Jinmen, a major strategic hub neighboring Yandu, stood steadfast within the sheltering arm of its bay, a city whose bustle and crowds concealed a deep, unhurried calm. In the distance, mountains newly washed in green merged with the farther sea and sky, where vast waves rolled without end.
Elio’s Notes: Jinmen (津门) is a traditional name for Tianjin, while Yandu (燕都, “Capital of Yan”) is a historical/literary name associated with Beijing.
At the foot of the mountains, sprawling neighborhoods of fashionable Western-style villas had awakened one corner of the old city with a touch of modern flair.
Years of martial training had ingrained in Yan Xiaodao the habit of sleeping early and rising early. He rolled out of bed just as the first faint light slanted through the window, washing his striking profile—strong brows and bright eyes—in the soft colors of morning.
A heavy huff, huff came from outside the bedroom door. The unmistakable presence filled more than one corner of the hallway, already impatiently shoving against the door.
The newer the house, the less its construction seemed able to stand up to close scrutiny. The doorframe began shedding plaster with a soft puff-puff rustle. The instant Yan Xiaodao opened the door, two enormous shaggy creatures with bristling whiskers barreled straight into his bare chest, their rough, drool-soaked tongues enthusiastically working over his chin and neck. This sort of dawn affection had been routine for years.
Yan Xiaodao grabbed a fistful of mane at the neck of one of his big darlings with both large hands and roughed it up affectionately. When he leaned in to kiss it, he stuck out his tongue and fiercely licked right back, sweeping across a row of sharp canine teeth. Neither side was willing to let the other get the better of them. Then he shoved the huge, adorably stupid head behind him. “Get lost, Master Bear. Go rinse your mouth and take a piss first.”
The other idiot immediately followed suit, unwilling to be left out. It jumped straight up, expertly planting both front paws on its master’s shoulders while a glossy mass of black, white, and gray fur rubbed all over his face.
Apparently even that was not intimate enough. As Yan Xiaodao slapped it back down, it shot out a paw with the ridiculous martial-arts move Tigress Snatches the Crotch.
“Huh? Trying to molest your bro now, Third Miss?!” Yan Xiaodao laughed as he blocked the fat paw attempting to tug open his boxer shorts.
Yan Xiaodao headed downstairs, picking up a basin along the way, slinging a white towel over his shoulder, and casually tossing several pieces of beef jerky behind him as a reward. The heavy panting instantly turned into a delighted chorus of vigorous chewing.
The air outside was chilly in the early morning. A light breeze tapped through the newly green treetops, swept across his shoulders, and raised an involuntary ripple over his bare back.
He bent over in the courtyard and washed with cold water, scrubbing hard over his shoulders, waist, and abdomen. White mist left his mouth as he exhaled, while droplets raced down the grooves between his abdominal muscles, soaking him from head to toe.
His drenched silhouette was hard and sharply defined, carrying the unmistakable masculine vigor of a northern man.
Brothers from the surrounding rooms wandered through the courtyard. Some were naked to the waist, laughing and talking as they washed, and they all looked over to call, “Boss.” Yan Xiaodao answered by flinging half a basin of cold water straight at them. Several basins immediately came flying back from all directions in retaliation, drenching him so thoroughly he was nearly floating away….
“You little bastards have no respect for your elders, fuck!” Yan Xiaodao shook a spray of water from his hair and cursed with a laugh. Master Bear and Third Lady charged out of the house, two powerful, muscular masses bounding gleefully around the wet courtyard, heads shaking and tails wagging, eyes practically squinted shut with delight. Their body language could not have been clearer: Nice one, boys! Soak him!
Nobody was afraid of him. Some were even a year or two older than Yan Xiaodao, but they still called him “Boss.”
Someone came out of a room carrying something that looked like a three-section staff, planted his feet firmly in the courtyard, and began striking it repeatedly against his own body as conditioning practice.
After rinsing himself all over with cold water, Yan Xiaodao fetched another basin, this one filled with warm water. Only then did he carefully lower his large hands into it and soak them, again and again.
Seen from the back, they were handsome hands for a man, with long fingers and evenly shaped nails.
They were neither the soft, delicate jade hands of a woman nor hands bulging with grotesque veins or heavy muscle. They were simply good-looking, neither more nor less than they needed to be.
But when he turned his palms upward, they revealed a shocking landscape of scars, as though knives and axes had hacked the flesh open before it healed white and raised. New wounds had been laid over old ones again and again. After so many years, there was no pain left. Old skin wore away, new skin replaced it, and in the end it all became thickened hide and callus, crossed by crooked grooves no healing could ever smooth away.
Only those impossible-to-hide blade scars still displayed the blood and glory of the hands’ owner, proof of more than a decade spent wandering the underworld and walking the knife’s edge.
Yan Xiaodao ate breakfast at the same table as his brothers. He polished off half a pot of savory tofu pudding, three fried flatbreads, and four tea eggs.
He went back to his room, stripped naked, and changed into clothes for going out.
A thick black protective wrap was fastened around his waist, intentionally or otherwise concealing his abs. Three or four lightweight knives were tucked along each side of his ribs, compact and easy to carry, some short and some longer. The longest was only about ten inches, and none looked especially frightening by size alone. At the small of his back, he also carried a heavier square-tipped patterned-steel combat blade slanted across his waist.
All that shadowed steel was ultimately wrapped neatly beneath a dress shirt and suit. A row of knife tips lay arranged in orderly staggered lines, flashing with a cold sheen like water before disappearing quietly beneath the white shirt.
Yan Xiaodao wore his suit properly, standing straight and respectable enough to pass for a decent citizen, with no trace of hostility between his brows. As usual, he adjusted his collar, a faint smile resting at the corner of his mouth, and headed out under the ceremonious escort of Second Master Bear and Third Lady flanking his path.
＊
Everyone in business circles knew who Yan Xiaodao was. He was no ordinary man: he was the godson of Qi Baoshan, one of Jinmen’s major power brokers.
Elio’s Notes: The Chinese terms 干爹 and 义父 here refer to a godfather, adoptive father, or sworn father figure. “Godfather” describes the relationship between Qi Baoshan and Yan Xiaodao; it is not itself an organized-crime title.
Yan Xiaodao had been an orphan as a boy. His father was unknown, his mother unidentified, and nobody wanted him. He had been nothing but a bundle of bones huddled by the roadside of a freezing village, a worthless little life ground almost into the dust. One more winter night and he would have died.
A kindhearted village woman found him and took him in, giving him at least one proper meal to fill his stomach. He grew up among brickworks, coal hills, sand-digging sites, and the marshy wasteland by the sea. He worked for money while attending school, and by sheer chance met the man who would later become his godfather.
At the time, his godfather was just as penniless, working at a factory on the outskirts of the city, but he treated Yan Xiaodao very well. If the ten yuan in his pocket could only buy four pork-and-scallion buns, two of them would always go to Xiaodao.
Yan Xiaodao followed the man from job to job, buying and selling small goods, setting up stalls to earn money, getting extorted and chased by local bullies, fighting people, watching their stall smashed and their goods burned…. Godfather and godson had once been miserably poor, without a cent between them, sleeping beneath city bridges in the dead of winter wrapped in rotten quilts. Beneath the bleak midnight lights of the old city, his godfather would set up a shabby stall selling cheap shoes and low-grade odds and ends, while Xiaodao stood nearby with a stick to drive off dogs, wrestling with strays when necessary. Even as a child, he had been a tough little man with iron in his bones….
Qi Baoshan himself was an extraordinary man who had weathered plenty of storms. Nobody knew exactly how he had suddenly made his fortune back then.
His godfather had been so poor that he could no longer afford to look after his son. Before leaving that year, he gave Xiaodao every last bit of loose change and property he had, then went elsewhere to try his luck. When Qi Baoshan returned two years later, he came back carrying bags full of money, having made a fortune from sources that were not entirely aboveboard.
Yan Xiaodao dropped out of vocational high school at sixteen and from then on followed his godfather into the underworld.
Qi Baoshan’s businesses were always half legitimate and half illicit. There was little that could not be done or could not somehow be made to work; in those years, what mattered was whether you had the nerve to make the move and the guts to follow through. He first threw down enough money to lease the entire building of the clothing, shoes, and general-merchandise market where they had once kept their stall. In one leap, the penniless nobody who used to be pushed around became the boss. Then he dealt, one by one, with the small business owners across the surrounding streets who still refused to fall in line. Two years later, all four of the largest furniture, lighting, footwear, and clothing malls in the northern district were under his control.
Several years after that, two faded restaurants in the eastern district housed in old Republican-era buildings were renovated from top to bottom, changing both their signs and their owners. They also established business connections with prominent people inside the government offices. Familiar faces who appeared nightly in the lead story of the local television news could often be seen entering and leaving those restaurants in private. Several more years passed, and the old city began a sweeping redevelopment campaign. New hotels and shopping centers rose from the ground in staggering numbers. The port developed a new bayfront economic zone, while overseas shipping, trade, and port-side processing entered a period of explosive expansion….
Some people started with nothing, carving their way forward through hardship. What carried them was the courage to take risks, the ruthlessness to seize money when it appeared, and the endurance to swallow whatever suffering came with it.
Yan Xiaodao had always remained at Qi Baoshan’s side, his two patterned-steel blades establishing their presence wherever they went. He fought his way through wars both visible and invisible, until his back was covered in scars.
Those bitter days had long since passed. They had withdrawn from the old knife-edge life, and prosperity had brought with it quieter years. Master Qi had also pulled back over the past several years. Following changes in the broader policy climate, he read the situation carefully and kept a lower profile. The books of his ocean freight company and its affiliated real estate and hotel businesses were now spotless. He behaved himself, earned honest money, maintained deep relationships with people from every faction, and made sure not to offend anyone.
Yan Xiaodao listened to his godfather and agreed with him. When you were young, you could fight viciously and risk your life to make piles of money—but if you had the life to earn it, you also needed to keep enough life left to spend it.
In early spring, the expressway was lined with bursts of floral and leafy fragrance, mixed with exhaust fumes and white factory smoke into the particular heavy aftertaste of a northern city. Hastily assembled greenery and a rapidly swelling population and traffic system had been forced together in the same narrow space, producing an unmistakable sense of helplessness. Dirt-hauling trucks occasionally sent clouds of sand and dust billowing behind them, while the sky seemed covered by a gray-blue veil. This was a metropolis transforming almost by the day.
Yan Xiaodao sprawled comfortably and expansively in the car, occasionally extending a hand to flick ash from his cigarette. The black car sped along with a roar. The window was cracked open, and the burning tip of his cigarette flashed past like a red star.
Driving was one of his inseparable brothers, a round-headed man with a buzz cut, narrow squinting eyes, quick hands and feet, and plenty to say. His full name was Yang Xifeng, but everyone affectionately called him Fengfeng.
“Boss, the expressway gets us to the airport fast. We came out a little early today, didn’t we? We’ll just be waiting around when we get there.” Yang Xifeng had a cigarette between his lips and drove with practiced steadiness.
“Fengfeng, get off in another two exits. I want to buy something before we head over.” Yan Xiaodao rolled the window all the way down, rested half an arm on the ledge, and pointed ahead.
“Buy what? Cigarettes, Boss?” Yang Xifeng asked.
“An outer coat. It’s still a little chilly,” Yan Xiaodao said.
Yang Xifeng turned and looked at his boss. Neither of them was dressed particularly lightly.
Yan Xiaodao explained casually, “He’s coming up from the far south. Might not have brought a thick coat. I forgot to grab one before I left, so I may as well buy my godfather a new one.”
They were on their way to the airport to pick someone up. Yang Xifeng nodded with a prematurely worldly expression, as though he understood everything, and said with a grin, “Boss, Master Qi’s coming back because he has business to handle, right? The leadership at the Linwan precinct just changed. Word’s already been passed to the new chief, and I heard Master Qi arranged to have dinner with him at Baiyue in a few days. You going too, Boss?”
Yan Xiaodao was accustomed to this sort of thing. “I know. I’m going.”
He was the only follower Master Qi brought to every social engagement without exception. Whatever else might happen, Yan Xiaodao would accompany him to drink and meet people.
Yan Xiaodao handled things briskly and generously, and he was good-looking enough that bringing him along to meet clients made his own side look good.
His face was long and lean, with dark brows and clear eyes, and he stood tall and straight.
Over the past couple of years, pretty-boy idols and surgically perfected fresh-faced celebrities had come into fashion. Judged purely by individual features, Yan Xiaodao was not dazzlingly handsome and could not compete with those glossy, powdered faces. But there was something compelling about his eyes and brows. His thick eyebrows carried a distinctly masculine force, slanting almost toward his temples without becoming excessively sharp or vicious. Before he even spoke, his eyes already seemed to hold a relaxed trace of laughter. His brows would lift slightly, and his gaze always seemed to say, “There’s still something private I haven’t told you yet,” carrying a lingering depth of meaning that gave his entire face unusual vitality.
Beside the tip of his nose, visible only on closer inspection, was a tiny black mole, small and delicate enough to soften his strongly masculine face with exactly the right hint of warmth and animation. It made him remarkably appealing. As a result, Yan Xiaodao got along well with men, women, strangers, and even old people.
They were nearing the exit they wanted when, several dozen meters ahead, the road suddenly compressed into chaos. Cars seemed to panic, jerking and jumping as they swerved across lanes. A dangerous accident unfolded in the blink of an eye.
Even with Yan Xiaodao’s excellent eyesight, all he could make out was a large truck failing to brake in time, skidding sideways across most of the roadway and slamming hard into a fifty-seat coach. The truck rolled almost instantly, while the coach’s square rear crumpled inward horrifically, crushed into a narrow mangled mess. Tires screamed from smaller cars all around them, and one after another, vehicles piled into the large vehicles blocking the roadway.
Fortunately, it was not rush hour. Most of the cars behind managed to stop in time, but traffic came to a complete standstill.
Yang Xifeng brought the car smoothly to a stop, then, with practiced experience, turned it at an angle and quickly claimed a spot along the emergency shoulder, safely clear of any secondary collision from ahead or behind. He looked up at Yan Xiaodao with an alert, expectant expression like a child waiting for candy, obviously hoping for praise from his boss.
“I’m going over to take a look!” Yan Xiaodao already had the door halfway open and one foot outside. He glanced toward the wreck, then headed straight along the narrow gap beside the roadside barrier with his usual brisk efficiency.
Once he got closer, the situation became obvious. A pale-gold sports car had forced its way into another lane and squeezed the truck. Whether the truck driver had recognized how genuinely expensive the sports car was or had simply braked too hard, the truck overturned and slammed into the innocent coach in the next lane, dragging a whole string of unlucky drivers behind them into scrapes and collisions.
Inside the Bentley sports car, he could see a flaming-red cashmere coat. Through the shattered window drifted the rich smell of expensive perfume mixed with sandalwood from the car’s incense.
“Damn. The ones without balls sure drive a hell of a lot harder than the ones with them. Fuck….”
Yan Xiaodao got out the first half and could not even be bothered with the rest. Which rich family’s mistress is this supposed to be now?
He ignored the sports car. With his long legs, he stepped and vaulted directly across the Bentley’s hood, then over another car, heading toward the overturned truck.
“Hey, you—you stepped on my car?….” The woman inside the sports car said while still talking on the phone. She seemed to have heard the first half of Yan Xiaodao’s remark as well, and humiliated anger tightened beneath her painstakingly drawn eyeliner.
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