Twenty-four hours later, Mingliu Stadium, located in the prime waterfront district of Linwan Harbor, welcomed the national team’s last stand in the final World Cup qualifying round.
The entire city of Linwan turned out, and huge tides of fans surged toward the stadium.
The airport was packed. Many fervent spectators had traveled from other cities specifically for this crucial match and began shouting slogans as soon as they landed, wearing the death-defying attitude of people ready to perish together with the foreign enemy if the team failed to win. Dragging flags and banners behind them, they converged into a red army and rolled grandly toward the stadium entrances.
Traffic restrictions began across more than a dozen surrounding blocks. Directing the fans and ensuring match-day security offered the most convenient excuse for closing roads. Yet anyone observing the surrounding streets carefully would notice that fewer police vehicles were parked along the roads than on an ordinary match day, as though someone had deliberately left plenty of open space through the streets and alleys.
At the same time, far more mysterious figures flickered around nearby buildings, street shops, food stalls, and bus stops. Dressed in plain clothes, they occupied and guarded every major route leading away from the stadium in every direction.
A vast net had been woven in secret, determined to catch its prey.
The lines entering the stadium moved in orderly fashion while fans shouted slogans and sang the national anthem all the way inside.
Only one section of the eastern stands had been reserved for visiting supporters. Every other stand churned into a red sea, flags rippling across it in waves. Yan Xiaodao and several of his brothers followed the seat numbers on their tickets straight to the VIP section facing the pitch, immediately behind the media seats.
Yang Xifeng had a five-starred red flag slung over his shoulder and was actually in high spirits. “Good things happen when you follow Big Brother. We little guys even get to sneak into the VIP seats. I’ve watched football for years and I always bought the cheapest tickets!”
Kuanzi kept an exceptionally solemn face and reminded him in a low voice, “You think Big Brother brought you out here to play?”
Yang Xifeng looked around in excitement. “We understand!”
Somewhere in the stands directly opposite them, too far away for Yan Xiaodao to distinguish with the naked eye, he guessed that Mr. Ling had also brought a group of lean, agile people and concealed them in that direction, echoing his position across the stadium. Even more plainclothes officers were scattered throughout the stands. The only thing he did not know was which sections Captain Xue and Deputy Captain Fang had chosen.
As kickoff approached, the stadium shook with deafening shouts and pounding drums. The passionate fans, full of hope and devotion, knew nothing about the story about to unfold on the pitch or the danger and tension gathering outside it.
When the South Korean team came out, the entire stadium greeted the visitors with a sinister chorus of boos.
When the home side emerged, the stadium answered with thunderous cheers. Number 11, Bei Jiahong, was indeed the focus of every eye. Thousands of beams of light and lines of sight converged on the number across his back. With more than twenty league goals on the season, Xiao Bei naturally carried the expectations of countless people into this match.
Bei Jiahong remained unsmiling during warm-ups, weighed down by his thoughts. Just before kickoff, he instinctively lowered his head and kissed the red cord bracelet tied around his left wrist. Naturally, it was something from his lover.
Yan Xiaodao lifted the collar of his T-shirt and brought his lips close to the miniature microphone. “Where are you now?”
Today he wore a light, casual T-shirt and practice pants, deliberately ordinary and inconspicuous as he blended into the crowd of fans.
The calm voice he had been waiting for came through the earpiece. “Right opposite you.”
“You’re above the visiting supporters’ section?” Yan Xiaodao raised his head and looked across the stadium.
“Close enough. We’ve already prepared water bottles and assorted projectiles for the enemy forces below us. Heh heh.” A low laugh rumbled out of Mr. Ling’s chest while a chorus of regionally accented curses sounded around him.
“Don’t start trouble. Be careful, baby.” Yan Xiaodao reminded him over and over, unable to stop worrying.
“Found any likely targets?” Ling He asked.
“No. We’ve been looking the whole time. There are too many people. It’s like fishing a needle out of the sea!” Yan Xiaodao said quickly. “Captain Xue’s side hasn’t said anything either. They must still be searching.”
He could not even find the figure of Ling He in his baseball cap and high ponytail. The red ocean had swallowed every individual who might otherwise have stood out.
The whistle blew. The nerve-racking match finally began. From a distance, the emerald pitch looked like an enormous green cloth onto which someone had thrown two handfuls of white and red dice. The dice struck the ground and scattered, and both teams immediately became locked in a fierce struggle for possession.
Yan Xiaodao had no attention to spare for the match. Every ounce of concentration was fixed on the surging crowd in the stands.
This was absurdly difficult. The match had sold out, all eighty thousand seats were full, and buying a ticket did not require real-name registration. People were everywhere. Trying to pick one or two targets out of those rising and falling waves of humanity was like trying to sift a single drop of water from the ocean when it was exactly the same color as every drop around it. Where were they supposed to begin? Even during their secret meeting the night before, they had not been certain Gu Yaoting would appear at Mingliu Stadium tonight. If he did not come, the entire operation would have been for nothing.
What they were betting on was their opponent’s arrogant confidence, the kind that made him willing to appear in the most dangerous possible place.
Xue Qian, meanwhile, stood somewhere nobody else would have expected.
His section was directly behind the South Korean goal, close enough that the person he was watching was Bei Jiahong himself. As the national team’s advanced striker, Bei Jiahong kept drifting and charging through the front line. Every run carried his fleeting figure past the goal, and his tiniest expressions and body movements were clearly visible beneath Captain Xue’s eyes.
He had not spotted the target in this stand either. Not so much as a hair.
With nothing else to do, Xue Qian started chatting with people he knew over the shared communication channel. “There’ve actually been rumors online for a while that somebody’s manipulating the national team’s results in the final qualifying round. Nobody believed it at the time. After lying low and preparing for so many years, surely this time we ought to make the World Cup, especially with how much attention the people above are giving it. Who’d have thought we’d keep losing right up to this last stand? Maybe those rumors really are true.”
His deputy, Fang Yuhui, picked up the thread. “Didn’t Economic Crimes already find evidence that several big bookmakers in Yandu may be involved in Southeast Asian football betting? Fuck, they’re aiming straight at making us lose this one! There are eighty thousand people packed into this stadium tonight. If we really lose by three, do those players think they’re walking out of here alive?!”
Kindhearted Deputy Fang was still worrying about the safety of the national-team players. He really did have the righteous sense of duty expected of a police officer.
Yan Xiaodao said, “I saw two exposé posts online too. They laid out the analysis clearly and even had some evidence. They directly accused people of fixing matches.”
Ling He cut into the channel at an unhurried pace. “So Gu Yaoting may be participating in the bookmakers’ operation and putting money into it for profit.”
Fang Yuhui said, “He stopped doing loan-sharking and switched to this?”
Yan Xiaodao said, “Loan-sharking comes with all kinds of follow-up trouble. Fixing betting markets is much easier. If Gu Yaoting is genuinely greedy for money and happens to enjoy the pleasure of manipulating people in the palm of his hand, then an underground football-betting syndicate is exactly the sort of business he’d choose.”
Ling He laughed coldly. “And if he uses his connections to control several key players, say his own goalkeeper and striker… then fixing a match becomes effortless. He can sit back, collect his principal and returns, and make a guaranteed profit.”
Those were matters for the football association and Economic Crimes to investigate together. At present, Xue Qian and the teams in the stadium cared about only one thing: whether they could catch the number-one suspect.
Most of the first half passed without anyone noticing. Neither team scored, and the action teams hidden throughout the stands found nothing off the pitch either.
Fang Yuhui suddenly growled, “Hey, hey? One-on-one… Fuck…”
Bei Jiahong received a diagonal pass from deep. Somehow it had beaten the offside trap, a once-in-a-century mistake by the South Korean defense. Bei Jiahong himself seemed not to have expected it. His feet hesitated for an instant, then the natural predatory instinct of a striker and his innate sense of where the goal stood drove him forward with the ball.
Many fans had already risen to their feet in anticipation, years of hope dissolved into the bright red paint across their faces.
Bei Jiahong left every defender behind and sprinted toward the opposing goal, but at the final moment he suddenly hesitated. His leg drew back to shoot and then did not. The chance vanished in an instant, and the goalkeeper gathered the ball without mercy.
“Ahhh!”
The entire stadium erupted in a groan of frustration and regret.
Deputy Fang’s furious roar over the communicator nearly deafened everyone. Xue Qian opened a private channel and complained, “Keep your fucking voice down. You’re louder than somebody screaming in bed.”
Deputy Fang nearly choked on a mouthful of water. “Fuck, have you ever heard me screaming in bed?”
Xue Qian gave an utterly shameless snort. “I’ve heard plenty of men screaming in bed.”
Deputy Fang broke out in goosebumps from head to toe, could not take another second of it, and immediately shut the private channel off.
Sweat dripped from Bei Jiahong’s hair. His expression was grave. He lifted his eyes toward a particular part of the stands and then lowered them again, looking even worse than before kickoff.
Xue Qian suddenly noticed. “Bei Jiahong’s not right. I think he deliberately threw away that chance. Chief, check the replay. Which section was he looking at just now?”
That old fox Bureau Chief Bao had hidden himself behind the scenes to command the operation. At that moment he was stationed in the stadium’s central monitoring room, facing dozens of surveillance screens and watching for the slightest clue exposed anywhere in the venue. Like Jiang Taigong sitting calmly at the fishing platform, he directed the younger men fighting on the front line.
Bao Zhengwei coughed once over the communicator. “Roughly the south sections six through eight, near the main stand.”
Yan Xiaodao sprang to his feet. Several men beside him followed instantly, all of them looking around with grim concentration as they searched along the line of Bei Jiahong’s gaze.
Bei Jiahong’s steps had grown hesitant and heavy. He kept looking unmistakably in that direction, his expression carrying helplessness and a plea for aid.
Yan Xiaodao reported softly over the communicator, “South Stand Eight, Row Twelve, not far below us. Chief, zoom in. I think the man in the wide-brimmed round hat and sunglasses is Lu Yilun.”
Bao Zhengwei confirmed it quickly through the cameras. “That’s Lu Yilun. He keeps looking at Lu Yilun.”
Everyone felt a trace of disappointment. Their source for the information was nothing more than fragments from private conversations between Lu Yilun and Bei Jiahong. They had no hard proof. Lu Yilun had appeared, but Young Master Gu remained invisible. The luxury boxes, lounges, and changing-room areas were all covered by police, yet no one had found the target. Could Gu Yaoting simply be sitting comfortably at home waiting to collect his dirty money?
“Could he just not be here at all?” Yang Xifeng had grown tired of carrying the flag and finally sat down lazily to wipe his sweat and catch his breath.
“Hey, fuck!… Hold it!” Kuanzi suddenly shot to his feet and clutched his head.
Just before the end of the first half, the national team lost its shape while defending a corner. A defender failed to mark his man, and the visiting side scored.
A great buzz of shock rolled through the stadium, followed immediately by a long, miserable sigh.
Xue Qian reminded them calmly over the communicator, “It’s finally started.”
The rumored fixed score was a 0–3 defeat. The script had finally begun.
Bei Jiahong lowered his head as though distracted and drifted among his teammates through the tunnel. It was the brief breathing space of halftime.
Half the high spirits that had filled the stadium seemed to evaporate in silence. Many fans still clung to a faint hope that the team could come from behind, especially against the South Korean side that had tormented them for so many years. At home, they absolutely could not lose.
During halftime, the head coach rearranged tactics around several key positions and shouted himself hoarse trying to lift the players’ spirits.
Bei Jiahong sat in the back corner of the changing room with a numb, vacant expression. The coach’s yelling sounded like an auditory hallucination to him. Beneath the large towel over his head, his phone suddenly vibrated.
He glanced at the number and immediately rejected the call.
The phone began vibrating frantically again, scraping at his nerves.
Bei Jiahong scrubbed at his sweat with the towel as though he meant to take off an entire layer of skin and rub his face raw. Using the towel over his head for cover, he finally lost patience and secretly answered.
The voice on the other end came through clearly. “We still need two more goals.”
Bei Jiahong remained silent.
Gu Yaoting coaxed him. “Baby, I’m watching you. Be good.”
Bei Jiahong said nothing.
Gu Yaoting threatened, “If you don’t behave, your brother will take you back to Yandu. From the looks of it, maybe you miss that lively life in Yandu where somebody always adores you and keeps you company?”
Bei Jiahong said, “…You filthy, shameless bastard.”
Despite the muffling towel, a thunderclap exploded from the direction of the head coach in front of him. The coach could take no more and began swearing. “I’m laying out fucking tactics up here and somebody’s making a phone call down there! Fuck your mothers, do you assholes even want to play the second half?!”
Bei Jiahong snapped the phone shut, his face bloodless and every drop running from him cold sweat.
……
Bao Zhengwei suddenly spoke over the channel. “Bei Jiahong just secretly answered a phone call in the changing room. Somebody must have called him.”
Everyone on the channel blurted out at once, “Gu Yaoting called him?!”
Yan Xiaodao realized Mr. Ling had not spoken for quite a while.
A moment ago seven or eight people had practically been fighting to talk at once. Yan Xiaodao had sharp hearing, but now he could no longer pick out Ling He’s voice among them. Where had Ling He gone?
After finishing his tirade, the head coach shouted several more hollow rallying slogans. When the players turned to head back out, the coach’s face was waxen, his expression close to despair. Everyone seemed to have a premonition that the match would now follow the prearranged scoreline. This was, in truth, an “elimination match.”
Bei Jiahong habitually fell to the back of the line, unwilling to be surrounded or watched. Figures swayed everywhere around him. He seemed to let sheer inertia push and force him forward. Apart from his legs moving, his upper body and awareness were numb. In his mind, the tunnel leading back onto the pitch was black and freezing. For years, every time he entered it had felt like crawling through an icy hell, an experience full of pain and terror.
Someone suddenly grabbed his elbow from behind and tore him out of that walking-dead trance.
Bei Jiahong turned his head. The corner of his eye caught the sweep of a flying ponytail, and before he could react he was yanked into a storeroom around the corner of the corridor.
The dark, cramped storeroom was barely large enough for two tall adult men. With both of them forced inside, they were almost forehead to forehead and chest to chest, though neither particularly wanted this kind of physical contact. They barely knew each other.
The man before him had an aggressively striking face and presence. Pale-green eyes possessed such powerful attraction that they seemed capable of seizing the consciousness of anyone nearby. Bei Jiahong stared in surprise, utterly unprepared for this hurried meeting. Ling He had pulled a baseball cap low over his face, with a long braid hanging from the opening in the back. Of course, the two men recognized one another on sight. For years they had known each other only by reputation without ever meeting, each deliberately avoiding every humiliating, unhappy memory attached to the other.
Ling He went straight to the point. “Jiahong, where is Lord Ting right now?”
Bei Jiahong shook his head woodenly. “I don’t know.”
Ling He pointed outside and said sharply, “The police have already surrounded this place with surveillance and manpower. There’s a net outside with no escape, and tonight they are going to arrest him. Tell me, where exactly is Gu Yaoting hiding?!”
Bei Jiahong hesitated for half a second. “He must be somewhere around the stadium watching me, but the stands are enormous. I honestly don’t know where he’s hiding.”
Ling He nodded and believed him. Then he said decisively, “You are not allowed to lose this match. Go back out there in the second half and turn the score around.”
Ling He was giving him an order, and his tone allowed no argument. One man was forcing him to score an own goal, while another demanded he equalize. Bei Jiahong wanted to spit blood straight into Ling He’s face.
Bei Jiahong’s lashes were still soaked with sweat. He panted irritably. “Turn it around? You fucking think South Korea is some soft persimmon of a team?!”
Instinctively, he did not want to see Ling He. He did not want contact with anyone who knew what lay in his past. Every such person tore open old wounds that had already hardened into black scabs and forced fresh lines of blood from them. And in Bei Jiahong’s eyes, Ling He really did seem to stand outside everything, high above the clouds, looking down on him without restraint. That overwhelming sense of superiority peeled away the last layer of dignity from Bei Jiahong’s face.
“We’re behind because of you. Why did you deliberately refuse to score that one-on-one chance in the first half? If you don’t bring the score back, who will?” One sentence from Ling He left Bei Jiahong unable to answer.
Bei Jiahong’s lips moved, then he suddenly roared, “Fuck! If I don’t do what he says, the one who gets hacked to death is me, not you! I’m the one trapped in this fucking mud pit covered in filth, not you! You’re standing there untouched. What fucking right do you have to judge me?”
“Do you want to stay trapped in this mud pit forever?
“Do you enjoy being covered in filth?
“Don’t you want to leave this place forever?” Ling He seemed able to see through him.
Bei Jiahong was furious, yet words failed him. At that moment his eyes were forced wet. It was the first time he had experienced how ruthless Young Master Ling could be. The man had left him no room at all to bargain.
“You won’t die.” Ling He’s chest rose and fell with the same heavy breaths. In the darkness, his features seemed to shine with a cool-toned light. He sounded absolutely confident, even naturally cold-blooded. “Do exactly what I tell you. You will not die, and that ‘good friend’ of yours sitting in the stands will be fine too.”
Bei Jiahong said nothing. Once again without warning, Ling He caught him by the shoulders. Their body heat touched as Ling He suddenly leaned close to his ear.
“Don’t be so afraid. Don’t be weak. Be strong. I’ll tell you how you’re going to get out of the stadium tonight…” Ling He lowered his voice and carefully explained his plan to Xiao Bei.
……
The second half began, and the situation immediately took a turn for the worse.
If the national team could survive twenty minutes without conceding again, it would already count as luck. Their goal was staggering under a bombardment of attacks, barely holding together. The visitors’ confidence surged as they hammered arrogantly at the Chinese defense. Captain Xue could no longer bear watching from his old position and hurried across to the other end to “guard” the South Korean goal instead.
Many fans in the stands had grief in their eyes. Online, the warm-up act before a full eruption of public opinion had already begun. “China is definitely losing this match. The score won’t stop at 0–1!”
Posts flooded social media in reverse torrents. Public sentiment swelled like a sudden tide inundating Linwan’s docks, pushing rapidly toward a climax with a salty, rank smell.
“FIXED MATCH! Everybody knew before kickoff it would end 0–3!!”
“Those Korean bastards have pushed THAAD right up to our border and tonight Dagu has fallen. This is a national humiliation!!”
“Xiao Bei is completely off form today and even blew a one-on-one! Heard he stayed out all night before the match screwing around. Of course his legs are weak! Absolute trash!!”
Every time Bei Jiahong touched the ball in the attacking third, opponents swarmed him. For a while he drifted into a daze, memories running endlessly through his mind as though he had become trapped inside some fragment of the past, struggling in the swamp that suffocated him.
He never wanted to return to this stadium again, never wanted to step onto this grass. A faint sheen of blood seemed to cover the field. Old blood had seeped into the roots and soil, filling the entire stadium with the stench he hated.
Linwan “Mingliu” Stadium. The name itself pointed to the leading corporate sponsor that had built it. Yes, it was the Jianyue Mingliu Group owned by Chairman Jian Mingxun that had financed this magnificent, incomparable stadium, the place where Bei Jiahong’s nightmare had begun.
He wanted to leave. He wanted to escape completely from this poisonous cage soaked in sludge. What he had felt over all these years resembled, in some unknowable way, Ling He hanging inside that sea cage with nowhere to escape, unable to live and unable to die. Right now he wanted to plunge headfirst into the cold, filthy seawater. If he was going to be hacked to death anyway, then everyone might as well die together and get it over with.
All across the stadium, the fans suddenly rose to their feet.
Although he was not part of the force responsible for crowd control, Xue Qian stood at the same time out of instinct, not knowing what was about to happen.
The entire stadium began singing the national anthem.
Bei Jiahong’s back trembled. Under the pursuit of the television cameras his face remained expressionless, but his eyes visibly shivered with moisture. The Korean defender marking him closely may have been shaken for one second by the martial rhythm of the anthem. A defensive midfielder on Bei Jiahong’s team threaded a straight pass forward. Bei Jiahong touched it lightly with the inside of his foot and slipped past the defender.
The solemn anthem continued. Before most of the stadium even realized what had happened, Bei Jiahong was sprinting toward the opposing goal. He was still nearly twenty-five meters out, a long distance, when a center back launched into a two-footed side-on sliding challenge meant to cut off his path.
Bei Jiahong struck. He did not even need to identify the direction of the goal. Guided by one of the most painful images in his memory, he swung his leg and blasted the ball toward a hideous bronze gate covered in blue-faced fangs, pouring more than ten years of accumulated hatred into the shot.
The blue-faced demon guarding the gate shattered under that strike, splintering and scattering before his eyes. The South Korean goalkeeper was nearly blasted into the net together with the ball.
By heaven’s will, it went in.
After several seconds of absolute silence, Mingliu Stadium erupted like a pot boiling over.
It was genuinely beyond everyone’s expectations. Captain Xue had thought the situation was deteriorating so badly that he had been preparing to join the armed police in clearing the stands and suppressing a riot.
“Holy fucking hell… unbelievable. It’s in!” Deputy Fang, the only genuine football fan on the channel, offered his professional reaction to the goal. Maybe a lifelong dream was finally coming true.
The stands dissolved into hysterical celebration, making one suppressed figure stand out even more sharply against the surrounding atmosphere. Lu Yilun’s back seemed to fold inward. His melancholy eyes hid beneath the shadow of his hat brim, and he shifted restlessly as his fingers trembled. Every thought was on Xiao Bei. How could the fans celebrating this goal possibly imagine the storm and bloodshed that might follow behind it?
Bei Jiahong himself looked stunned even as his teammates hurled themselves around him in wild celebration.
What happened to the own goal he had promised?
He had put the ball into South Korea’s net.
Would he get out of the stadium tonight? Would Gu Yaoting, hidden somewhere inside, drag him away and chop him into minced meat?
Could he trust what Ling He had told him? Would those people really get him out?
Lu Yilun began moving slowly along the stairs to leave, only for a solid figure to block his path. He looked up and saw Yan Xiaodao standing in front of him.
Lu Yilun’s expression changed. He hunched one shoulder and tried to squeeze past.
Yan Xiaodao said, “Mr. Lu, are you going to find Xiao Bei, or are you trying to find someone else?”
“Why are you stopping me? Get out of my way!” Lu Yilun’s expression turned cold and gloomy. After years of surviving in the entertainment industry, he could produce every possible expression with ease. Whether a camera was present or not, Brother Lu could change the weather on that face at will.
“Do you know where that man is?” Yan Xiaodao asked, unwilling to give up.
“I don’t know anything. I have nothing to tell you. Stop asking me.” Lu Yilun was cold and miserable. Yan Xiaodao’s very presence seemed to push him toward a dead end and leave him on the brink of collapse. Lu Yilun had believed Bei Jiahong would lose exactly as predicted before the match. Fine, appease those demons and buy the two of them a little breathing room so he could plan their escape… Now both of them were finished.
Yan Xiaodao opened his mouth again, but Lu Yilun suddenly exploded. “He scored and you’re all happy, aren’t you? You’re so fucking pleased with yourselves! What use are all these police? Can you actually catch the real criminals and monsters? Does anyone genuinely care whether Jiahong lives or dies? If he wins this match and gets killed for it, does anyone give a damn?!”
In an impulsive burst that was almost violent, Lu Yilun shoved Yan Xiaodao aside and forced his way through.
“You can’t run around on your own. It’s dangerous outside!” Yan Xiaodao’s expression changed too. He followed Lu Yilun down the stands and charged toward the stairs.