Chapter 8: The Two-Faced Mad Dog

“Ha, a drowned dog.” Shen Yanzhou glanced at him, casually tossing over the umbrella dripping with black water.

The man neither dodged nor flinched, catching the umbrella precisely, not even letting the dirty water flicked from the umbrella tip splash onto Shen Yanzhou’s suit trousers.

Then, he silently knelt and removed his leather shoes.

Shen Yanzhou had just stepped into the villa when the private phone in his suit pocket began vibrating.

It was Shen Xici.

He answered while single-handedly loosening his tie, walking toward the second floor.

“Speak.”

“Brother, the Kwai Chung dock side still can’t be resolved.”

Shen Xici’s voice was agitated and depressed. “The Nanyang side just sent word through someone, very ugly. They said if that shipment doesn’t clear customs by twelve tomorrow night, they’ll invoke the Delayed Delivery Compensation Clause. That old bastard even threatened to invite the ‘uncle-level seniors’ out for tea, and to report us to the chamber of commerce.”

Shen Yanzhou pushed open the bedroom door, tossed the cold-dampened coat onto the floor, and irritably changed into a nightgown.

“Tell that old bastard, the Shen family name has stood in Hong Kong for decades. We worship Lord Guan, we speak of rules.”

“The Shen family’s ships, even sailing out in Typhoon Signal Number 8, have never missed their schedule. Tell him to put his heart back in his stomach and swallow it down.”

“Understood, Brother. I’ll have someone go pacify them right now.” Shen Xici paused. “Also, Ah Biao just reported back. Security’s brothers traced that surnamed Leung officer to his private residence in Kowloon Tong. His mistress said he just ran.”

“But the informant says, half an hour ago, they saw Officer Leung’s silver Toyota heading toward the abandoned shipyard in Sai Wan.”

“Ah Biao has already taken people biting after him. The car is full of hard goods.”

“Tell Ah Biao, keep the hands clean.” Shen Yanzhou walked to the liquor cabinet, single-handedly took down the decanter, opened the red wine, poured it into the glass. “I don’t want tomorrow morning’s Hong Kong headline to be us cleaning house for the O-Note.”

“Yes.”

Hanging up the phone, Shen Yanzhou casually tossed the mobile onto the dark red velvet bedsheets.

After the adrenaline faded, the body long soaked in alcohol and tobacco began to retaliate. It felt like a hand with thorns was inside his stomach, pulling and tearing raw. The pain made the veins at his temples twitch slightly, cold sweat seeping along his pale temples.

He had to drink something immediately, even if it was just strong liquor to numb his nerves.

The crystal cup had just touched his lips when the bedroom door was pushed open silently.

The man walked in carrying a tray. He had changed back into last night’s black tank top, his knotted muscles exposed.

Seeing Shen Yanzhou at this moment with his clothes half open, curled up on the sofa from the pain, the man’s footsteps halted abruptly.

Those eyes gleaming in the darkness stared dead at Shen Yanzhou’s chest rising and falling with his breath. His Adam’s apple rolled with extreme thirst.

That gaze was too naked, as if wanting to swallow a person alive.

Shen Yanzhou frowned in displeasure, forcibly enduring the stomach cramp spasms. “Thirty Million, had your fill of looking? Put the thing down and get lost.”

The man didn’t get lost. Instead he advanced two steps with the tray, the shadow instantly enveloping him.

“Master, tonight went very badly?” His voice was very hoarse.

“Meddling in others’ business.” Shen Yanzhou’s hands shook badly. He tilted his head back to pour the red wine down.

A large hand covered in rough calluses reached across horizontally, impolitely seizing his wrist. The force was astonishing, forcibly wresting the wine glass from Shen Yanzhou’s hand.

“Drinking on an empty stomach will perforate your stomach.”

The man set the wine glass aside, single-handedly lifting that porcelain bowl still steaming with heat from the tray.

“I stewed ginger milk. The ginger is freshly pounded. I added double the milk to cover the ginger flavor.”

The milk scent instantly dispersed the cold wine aroma. Shen Yanzhou smelled that scent. He didn’t like it. But right now the gripping pain in his stomach left him without even the strength to speak loudly.

“I told you to get lost, don’t understand human speech?” His face was deathly pale. He raised his hand to knock over that bowl.

A crisp “clatter” sound.

The bowl didn’t overturn.

The man’s palm was broad and thick, directly meeting the scalding bowl wall, wrapping around the back of Shen Yanzhou’s hand. Scalding ginger milk overflowed, pouring onto the old wound at his tiger’s mouth. He didn’t even move his eyebrows. Instead he took advantage of the momentum to press forward.

His coarse hard knee forcibly pried open Shen Yanzhou’s pressed-together legs, pinning this master who normally stood high above onto the redwood liquor cabinet behind him.

“Master, I beg you.”

He lowered his head. Scalding damp breath sprayed against the side of Shen Yanzhou’s neck. The tone sounded gentle, but the movements were all offense. “Once you’ve finished drinking, you’ll have strength. Punish me however you want.”

“You…”

Shen Yanzhou was about to explode, but his gaze at extremely close distance collided with the hideous scar on the inner side of the man’s wrist.

The position of the artery.

Last night viewed from afar it wasn’t clear. Now pressed dead by this hand, Shen Yanzhou finally saw clearly. His wrist was covered in old scars.

Dense knife wounds, cigarette burns, some deep enough to see bone. After cutting the vein they had healed crookedly, like ugly centipedes winding across wheat-colored skin.

What had this hand experienced in the Kowloon Walled City.

The hostility in Shen Yanzhou’s eyes inexplicably dispersed somewhat. In its place was complex, kindred-spirit exhaustion.

He was too tired.

Those old men outside wanted to eat his flesh. The officers wanted to flay his skin. Only this dog before him, though also wanting to eat people, but at least for now, this dog only recognized him as its sole master.

“Give it here.”

Shen Yanzhou gave up resisting. He took the bowl from the man’s hand and tilted his head back, drinking it all in one go.

Scalding, spicy, sickly sweet.

That heat flow slid down his throat, domineeringly dispersing the cold in his stomach. But immediately after, at the root of his tongue arose an extremely faint, bitter taste that didn’t belong to the ingredients.

Shen Yanzhou lifted his eyelids and glanced at the man.

He couldn’t have put something in it, could he?

Looking at the man’s expressionless face, he said nothing. He stuffed the empty bowl heavily back into the man’s embrace.

“Get lost.”

The man received the empty bowl with both hands. “Yes, Master.”

After speaking, he didn’t entangle further. He turned and withdrew. With the light click of the door lock, the room returned to dead silence.

The familiar insomnia did not arrive. Instead, an intense, irresistible drowsiness followed.

Shen Yanzhou tried to reach for the documents at the bedside. His fingers went limp as if not belonging to himself. That heat didn’t just warm his stomach, but also burned through his blood to his four limbs and hundred bones, dragging his consciousness bit by bit into a dark sweet abyss.

His fingers gripping the bedsheets loosened. Before long he had sunk into deep sleep.

Separated by one door.

The man had not left.

He heard the breathing inside become long and even. He pushed open that door that had not been truly locked again.

Like a ghost he knelt beside the bed.

His gaze greedily adhered to Shen Yanzhou’s open silk collar. He slowly lowered his head, extended his tongue, and along the trail where the red wine had just flowed, slowly and obscenely licked.

The rough tongue rolled across the tender neck skin, like a beast cleaning its food, bit by bit moistening the dried wine stains, leaving behind ambiguous to the extreme water marks.

“Mm…” Shen Yanzhou emitted a vague nasal sound under the drug’s effect. His slender neck tilted slightly backward, yet precisely sent his vulnerable Adam’s apple into the man’s teeth.

The man’s gaze instantly turned dangerous. He used his teeth tips to lightly hold that slightly protruding cartilage, grinding unhurriedly, until his breathing grew chaotic, before reluctantly leaving.

“So good.”

He straightened his waist. His fingertips obsessively rubbed across that skin he had dirtied and then licked clean. The depths of his eyes were filled with morbid satisfaction.

Then he stood up, glanced at the bedside document about “Kwai Chung Dock.”

The tender infatuation in his eyes retreated completely clean. Only remained a chilling gloom.

Since some old men had made him unhappy.

Naturally they all had to be cleaned up.

—–

Three thirty in the morning. Tail of Sai Wan. Abandoned shipyard.

The air was permeated with the stench of heavy oil and rotting seaweed. The sea fog was thick enough it couldn’t disperse. In the distance, navigation lights flickered on and off upon the black sea surface like bloodshot ghost eyes.

Beneath the massive gantry crane, a rusty iron chain hung in midair. At its end hung a living person.

Officer Leung had his hands bound behind his back with rough hemp rope, suspended over the sea surface like a dried salted fish. Below his feet were pitch-black surging waves. Every time the spray crashed against the concrete piles, it emitted dull sounds like a beast chewing bones.

And the man who held his life and death in his hands sat on an oil-stained bollard by the shore.

He had his back to the light. Long legs casually stepping on coils of rusty iron chain. The collar of his black windbreaker stood up, blocking most of his face. Only the scarlet cigarette tip at his fingertips flickered bright and dark in the sea wind.

“Officer Leung, how’s the consideration going?”

The man’s voice was low, lazy. “My patience is limited.”

“Cough cough… brother… I had eyes but failed to recognize Mount Tai…”

Officer Leung was stiff from the sea wind. Blood rushing to his brain made his vision blurry. His voice was shaking. “Do you know who I am? Touch an officer, the police won’t let you go… you want money, right? However much you want, I’ll give…”

“Money?” The man laughed lightly. The laugh was very brief.

He stood up, walked to the edge, looking down at Officer Leung suspended in midair, like looking at a bag of garbage.

“I don’t lack money. I only want a name. Who told you to detain Mr. Shen’s cargo?”

Officer Leung’s entire body trembled. He shook his head desperately: “Can’t say! Really can’t say! Those people are madmen. If I speak, my whole family will die! I beg you, I’m also just mixing a mouthful of food to eat…”

“Mixing a mouthful of food to eat?”

The man casually flicked cigarette ash.

“Officer Leung, your son is in Form Three at St. Paul’s Secondary School, right? Every morning the school bus has to pass that curved road on the mid-levels. Lately there’s been a lot of rain, the roads are slippery. If the brakes fail, the whole vehicle tumbling down the mountain…”

He paused. His tone was gentle as if greeting an old friend: “Tell me, would that count as an accident?”

Officer Leung’s entire body shook violently. The originally merely fearful gaze instantly shattered into desperate horror: “You… harm doesn’t reach wife and children! That’s the code of the jianghu! You can’t touch my son!”

“Code?”

The man threw away the cigarette butt. The tip of his shoe ground out the sparks. His eyes were full of violent mockery.

“Codes are made by people. But I’m a mad dog.”

He tilted his head. The corner of his mouth curved into a cruel arc. “Have you ever seen a mad dog bite people, and still check the almanac to pick a date?”

Before the words finished, without any warning, he directly pressed the winch descent button.

Buzz—

The motor turned. The chain plummeted!

“Ahhh—!!”

Officer Leung emitted a pig-slaughtering scream, instantly plunging into the icy seawater. The black seawater instantly swallowed him. Only a string of violently churning bubbles and gurgling choking sounds remained.

The man wasn’t anxious. He looked at his watch, silently counting seconds, listening to the below struggling water sounds. There wasn’t even a ripple on his face.

Half a minute.

The winch turned, pulling the person out of the water like a dead pig.

Officer Leung vomited mouthful after mouthful of salty fishy seawater. His entire face had swollen to a pig liver color from suffocation. Snot and tears smeared all over his face.

“Now, is your brain a bit clearer?”

The man played with that switch in his hand, making a motion to press down again. “Heard there’s sunken piles beneath this sea area. The rebar is very sharp. Wonder if this time going down, it could pierce you straight through.”

“I’ll speak!! I’ll speak!!”

The fear of death completely shattered Officer Leung’s last psychological defense. Compared to the people who threatened him, the madman before his eyes who didn’t play by common sense—

he would really play him to death here!

“It’s the United Righteous Society! It’s the United Righteous Society’s lodge master Lei Hu!” Officer Leung collapsed in a great scream, his voice hoarse and broken. “It was him pointing a gun at my head making me detain the cargo! It really has nothing to do with me!!”

The man’s hand on the switch stopped.

“United Righteous Society, Lei Hu.”

He coldly chewed these few words between his teeth and lips. A flash of extreme disgust and hostility passed through the depths of his eyes.

Another pack of rats in the stinking ditch, never-ending.

The man pressed the switch again, dragging Officer Leung up, heavily throwing him onto the oil-covered concrete ground.

Officer Leung lay paralyzed on the ground, like a puddle of mud. He didn’t even have the strength to tremble.

The man walked before him, crouched down, playing with a Zippo lighter.

“Click.”

The blue flame leaped up, illuminating his handsome yet gloom-covered face filled with menace.

He used the hot wind guard to lightly pat Officer Leung’s greasy cold face.

“If you don’t want to die, before the sun rises, get the release slip signed and delivered to the company.”

Officer Leung cowered, teeth chattering: “B-but the United Righteous Society side…”

“That’s your business.”

The man stood up, disgustedly using a handkerchief to wipe the fingers that had just touched Officer Leung. He casually tossed the expensive handkerchief into the sea, and without looking back walked toward the deep darkness.

Just as his figure was about to disappear, the voice that made Officer Leung’s gall bladder cold traveled over with the wind:

“Remember, don’t think of playing tricks.”

“Mr. Shen believes in Buddhism. He has a good temper.”