when his face darkened. “What are you doing?”
The children jumped and grabbed their waistbands, stammering, “Peeing.”
Lin Yi picked up a pebble and threw it at their feet. “Where the hell do you think you’re pissing?”
The little brats looked aggrieved. “Someone’s been paying us to pee on the tires for the last few days. One yuan each time. The more times you pee, the more money you get.”
Another child added, “He gave us chewing gum too. Once there’s no sweetness left, we’re supposed to stick it on the car. Whoever gets theirs stuck on the hardest gets more money.”
With the cigarette between his lips, Lin Yi rubbed a hand over his buzz cut and let out a low, amused, “Shit.”
He called someone to tow the car to a car wash, then made a phone call. “Has the hidden camera in A3 private room been removed? Keep the footage. I’ll need it.”
……
Recently, Zhou Ruo An had been worked half to death over the electronics-factory acquisition.
As one of Shengkai Foreign Trade’s key projects for the new year, the acquisition was being led by Chairman Zhou Ran Ming, who had assembled a project team with clearly divided responsibilities and authority. The position of project leader, however, remained vacant. Put simply, whoever produced the most viable plan and managed to acquire Jinggui Electronics at the most reasonable price would become the project leader—and afterward would most likely be the person chosen to serve as General Manager of Jinggui Electronics.
Looking through the factory’s documents, Zhou Ruo An murmured to himself, “The production line was just upgraded. Its production scale is enough to cover Shengkai’s current export orders for electronics, transportation is convenient, and the supporting facilities are complete. With a piece of meat this fat, there’ll be no shortage of wolves fighting over it.”
Ren Yu had been standing beside him the entire time and now handed him another document. “Within the group, both the Eldest Young Master and the Second Young Master have already submitted acquisition plans. People from the first and second branches are watching this project too. And it’s not only inside the company. Plenty of outside companies are planning to acquire Jinggui as well. Fourth Young Master, there are too many competitors. If the group doesn’t tilt its policies in our favor, our chances aren’t good.”
“The group isn’t going to tilt its policies toward me alone. Depending on the group is worse than depending on myself.” Zhou Ruo An flipped the Jinggui Electronics documents back to the first page. Looking at the photograph beside the chairman’s name, his con-artist brain switched on. He muttered, “Shao Chen Feng… couldn’t you have some little weakness for me to grab?”
Before he even finished speaking, the phone on the desk chimed with a new message. Still looking at the documents, Zhou Ruo An tapped it open, and a video immediately appeared.
Dark sky. A deep alley. Burly men packed together and shifting around…
At the center of layer after layer of encirclement, Zhou Ruo An spotted Lin Yi’s calm yet vicious face.
His interest immediately surged. He shoved the documents aside and turned up the volume.
Ren Yu leaned toward the screen as well and stammered in shock, “He… how…”
Ren Yu was terrified of Lin Yi. Even seeing him through a screen was enough to make him stutter.
Zhou Ruo An found that particularly irritating. Outside, Ren Yu swaggered around like some big shot, every inch the polished elite and ready to bite at anyone who crossed him. Put him in front of Lin Yi, though, and he became completely useless, so scared he could barely speak properly.
“I hired people to jump him. Tonight I’m going to have him beaten to death.”
Ren Yu counted the men visible in the video and looked worried. “Are this many enough?”
The video was short and chaotic. Zhou Ruo An watched it twice from beginning to end before standing and putting on his coat. “I hired three groups from out of town. They’ll go at him one wave after another and wear him down. No matter how tough Lin Yi is, he’s still flesh and blood. One punch from each of them would be enough to kill him.”
Zhou Ruo An reached the door and pulled it open. Behind him, Ren Yu asked, “There’s still a meeting later. Fourth Young Master, you’re going out now?”
Without even looking back, Zhou Ruo An waved a hand.
“What’s so interesting about a meeting? Watching Lin Yi get beaten to death is much more fun. Ask for leave for me.”