The situation on the field changed again because of Xiao Bei’s goal.
It was as though an invisible taiji diagram lay faintly buried beneath the turf. Now it slowly began to turn, reversing yin and yang, heaven and earth, and overturning the entire balance of the match. The national team had equalized and surged with renewed momentum. The anthem roaring from all directions became even more magnificent as Bei Jiahong carried the ball through midfield again. Several players exchanged two or three short passes, the sort of neat combination play the national side managed only once in a century. The ball was slipped toward the byline, and the team unleashed its trademark attack, a cross from the end line. The ball came into the goalmouth and struck the hurriedly raised shin of a South Korean defender.
“AHHHHHHHHHHH!”
An own goal.
Heaven above. The opposing defender had actually put the ball into his own net right in front of goal.
The home side had not only equalized but taken a one-goal lead. It was a miracle unfolding tonight. The fans in the stadium were nearly fainting and screaming themselves hoarse with joy.
Over the communications channel, Ling He quickly reported to Bureau Chief Bao and Captain Xue, “Watch every direction. Xiao Bei may be in danger.”
Xue Qian murmured, “He really had the guts to score. Fucking incredible.”
Ling He suddenly said, “Bei Jiahong has a way to leave the field early. Captain Xue, have your people prepare to protect him through the tunnel and take him away ahead of everyone else. Take him now. Immediately.”
Xue Qian said, “…Understood. Yuhui, Team Three, move!”
Before the match, many fans had bet on the national side winning by a single goal. The bookmakers were the ones facing a catastrophic payout now. If someone truly was manipulating this match from behind the scenes, would the people fixing it spare the man who had disobeyed their order and scored?
He was probably going to die horribly.
Hands and feet chopped off, body cut into pieces and dumped from a Linwan pier to feed the fish, or else ending up like Yi Han, covered in humiliating wounds and soaking in freezing seawater until his skin turned white… But tonight, if death had to come, he would rather die standing.
Bei Jiahong let the sweat stream freely along his brow bone and eye sockets. He did not even need to perform the role Ling He had assigned him. Extreme exhaustion and tension were already enough to make his stomach contract and spasm, sending every churning emotion surging violently toward his throat.
At the sideline, Bei Jiahong suddenly doubled over. After a bout of violent dry heaving, he began throwing up spectacularly.
The scene erupted in commotion. The bench descended into chaos and someone shouted for the team doctor. Bei Jiahong had suffered from psychogenic vomiting for several years, so this was far from the first time he had been sick and nobody considered it a new condition. No one had expected an attack to happen openly during such an important international match. Spectators stared in shock and disappointment.
Ling He cut in over the channel. “Chief, anything unusual in the stands?”
Xue Qian said, “Yuhui, hold the emergency tunnel. Keep your eyes on the medical team.”
At the same time, chaotic footsteps and rough breathing sounded through the channel. Yan Xiaodao shouted in a low voice, “Lu Yilun just ran from my section. He must be going to find Bei Jiahong!”
Xue Qian said, “Get Lu Yilun back. Don’t let him run around by himself. It’s dangerous outside now.”
Yan Xiaodao forced his way through the packed crowd and answered, “…I’m catching him now!”
Every member of the operation had a separate role and locked onto a separate target while moving at full speed. In every visible part of the stands, tens of thousands of people celebrated while red scraps of paper whirled through the sky. In the places the crowd could not see, the hidden struggle had filled the air with alarm.
Most of their people converged on the tunnel beside the Chinese coaching area, assuming Bei Jiahong would leave that way. Only Ling He remained where he was. Amid the wildly celebrating crowd, his own target, the big bookmaker who had just lost a fortune, ought to be moving in the opposite direction.
Bao Zhengwei must have been drowning in work inside the control room. Who knew whether the old man’s eyes remained as sharp as they had been in his youth? The surveillance team stared at dozens of monitors, rapidly switching among different sections of the stands and every area behind the scenes.
Bao Zhengwei suddenly said, “Our people have been watching the home sections this entire time. There’s only one section in the stadium assigned to the visiting supporters. We overlooked it.”
Ling He went instantly alert and stood. “Chief, you think he’s down below my section?”
“Look carefully. Front row of that section. There’s a dark-skinned man with a short ponytail…” Bao Zhengwei’s voice came in broken pieces as though he were tracking the figure in real time while speaking. “He stood up as soon as the score went ahead. He’s very tall. He’s leaving… He’s taking Tunnel Fifteen into the corridor… He may be heading for the players’ tunnel to find Bei Jiahong too!”
Ling He had been waiting for Bao’s directions.
Before Bureau Chief Bao had even finished shouting, Ling He was already charging from his concealed position.
Bao Zhengwei barked with absolute authority, “Ling He, stay where you are. Do not go over there by yourself. It’s dangerous!
“Xue Qian, Team One, support him! Target moving east from Tunnel Fifteen… Black shirt and trousers, sunglasses, ponytail, very tall!”
If a drone had been circling above the stadium at that moment, it would have captured Ling He’s lean figure fighting through cracks in the crowd, using the most efficient route he could calculate to rush toward the target.
Mao Zhixiu followed behind him with equally agile steps.
Ling He braced one hand on a railing, vaulted over it, and landed on the stairs without even pausing. At last he escaped the crowd, left the stands, and rushed into the stadium’s interior corridor.
Wind roared past his ears and tangled with his hair while countless figures flickered around him. Bureau Chief Bao’s voice sounded intermittently through the earpiece, directing his pursuit.
Chairman Jian apparently had a fondness for grand circular buildings built like mazes. Jian Mingxun presented himself as restrained and low-key and had suppressed his real nature for years, but underneath he was wildly ambitious, obsessed with grandeur, and especially fond of imposing monumental architecture. Mingliu Stadium resembled Linwan’s “Red Square,” with internal passageways stacked layer over layer and twisting in every direction.
Several times Ling He thought he glimpsed a powerful, broad figure flash across the far end of a corridor. Each time he reached the end, the circular hallway opened before him into an even longer curving route, and the target had already disappeared farther ahead.
……
At the same time, out on the pitch, Bei Jiahong’s vomiting was so severe that the match had to be stopped for five minutes before the medical team finally carried him away on a stretcher.
Bei Jiahong lay flat on his back. The stadium’s circular lights ringed the edge of the night sky like dazzling rhinestones, their brilliance revolving across his vision. His mind was completely clear. He knew exactly what he had done and still possessed an intense desire to escape and survive.
Vomiting was a chronic condition he had suffered for years, something everyone knew about. No one would find it suspicious afterward.
This was the method Mr. Ling had taught him: add a scene of his own at the critical moment, use the vomiting attack to escape the final twenty minutes, leave the pitch early, disappear, and thereby force the hidden villains to act early and expose themselves.
The light in his vision suddenly dimmed. The sky disappeared and the stadium lights vanished. It felt as if he had slid into the abyss of a tunnel while black fog rose from every corner. Bei Jiahong struggled upright in alarm and realized the stretcher was being carried into the players’ tunnel toward some unknown destination.
He tried warily to jump down, only for several powerful men around him to hold his arms and legs. “Don’t move!”
A long ambulance waited at the corridor exit, its shell looking stronger and more solid than that of an ordinary ambulance. Not one person inside wore the white coat of a medical worker. Of course, Bei Jiahong was neither injured nor ill. He did not need treatment. He was worried only about his precarious fate in the middle of this crisis.
His face went abruptly pale when they tried to force him into the ambulance. He fought the many hands attempting to restrain him. “I’m not going with you! Let me out!”
A muscular man in black body armor, armed with a gun, grabbed him by the collar of his jersey. “What the hell are you struggling for? Hurry up and come with us!”
The man’s arms were all hard tendon and muscle, obviously trained, and with his broad back and black tactical gear he hardly looked friendly. Bei Jiahong stared at him in fear. “Who are you?”
“I’m Officer Xue’s deputy. My surname is Fang. I’m here to take you away and protect you, so stop making trouble.” The broad, powerful man in the black sun hat discreetly flashed his police credentials, then could not resist adding in a low voice, “Hey, that full-instep shot earlier was fucking beautiful. Amazing. Xiao Bei, give me an autograph later too, okay?”
Deputy Captain Fang was powerfully built, but his voice was not loud and was even rather gentle. Everyone knew the star Bei had an aloof, stingy temperament and was difficult to approach. Only after saving the man did Fang Yuhui dare claim a little credit and shamelessly ask for an autograph.
Bei Jiahong had nothing to say. Deputy Fang dragged him into the ambulance like a sack, shut the door, and took off. Before eighty thousand pairs of eyes in the stadium, they had performed a perfect cicada-sheds-its-shell escape.
Bei Jiahong suddenly remembered something. “Officer Fang, wait. I need to leave with someone.”
Fang Yuhui asked, “Who?”
Bei Jiahong said distractedly, “My friend is still in the stands. I’m afraid something might happen to him.”
“That’s Team One and Team Two’s assignment. I lead Team Three. My job is to rescue you and protect you.” Fang Yuhui was responsible only for carrying out orders from the chief and Captain Xue, and he absolutely refused to make a mistake on his side. More than anything, he dreaded hearing Xue Qian slam a desk and curse. He chopped one hand through the air decisively. “Go.”
……
The person Bei Jiahong was worried about was no longer sitting in the stands.
Lu Yilun, like a startled bird, fled down the stairwell toward the players’ lounge and medical-room area, running so fast that his round hat flew off. For the entire previous hour his heart had been hanging in suspense over Xiao Bei. Losing this match would be unbearable, but winning it was infinitely more terrifying.
Yan Xiaodao chased close behind at speed. The hem of his T-shirt had pulled free from his waistband and billowed behind him as he moved, almost like a banner escorting his fierce, dashing charge.
He vaulted a railing and locked onto Lu Yilun’s figure ahead, drawing closer with every step.
Then, not far in front of him, Lu Yilun stopped dead.
He seemed to have suffered an enormous fright. His feet skidded violently without warning. His upper body was still pitched forward in the posture of a man running, while both legs desperately tried to backpedal. His body looked ready to come apart at the waist as he nearly fell.
Yan Xiaodao raised his head and came face to face with the man standing at the far end of the corridor.
The saying was true: when you saw that person, you knew who he was. There was no need for introductions and no need to waste words.
Another man with a ponytail, though in temperament and appearance he could hardly have been more different from Ling He. His bronze-gold face gleamed, and his body was tall, powerful, and martial. Even wrapped in tight black clothes, every fold of the dark fabric seemed to radiate a crushing presence. It was enough to freeze Lu Yilun in terror in the middle of the corridor.
The man was Gu Yaoting.
How much nerve did a person need to possess? He had committed enough wolf-hearted, leopard-gutted deeds that even a spectacle like this no longer frightened him.
Gu Yaoting did not need to ask who the man opposite him was either. He bared his white teeth and sucked in a sound. “Tch. It’s just one fucking football match. You all had to make such a fuss and ruin my business.”
Yan Xiaodao’s entire body tightened for action as he stared at him. “Just one football match?”
Gu Yaoting tilted his head and snorted. “Yan Xiao, what do you want?”
“You going to keep saying Chen Jiu was just one worthless little life?” Yan Xiaodao said coldly. “The innkeeper and his wife back then were only three lives. Burning down the chemical plant to frame Ling Huang was only a few more… Gu Yaoting, or should I call you Zhang Tingqiang? Exactly how many blood debts are you holding in your hands?”
Gu Yaoting shook out his thickly muscled arms and rolled his neck from side to side. His vertebrae cracked softly twice, like the warm-up ritual of a fighter about to step into the ring. He said disdainfully, “Ancient history. Nice to know somebody still remembers those glorious deeds for me. Hmph.”
Grief burned in Yan Xiaodao’s chest. “And Officer Lu Haocheng?!”
“Heh heh…” Gu Yaoting’s laugh was not especially loud or exaggerated. The coldness and lawlessness forged into his bones over many years seeped through it. “Officer Lu was too much of a fucking nuisance. He didn’t understand the situation and insisted on coming to make trouble! I don’t enjoy killing people for no reason, but if they stand in my road, they can only die. Otherwise how the hell am I supposed to get through?”
He was another perfect illustration of the creed, Better that I betray everyone under heaven than let anyone betray me. Every ruthless warlord in every age was much the same. In the pursuit of lifelong wealth, power, and ambition, they denied even family, killed gods who stood in their way, used every possible method, trampled across reputations already strewn in ruin, and treated other people’s lives and happiness as dirt beneath their feet.
Yan Xiaodao said, “If every single thing you do and every step you take makes you think someone else is ignorant for blocking your road, then the person blocking everyone’s road and refusing to see reality can only be you.”
That was all Yan Xiaodao had to say. He wasted no more words and launched himself forward. At the far end of the corridor, Gu Yaoting charged at precisely the same instant.
Lu Yilun’s tall, thin body seemed ready to sway apart, frozen at the midpoint of their collision by the killing intent surging from both men. There was no wind in the corridor, yet his body rocked faintly. Gu Yaoting’s face turned vicious as one huge hand reached for the back of Lu Yilun’s neck. “I knew it was you who informed on us back then…”
He managed only half the sentence. Lu Yilun knew Gu Yaoting had already pieced together the truth of that old event. Disaster had finally reached him, and he was about to die on the spot without an intact corpse. His face drained white. Just as Gu Yaoting nearly tore him backward by the collar, Yan Xiaodao arrived with one hand. A flash of white blade skimmed past the back of Lu Yilun’s skull and slashed toward Gu Yaoting’s arm.
Lu Yilun was thrown aside with his eyes squeezed shut. He remained against the wall for a long moment without moving, wearing the expression of a man resigned to death because he assumed pieces of his body were already missing.
The instant Lu Yilun closed his eyes, all he saw was Officer Lu lying in a pool of blood after being shot twenty-two times.
For three years, that nightmare had followed him like a shadow and tortured him. Every night in bed, whether someone lay beside him or not, the floor and walls of his room seemed painted in blood, the metallic smell filling his nose.
The knife tip drew a point of light, fleeting as a white colt glimpsed through a crack. It cut the thin air and lit the fuse, causing the vengeful force accumulated in the atmosphere to detonate in an instant.
The first attack was dodged. That alone was enough to warn Yan Xiaodao that the man before him possessed unfathomable hand-to-hand skill and was no ordinary opponent. Gu Yaoting’s forearms and palms were thicker and stronger than most men’s. One elbow smashed into the outside of Yan Xiaodao’s wrist and drove a deep, bone-piercing pain through him.
Yan Xiaodao bit his gums until they bled and endured it.
The deep axe and blade marks on Chen Jiu’s rotting remains had already testified to his opponent’s cruelty and savagery.
After so many years, neither cruelty nor savagery had changed in the slightest. The only additions were the wild arrogance and contempt of a man who now stood high above ordinary people.
A wash of red suddenly flooded beneath Yan Xiaodao’s lower eyelids. Inside that color was the dark-red blood spilled by so many people, innocent and suffering. He curved his entire body into a guarded stance before the powerful enemy, locking the sharp blade between his fingers without the slightest fear and with no intention of retreating.
One man’s palms carried violent force while the other’s body moved with effortless freedom. The point of blade light between Yan Xiaodao’s fingers carved another dazzling arc, its sharp force tearing through the defenses of the fortress before him. The gap crushed and split open in the air seemed to bleed out three years of suppressed rage.
He knew Gu Yaoting had a gun. His dense, relentless pressure was meant to give the man no chance to draw it.
Whichever hand reached for the gun, he would cut that hand.
A blade was extremely useful in close combat. It might not kill immediately, but carving pieces off the opponent was satisfying enough. When blood sprayed into the air, Gu Yaoting should have understood that Yan Xiaodao was subjecting him to a slow execution by a thousand cuts.
During the close-quarters struggle, fine tears opened all over the fabric covering Gu Yaoting’s arms and thighs. The rips widened and exposed bronze skin and hard muscle beneath.
Yan Xiaodao could also feel his own forearm swelling where repeated blows had landed. The bone was probably cracked.
This was a fight to the death between evenly matched opponents. If the man in front of him were not a monstrous criminal with innocent blood on both hands, this might originally have been a contest between worthy equals, the sort of clash that bred mutual admiration. Unfortunately, their roads were different and could not be shared. These men had spent years walking the borderlands between good and evil, but after all their cultivation and experience, they had finally separated completely at this moment, drawing a clear boundary between themselves, water and fire incapable of coexisting.
Yan Xiaodao held the knife in his right hand, but midway through a turn his left hand suddenly swept out beneath his ribs. The strange angle left his opponent no time to defend.
A thin, exquisite blade shot out from beneath Yan Xiaodao’s ribs and buried itself in the vulnerable point of Gu Yaoting’s right shoulder. The sensation of skin and bone splitting apart might have reminded the man of the tendon-tearing, bone-dislocating dismemberment once inflicted on Chen Jiu and others.
The strike drove Gu Yaoting backward several enormous steps as though a powerful impact had physically hurled him away.
Yet while retreating, he suddenly drew his gun.
Yan Xiaodao was already launching himself forward, utterly fearless at the boundary between life and death.
Several lean figures wrapped in black burst from the other end of the corridor at the same time. The man leading them gave Gu Yaoting no chance to fire.
Xue Qian planted one foot on the railing, launched himself into the air, and kicked Gu Yaoting squarely in the right wrist.
The barrel jerked away at the instant the gun fired. The bullet missed Yan Xiaodao’s chest and struck a stadium wall instead. Several decorative tiles exploded, fragments clattering down in a shower.
After circling the stadium’s round stands an unknown number of times, Ling He arrived directly behind Captain Xue. Everyone had finally converged again.
Gu Yaoting casually pulled the willow-leaf blade out of his iron-tower chest as though the gush of blood meant nothing. A demonic grin spread across his face. Greenish light shone from his eyes as he deliberately stared deeply at Ling He, then suddenly burst into arrogant laughter. “Hahahaha, Ling He? You actually survived this long. Still thinking about avenging your parents?…”