"Chief Lin, you're joking." Wang Zhenkun's expression was a little stiff, but he forced the smile: "The guests brought it in themselves. What's that got to do with me..."
An assistant-looking man beside him blocked the officers heading for the inner room: "Hey, hey — this in here is our confidential records room. Do you have a search warrant? I'm filing a complaint against you!"
Lin Wuyang's phone started ringing too; someone out there clearly wanted to interfere.
Hearing the ring, Wang Zhenkun let out a breath and began to smirk. Lin Wuyang didn't answer the call; instead he asked abruptly, "That assistant of yours is quite something. Very capable, and loyal too. You trust him a lot, don't you?"
A strange, alien force washed across his soul sea, and caught completely off guard just when he thought he'd breathed easy, Wang Zhenkun couldn't help himself and blurted out loudly: "Capable my ass! If I weren't keeping an eye on his wife, I'd have kicked him out long ago! We'd agreed he'd bring her along tonight to drink with us — and then you had to stick your nose in, you stinking cop!"
A dead silence fell.
Wang Zhenkun's face slowly swelled to the color of pork liver. The assistant stared at him woodenly, his eyes turning colder than cold, and the other underlings around them instinctively backed away.
Chu Ge, kept invisible by Qiu Wuji and enjoying the show, nearly doubled over laughing. You know, when Lin Wuyang uses that ability properly, it's actually a lot of fun.
The assistant declared loudly: "There's not only drug trafficking here — there's an illegal casino too!"
After that, nothing was in any doubt.
Lin Wuyang heaved a long sigh: "Their Qixi, and our Qixi."
The assistant turned informant and led Lin Wuyang toward the casino. Qiu Wuji's voice reached Chu Ge: "There's a hidden door down in the casino. Someone's running off with documents... oh, and a whole crate of the stuff they're calling drugs."
"A whole crate..." Chu Ge's expression turned grave too.
This was drugs they were talking about!
Lin Wuyang led his people charging down. They'd been efficient enough, but with a hidden door to flee through and nobody posted outside in advance, there was plainly no catching them in time. What about the drugs, and all the other crucial documents and physical evidence?
But getting mixed up in this kind of thing...
Seeing him hesitate, Qiu Wuji asked, "What are drugs?"
Chu Ge said quietly, "Something that ruins people. Like the addictive pills the demon sects use in my books to control and enslave others... To stamp them out, this country has paid in the blood of a great many soldiers."
From his tone, Qiu Wuji knew exactly what he was thinking. She gave a slight nod: "No wonder your classmate's voice went so grim and cold... Then let's give him a hand."
Seeing how obvious this seemed to her, the little urge to back off in Chu Ge's heart suddenly vanished, and he laughed: "Sect Master Qiu truly is a ray of light for the righteous path."
Qiu Wuji smiled faintly. "You wrote it."
She reached out and pressed a hand to Chu Ge's shoulder, and with a whoosh the two of them vanished.
A door in the alley behind the nightclub was abruptly shoved open, and several burly men came stumbling out in a panic, clutching boxes and bags.
As long as the police didn't seize this haul, there was still room to turn things around. Even if they were caught for trafficking, the quantity changed everything.
In theory, the cleanest move was to burn the whole lot — but who could bear to?
That was money!
On a wall in the distance, Zhang Qiren and several men hid in the shadows, coldly watching the alley. When the men came out, Zhang Qiren patted the scrawny, monkey-like man beside him: "Your chance to redeem yourself has come..."
The man was none other than the one who had tried to assassinate him before. At those words he only smiled bitterly: "Even if the Second Young Master hadn't given the order, I'd have wanted to do this."
Zhang Qiren sneered. "Is that so? Then how come in all these years I never saw you do a thing? But when it came to assassinating me, you were quick and vicious enough."
The man said nothing. He stepped out to go do the job — then suddenly went "Huh?" and froze in place.
Zhang Qiren also went "Huh?" Looking at the figure that had just appeared in the alley, his face twitched: "Why is he here too? Has the fate between us really reached this level? How did I not notice when we were living together... Ah, what a waste that he's a man."
His men: "..."
He's not just a man, he has a girlfriend too — a terrifying girlfriend who can haul a scrawny monkey into the air one-handed. Second Young Master, do wake up. Or maybe try women's clothes?
Huh, no, wait — where's the woman?
Chu Ge hadn't let Qiu Wuji show herself; she was only holding the field from the shadows.
Both of them felt it was better for her not to display her powers too much in front of outsiders, and that if anyone had to put on a display, it should be Chu Ge — after all, Qiu Wuji didn't even have an identity in this world.
If all they needed was to hold the men back for a while, then Chu Ge, now trained in a movement technique and the Golden Bell Shield, would have no trouble blocking an alley mouth for a minute or two.
The men in the alley saw someone blocking the mouth of it too, and were frantic with fury: "Get out of the way!"
With that, one of them barreled straight into Chu Ge.
A faint golden light rose from Chu Ge's body. At the impact he stood utterly still, while the man who'd rammed him had hit a wall; with a pained grunt he staggered back several steps before he found his footing.
Huh, my stance is getting steadier all the time. Does balancing durians on my head actually work? The notion of going home to balance more durians flashed through Chu Ge's mind — then he saw two burly men lunging at him, faces savage: "So you're here to wreck the place. You have a death wish!"
Savage faces, fists the size of rice bowls, gangsters charging like mad tigers. Chu Ge had never in his life imagined he'd face a scene like this, and yet now that he truly was, he didn't feel even a trace of nerves.
His feet shifted lightly apart purely on instinct; in a narrow alley fought at arm's length, he somehow moved with the ease of a stroll through a courtyard. The two men went right past him without so much as grazing his sleeve, and instead threw their own weight wrong, pitching forward.
In the distance, Zhang Qiren and his crew stared wide-eyed.
The Second Young Master's roommate is so fucking cool! Is this the legendary Wave-Walking Steps?
The next second, the dashing Chu Ge showed his true colors.
He had never trained a single offensive technique. Since his opponent was wide open, he simply followed through and punched the man on the left in the face. He was just savoring the satisfying smack of fist on flesh when pain stabbed at his ribs.
The other man had somehow drawn a dagger, and even while stumbling he stabbed at Chu Ge's ribs — and Chu Ge hadn't noticed a thing.
"Clang!"
Golden light flared; the blade bit half an inch into flesh and went no deeper.
The man's eyes nearly popped out of his head. What the hell is going on?
With a roar of pain, Chu Ge smashed his fist into the man's face. The golden-lit punch deformed his features; he sprayed a mouthful of blood and slammed hard against the wall.
"Hiss... damn it..." Clutching his aching ribs, Chu Ge hunched over and looked up. The others had already set down their boxes, and every one of them had a dagger out.
Chu Ge: "..."
"Where'd this dumb punk come from..." The sight of blood had clearly roused their savagery: "Want to play the righteous hero? Go fuck your mother!"
The daggers came straight at him.
"Shit..." Chu Ge wanted to back away.
The next instant his vision blurred, and Qiu Wuji was already in front of him, her slender jade-white fingers lightly pinching the dagger still.
The thug: "?"
A flick of that slender hand, and every dagger had somehow been disarmed into Qiu Wuji's grasp. Under the stares of people who looked like they'd seen a ghost, the blades were crushed bare-handed into one lump of scrap iron.
The smiling look she had worn all these days was now ice-cold: "You? You dare hurt him?"
"Bang!" Several muffled impacts sounded as one. Every one of the burly men was ground down by an invisible force, flung back a dozen meters, and dumped right back at the doorway they'd come out of.
The police burst out through that door at that very moment.
Qiu Wuji and Chu Ge were already gone.
The scrawny, monkey-like man came flying down from the distant wall, cackling: "Young Master Zhang asked me to give Young Master Wang his regards!"
Lin Wuyang looked down at the credit that had dropped into his lap, then raised his head to the night where the skinny monkey had vanished, his brow furrowing: "Has Zhang Qiren changed character? Doing this — doesn't that break the taboos of their underworld?"