The brief two-day stay on Yilulifu Island slipped quickly through their fingers, and all the guests packed up and boarded the ship again for the return voyage.
Yilu Island was just such an exclusive place, veiled like a wealthy lady behind a luxurious, secretive gauze. For most of the year, especially through both the dry and rainy seasons, it closed its doors to visitors. Only a handful of local islanders remained to maintain the coral reefs and white beaches. On the scattered days of good weather squeezed into each year, the island opened to wealthy VIPs from East Asia, allowing the casino, beaches, and thatched overwater villas to earn a year’s worth of turnover and profit. From time to time they also smuggled coral and specimens of deep-sea animals to subsidize operating costs.
Many guests had changed the male or female companions at their sides yet again, exchanging their human “resources” with one another in an atmosphere of extraordinary harmony and unity. Some even took hot, sexy local beauties away from the island, openly trafficking people across borders.
On the white beach, a coconut-palm path led toward the cruise pier. When Yan Xiaodao finally appeared at the end of the path with Young Master Ling, those who knew beforehand and those who had no idea what was happening, the nosy and the merely passing by, along with the island’s tame security guards and service staff, all found their attention drawn at once toward that dazzling presence, impossible to ignore, as though it had cut through golden light and sunset clouds.
When Ling He had been Watanabe Yangshan’s prisoner, he had been filthy, disheveled, and foul-smelling. Yet he had still made the well-traveled Jian Mingjue exclaim over him as the “number-one beauty,” while Yan Xiaodao had silently agreed that he was a “peerless, city-toppling beauty.” Now that Young Master Ling had been scrubbed clean and transformed, just how elegant and eye-catching could such a man look on a tiny island like this?
Yan Xiaodao had obtained a wheelchair and slowly pushed Ling He toward the pier. He did not even need to deliberately greet anyone he knew; everywhere they went, people were already nodding, bowing, and offering eager courtesies.
Yan Xiaodao remained tense in both body and mind, not daring to relax for a moment. His eyes took in every direction, watching the weapons at the waists of the surrounding security guards. Ling He turned his head and instructed him lightly, “No need to worry. Just push me along and keep walking.”
Yan Xiaodao lowered his voice so that only the man in front of him could hear. “That old bastard Watanabe should still be lying in a hospital bed. I’m only worried about the others, or people whose origins we don’t know.”
Ling He was much more relaxed. Tilting his face up to study Yan, he asked, “Mr. Yan, if today you were carrying out a job and planning to ambush somebody, would you strike here on the island right now, or wait until you were aboard the Cloudtop and make your move in secret?”
Yan Xiaodao answered frankly without thinking. “On the ship.”
Ling He smiled in understanding. “Exactly. Ambushing us aboard the ship during the return journey gives them a better chance of success. They can conveniently dump both our corpses into the sea afterward and let us end up in the bellies of fish. It even saves them the trouble of disposing of garbage. Not a fragment of bone would ever be found, and in waters beyond anyone’s clear jurisdiction, no one would investigate too closely. Am I right?”
Yan Xiaodao said, “Right.”
Ling He sat leisurely in his wheelchair as though he were merely sightseeing on a runway. There was no hunched, miserable posture of illness and no listlessness about him. When the breeze lifted his medium-length black hair, his entire face seemed plated in light, the tips of his brows and eyes stained by crimson clouds spilling down from the horizon. His eyes were green jade, his whole face radiant.
On top of that, he was wearing clothes Mr. Yan had worn before. Plenty of people recognized them. The effect was extremely suggestive, leaving everyone free to imagine that the two men had crawled out of the same bed.
Yan Xiaodao had worn the outfit when he went riding and shooting at the range: a loose linen shirt, smoke-gray riding breeches, and brown high boots. Their builds were similar. Mr. Yan had the standard northern-man physique—muscular when undressed, lean when clothed—while Ling He was even more slender because of his long arms and legs. Somehow, he made the shirt and boots hang loosely and elegantly from his body, giving him an airy, carefree look.
One behind the other, the pair practically carved a path through the crowd with the force of their presence. Yan Xiaodao pushing Young Master Ling did not look like a man pushing someone disabled. It looked as though he were escorting some hidden master out of seclusion, a grandmaster descending into the world, ready at any moment to raise a hand and slaughter everything in sight.
Ling He leaned back the entire way, tapping one hand against the armrest. When the sea breeze reached him at the pier, he spotted Young Master You standing along the ship’s rail. Behind his tea-colored lenses, You Haodong’s eyes still carried twisted hostility, his bronze-gold forehead gleaming as he stared at the two of them without a word.
Ling He did not care in the slightest. Calm as drifting clouds and light wind, he said to Yan Xiaodao, “Board the ship. Just keep going. There’s no need to worry about Mr. You. He doesn’t dare. Where you’re concerned, he has too many things to consider and too much to lose.”
Yan Xiaodao snorted. “I’ll borrow your courage.”
Ling He laughed brightly. “Ha ha, Mr. Yan, I, Ling He, am fighting alone without anyone to rely on. Are you? You may have come here by yourself, but there are people behind you. There’s a towering tree at your back. Anyone dealing with you has to calculate the give-and-take. Opposing you means making an enemy of Master Qi. Humiliating you is like spitting in Master Qi’s face or slapping him. Can they really do those things without weighing the consequences first? You Haodong is fierce on the outside and weak within, bullying the weak and fearing the strong. I bet he’s afraid of you. He simply doesn’t dare! You just focus on getting me aboard. He’ll assume you still have another major move hidden behind you, which makes him even less likely to act rashly. The bolder we are, the more he’ll hesitate and waver. He has no idea how many groups Master Qi may have arranged, so naturally he won’t dare do anything. Surely you’ve heard the classic Yan-school Peking opera piece The Empty City Stratagem at the Yandu Grand Theater, even if you can’t sing it?”
Elio’s Notes: The Empty City Stratagem is the famous bluff in which a seemingly undefended position is presented with such calm confidence that the enemy suspects a trap and retreats. Here Ling He is explicitly proposing that they bluff their way past You Haodong. It is also a famous Peking opera story.
“…You can sing it?” Yan Xiaodao discovered that practically every sentence Ling He spoke was logical, struck directly at hidden vulnerabilities, and matched many of Yan’s own thoughts. Sometimes Ling He seemed almost like a prompter perfectly synchronized with the rhythm of Yan Xiaodao’s private complaints, leaving him with nothing to refute.
Ling He was in the rare mood to chat idly with Yan Xiaodao. Tilting his face up, he smiled. “I learned a few lines. I’ll sing them for you another day, if you can keep me alive long enough to get out.”
After they returned to the Cloudtop, the scattered time spent while every household and entourage packed, arranged belongings, and settled back aboard passed without further mention. A small conflict arose only when they returned to their cabin.
The guests had boarded by the same arrangements as before, naturally returning to their original cabins. Their tickets included VIP reception for the round trip.
Yan Xiaodao had one extra person beside him now. Ling He was an additional passenger who had joined the ship halfway through by extremely unconventional means, so he currently had nowhere to sleep. If Ling He had somewhere to sleep, then Mr. Yan had nowhere to lie down. In the cramped cabin, Mr. Yan certainly could not stack himself on top of Ling He and sleep there.
Ling He rolled his wheelchair around the cabin once and immediately felt that the space was too small and the ceiling too low. Once he came in, Yan Xiaodao could barely enter behind him.
“It really is a little small. I’ll sleep on the floor.” Yan Xiaodao felt somewhat apologetic, though he was not in the habit of cracking jokes and crying poverty before a young master.
Ling He, however, had no intention of appreciating Mr. Yan’s self-sacrifice. He crooked one palm mysteriously.
Yan Xiaodao bent down, placing both hands on the wheelchair’s armrests in a posture of attentive listening.
It was a casual movement. Yet after leaning down and lifting his eyes, Yan Xiaodao quickly lowered his gaze again and avoided looking directly. Mr. Ling was the sort of man who could catch your eyes from across a room and make you involuntarily want to walk closer for a better look. Once you truly came close, he was so beautiful that he could swallow your entire awareness…. Yan Xiaodao disliked this feeling that his physical senses and central nervous system were slipping beyond his control and making him stare blankly like an idiot.
Ling He did not play coy. He pointed directly upward. “The top deck of this ship has luxury duplex suites. Mr. Yan knows that, doesn’t he?”
Yan Xiaodao nodded. “I know. They’re all booked and occupied.”
Ling He said disdainfully, “Don’t you have that nouveau-riche friend surnamed Liang, Liang Youhui?”
Yan Xiaodao said, “…”
“What does he need a two-hundred-ping duplex all to himself for? Is he planning to raise livestock and pigs in it?” Ling He raised an eyebrow as though the answer were obvious. “Young Master Liang has always wanted to invite you to sleep in his room, hasn’t he, Mr. Yan? We’ll both go stay upstairs with him, and he can come down and sleep in your room. Swap cabins with him.”
Elio’s Notes: A ping is an East Asian real-estate unit equal to about 3.3 square meters. Two hundred ping is roughly 660 square meters, or about 7,100 square feet—hence Ling He’s joke that Liang could raise livestock in the suite.
“Heh… heh-heh….” Yan Xiaodao actually laughed aloud, a deep laugh rolling from his chest. He studied Ling He with amusement, wondering how this man’s brain was built to come up with something this shameless.
Ling He smiled back with the sharp expression of someone saying, This is how wicked I’ve always been. Who’s going to stop me? What can any of you do about it?
Yan Xiaodao very much wanted to pinch that handsome face and poisonous mouth on behalf of the unfortunate Young Master Liang.
The happy, delighted expression on Liang Youhui’s face when he met Yan Xiaodao at the suite door made Yan Xiaodao himself feel sympathy, guilt, and a sudden urge to compensate the poor man.
Yan Xiaodao raised one hand to brace against the doorframe, lowered his head, and vigorously rubbed his nose.
Instead of exploding as expected, Liang Youhui mocked him. “I get it. You’re doing this to please that gorgeous young beauty you’ve been cuddling left and right, glued together like lacquer! In that pigeon coop you booked, the two of you couldn’t even make a ripple playing Two Dragons Playing in the Water. Regretting how badly you chose your room now?”
“Youhui, I’ll make it up to you later.” Yan Xiaodao bent at the waist and gave him a sincere ninety-degree bow.
“Hmph. You owe me a favor. You’ll have to repay it in flesh,” Liang Youhui said.
“Pick whichever piece of flesh you want. Cut it off and stew it. Your brother won’t bargain with you.” Yan Xiaodao laughed, only half joking.
“Mr. Yan, is there a giant line written across my forehead saying, ‘I’m stupid and rich, come screw me over’?” Liang Youhui reached out and pinched Yan Xiaodao by the nose. He had always secretly been infatuated with the tempting little black mole beside Yan’s nostril, frustrated that he could neither lick the man nor find out what he tasted like.
“Ha ha….” Yan Xiaodao eagerly carried Liang Youhui’s still-unopened luggage back out the door. “Young Master, I’ll escort you downstairs and point out the way.”
Liang Youhui remembered what he had seen at the pier earlier, when Yan Xiaodao had lifted Young Master Ling horizontally and carried him up the gangway. However unwilling he might be, he had to admit that the two men looked astonishingly good together. One was handsome, tall, and overwhelmingly masculine; the other was a city-toppling beauty of unmatched elegance. Wrapped together, they looked fucking perfect, born as a pair, leaving no room for anyone else to squeeze between them.
Yan Xiaodao considered Liang Youhui genuinely kindhearted by nature. Leaving aside the harmless details of his private life, this young master raised in privilege was not truly stupid. He understood how the world worked; he simply disdained scheming and had never developed the ambition to hurt people. Every day he ate, drank, played, and gathered friends, perfectly willing to spend his whole life as a carefree idler without regretting the years running through his fingers.
Both came from prominent families, yet Ling He and Liang Youhui were two completely different people. How exactly had Ling He managed to grow such a crooked heart?
The Cloudtop’s top-deck duplex was unbelievably comfortable, a floating taste of life above the clouds. The moment Yan Xiaodao moved in, he sincerely began appreciating Ling He’s crooked idea. Sure enough, if you were going to live in the jianghu, you needed a sufficiently thick skin.
The first floor of the duplex was a luxurious living room large enough to fight a bull in, with a miniature bar beside the corner sofa. Sunlight poured through the portholes and spread across the dining table. It seemed to follow the guests’ footsteps up the spiral staircase toward the second-floor bedroom, where there was an even more expensive Italian vibrating mattress and a double massage bathtub….
Yan Xiaodao checked the room once again. A room Young Master Liang had stayed in was actually cleaner and safer; nobody had installed listening devices.
Without ceremony, Yan Xiaodao poured himself a glass of alcohol to ease his boredom and fatigue. He glanced at Ling He. Want one?
“No. Alcohol goes straight through me. I’ll keep wanting to use the bathroom, and I’d rather not trouble Mr. Yan.” Ling He spun the wheelchair around and completed a full 360-degree turn in the living room. The place was spacious enough for the two of them to dance a tango, suddenly making him want to grab someone and dance. Unfortunately, he could not stand….
Yan Xiaodao carried Ling He upstairs so the man could take an afternoon nap and would not get bored enough to use Yan as target practice for his mouth again.
He could also feel that whenever Ling He hung in his arms, the man’s hands remained perfectly proper and observed every boundary. His fingers did not touch Yan at all. His palms rested lightly on Yan’s shoulder in loose half-fists, while Ling He’s eyes calmly moved away from Yan’s ear and jaw.
Yan lifted both of Ling He’s legs and pulled off his boots. Lying on his back, Ling He spread his long dark hair across the white bedding, dark brows above green eyes, skin pale as porcelain. Ling He gave him a grateful smile. “Mr. Yan, I really want to thank you with something in return.”
Whenever Yan Xiaodao heard Ling He talk like that, he immediately became wary. Somebody was probably about to suffer spectacularly because of Young Master Ling again.
Ling He propped himself up on one elbow and once more crooked a finger mysteriously. After Yan Xiaodao bent toward the bed like a large cat, Ling He whispered, “I’ll give you a good strategy. If you truly can’t stand that entire You family of scumbags, then seize on the fatal mistake You Haodong made today.”
Yan Xiaodao asked, “What mistake?”
Ling He smiled gently and lowered his voice as far as it would go. “You Haodong is, after all, the second generation of an official family. He doesn’t know how to restrain himself, yet he actually dared come aboard Blue Sea Cloudtop. He’s forgotten himself and forgotten where he comes from. How can he be compared to a private-sector playboy like Liang Youhui? The higher his father’s position, the more precariously the whole family stands. They look strong from outside but are hollow within. Sooner or later, somebody jealous of them will drag them down. The only question is whether it happens a few years earlier or later…. You could help them fall a little sooner.”
Yan Xiaodao calmly watched Ling He’s eyes and lips, trying to work out how such extraordinary calculations managed to emerge from that face and that mind.
Ling He went straight for the vital point. “Nearly a hundred properties in Linwan and neighboring cities. Bribes so enormous the total can’t even be properly counted. A life of extravagant decadence and money thrown around like water. And the You family’s son holds public office himself, yet his private morals are corrupt—participating in sex parties, involved with socialites from elite circles…. All you need to do is throw out the first thread. Naturally, people who already hate his family and are waiting for the chance to replace them will pick it up for you.”
Yan Xiaodao neither agreed nor disagreed. “Inspection teams handle the first things you mentioned. It all depends on whether the people above actually want to investigate the family thoroughly. As for Blue Sea Cloudtop, it’s only an overseas cruise carnival. There’s no direct evidence he was gambling heavily, taking drugs, or visiting prostitutes….”
Yan Xiaodao’s meaning was clear. VIP casinos and pleasure venues at this level had strict rules and security. Photography and recording were absolutely forbidden because nothing could be allowed to leak. Everyone coming and going guarded the outside fiercely. They were all in the same boat, gambling and whoring in the same nest. Nobody could report anyone else without sinking themselves too.
Ling He shook his head, openly disdainful. “Mr. Yan, can’t you guess who You Haodong fucked for half the night yesterday and nearly killed?”
Ling He had not brought it up, and Yan Xiaodao had never been interested in thinking about what happened in other people’s beds.
But once Ling He mentioned it, Yan Xiaodao was not stupid. He guessed immediately.
The suite next door was currently occupied by the man surnamed You. At this very moment, he was probably sitting there on needles, calculating what the people in this room were doing.
Ling He smiled coldly. “Mr. Mai has plenty of intimate guests among Yandu’s upper levels. Send it upward to any one of them and that will do. Mai himself is cowardly and spineless and doesn’t dare make a sound—a ruined flower too weak to stand up for himself. Are you telling me you don’t dare make noise on his behalf?”
Yan Xiaodao silently drew in a breath, astonished by the depth of Ling He’s calculations, the cruelty of his tongue, and the vicious accuracy of his eye. Without changing expression, he asked, “You have evidence? What can you do without evidence?”
Ling He was equally calm. “Heh. What makes you think I don’t have evidence?”
＊
The two of them continued probing each other one sentence at a time. Just then, somebody knocked downstairs—four knocks first, then, when no answer came, another four or five. Whoever it was waited stubbornly for the door to open.
Perhaps it was a server. Or perhaps Lord Liang had discovered that he simply could not tolerate living in a pigeon coop after all, regretted the exchange, and had come charging back?
Yan Xiaodao shot Ling He a look telling him to lie down and sleep, then went downstairs to answer the door.
The instant Yan Xiaodao’s back disappeared down the spiral staircase, Ling He let out a breath. It was as though only then could he finally release every muscle and nerve he had kept fully armed and taut. He collapsed onto the bed and drew in great breaths of air.
He was utterly exhausted, yet his eyes remained stubborn and resilient. He had endured for so many years that his heart had long since grown cold and hard.
Like a slow, lingering long take in a film, he gradually turned onto his side, his face reaching yearningly toward the bright sunlight entering through the window. But he stopped before he reached the light, leaving his face buried in shadow while lashes beautiful as misty ink mountains concealed his eyes.
Was I too obvious? Too eager to succeed?…
Yan Xiaodao…
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