The moment Yan Xiaodao entered the hotel lobby, the phone in his pocket started clamoring. One listen and he knew some little brat was begging for candy again. Yang Xifeng let out a wounded complaint. “Boss, did you forget your baby?”
Yan Xiaodao strode briskly onward. “Didn’t forget!”
Yang Xifeng said, “I’m on the same floor as your guest room, in the room right next to the eastern emergency exit. You’ll know it when you see it. It’s close to the pier too.”
Yan Xiaodao praised him. “Efficient.”
Yang Xifeng immediately seized the opening. “Bro, can I go have a sauna? Can I expense it?”
Yan Xiaodao knocked him straight back down. “What, you need a facial and a new hairstyle too? You’re more trouble than a woman. If I’d known, I would’ve brought a girl.”
Yang Xifeng grinned shamelessly. “Hey, I’m still a little more useful than a girl, aren’t I? Heh-heh.”
Yan Xiaodao’s voice remained perfectly unhurried. “Keep an eye on those three bodyguards behind You Haodong for me.”
Yang Xifeng immediately turned serious. “Don’t worry, Bro. I’ve been watching them the whole time. What the hell are those three supposed to be? Bunch of useless deadweights, obvious pushovers. I could take care of them for you myself!”
Young Master Liang had just come back from riding a Jet Ski by the shore, still wet and looking as though several little demons had thoroughly looted him from head to toe. He came looking for Yan Xiaodao to have dinner at the restaurant.
Liang Youhui leaned over and said thoughtfully, “You look like you’re about to die of boredom. I made plans with a few friends for midnight, including that You family kid. We’re going to the hotel’s hot-spring massage rooms to have some fun. You coming?”
Yan Xiaodao took a huge bite out of some Southeast Asian cold spring roll he couldn’t identify and said around the mouthful, “Tonight? Then I’m guessing You Haodong won’t especially want to see me.”
Liang Youhui looked surprised. “Why? Aren’t you two acquaintances and fellow locals?”
Yan Xiaodao changed the subject without batting an eye. “Hey, speaking of which, you planning to eat for free today?”
“Huh?” Liang Youhui stupidly began patting himself down.
Yan Xiaodao bit the flesh clean off a grilled tiger prawn. “Where’s your wallet? You trying to stick me with the bill?!”
Liang Youhui smiled awkwardly. “Ah, some little demon sucking out my yang energy must’ve picked my pocket. Outrageous! Xiaodao—you pay? Ah, no, no, how could I make you pay? Just have them put it on my hotel account!”
＊
The very thought of meeting Watanabe at the hotel casino that evening and being forced to see Yan Xiaodao again put You Haodong in a thoroughly foul mood. Naturally, when he was naked in a hot-spring pool looking for pleasure and getting laid, the last thing he wanted was to see Yan Xiaodao yet again.
Watanabe Yangshan really did intend to sell the same piece of merchandise to two buyers and hold out for the highest possible price. Beneath those soft, sagging eyelids gleamed boundless greed. He had gone to great trouble to seize this merchandise; he would not even have minded flaying the man alive. But if he did the flaying himself, he would never recover his investment, so why not hand him over to someone who wanted to flay him even more?
Deep within the hotel, strangely shaped wall lamps set at peculiar angles resembled an Eight Trigrams formation, guiding the way through a maze of interconnected corridors toward the casino. Miniature shrine-shaped incense lamps stood in corners everywhere, giving off a faint, intoxicating fragrance of agarwood from the South Seas.
Hidden behind the casino was a mysterious reception hall where the owner entertained private VIPs. Watanabe personally escorted the guests inside one by one.
Once they entered, the space suddenly opened up before them. The architecture was magnificent, the ceiling astonishingly high, clearly built without regard for expense, like an entirely different world concealed inside the hotel. The most striking feature was a gigantic enclosed circular aquarium, where azure seawater and all manner of rare marine creatures had been transported from the deep sea for the guests to admire.
As the guests strolled slowly along, each was served a cup of Shizuoka Snowmelt Spring Tea.
Accompanying them was a handsome man Watanabe Yangshan had specially hired to entertain the guests. He had black hair and a handsome face and spoke Hong Kong-accented Mandarin. Most memorable of all was that whenever he smiled while speaking, he showed exactly four teeth above and four below. He had probably practiced that smile in a mirror hundreds or thousands of times. His manners were courteous, polished, and expertly practiced. Yan Xiaodao recognized the celebrity face—a familiar actor from the Jinggang Special Administrative Region who often worked on the mainland—but had never expected to see him trading on his looks in a setting like this.
Light poured down from overhead. Instead of an ordinary ceiling, the hall was roofed in colored glass, inset with mosaic designs made from fragments of stone, pearls, and jade. Whenever the spotlights outside the hotel shot into the sky, their brilliant light refracted down into the hall.
Jian Mingjue exchanged flirtatious looks with the Hong Kong-accented celebrity for quite a while, finished his tea, then turned back with a smile. “Watanabe-kun, surely you didn’t specially invite us here just to look at tropical sharks and squid?”
Watanabe Yangshan’s ingratiating smile piled across his face as he gestured invitingly. “There’s a tea pavilion behind here. Please, gentlemen, take your seats and we can talk.”
Yan Xiaodao was already bored enough to have nothing to say, so he simply followed the group around looking at fish and taking in the surroundings. You Haodong and Jian Mingjue were practically bursting with impatience, as though they wanted to grab Watanabe by the neck and demand, Hurry up, you old bastard. Stop going in circles and get to the fucking point!
Their group of seven or eight walked around the enormous aquarium. Behind it was another gigantic open fountain pool, with an elegant tea seating area beside the water.
After exchanging a few polite courtesies, everyone sat according to title and status. The famous actor accompanying them could command millions of fans with a wave of his arm in public, yet in private circumstances like this he sat in the lowest seat, there to pour tea and carry shoes for the wealthy patrons.
In the brief moment while everyone turned to sit down, sharp-eyed Second Young Master Jian was the first to let out an “Uh.”
Yan Xiaodao turned and saw it too. The whole row of distinguished guests wore the same startled expression, their backsides nearly touching their seats before they froze halfway down, necks craned and eyes widened as they stared straight toward the center of the fountain pool.
In the middle of the water, silver chains hung downward, suspending a man amid the currents.
Their viewing angle had been wrong before, so none of them had noticed him as they approached. Only after taking the main seats did they see clearly. On either side of the Roman-style fountain pool stood heroic statues of war gods, each entwined with strange serpents, holding a trident and standing on a shield. The tridents happened to provide solid anchors for the chains. Two lengths of chain, one on either side, held a man’s hands high above him while his body hung in the pool below.
Long hair dripped over his shoulders. His narrow eyes were half-open, half-closed. He did not look particularly miserable at all; if anything, he seemed to be floating comfortably in the water, and the corner of his mouth even held a faint, mocking smile.
When that gaze swept across him, Yan Xiaodao felt those unusually expressive eyes pause on him for half a beat and send him a meaningful smile. The man had probably recognized him as the nighttime visitor who had come by the iron cage the night before.
Not only is he still alive, he looks pretty comfortable soaking in there. Did this guy turn into a fish or something?
Seeing that everyone had arrived, the man’s thin lips curved beautifully, and he actually laughed aloud. In the vast empty hall, there was nothing but the murmuring of water and several quiet heh-heh laughs. The effect was slightly eerie.
Everyone wore rigid, solemn expressions, each harboring their own ugly little calculations, but no one wanted to speak first. All eyes turned toward Watanabe.
Watanabe Yangshan stared at the inexplicably laughing prisoner and smiled as he instructed his men, “There isn’t enough water. Add some.”
There really was far less water than when the cage had been soaking in the sea, and an indoor pool did not have wind and waves. Watanabe Yangshan was obviously dissatisfied with such warm, placid water and ordered them to pour in more. Before long, the water had risen past the markings along the pool wall and eventually came close to overflowing, the ripples spilling out far enough to wet the palm-fiber cushions in the tea pavilion.
The man in the pool immediately stopped looking so comfortable. The water that had reached only his abdomen now climbed to his neck and chin, finally stopping precisely at the line of his lower lip. One careless dip of his head and he would choke. He was forced to hold his head higher, and his breathing visibly began to quicken.
Yan Xiaodao knew that once water rose above the chest and pressed against the area around the heart, remaining submerged for long became extremely uncomfortable and produced an intense sensation of suffocation…. The trick of soaking the cage in seawater had clearly been another of Watanabe Yangshan’s malicious ideas.
“Ling He, you deserve what happened to you today, ending up in my hands. Let everyone see what an ugly, pathetic, filthy state you’re in. Let’s see what waves you can still stir up now!” Watanabe Yangshan had always carefully cultivated the appearance of a kindly old man; rarely did he rip away that disguise and expose his hatred so openly.
The big fish in the water sneered. After soaking for so long, his dark brows and handsome features stood out with unusual clarity. He shot back, “And what if I did fall into your hands? You ridiculous old clown. How many extra layers of skin did you paste onto that face today to dare play the madman, act the fool, and spew lies in front of this many people?”
Watanabe Yangshan’s expression changed.
“Ling He. You know that Ling Huang from back then, the boss who went to prison? This is his son. You’ve heard of him, right?” Jian Mingjue, whose status placed him on the same sofa as Yan Xiaodao, quietly leaned closer with his teacup.
“I’ve heard of him. His family had some feud with Watanabe?” Yan Xiaodao asked softly without looking aside.
“His family offended plenty of people, I’d say—of course, this is all secondhand stuff I heard from the older people in my family! Ling Huang was originally an overseas Chinese who came back and changed his citizenship. Whether he actually changed it back to Chinese nationality, I honestly don’t know. Anyway, thanks to the advantages his status gave him, he built a huge business down in Province S and Province F. Then there was that massive fraud and smuggling case—more than ten years ago now, right? Wasn’t the case worth tens of billions? It practically brought down half the local officialdom….
“A lot of people lost money because of his family’s case. They got cheated—small entrepreneurs who’d built themselves up from nothing, little business owners, even pooled savings from ordinary people in villages and towns. It all vanished, and the money was never recovered. I heard some people were driven to the end of their rope and jumped to their deaths. Tsk, tsk. Their whole life’s retirement savings, gone. Plenty of people would like to dig that Ling bastard out of his grave, grind his bones to powder, and scatter the ashes!”
These were matters from ten or twenty years ago, old gossip nearly as old as Second Jian himself. It was all hearsay. The fact that he had managed to piece together this much was impressive enough.
In short, Ling Huang was a notoriously disgraced dead man whose family and followers had scattered after his fall, reduced to an occasional object of ridicule for later generations. Whenever his name came up, it was always in the tone of “anyone has the right to kill him.” Who would genuinely bother digging into the rights and wrongs of the old case?
“But… that face, those looks… really not bad….” Jian Mingjue reverted to his old profession within three sentences, his gaze lingering with considerable interest on Young Master Ling as he struggled in the water with his neck stretched upward. The old underworld scandal he had just described was already forgotten.
You Haodong sat with Watanabe in the main seats, and at that moment he genuinely wore an expression of righteous indignation that screamed “anyone has the right to kill him,” as though the bright red words “I HAVE A FEUD WITH HIS FAMILY TOO” had been written across his face.
Looking completely united with Watanabe Yangshan against their common enemy, You Haodong asked with rare concern, “That sinister, treacherous bastard made your family suffer too?”
“Hmph….” Watanabe Yangshan’s half-bald scalp reflected the colored light from the stained-glass windows. “Ling He… he schemed against us. He destroyed nearly two-thirds of the ships belonging to my oceangoing transport companies. He swallowed my Watanabe family’s businesses!…”
For the next ten-odd minutes, the gathering turned into Watanabe Yangshan’s personal one-man grievance conference. Nobody else could get a word in.
It was the first time Yan Xiaodao had discovered that this fake old Japanese bastard could talk so much. His eloquence was not a bit inferior to that pimp Jian Mingjue.
To make a long story short, Watanabe Group had been an oceangoing heavy-industry enterprise that received major support after the war and had spent decades dominating maritime business across East and South Asia. In those years, half the ships traveling through Korea Bay, the Ryukyu Strait, Malacca, and the Indian Ocean, along with many of the port projects there, had at one time belonged to companies under the Watanabe umbrella. For a time, their prominence was unmatched.
Yet in recent years, the group’s performance had suddenly collapsed for reasons nobody entirely understood. Global oil prices had indeed soared after the turn of the millennium, labor costs had doubled, and business had become difficult everywhere, but there had clearly been other factors involved. Perhaps Watanabe Yangshan had grown arrogant and overconfident after years of success, because somehow he had fallen straight into Young Master Ling’s trap.
In Watanabe Yangshan’s eyes, someone like Ling He had originally been nothing more than a homeless dog. Your father was already in the ground. Your family had collapsed. The authorities had confiscated your family’s property and struck your family from the registers. You were lucky they hadn’t wiped out nine generations of your clan. My Watanabe family only saw that you might still be useful and gave you a mouthful of food.
But once the frozen body of someone you had once fed finally warmed back to life, he might turn around and bite you viciously, ruining you completely.
Young Master Ling had apparently done exactly that to Watanabe Yangshan. He had wedged himself into the Watanabe family’s internal operations and seized control of several crucial parts of the business, then linked up with outside connections and began dismantling the ports and docks in which Watanabe held capital or controlling stakes—hollowing them out, knocking them over, driving them into bankruptcy, or secretly selling them off for cash one after another…. Building a fortune from nothing was difficult; destroying one was easy. Like a chain of falling dominoes, within only a few years the Watanabe maritime empire had begun to collapse.
There were some things Watanabe Yangshan did not dare say in front of outsiders. He could not expose everything.
Many of his former ships had already changed hands, bought dirt-cheap by Chinese and Russian capitalists, while the proceeds had vanished. Perhaps Ling He had found some way to siphon the money away. The subsidiaries were spending far more than they earned and urgently needed to file for bankruptcy before being sold off cheaply. Watanabe Yangshan had very little liquid cash left. He was practically half a pauper, desperately propping up the appearance of wealth. Otherwise, why would he be flattering, bowing, and scraping so diligently before port-capital heavyweights such as the You, Jian, and Qi families? He had no choice but to humble himself and go from door to door begging for whatever benefits he could get….
“My adoptive mother became ill from anger and threw herself from a building. And my stepfather, Mr. Watanabe Masaharu, who spent his entire life faithfully upholding loyalty, trustworthiness, benevolence, love, propriety, righteousness, integrity, and a sense of shame, was also struck by this series of blows—by your despicable schemes—and suffered a stroke that left him bedridden. To this day his condition remains grave….”
Watanabe Yangshan spoke with such emotion that his whole body trembled, inviting limitless sympathy. People within these circles had heard about it too: the prominent family of adoptive parents Watanabe Yangshan had attached himself to had indeed met a miserable fate—one suffered a stroke, the other jumped from a building.
The quiet celebrity with the Hong Kong accent bent low and hurried from one end of the sofa to the other, discreetly bringing his patron tea and a handkerchief. He certainly knew how to read the room.
“You are… nothing but a black-hearted, rotten-gutted poisonous snake….” Watanabe Yangshan finally bit out the accusation viciously.
“Ha ha ha ha…” The beautiful snake in the pool burst into almost brazen laughter even as he choked on water, not denying his handiwork in the slightest. His smile was beautiful enough to make everyone present draw in a startled breath.
Ling He sneered and gave him two words. “Serves you right.”
Watanabe Yangshan was so angry that his waist and belly seemed to swell another size. He turned toward You Haodong and demanded, “Mr. You, tell me—someone this calculating, sinister, and vicious, to my Watanabe family, doesn’t he deserve to die?”
You Haodong gave a slight nod. “He absolutely deserves to die.”
Watanabe then looked toward Second Young Master Jian for support. Jian Mingjue was staring at the stunningly smiling poisonous snake, his neck stretched forward farther than a goose’s, already completely distracted. He nodded repeatedly on instinct. “Deserves it. Absolutely deserves it….”
At that moment, both Watanabe’s gaze and the handsome man’s gaze from within the pool shot toward Yan Xiaodao.
Yan Xiaodao’s nose moved slightly. He shook his head. “He really does… deserve to die.”
Young Master Ling in the water had been listening carefully and caught the quiet remark. He gave Yan Xiaodao another icy, enormous eye roll.
You Haodong seemed to make up his mind, deciding to cut through the tangle quickly before delay brought further complications.
He slammed his teacup onto the table, splashing pale green tea across the woven bamboo tray. “Mr. Watanabe, let’s do this according to what we agreed before. Hand this Ling fellow over to me.”
Watanabe probed, “Mr. You, you’ve suffered because of him too. You can’t afford not to guard against him, can you?”
“Hmph.” You Haodong neither confirmed nor denied it, deliberately leaving his true intentions vague. “Keeping him alive is always going to be a thorn in your heart. Why don’t I remove the problem for you, so you never have to see him again?”
The terms they had previously negotiated consisted of various discreet advantages involving berthing, transshipment, and taxation at Linwan Port. For the You family, which held real power, quietly granting a company certain favors—without even counting the kickbacks—was easy enough. If Watanabe’s companies wanted enough breathing room to keep doing business with port enterprises, they had no choice but to depend on such scraps and concessions.
Watanabe’s shrewd eyes flicked toward this side again. Jian Mingjue finally could not hold back and snorted, “What’s this? Are you gentlemen seriously planning to drop the executioner’s blade on him or throw him into a vat of boiling oil? Come on, there’s no need to go that far!”
Yan Xiaodao spoke slowly. “It really isn’t necessary, Mr. Watanabe. Surely there’s still room for us to negotiate?”
Jian Mingjue smiled obscenely. “Don’t just dispose of him. He could still be useful. If nothing else, hand him over to me!”
Watanabe neither agreed nor refused outright. He waited patiently to see which family would offer the more suitable price.
Using the front of his suit jacket as cover, Yan Xiaodao’s remarkably nimble fingers sent a string of messages without anyone else noticing.
【There are two heavy oceangoing vessels docked at Linwan Deepwater Port right now. If they catch your eye, Mr. Watanabe, all clearance paperwork and tax-exemption forms are complete.】
Watanabe Yangshan felt the vibration in his palm and glanced down at the line of text.
【They run Far East routes and already have low-rate contracts with the various ports. They’d be convenient for you to use.】
Watanabe looked down and saw that one too, but still said nothing.
Yan Xiaodao cursed inwardly, his teeth aching from frustration, and quickly sent another message to someone else.
【Youhui, did you bring your checkbook? I’ve run into a little trouble. Need to borrow some money.】
Liang Youhui was off fooling around who knew where on the island and did not reply for ten minutes. Fortunately, Jian Mingjue had jumped into the bidding on his own and started tangling with You Haodong because he wanted a share of the spoils, buying Yan Xiaodao enough time to finally receive Liang Youhui’s reply: 【You want to borrow money? I’ve got money! Where are you?】
【Aquarium behind the hotel casino. Have your bodyguard bring me the checks. Can I fill in whatever amount I want?】
Liang Youhui must have been reflecting on the terrible judgment involved in choosing his friends. What kind of fucking friend is this?! Perhaps the image of Yan Xiaodao’s tall, handsome, masculine build flashed before Young Master Liang’s eyes and made even a terrible friend worth tolerating. He replied in alarm: 【Bro, what the hell number are you planning to write?!】
Ling He suddenly burst into another reckless peal of laughter from the pool. His voice was genuinely pleasant, low and lilting, the tail of his laughter rippling out like waves. “A roomful of human garbage, and my life can still fetch a decent price? Hurry up and call out a number pretty enough for me to enjoy hearing it. We might as well all have some fun together.”
The lingering resonance climbed all the way to the glass dome overhead, clear and bright to the ear.
Yan Xiaodao’s fingers tightened. Young Master Ling seemed to know exactly what message he was typing, as though he had X-ray vision.
Yan Xiaodao was only looking for a way to stall the old fox for now. Once he got the merchandise into his hands, it would not be too late to tear up the agreement. How much could this thick old face of his possibly squeeze out of Young Master Liang?
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