The Moulin Rouge Theater’s famous revue was about to begin. Male and female guests in formal dress strolled into the theater from every corridor, competing in splendor until the eye hardly knew where to look.
Every man in a sequined suit and velvet bow tie seemed to have some gaudily feathered bird hanging from his arm. Some looked like peacocks, some like phoenixes, and even the shabbiest resembled pheasants, all buried in lace, puffed sleeves, and feathers of every color. Their taste might have been questionable, but they had certainly spent plenty of money. Only when Mr. Yan emerged from the corridor was there a handsome man in formalwear pushing an even younger, more handsome man in a suit seated in a wheelchair.
Behind them trailed an irritating third wheel. Young Master Liang, dressed in a flashy dark-red velvet evening suit, followed close beside Mr. Yan without missing a step, his mouth chattering nonstop.
Three men traveling together, all strikingly good-looking, inevitably became another spectacle for gossip inside the theater.
Earlier, Yan Xiaodao had hauled Ling He up from the bed and pulled a spare suit from his luggage, tossing it onto him. “Come with us.
“Staying in this room isn’t safe either. The hallway is deserted, which would make it even easier for someone to shut the door and trap us inside. Everyone aboard is gathering at the theater now. That’s where the biggest crowd will be. Maybe we can disappear into the confusion.”
He dressed Ling He in one of his own dark-blue formal suits woven with fine silver-gray vertical threads.
Ling He looked about two centimeters taller than him and had very long legs, so full-length trousers became fashionable ankle-length ones on him, exposing a slim, beautifully boned section of ankle. He casually pulled open the front of the jacket and deliberately fanned himself. “There’s nothing hidden under my armpits. Otherwise, how would this thing hang loose on me while looking so bulky when you wear it?”
Ling He laughed as he spoke. Yan Xiaodao immediately knew the man was still hard-mouthed but soft-hearted and had found himself an excuse to step down. He had probably reflected on how excessively sharp and unreasonable he had been earlier.
Sure enough, Ling He behaved exceptionally well that entire evening. Toward Yan Xiaodao he could almost be described as “gentle.” Sitting in the wheelchair, he went wherever Yan pushed him without throwing a tantrum, picking a fight, or spraying venom at innocent bystanders.
As long as Ling He kept his mouth shut, Mr. Yan’s life was extremely easy, because Young Master Liang beside him also had an excellent temper.
Liang Youhui had a broad heart and did not care how anyone looked at him. He paid absolutely no attention to the several Yandu princelings nearby who knew him and were privately sneering that this was “one king with two queens,” or that “Young Master Liang is actually competing with a cripple over Yan Xiaodao.”
Like an old horse who knew the road, Liang Youhui led the other two straight to their box. He was clearly a regular and knew the place inside out. The box imitated a Neo-Baroque style, pairing gaudy nouveau-riche gold with elegant relief carving. On the table, bone-china tea ware decorated with camellias rested on red velvet.
Liang Youhui assumed the other two had never been there before, so all the way in he kept pointing out and explaining the lavish decorations on the dome and stage. When Ling He was calm, he was extremely conversational, elegant in manner, and obviously well traveled. Somehow the two of them went from discussing the Shochikutei Revue to the myths behind the theater’s marble statues, then on to the regular productions at Paris’s Palais Garnier and the grand productions and performers of Broadway in Manhattan.
Liang Youhui was intrigued. “Hey, you—you’ve seen quite a lot?”
Ling He smiled faintly. “I studied and traveled abroad before.”
Liang Youhui answered with complete sincerity, “I studied at one of the University of California campuses. What country did you study in?”
Ling He’s mouth recognized neither propriety nor restraint. “I’ve been to plenty of places and changed where I stayed all the time. Wherever it was safe and nobody was chasing me around trying to hack me up or kill me—that was where I went to school.”
Mr. Yan could not even get a word into the conversation. Wasn’t this rich-kid study-abroad topic being a little disrespectful to poor country bumpkins like him?
Still, he vaguely felt that Young Master Ling was already giving him quite a lot of face today. Ling He was maintaining basic social courtesy with Yan’s friend, which was exceptionally rare.
Yan Xiaodao’s attention was not on the show anyway. As though he could possibly be interested in an erotic revue staged with vast amounts of money by scum like Watanabe. His eyes never left the movement and details around them. Their elevated box gave them a clear view of both the stage and audience below. Familiar guests and their companions looked like clusters of slowly wriggling black shadows as they dispersed toward their seats, finally filling the entire theater.
A theater aboard a cruise ship could not be too large. This one could just barely hold all the guests, making the atmosphere warm and intimate.
The air carried perfume, tar, and a faintly sweet smell from maguo pills mixed with crystal meth. Perhaps some rich second-generation kid was “skating” inside one of the boxes.
Elio’s Notes: Maguo refers to stimulant tablets commonly associated with methamphetamine and caffeine; the novel distinguishes them here from crystal meth. “Skating” is underworld slang for taking crystal meth.
Yan Xiaodao did not directly encounter Jian Mingjue or You Haodong, but he saw both groups enter boxes on the second level. Everyone had their own concerns, so they merely nodded to one another from afar.
Following the number printed on his invitation, You Haodong pulled aside the velvet curtain of his box, only to find someone already inside.
Young Master You frowned unhappily. “You’re in the wrong room, aren’t you?”
The man inside bent over apologetically and spoke stiff Mandarin in some unidentifiable accent. “Ah, perhaps… wrong seat. Sorry, sir. Next door. You can sit in the room next door.”
“Lunatic!…” You Haodong had no patience to waste talking nonsense with a stranger. Sitting next door was the same anyway. He did not particularly want to be beside Yan Xiaodao and have to look at that irritating bastard.
Before dinner, immediately after Toshita Mayumi left Yan Xiaodao’s room, two men in black had grabbed her and taken her into the elevator. They were actually Bodyguards Two and Three from the You family.
Mayumi had been drinking. Her eyes were seductive and her face flushed with alcohol. Her disordered hair, loosened kimono collar, and the glaring hickey on the back of her neck all seemed to announce that she had been thoroughly worked over in the room at least two or three times.
Mayumi stubbornly refused to speak Mandarin, while the You family’s thugs could not understand Japanese. After a long session of gesturing and threatening each other like chickens talking to ducks, they failed to get a damned thing out of her. The two bodyguards genuinely saw nothing suspicious and could only let her go in annoyance.
In the dim theater, Yan Xiaodao quietly moved his fingers and sent a text: 【Which boxes are You and Jian in?】
His loyal little follower seemed to be sitting with his phone permanently in hand waiting for one order from his boss. The reply came immediately: 【You is one box over on your left. Jian is one box over on your right.】
Yan Xiaodao: 【Is Watanabe here?】
Yang Xifeng: 【Couldn’t find him.】
Yan Xiaodao: 【Who’s directly beside me?】
Yang Xifeng: 【Seriously don’t know, Boss. All unfamiliar faces. Maybe from Yandu.】
The theater lights went out. A fantastical atmosphere created by shadow and curtain slowly unfolded from one corner of the stage. A strange white-haired ghost with a face painted white stepped to mysterious drumbeats in search of its sacrifice. The ghost carried an ink-painted folding fan and wore sinister red makeup, neither man nor woman yet somehow both male and female. Beneath a curtain of falling cherry blossoms, the figure bent backward, face beautiful and bewitching…
Kabuki-dressed drummers pounded out a deafening rhythm beneath the curtain and stage smoke, like armies lying in ambush on every side amid roaring cries of battle…
Yan Xiaodao quietly reached his left arm around the back of Ling He’s wheelchair, creating the appearance of wrapping an arm around him. His five fingers idly performed piano fingering, tapping out a figure-eight pattern again and again. Ling He apparently noticed him lean closer and silently turned his head to study him, his gaze seemingly freezing on Yan’s profile and temple…
Yan Xiaodao’s right hand rested beneath his arm near his waist. His gaze tried to penetrate the neighboring box, separated from them by only one thin partition, while his ears still had to endure Liang Youhui’s enthusiastic commentary. Before him stretched a suddenly expansive stage illusion filled with seductive men and women swinging high into the air.
The so-called kabuki show was really a bait-and-switch. What guest who came here looking for pleasure genuinely wanted to watch an authentic traditional Osaka or Edo geisha performance? The production was more like a knockoff of the Bellagio’s famous Las Vegas spectacle, complete with an imitation stage pool, although their pool was hardly larger than a puddle, and an imitation of fantastical aerial performers, although these particular men and women wore ultra-short, leg-baring kimonos and performed cleavage-spilling splits in midair, provoking wave after wave of cheers from the audience…
More dancers stood on elevated platforms near the second-floor boxes, gripping silk ribbons and preparing to launch themselves downward into the performance space.
One young dancer with an elaborate updo and a voluptuous figure stubbornly ignored her cue. At the crucial moment, she was still looking backward, searching the row of second-floor box windows until her gaze rapidly met Yan Xiaodao’s.
The girl was Toshita Mayumi.
Alarm leapt into Mayumi’s almond-shaped eyes as she stared at Yan Xiaodao. She opened her mouth as though trying to say something, but there was no time, and even if she had spoken they could not have heard her over the thunder of drums and music.
The girls launched downward together with the rain of cherry blossoms, swinging toward the audience but still suspended by silk cloth. They flipped through the air and performed all manner of difficult aerial yoga poses to entertain the demanding guests. Every dancer under Watanabe’s command supposedly possessed “108 secret techniques.” Rumor had it that those very same tricks were what they used to entertain customers in bed.
Perhaps because Yan Xiaodao already had doubts in his mind, he kept feeling as though Miss Mayumi was constantly looking at him.
In reality, they were already far apart. The dancers hung upside down beneath the dome with their gazes wandering everywhere; it was impossible to know exactly where any of them was looking. But Yan Xiaodao noticed that Mayumi kept awkwardly twisting her face toward their side, as though her eyes were repeatedly telling him to leave this place.
Ling He and Liang Youhui presumably did not know Mayumi. Ling He’s expression remained calm and detached, looking at no one.
Mayumi’s position faced the row of box windows where they sat, allowing her to see the guests inside every box. The girl must have seen something and was trying to warn them.
Yan Xiaodao remained expressionless. His arm suddenly closed around Ling He’s shoulder as he asked quietly, “Want to go to the restroom?”
Ling He considered the meaning behind those words. “Mr. Yan?”
Something suddenly went wrong with the aerial group that was about to swing toward the center of the stage.
With any performance involving people flying overhead, this was precisely the sort of accident everyone feared. No one expected one silk ribbon to suddenly come loose. The dancer hanging from it screamed as she fell. The packed audience erupted in alarm, yet very few people spared any sympathy for the falling girl. Guests both near and far immediately ducked and covered their heads, terrified that the person dropping from above would land on them.
More than a century ago, a crystal chandelier fell over the audience at the Palais Garnier and killed one spectacularly unlucky woman, costing the theater an enormous settlement.
This time, what fell was a person.
Yan Xiaodao was badly startled. The girl who had fallen was Miss Mayumi, descending together with a long length of silk ribbon straight into the shallow pool below. It was only a fall of three to five meters, but she had certainly hit hard. Water and screams exploded upward. Yan Xiaodao thought he saw Mayumi raise her head from the pool, staring toward him in shock and pain, still preoccupied with their safety…
Yan Xiaodao abruptly stood and, without expression, hauled Ling He up. “Come with me. We’re leaving.”
He understood perfectly well that no matter what forgotten corner of the Cloudtop their group stayed in tonight, this battle was unavoidable. The ship was only so large. Too many pairs of eyes were watching Ling He from the shadows. There was nowhere they could hide.
The entire wall of the neighboring box shattered before their eyes with a tremendous bang.
It was only a thin wooden partition, which immediately surrendered under the heavy blow and broke into pieces. Splinters and shards sprayed toward Ling He’s wheelchair like a shower of scattered flowers.
Sharp splinters stabbed madly toward half of Ling He’s face and body, making him instinctively lean hard toward the person he trusted most. A thin line of blood suddenly ran down from Ling He’s hairline.
The next second, Yan Xiaodao seized Ling He bodily from the wheelchair and shielded him behind himself. He stepped directly into the attack, one iron palm thrusting into the cloud of splinters and smoke. His hand collided head-on with his opponent’s iron fist, flesh striking flesh before the two immediately fell into close combat. In the tiny, precious space of the box, terrifying flashes of fists and blades filled the air…
It looked like something from a movie. In real life, Liang Youhui had always believed things like this simply could not happen.
The instant the fight began, the chair beneath him overturned backward and dumped him under the table, perfectly positioning him to protect his head, chest, and other vital areas. Young Master Liang remained beneath the table for ages without managing to crawl out, frozen stupidly while fists, feet, tea ware, and shattered cups flew through his field of vision.
Liang Youhui had never seen Yan Xiaodao fight anyone before. Not a real, vicious battle like this.
Yan Xiaodao’s eyes were blood-red. Dangerous slashes had opened across both shoulders, his waist, and abdomen of his suit. When his opponent’s knee struck his right elbow joint, pain drilled through him as though the bone had cracked. He knew the injury was serious, and the agony only drove his fury higher…
The killer had yellow-white dyed hair and Southeast Asian features, clearly a hired hand being paid to do a job. He spoke very little Mandarin, and there was no need for pointless conversation anyway. His goal was simply to get past Yan Xiaodao and reach Ling He.
Fortunately, the killer did not simply open fire with a gun, perhaps from confidence, or perhaps because he was more concerned about accidentally hitting someone else. The space was too small and the theater too crowded. Wealthy guests worth fortunes were everywhere only a few meters away. None of them could afford to be injured, and any death among them would become tomorrow morning’s online headline.
Fighting while protecting Young Master Ling was genuinely too difficult. Again and again, Yan Xiaodao had to take the attacker’s blows directly on his own shoulder. Spotting an opening, the opponent suddenly extended a metal claw toward Yan’s left shoulder, where he was supporting Ling He.
A metal claw had been fitted over the man’s right arm. If that strike landed, it would either cut off Yan’s arm or cut off Ling He’s.
Yan Xiaodao let go. The sharp metal claw ripped through the air between him and Ling He, carving a razor-sharp Chu–Han boundary between them. With the same motion, Yan threw Ling He back into the wheelchair and kicked one armrest, sending the chair spinning out of the box.
Elio’s Notes: The Chu–Han boundary refers to the dividing river on a Chinese chess board, separating the Chu and Han sides. Figuratively, it describes a hard dividing line.
He turned coldly and raised a hand toward the yellow-haired killer.
From the hollow of Yan Xiaodao’s fist, a sharp white blade had appeared without anyone noticing. He slashed upward at an angle along the killer’s abdomen, chest, chin, and nose! Caught completely off guard, the man watched in shock as the white blade nearly opened him from belly to chest and carved a bloody line upward, almost splitting his chin into two jagged lobes. Spinning droplets of liquid sprayed outward under centrifugal force…
Several drops of blood splashed across Yan Xiaodao’s face. He turned and rushed out of the box.
The theater corridor had already become a completely chaotic chicken coop amid deafening commotion, every variety of gaudy bird running in all directions, feathers practically flying. Guests in the surrounding boxes who sensed that something was wrong hurriedly fled their seats. A woman in a floor-length gown tripped directly in front of Yan Xiaodao and fell face-first onto the floor.
Amid the shifting figures in the corridor, the empty wheelchair remained where it had rolled, completing one last circle under the final trace of momentum. There was no one sitting in it.
Something went boom inside Yan Xiaodao’s head.
Clusters of light began glowing and whitening across his vision. His head spun.
Less than twenty seconds had passed. Yan Xiaodao stared blankly in every direction and called in a low voice, “Ling He?!
“LING HE!!!”