Chapter 140: Gang-Related Activities

Where are we going?

The thin young man squeezed into the car, slammed the door shut, and aggressively shoved Monkey aside before asking with a puzzled tone, "Second! Fourth, are you guys alright? What the hell! Step on it, to the hospital!!"

When he turned his head and saw the situation in the back seat, he jumped in fright. The taxi's interior light wasn't on; when he first opened the door, he had only seen pitch-black darkness. Now, aided by the light shining from outside the car, he saw that both Lin Jia and Fourth had blood all over their faces, and he immediately roared in panic.

"Fifth, stop shouting! I'm fine! It doesn't seem like I'm seriously injured at all?! How about you, Fourth?" Lin Jia wiped his face. Earlier, his whole body had been weak and numb, and he had been panting heavily. Now that he had caught his breath, he felt around his body to check himself. He couldn't feel any pain, only a numbness, and didn't feel like he was badly hurt. The blood on his face came from a small cut on his forehead near his hairline. When he touched it, it didn't feel deep; it seemed to have been scratched by someone's fingernail or a belt buckle during the melee earlier.

Black Bear, sitting beside them, said to the driver, "Driver! Could you please turn on the light? Let me check on them!"

The driver, a man in his thirties, didn't seem the least bit surprised by their current state. Judging by the fact that he hadn't even asked where Lin Jia and the others intended to go, he was presumably part of the same crew as the young man whom Boss Xu Fangfang had called "Fifth." The driver unhurriedly drove straight toward the destination specified by Fifth, and upon hearing Black Bear's request, obligingly switched on the small interior dome light for illumination.

The moment Black Bear shifted his weight to turn sideways and check the cut on Lin Jia's forehead, he suddenly let out a shrill scream and leaped up, slamming his head hard against the roof of the car.

Everyone inside was startled. The driver slammed on the brakes, pulling over to the side of the road. Gripping the steering wheel, he turned back and asked with alarm, "What's wrong?!"

As everyone looked toward the seat where Black Bear had just been sitting, they saw a mess of long, strip-shaped newspaper bundles scattered haphazardly across it. One of them was already somewhat torn, with traces of blood on it. Lin Jia picked it up and ripped it open, giving everyone a tremendous shock! It turned out to be a foot-and-a-half-long curved ox-horn knife!

These long paper-wrapped packages were the ones thrown into the car by the thirty-odd young men Fifth had brought earlier. The driver was also startled. "Damn it! I forgot to tell you guys! Take a look! Did you slice your family jewels off?! These are the tools the brothers brought along, and Prince told me to bring them back!"

Black Bear was practically on the verge of tears. Disregarding the cramped space inside the car and the presence of so many people, he yanked down his jeans. Everyone stared intently at his furry little bird for a long time before confirming it was unharmed, and then burst out cursing, "Damn it! Pack that up quickly! That's disgusting!"

Black Bear's injury was at the top of his thigh, caused by accidentally sitting on the blade. The cut wasn't deep, though if it had been just an inch higher, things might have been serious. Black Bear was truly unlucky; he hadn't gotten hurt during the actual fight, only to be ambushed by his own side afterward.

Lin Jia and the others carefully picked up all the newspaper-wrapped packages from beneath their seats and tossed them onto the floor. Lin Jia said in astonishment, "What the hell! Why did you guys even bring knives? Wasn't there enough bloodshed already? This has blown way out of proportion!"

Lin Jia was starting to get scared now. During the fight, he hadn't felt a thing, but now that he had calmed down, terror set in. If someone had actually died, today's affair would be a catastrophic disaster!

Fourth was also somewhat terrified. "Did... did anyone die?"

The driver set the car back in motion and said, "Hard to say for now! When Prince's people got the call, they thought it was a major crisis, so they brought all their hardware along. When they arrived, they saw it was just a bunch of punks brawling—everyone was hitting each other with the flat of the blades, which is why the newspapers didn't even tear! But who knows if anyone was killed in the beating before that? Just now, I saw some kid on the roadside with his skull split open. Who was vicious enough to do that? Tsk tsk..."

Fourth's face turned completely pale. That kid out there was the one he had clobbered with a brick.

"Prince went to negotiate with the cops from the 110 precinct. You guys live in this residential compound under their jurisdiction, so as long as nothing major happened, it should be fine! For now, I'm taking you to wait at Prince's place. We should get word shortly!"

***

The young men in the car fell silent, an unspeakable tension gripping their hearts. Especially for Lin Jia and his friends, who weren't usually involved with the street gangs, nobody wanted a criminal record. If that happened, their entire lives might be ruined!

"What on earth happened just now? It was total chaos! Where did all those people suddenly come from?" Fourth was also badly frightened, his small face rather pale, whether from his injuries acting up or something else.

Black Bear, Monkey, and Fifth all shook their heads blankly, utterly clueless about what had transpired. They only knew that Lin Jia had gotten into a fight with someone.

"You'll find out in a bit! Prince and that girl, your boss, will be back shortly!" The driver puffed casually on a cigarette, not even turning his head as he spoke, as if such occurrences were the most mundane things in the world to him.

Lin Jia couldn't regret it more right now. His nerves were frayed to the breaking point, cold sweat breaking out in relentless waves, and sharp pains suddenly flared up all over his body. Lin Jia muttered in a daze, "We've really gone too far this time..."

The small town was compact, and within minutes they arrived at the home of the young man known as "Prince Fifth." It was a four-story private building located in Qiaomailing Village. When they got out of the car and went inside, they found that Boss Xu Fang and Prince Fifth were already waiting for them.

Putting the pieces together through mutual questioning, they finally understood what had just happened:

After Lin Jia and Fourth had charged out, Boss Xu Fangfang panicked and frantically made continuous phone calls to Lin Jia and Fourth's classmates, as well as to Black Bear—a neighborhood punk leader—and Chen Biao (Fifth among the seven sworn brothers of Lin Jia's group). Fourth and Xu Hongbin had gotten into a dispute with someone and were being swamped and beaten by a large crowd.

On the phone, Boss Xu had stammered incoherently, making everyone think it was a monumental crisis. Due to the urgency of the situation, all three factions had hastily rounded up whoever they could lay hands on and rushed to help. Prince Fifth had even mobilized more than thirty of his street thugs, charging in fully armed.

As it turned out, Black Bear and Prince Fifth had arrived at roughly the same time. They never expected to witness a massive brawl involving dozens of people because Boss Xu Fangfang had told them it was just a mob surrounding Fourth and Lin Jia. Instead, the scene looked like a whole faction helping Lin Jia and his group, while several other factions fought among themselves in absolute chaos. Unable to distinguish friend from foe in the confusion, they had held back from intervening on the spot.

Fortunately, they hadn't intervened. The thirty-odd youths under Fifth were essentially professional street enforcers with blades; had they actually joined the fray, today's incident truly would have been irredeemable. When Black Bear finally waded in and pulled Lin Jia and the others out, he discovered that Monkey and his crew—whom Lin Jia had previously met over drinks—were also present. Once they recognized Lin Jia and his friends, they pitched in to help, which in turn triggered a free-for-all among the other rival punk factions, creating a massive chain reaction of people helping each other out. In the end, those punks didn't even know why they were fighting, nor who they were supposed to be helping; they just lashed out at anyone in sight.

***

After Prince Fifth arrived with his men and saw it was merely a bunch of low-level punks, he had his subordinates knock out those nobodies, immediately dumped the controlled weapons they brought into the taxi Lin Jia and the others boarded, and had everyone scatter in their respective vehicles. Prince Fifth himself stayed behind to brief the precinct officers. As an entrenched local force with deep roots, they knew plenty of people in official circles. The beat cop responsible for that residential compound was an old acquaintance—moreover, those beat cops were practically brothers from their extended circle. As for how those local cops chose to deal with the minor thugs groaning on the ground, there was no need to dwell on it. The dark underbelly of society was better left unsaid.

Lin Jia's sworn brother, Fifth Chen Biao, had been not far from the residential compound at the time. By the time he gathered his own crew of hoodlums and rushed over, it was already over, so he had missed the action. Ultimately, he simply followed Lin Jia and the others to Prince Fifth's house.

That was how things stood. Hearing Prince Fifth say that nothing serious had happened, everyone let out a collective sigh of relief and collapsed limply onto the massive, plush sofa set in Fifth's living room. Fifth's home was exceptionally luxurious, decorated with opulent, golden splendor. From the outside, the private residence looked dilapidated like a building slated for demolition, but stepping inside revealed a luxury that could shock anyone. Why a twenty-four or twenty-five-year-old like Fifth owned such an extravagant house, however, was not something they needed to know.

Once they relaxed, the pain hit. Lin Jia and Fourth began to groan. Earlier, their bodies had been numbed by the beating, rendering them completely insensible to pain. Now that they had calmed down and regained sensation, every inch of their bodies ached fiercely.

Prince Fifth chuckled and instructed the thirty-something driver who had intercepted them to fetch the most renowned bone-setter in Qiaomailing Village. At the same time, he pulled out a pack of Little Panda cigarettes and handed one to each of the boys. Lin Jia puffed on the cigarette with trembling lips, igniting it with Fifth's gold lighter, and squinted as he took a fierce, deep drag. Having lost his glasses, everything looked blurry to him now.

Fifth unhurriedly lit his own cigarette, took a drag, leaned back against the sofa, squinted at Lin Jia, and suddenly dropped a question:

"Madman! You've got some grit in you. Interested in coming to work for me?"