Several warmhearted drivers had already come over to help. In any case, everyone was stuck here and couldn’t go anywhere.
The passengers on the coach were quickly evacuated with only minor injuries. As it turned out, the truck had come from another province carrying cattle, and this crash had caused catastrophic losses—livestock were now running loose all over the expressway!
The driver’s face was covered in blood, but he was conscious and could still move his arms and legs. The violent collision, however, had crushed the usable space inside the cab to almost nothing. The unlucky driver was trapped in his seat, folded at a horrifying angle, his entire body trembling violently.
Yan Xiaodao carefully climbed up and asked, “You holding up okay? Someone’s already called the police. Traffic police will be here soon.”
Still shaken, the driver nodded, his face contorted with pain in the cramped space. Several good Samaritans tried to help pull at the mangled door, but there was no chance of that working. An accident like this required professional rescue and extrication equipment.
The traffic police and ambulance finally struggled their way through the congestion as though crossing space-time from another dimension, arriving embarrassingly late. The door, however, still would not open. The traffic officers took one look at the scene and nearly lost their heads too; their first problem was figuring out how to catch the two cows that had already vaulted the barrier and were freely charging toward the opposite lanes.
Yan Xiaodao stood out sharply in his neat suit amid the chaos. He came face-to-face with two police officers who had likewise been swallowed up by the crowd and gave them a nod.
They were all local fixtures. Everyone knew everyone else.
“Hey, Officer Sun.” Yan Xiaodao greeted him, and the two offered each other cigarettes. The officer waved his hand and said he couldn’t smoke while on duty, but nevertheless forcibly stuffed one of his own cigarettes between Yan Xiaodao’s fingers while shouting into his radio, “Can your rescue truck get through or not?! Hurry the hell up! The door won’t open and we can’t get the man out!”
“There’s a cow on the expressway!… And not just one—what the hell is this? Three altogether, and two have already run down off the roadbed!” the officer yelled again. “Get the warning lights out, now! At least three kilometers back. Stop every car behind us, and watch out—the cows may already have gotten through!”
Yan Xiaodao soothed him with a few deeply understanding words, then reminded him, “Officer Sun, I’ll trouble you guys to keep an eye on the traffic behind us. Don’t let any more cars come through and ram into these old bones of ours, wiping the whole lot of us out at once. I’ll go take another look at the driver. He should be all right.”
“Sorry to trouble you, Mr. Yan. Really bad timing,” the uniformed officer joked. “Holding up your business again, huh?”
“Ahem—just trying to scrape together enough business to put food on the table. Nothing worth showing off; you boys would laugh at me!” Yan Xiaodao was already walking away when he turned back with a grin and waved, pointing with the cigarette between his fingers. “Drinks after you get off work. Don’t disappear on me later!”
God only knew what forsaken stretch of nowhere the rescue truck had gotten stuck in, but it simply wasn’t coming.
More and more anxious passersby gathered from every direction, everyone talking at once and nobody knowing what to do. Someone shouted, “Is the truck leaking fuel?” Someone else yelled, “We’ve got to get the driver out now!” But in the end, everybody was shouting variations of “The door is completely crushed out of shape—there’s no way to pull it open!” and “This is fucking bullshit! That Bentley forced its way into the lane and caused the whole goddamn thing, but the little car itself is perfectly fine. Why the hell didn’t she get hit?!”
Yan Xiaodao climbed onto the section connecting the cab and the rear compartment, slowly crouched down, and studied the mass of cracked, twisted scrap metal that had been smashed into a tangled knot. He had a pretty good idea now.
He stood again, this time looking down from above, his entire body upright atop the overturned truck and his line of sight extending farther than anyone else’s. He glanced toward the endless sea of vehicles stretching several kilometers behind them, then toward the distant harbor, where towers and the masts of enormous ships stood in the heavy fog. They had already lost a lot of time.
He spotted Fengfeng and two enthusiastic bystanders who had temporarily formed a three-man team and were currently bullfighting on the expressway—helping surround the big yellow cow that was blatantly resisting arrest.
As he crouched down again, Yan Xiaodao slipped his right hand beneath the left side of his shirt while no one was watching.
His suit jacket seemed merely to have been stirred by a passing breeze, the hem shifting slightly. It was an extraordinarily practiced movement, so subtle that the naked eye could barely distinguish it. When his hand emerged again, a point of watery white light flashed between his fingers.
“You’re fine. Hang in there. I’ll get this door open for you.” Yan Xiaodao leaned closer, soothing the driver—whose emotions were already on the verge of collapse—with his deep, resonant voice. Blood loss was draining away the man’s body heat, and the cold was making him confused and agitated. The surroundings were deafening, while an injured cow with a mangled leg inside the cargo compartment was frantically slamming into the glass behind the cab. The driver was dressed too lightly, and his entire body had fallen into helpless spasms.
Yan Xiaodao casually took the half-smoked cigarette from his lips and, without minding in the least, held it to the mouth struggling for breath inside the narrow gap.
The driver’s terrified gaze met Yan Xiaodao’s. Following the smell of smoke, he instinctively took two deep drags before unexpectedly giving Xiaodao a second look.
Yan Xiaodao bit the cigarette back between his own teeth and instructed in a low voice, “Turn your head as far that way as you can… Yeah. Don’t be scared. Turn farther. A little farther. Give me more room to work on the door… Don’t turn around and look at me.”
Someone on the roadway tried to climb up as well. Yan Xiaodao suddenly pointed with his left hand toward a spot a kilometer behind them. “That big yellow bull’s charging this way! The front of this truck is painted red—it’s coming straight for the red. Quit standing there staring and stop the damn cow!”
As though they had received an order, the entire crowd turned around in perfect unison to look for the cow.
Within those few cramped seconds, Yan Xiaodao suddenly raised his right hand and moved with astonishing speed, bringing his palm down toward the driver!
The naked eye could not possibly have followed it. The knife handle appeared to be secured beneath his thumb, while his other four fingers and palm closed directly over the back of the blade, concealing almost all of it except for a sliver of white steel gleaming from the hollow of his palm. Under the sunlight, the blade tore a fissure through the air with a sound like ripping silk, followed instantly by the violent, terrifying shriek of sheet metal being sliced apart.
The driver caught something smashing toward him from the corner of his eye. The scream of terror rising in his throat was forced back down by Yan Xiaodao’s calm, commanding stare from above, and then a left hand came from nowhere and covered his face, shielding his skin and eyes from the flying metal shavings.
The mangled mass that had once been the truck door suddenly seemed to lose the support of its steel frame. It broke apart with startling fragility, then came away like a slab of rotten flesh being skinned, effortlessly dismantled into pieces!
The force was tremendous, the motion almost entirely powered by the strike of his palm. Never mind ordinary flesh and blood—even sinew and bone, even sheet metal and iron chains, had little hope of remaining indestructible once shaken by that blade.
His suit jacket shifted again. When Yan Xiaodao’s right hand emerged once more, his palm was clean and empty.
A layer of rough, thick skin covered his palm, without so much as a split or trace of blood. Tempered through countless repetitions, it had long since become as solid as a wall of bronze and iron; holding a knife was as ordinary to him as holding chopsticks. Yet the stubborn, vicious sheet metal beneath that palm had already surrendered, split into several pieces.
A faint sheen of sweat appeared on Yan Xiaodao’s forehead. He no longer cared that he was dressed respectably. Dropping to one knee and bracing himself with one foot, he began straining with his bare hands to wrench apart the curled metal.
When the police and bystanders turned back, they cried out in surprise. Most of the bloodied driver’s body was already outside the cab.
The rescue of a trapped victim was the most effective sedative for everyone’s tightly wound nerves. The crowd surged forward to lend a hand. Hardly anyone stopped to examine how, exactly, that truck door had been opened just now. Maybe someone had simply found the right leverage and happened to pull it loose.
The ambulance managed to take the injured man to the hospital before the rescue truck ever arrived.
Yan Xiaodao jumped easily down from the truck and brushed dirt, dust, and a small lump of cow shit from somewhere off his clothes. Brushing was pointless; the outfit was beyond saving. His entire body was steeped in the combined fragrance of fodder, manure, and mud.
“I didn’t hit anyone. I didn’t crash into anybody. What responsibility am I supposed to bear?”
“I’m not going to the traffic police station. I have nothing to say. Nobody even died.”
“Mingxun—I got hit. I’m stuck here right now, and the police insist on taking me to the traffic station to give a statement. They won’t let me leave because somebody was injured… Call them for me and tell these officers to stop making things difficult for me, all right? Nobody died in the first place.” The wealthy lady in red had a sharp little mouth, though she never raised her voice. Nor was she like some vulgar shrew who had never seen the world, climbing out of the car to throw a fit, slap traffic officers, claw at people, and tear their clothes—that would be far too lacking in class. Her diction remained cool and composed, her face and lipstick perfectly intact as she leisurely made calls inside the car while casually bickering with Officer Sun outside the window. Now she looked up and contradicted him again. “I wasn’t speeding. Which eye of yours saw me speeding? I didn’t jerk the steering wheel; I was driving normally. He couldn’t brake in time behind me, so that’s his own damn fault. If he hit somebody else or killed a few people, what does that have to do with me?”
“I got ‘hit’ too. Shouldn’t he be compensating me? This window and my rear bumper…” As the beautiful woman in red reached the words “rear bumper,” she looked back and saw a certain someone stepping past one side of her precious vehicle yet again, very clearly planting his foot on the bumper beneath her gold-trimmed license plate.
The exquisitely made-up woman happened to meet Yan Xiaodao’s gaze. One could barely suppress her anger; the other looked back coldly, mockery in his eyes.
Yan Xiaodao had rolled his suit sleeves up to his elbows. With a cigarette between his lips, he calmly lifted one long leg and stepped across the Bentley’s broad rear end through the narrow gap between two cars. Xiaodao had more important shit to do—he was busy helping the police catch cattle. If they didn’t get the cows off the road, nobody was going anywhere.
The arrogant beauty abruptly froze.
It wasn’t because she knew Yan Xiaodao. They had never met. The woman simply stared at his striking side profile in his white shirt and suit, staring several times longer than she should have without managing to pull her eyes away….
That day, after chopping open a truck door, Yan Xiaodao also helped the police rope cattle, which delayed him for quite a while.
One of the bulls had an exceptionally violent temper and remained locked in a standoff with the armed crowd surrounding it. The police were already preparing to bring in a sniper.
Yan Xiaodao slowly removed his suit jacket and carried it in one hand. Under everyone’s eyes, he simply began walking toward the enraged bull at an unhurried pace. The grassy slope beside the expressway had not been maintained, and yellow grass stood nearly a meter high. The bull’s frightened eyes remained fixed on the approaching man.
Yan Xiaodao pulled the tail of his white shirt free from his waistband, letting it hang loose and easy, giving him a distinctly carefree, unruly air. The black mole beside his nose trembled faintly with his breathing and complemented the smile at the corner of his mouth. His lips moved as though he were holding a little negotiation meeting with the bull, calm and unhurried.
“All right—this is yours!” Before long, Yan Xiaodao appeared to have negotiated acceptable terms with the enraged bull and generously tossed his black suit jacket over its back.
The enraged bull blinked its blood-red glassy eyes several times. The red gradually receded from them. Apparently it found the man in front of it unusually reassuring and trustworthy, because it allowed Yan Xiaodao to stroke its neck and lead it all the way back.
“Unbelievable!” An officer gave him a thumbs-up and ran over laughing. “Mr. Yan, tonight’s drinks are definitely on us.”
“Forget the drinks. Just reimburse me for the damn clothes, brothers!” Yan Xiaodao shook out his suit jacket and laughed heartily. Under cover of putting it back on, the hand he had draped companionably around the bull’s neck quietly returned a gleaming, slender three-inch willow-leaf knife from his palm to the sheath at his ribs, while his smiling eyes revealed nothing.
That three-inch blade could seal a throat the instant it drew blood. With one palm strike, it could have opened the bull’s neck and killed it on the spot.
If the soft approach failed, he could always use the hard one. Behind the move everyone could see, he still had another hidden away.
The men clapped one another on the shoulders, exchanging pleasantries in broad daylight before passing cigarettes around again.
“Tonight, that little Songjuhe place on Songjiang Road?” one officer suggested quietly.
Yan Xiaodao glanced at him and said evenly, “I never eat Japanese food.”
＊
The traffic police cleared a single lane ahead, and the massive line of trapped vehicles finally began slowly squeezing through that narrow opening.
Yang Xifeng smoothly glided the car up in front of his boss. Yan Xiaodao exchanged a few polite waves with the uniformed young officers, turned around, and simply put both legs straight through the fully open passenger-side window. With one smooth twist of his waist and tilt of his head, his backside landed squarely in the seat, as though the window had been designed specifically for him, its outline sliding neatly along his body and admitting him into the car.
Yan Xiaodao held up his cow-stinking suit jacket with both hands and mocked himself. “I already look like this. No fucking point pretending to be respectable anymore.”
Yang Xifeng gloated. “Bro, see? I told you perfume is useful for men, but you just refuse to wear any!”
“That’d make it even more disgusting. The two smells would clash!” Yan Xiaodao cursed with a laugh.
The black car sped down the exit. Inside the gold Bentley, the beautiful woman sat poised and refused to get out while waiting for her “reinforcements.” At that moment, she suddenly began questioning the traffic officer handling the case. “Who was that man just now?… The one herding the cow.”
Officer Sun looked slightly surprised and brushed her off. “Just a passerby.”
The middle-aged wealthy woman persisted. “You were talking to him. You know him? Is he a police officer? What’s his name?”
“No! He’s just an ordinary businessman.” Officer Sun frowned as he checked the name and photograph on her driver’s license and entered the information.
Her identification gave her name as Zhao Qifeng, thirty-seven years old. A business card was tucked inside the license holder as well, crowded with a string of impressive titles. Someone who drove a car like this was clearly both rich and influential.
“A businessman. Hah. That makes things even easier….” Zhao Qifeng murmured to herself, a self-satisfied smile hiding at the corner of her mouth. She looked like someone who had unexpectedly spotted a rare “treasure” among the crowd. She idly shook the diamond-studded phone in its gold case, then tapped the screen, bringing up the photograph she had secretly snapped moments before.
In the photograph, Yan Xiaodao wore his suit with his head slightly lowered, his sleeve rolled to the elbow. Sunlight picked out the handsome profile of his nose and lips.
…
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