Yan Xiaodao drove away from the prosperous city center. His trunk was loaded with dried and fresh specialties brought back from the Three Rivers region and Luancheng, together with a gift box of that year’s new Baihao Yinzhen tea he had specially bought in the south. His godfather liked white tea.
North of the city, near the outskirts, lay an enclave that had preserved six hundred years of old-city street life almost untouched. Gray-brick and tiled courtyard houses filled the lanes in every direction. Time seemed to seep from their deliberately weathered colors, like scenes from old photographs reproduced through a kaleidoscope. Yan Xiaodao had memories of his teenage years here too.
A clean historical fault line seemed to divide this district from the newly constructed commercial center downtown, providing the old men who missed the atmosphere of another era with one final refuge from the world.
Perhaps it was also Qi Baoshan’s last refuge.
No wonder Godfather has been staying somewhere like this… Yan Xiaodao thought.
The elderly attendant greeting guests at the teahouse lifted the curtain and welcomed people in a resonant voice powerful enough to rise through all three floors around the central courtyard. The old man apparently thought Yan Xiaodao looked familiar. From the suit, shoes, and imposing bearing alone he knew this was somebody important, though he could not remember the surname.
Yan Xiaodao greeted the people around him mildly and asked the manager in a low voice, “Master Qi is here?”
The manager nodded and bowed politely. “Yes, yes! Private Room 16 on the east side of the second floor. Boss Yan, right this way!”
……
At the center of the teahouse stage, armies clashed while the great river rolled eastward. The storyteller in a long gown slapped his wooden block against the table, snapped open the folding fan between his fingers, and poured out jokes, curses, and clever turns of phrase. Below the stage, elderly customers drank tea from covered cups, cracked sunflower seeds, and listened with relish.
Yan Xiaodao carried a tin of Baihao Yinzhen and intercepted a pot of hot water from a waiter.
Inside the private room, Qi Baoshan occupied the honored seat at a mahjong table. He raised his eyelids just as his gaze met Yan Xiaodao’s. Yan nodded with neither arrogance nor servility, offering a silent greeting: Godfather. I hope you’ve been well.
Strictly speaking, they had not been well at all. Master Qi visibly looked older.
They had not seen each other for several months. Even though Qi Baoshan normally maintained himself carefully and kept his beard cleanly shaved, he could no longer conceal the exhaustion and age steadily overtaking him. The cleaner his chin was shaved, the more clearly it exposed the deep ravines of the lines running around his mouth. They looked dry and weathered. His godson had run off with the son of his enemy, after all. Master Qi had nobody considerate left around to nourish his heart.
Perhaps it was merely psychological, but Yan Xiaodao even thought the gold-rimmed glasses on his godfather’s nose looked less bright and spotless than before, as though the lenses had not been properly cleaned. Only Qi’s eyes remained as sharp and intelligent as ever, his pupils blazing.
The mahjong battle at the table was in full swing, tiles clicking crisply as they moved. Yan Xiaodao silently prepared tea and poured water for Master Qi, lowering his brows respectfully. At the same time, he filled the covered cups of the other three businessmen at the table. In front of outsiders, this gave his godfather face. Yan Xiaodao had never forgotten the rules of reading a room and handling social situations.
“Aiya, no need to be so polite, Little Boss Yan!” one player praised in the flattering tone common among businessmen. “Young Boss Yan under Master Qi really knows how to take care of people. Master Qi trained him well!”
Qi Baoshan lowered his eyes and grunted, neither praising nor criticizing. He reached out and claimed the tile he wanted. Another player exclaimed, “Look at that! The moment your precious godson arrives, your little treasure basin arrives with him. Money starts pouring in, and now you’re already winning ours!”
Qi Baoshan pointed at the seat beside him and summoned his “treasure basin,” Yan Xiaodao.
Whatever storms and disagreements the godfather and godson had endured privately, in front of outsiders they still maintained the deep affection and loyalty of father and son. Qi Baoshan lifted one hand, and Yan immediately understood. Their old conflicts could never become entertainment for outsiders. That was also how family businesses survived, closing ranks in public. And it was hardly unique to Qi and Xiaodao. Zhao Qifeng’s romantic scandals were famous enough to cover her husband in green hats, yet Chairman Jian could still stand beside her and perform the role of loving husband. These people had all refined acting into a true art.
The first pot of tea emptied and became a second. One perceptive player rose and surrendered his seat to Xiaodao.
Yan Xiaodao had barely sat down when Qi Baoshan glanced at him and spoke with layers beneath the words. “Young Boss Yan, this old man will have to rely on you showing me mercy.”
Yan Xiaodao inclined himself respectfully. “Godfather, what are you saying?”
For the rest of the game, Yan Xiaodao thoughtfully fed his godfather useful tiles. The other two players slapped the table and shouted, “This game is impossible! You two really are connected heart to heart, father and son thinking as one!”
Calculating a mahjong game this way was exhausting. Racking his brains to deliberately feed somebody else tiles was no easier than figuring out how to win for himself. Yan Xiaodao’s thoughts raced. Facing his godfather filled him with so many complicated emotions that his expression continually hovered on the edge of speech.
With Yan Xiaodao beside him providing support, Qi Baoshan immediately became a tiger with wings. His previously bored, stagnant play transformed into attacks from every direction. Within moments, he swept through an entire round.
Master Qi won the final hand with Seven Pairs.
Seven matched pairs, fourteen tiles altogether. He laid them down and won. His godson had not even managed to help him that time. Master Qi had drawn every tile himself through sheer luck, which was almost ridiculous.
The regulars who often gathered at the teahouse to play with Qi knew his habits perfectly. They complained sincerely, “Qi Baoshan, you old bastard, you’re always pulling this damned Seven Pairs trick on us. Annoying as hell!”
“Next time we play, we’re adding a rule. He’s forbidden from winning with pairs! Every time he does it, he lands a monster hand. Eight thousand yuan gone in one game!”
“Qi Baoshan, no wonder you had that nickname when you were young. What was it again? ‘Qi Duidui’? ‘Seven-Pairs Duidui’? That was you, wasn’t it?”
“…”
The cheerful flattery and joking inside the room thickened the atmosphere into something almost sticky, dulling Yan Xiaodao’s senses. Voices gradually faded from his ears. His awareness seemed to withdraw from the room as a halo suddenly flashed before his eyes.
Master Qi was genuinely skilled at mahjong. Age had only made him more calculating, better at reading tiles and people alike. In fact, Yan Xiaodao’s own intimidating card and tile skills had all been learned from his godfather.
So Yan had known all along. He simply had never told Captain Xue or Ling He the truth. Wherever Qi Baoshan went, he inevitably made mahjong friends. Apart from silk jackets, black cloth shoes, antiques, cooking a few dishes himself, there was one other thing he could never live without: a mahjong table. And it was from that table that he had earned the old nickname “Qi Duidui.”
Elio’s Notes: The surname Qi, 戚, is pronounced the same as 七, “seven.” Duidui evokes repeated “pairs.” Qi Baoshan’s old mahjong nickname can therefore be heard as both “Qi Duidui” and a joke about “Seven Pairs.” This directly connects him to the mysterious Duidui remembered by Chen Jin in Chapter 70.
The other players sensed that Qi Baoshan and Yan Xiaodao were both carrying serious thoughts. Once the last round ended, they took their leave.
The storyteller disappeared from the stage, replaced by the soft, drawn-out singing of an opera performer. Before Yan Xiaodao could finally begin the real conversation, Qi Baoshan shoved his chair backward with a scrape and complained irritably, “What the hell are they singing? Come on. You and I will go show them how it’s done!”
Qi Baoshan was one of the teahouse’s most valued customers and spent generously enough to support performances there. He simply marched Yan Xiaodao backstage as though he owned the place. That was true VIP treatment.
Backstage, members of the opera troupe were doing makeup and changing costumes. Qi Baoshan was unexpectedly enthusiastic today. He sat in front of a mirror, combed his hair backward, and painted himself in the makeup of an older male role. White greasepaint covered his face, while red pigment around the eyes and between the brows created a faint rouge-like glow. Qi Baoshan’s face was long and thin, and the finished makeup actually looked rather handsome.
Qi Baoshan attached a three-part black beard and beckoned convincingly. “Xiaodao, come here. Put on Zhao Yun makeup and let me see! You and I can sing Changban Slope together.”
Yan Xiaodao’s entire face darkened. “I don’t know how!”
Qi Baoshan said, “How do you not know? Didn’t you dress as Zhao Yun when you were little? I taught you.”
Yan Xiaodao mocked himself with embarrassment. “It looked terrible. I never learned properly.”
Qi Baoshan said, “Put on the full armor of a martial role too. It’ll look good.”
Yan Xiaodao really had played here as a teenager, painting his face into that of handsome Zhao Zilong of Changshan, putting on complete stage armor, grabbing a tiger-headed silver spear, and waving it around with spectacular swagger.
“What are you afraid of? Your foot is completely recovered, even nimbler than before. Think you can’t handle the thick-soled stage boots?” Bitterness entered Qi Baoshan’s voice. The red makeup between his brows looked almost like the fire and blood at the docks. “How exactly did that brat Ling He fix your foot? He healed your foot and conquered your heart along with it. Impressive.”
Yan Xiaodao had been waiting for the past to come up. He moved closer and sat beside Qi Baoshan, his attitude sincere. “Godfather, I stayed away far too long before coming back. I’m sorry.”
There was nothing left for either man to conceal. Wearing the long stage beard, Qi Baoshan looked as though he had already immersed himself in the grand drama of his own life. He raised his head. “You went south. Now you know everything. Xiaodao, what do you think of the life your godfather has lived? You’re angry. You despise the things I did back then. You think I’ve embarrassed you, don’t you?”
Yan Xiaodao slowly shook his head. “Godfather, I don’t think you embarrassed me. I understand that many things in this world aren’t simply black or white, and good and evil don’t always divide cleanly. Chen Jiu was ultimately no decent man. Considering the evil he committed, I can understand why you chose to pursue your own interest while getting rid of someone harmful. But innocent people were dragged into it, murdered simply to silence them. Some things went too far. That I cannot accept.
“Godfather, you’ve taught me many important truths over the years. A man lives by loyalty and conscience. We don’t shrink from what we do, but we must dare to take responsibility for it. People like us have always walked one heavy step at a time between light and darkness. If somebody once stepped off the road by mistake, then correcting that path now would still honor the loyalty, filial duty, benevolence, righteousness, integrity, and sense of shame you taught me from childhood… Godfather, there’s nothing the two of us cannot carry together. Turn yourself in.”
At last Yan Xiaodao revealed the real reason he had come to see Qi Baoshan without telling Ling He. He intended to persuade the man to surrender.
No matter what, Yan never wanted to see the day Ling He charged in to settle an old blood feud and the two of them fought to the death in front of him.
Yan clasped both hands together until his knuckles whitened, but his position remained unwavering. “Godfather, Secretary You has already ended up like that. In my heart, you’ve always been a real man who stands upright beneath heaven and earth. You’re a hundred times stronger than a cowardly, incompetent hypocrite like You Jinglian! And I believe I’m at least ten times stronger than his useless son who could never accomplish anything! Whatever happens in the future, I’ll remain grateful for everything you’ve done for me. If you’re willing to surrender, I’ll go with you. If you go to prison, I’ll stand beside you. I won’t hide. You…”
“If your old man gets dragged to the execution ground and shot, are you going to bring me my last meal, prepare my coffin, and collect my body?!” Qi Baoshan abruptly stood. Inside the cramped dressing room, his body suddenly seemed enormous. The brilliant opera paint beneath the lights made everything surreal. “Heh… heh heh… hahahahaha!”
The performers waiting nearby sensed something wrong and quietly moved away, unwilling to get involved. Soon only father and son remained in the small dressing room. Yan Xiaodao’s bare, clean face confronted Master Qi’s elaborate stage makeup. The paint was a disguise, yet somehow it drew out the rawest anger and grief beneath it.
Qi Baoshan staggered a step, then suddenly stared at Xiaodao. “Xiaodao, I’ll tell you this much. The two of us really are ten times, a hundred times better than that father and son from the You family. Your godfather is ten times, a hundred times better than that beast surnamed You… I just can’t accept it.”
“I really do regret it…” Emotion struggled openly inside Qi Baoshan’s eyes. His breath repeatedly lifted the three strands of beard hanging beside his mouth. Yan Xiaodao had never seen his godfather lose control this thoroughly or reveal himself this honestly.
Qi Baoshan spoke straight from his heart. “That bastard Chen Jiu deserved exactly what happened to him. I don’t regret killing him. Hacking him apart and getting his filthy blood all over me only dirtied my hands. He was scum through and through! Originally, we were supposed to divide the money and leave. Nobody expected the innkeeper and his wife to walk in at exactly the wrong moment. I didn’t want to harm them, but for my own selfish interests I allowed Zhang Tingqiang to kill an innocent husband and wife. That was my failure of humanity. It is a debt I’ve carried my entire life. My conscience has never been at peace.
“That old bastard You Jinglian was treacherous and filthy enough to make anyone despise him. I have never willingly associated with that sort of person and barely dealt with him afterward… He was the one who took advantage of the situation and assaulted the innkeeper’s wife.”
More than a decade earlier, on a bleak rainy night in the wilderness, a group of men committed a terrible crime. Blood stained the staircase railing of the inn. Rotten boards beneath them could barely endure the weight of several grown men fighting and splintered underfoot, nearly collapsing.
When lives were at stake, benevolence, morality, and humanity all vanished inside the flood of blood. Once the first drop splashed across a man’s eyelids, the thick smell of blood could bury whatever caution, fear, and conscience remained in his bones. The frenzy that followed could no longer be reversed. Every strike of every blade drew blood.
Qi Baoshan was left-handed. In his left hand he held the broad steel blade, droplets of blood running from its edge and falling one by one to the floor.
He had been forced to act. The viciousness and cruelty he displayed at that moment were also the shield he needed to survive. In a scene where people were killing for money, showing even the smallest trace of weakness or fear could bring a blade down on your own body and make you the second corpse after Chen Jiu. Qi Baoshan had nowhere to retreat. In the narrow road where enemies met, necessity pushed him into temporarily joining forces with Zhang Tingqiang and You Jinglian. Willingly or not, they became grasshoppers tied to the same rope, every pair of hands soaked in blood.
The woman’s pale face and terrified scream almost pierced through the thin sound of the rain, startling the group of criminals and throwing them briefly into panic. That single moment of disorder brought catastrophe down upon the innocent witnesses. Yet when Li Shuping’s hands were bound, her cries silenced, and she was hidden inside a wardrobe, no one expected You Jinglian’s bloodshot eyes to settle on the attractive woman with another kind of intent.
Qi Baoshan was furious at the sudden complication. It violated every cautious habit he possessed. Every additional act meant dragging more and more people into the disaster, turning one spark into a fire impossible to extinguish. He cursed You Jinglian in disgust. “Are you that fucking desperate? You absolutely have to touch the woman? Pathetic!”
You Jinglian emerged from the scene disheveled and half-dressed, while dark blood stained the floor beside the wardrobe.
Qi Baoshan was so disgusted that he kicked You Jinglian hard in the backside. That one kick became another reason the two men disliked and distrusted each other for years afterward and kept their distance.
You Jinglian suffered from a private physical condition. The more a man like that was tormented by feelings of inadequacy, the more viciously he might attempt to prove his own masculinity against people unable to resist him. In the end, however, he was physically incapable of completing the assault. Even his attempted cruelty was contemptible.
But his filthy act forced the group into murdering witnesses once again. The bodies that screamed beneath the flames until they blackened became an unforgivable sin written into all their lives. Their souls turned to ash in that fire. From that point onward, there was no road back.
……
Qi Baoshan seemed to have completely entered the opera now. He blew dramatically at the long black beard beside his mouth, hummed a line of lyrics, then snatched up a stage spear and began swinging it.
Yan Xiaodao finally asked another question that had weighed on him. “Ling Huang, the boss of the Ling family back then, should have been innocent too. Was he framed, imprisoned, and stripped of his property because he knew what really happened?”
“Innocent my ass!” Qi Baoshan cursed. The long spear thrust forward, and Yan Xiaodao instinctively leaned backward to dodge, only for the spearhead to strike the edge of a cabinet instead.
“I know how I exposed myself to the police now… because back then I personally went to the station and reported Ling Huang.” Qi Baoshan sighed toward heaven over his own terrible luck, anger and unwillingness burning in his eyes. “But I do not regret reporting him, bringing him down, or sending him to prison. A piece of scum who preys on children, even children raised beneath his own roof, deserves to be destroyed by everyone.”
“Sometimes the law feels like a joke. Why doesn’t the law castrate people like that before cutting them into pieces?” The heavy opera makeup made Qi Baoshan’s expression even more sorrowful as he laughed bitterly. “I can guess what that kid surnamed Ling wants revenge for. We are the people he intends to settle accounts with. You Jinglian and some of those other bastards lost every scrap of conscience, harmed innocent people, and profited from flesh. I never did that. I never committed those filthy crimes! Xiaodao, your godfather has a bottom line. But this world contains far too many bastards who have none.”
Yan Xiaodao said nothing.
He stood dazed in the middle of the dressing room, grieving for his godfather and suddenly wanting Ling He beside him so badly that the words clogged his throat and refused to emerge.
After surviving every storm and finally seeing certain truths clearly, Qi Baoshan laughed with the open bearing of a man from the jianghu. “Xiaodao, you brat, at least you still have loyalty. You didn’t run away at the crucial moment and leave this old man alone waiting for a lawsuit or a bullet. You and I aren’t even related by blood. For our father-and-son bond to reach this point, I, Qi Baoshan, am satisfied.”
The rhythm onstage changed with a clash of gongs. A dan performer entered for the next piece, while the drummer struck out a crisp pattern that seemed perfectly timed to shift the atmosphere inside the dressing room.
Qi Baoshan clearly had no interest in the soft, delicate singing drifting from the stage. Carrying the spear, the old man suddenly recovered the wildness of youth and launched into a Tan-school passage from Search for the Orphan, Save the Orphan.
The opera tells the tragic story of the Orphan of Zhao. Cheng Ying, a retainer of the wronged Zhao family, sacrifices the life of his own biological child to save the surviving orphan of Zhao Dun, then raises that child to adulthood so the Zhao family can eventually avenge itself.
Elio’s Notes: Search for the Orphan, Save the Orphan is a classic Peking-opera work based on the ancient story of the Orphan of Zhao. The “Tan school” refers to the influential performance tradition associated with legendary Peking-opera master Tan Xinpei.
Qi Baoshan’s voice was rich but hoarse, its rough edge slicing through the heavy air while the graceful figures onstage dissolved into drifting arcs of light. His singing carried years of bitterness. Every word was clear and emotionally piercing, leaving Yan Xiaodao deeply unsettled. It felt as though every line was soaked in Qi’s own blood and tears and had been chosen specifically for his godson to hear.
Mr. Ling, whom Master Qi had just been discussing so sincerely, was at that exact moment sitting alone in a large, empty room at their temporary base, headphones connected to surveillance equipment. Tiny spasms moved across his face. His complexion was grave, his body as motionless as a clay statue.
Mao Zhixiu saw the man’s terrible mood and concluded that dinner was clearly doomed. With no alternative, she cooked an enormous pot of crude, simplified spaghetti with tomato meat sauce herself. The pot was deep enough to resemble a basin and could feed all five or six of them.
Mao Zhixiu said, “Mr. Ling, I know it isn’t up to your standards, but at least honor me by eating a bowl. Otherwise I swear I’ll never cook again!”
Ling He lowered his lashes, apparently entering meditation. He replayed every section of Master Qi and Xiaodao’s intimate conversation, consciousness buried beneath intense emotions and countless tangled details. Many facts differed slightly from what Ling had originally believed. Tiny deviations at the beginning had accumulated through a butterfly effect until, close to the end, the picture had veered wildly off course. The assumptions he had defended for years began to loosen. His brows twisted tightly. “I may have been wrong.”
Mao Zhixiu did not notice the seriousness of what he meant and continued provoking him. “Wrong about what? Aren’t you always ‘the prettiest’ and ‘always right’?”
Pain tightened Ling He’s brows. “I stabbed him. I may have been wrong.”
People in love really were all insane. Mao Zhixiu shivered. “Ling He, Mr. Yan’s foot has been healed for ages. Wake up!”
Ling He unconsciously touched his own ankle, remembering that sharp, bone-piercing pain of suffering an injustice and being unable to let it go. Hatred had driven him to attack Xiaodao viciously, and the blade he put through Yan’s foot had really been meant for Qi Baoshan. Only now did he realize that the figure behind Xiaodao, the target he had kept fixed at the center of his sights, had started blurring out of focus.
“Master Qi wasn’t really part of that group. He wasn’t one of those people. He didn’t do those things, and it doesn’t sound as though he lied to Xiaodao.” For once, the perpetually calm and commanding Mr. Ling had lost his usual composure. He gripped his phone, hesitating.
He lowered his head and began typing. He wrote something, erased it, rewrote it. After the name “Xiaodao,” he had no idea what else to say. Finally, he sent only two words: 【Xiaodao.】
Two words were enough to comfort people who loved each other. Yan Xiaodao answered instantly with nothing but a smiling face.
Ling He’s heart suddenly hurt. Xiaodao was miserable, yet he was still smiling at Ling and forcing himself to remain strong. Ling quickly sent another message. 【Xiaodao, I want to see you.】
Yan Xiaodao replied: 【Tonight isn’t convenient. Tomorrow.】
Ling He’s fingers moved urgently, the longing in his heart almost spilling straight onto the screen: 【Xiaodao, come here. I want to lick you.】
The line nearly blinded Ling He himself. Those absolutely were not words he could imagine saying aloud.
Every character looked perfectly ordinary on its own. Put together, the sentence became something Ling He no longer recognized.
Ling He tilted his head and stared at what he had typed, picturing Yan Xiaodao. At last he understood with painful clarity that he had fallen far too deeply, completely defeated by emotion. Yet reason still wrestled with his fingers. Before sending the message, he deleted one crucial word.
【Xiaodao, come here. I miss you.】
Elio’s Notes: The joke works particularly neatly in Chinese: deleting the single character meaning “lick” turns “I want to lick you” directly into “I miss you.” Ling He therefore manages to turn an embarrassingly explicit impulse into a perfectly respectable confession with one deletion.