Chapter 23: An Unexpected Battle

Just as it had yesterday, the phone rang as the vehicle pulled up outside the building. Li Wei answered at once. “Go on, what trick are you going to play this time?”

Tian Yi said, “Same rules. Go upstairs alone, to the conference room on the top floor. As for our friends from HL, please stay out of the building.”

Li Wei exchanged a glance with Ji Cheng, then stepped out of HL's surveillance van, climbed the steps in a few strides, and pushed through the revolving door into the building.

Though he owned the place, Li Wei had only been there a handful of times. The receptionist recognized him and was momentarily at a loss. After mechanically directing him to the elevator to the top floor, she remained dazed for quite a while. Only after Li Wei had left did she hurriedly call her superiors to tell them that Young Master Li had graced them with his presence and might have gone to the top floor.

Li Wei took the high-speed elevator straight to the top floor. When the doors opened, he poked his head out and looked both ways. The corridor was completely deserted.

With some trepidation, Li Wei stepped out and located the conference room on the floor plan beside the elevator. He encountered no one on his way there. Apart from the air blowing through the vents overhead and his soles scuffing against the marble floor, there wasn't a sound.

He turned the handle and pushed open the conference room door. The sight inside surprised him so much that he couldn't help saying, “What are you all doing here?”

More than ten people sat around the long conference table. Some were middle-aged and already balding, some were about Li Wei's age or a few years older, and others had white hair and deeply furrowed faces. They wore suits and polished shoes, dressed head to toe in designer labels, with every hair in place. Each was a leading figure in the Dragon Commandery's business world, immensely wealthy and a financial power in his own right. Ironically, every last person at the table was an aristocrat.

This was the core of Li Wei's social circle, his friends and competitors. That was the polite way to put it, of course. Less politely, they called each other brothers to make exchanging favors easier, while secretly wishing your entire family would drop dead so they could take over your fortune, wives, and concubines.

That was more or less the relationship.

Surprise flickered across their faces when they saw Li Wei, too, but no one spoke. Li Wei seemed to detect something in their eyes. It was fear...

The door beside him closed, pushed shut by a powerful arm. The barrel of a silenced gun came to rest against the back of Li Wei's neck.

Cold sweat instantly beaded on his head. For a moment, he considered shouting for help. If he called out, the HL personnel downstairs could storm up within minutes. But then he thought better of it. With a gun pressed to his neck, killing him would only take a second. He'd be stone dead long before anyone outside arrived. The fact that the man hadn't fired meant he didn't want him dead.

The muzzle slowly withdrew from the back of Li Wei's neck. In such extreme terror, a person's senses become sharper than usual. Li Wei could distinctly hear footsteps behind him, the sound of leather shoes. The gunman was backing away.

One step, two... After six or seven steps, the footsteps stopped. The man still didn't speak. Instead, he snapped his fingers. Li Wei guessed that meant he should turn around.

Turning slowly, Li Wei saw a middle-aged man in a black suit and black gloves, with gleaming leather shoes and slicked-back hair. His gaze was as sharp as that of a beast on the hunt. If there was a standard template for a “cold-blooded” expression, it was the face before Li Wei now.

Gambling Snake, a man born looking like a professional hitman. Whether having a face like that was a blessing or a curse was anyone's guess.

Beside him stood a tall stool and a plastic blackboard. A glass of water sat on the stool.

Holding the gun in his right hand, Gambling Snake pointed its muzzle at the blackboard beside him. A line written on it read, “No talking. Give me your phone.”

Li Wei carefully took out his phone, stepped forward a few paces, and held it out to Gambling Snake.

In those few moments, Li Wei considered whether to rush the man and fight him. He was still wearing a bulletproof vest under his suit. With a gun pressed to his neck from behind, he hadn't been able to resist, but now he had a chance. When someone suddenly lunged at a gunman at close range, shooting for the torso was the safest option, and instinctive, too. As long as the vest could take one hit, he could grab the man's wrist and keep him from aiming a second shot. The others in the room could do something, too. If they all piled on, surely they could overpower one man?

But Gambling Snake's murderous gaze stayed fixed on Li Wei. While Li Wei was still wrestling with the idea, Gambling Snake actually gave him a slight shake of the head, his expression seeming to say, “I'd advise you to behave yourself.”

Li Wei swallowed and immediately drove all thoughts of resistance from his mind. As the saying went, don't take on a job you don't have the tools for. The fellow before him was probably the sort who could snap his neck barehanded and raise his gun to fire again, all within two seconds. He'd already seen through and mocked a mere passing thought. If Li Wei actually lunged, he'd probably be beaten until he was paralyzed down one side.

Gambling Snake took the phone and put it in the glass of water. Downstairs, HL's listening team heard a few bursts of static before losing the audio feed from the bug on the phone. Fortunately, another device combining tracking and listening functions was hidden on Li Wei's bulletproof vest, so HL could keep listening. They were puzzled, though. Why had there been nothing but faint noises for a while now? They hadn't heard a single word. What on earth was Li Wei doing?

After dunking the phone, Gambling Snake turned the pivot-mounted plastic blackboard a hundred and eighty degrees to show its other side. There was writing there, too. “Give me the bug on your bulletproof vest as well.”

Li Wei was speechless. He'd thought his last lifeline had gone unnoticed, but the man knew about that, too. Helplessly, he handed over the listening device hidden on his vest. Gambling Snake gave it the same treatment, dropping it into the water. Now the HL team was completely in the dark.

With that done, Gambling Snake finally spoke. His voice was exactly as Li Wei had imagined, a perfect match for his face. In short, it had the standard tone and timbre of a cold-blooded Mafia hitman. “Find a seat. No chatter, and don't ask me questions.”

Li Wei shakily approached the long table and found a seat. He gave the business tycoons questioning looks, but they seemed afraid to utter so much as a word. These men, who ordinarily only pretended to get along, were now desperately exchanging meaningful looks. Unfortunately, it did no good. None of them understood what anyone else meant.

In full view of everyone, Gambling Snake walked steadily to the door and pressed the built-in lock on its handle. Once he had locked the door, cold steel flashed from his sleeve as a wrist blade appeared. Before anyone could react, he had sliced off the interior door handle with a single stroke. The cut was smooth, and the remaining stub was far too short to grip and turn.

The multimillionaires all wore much the same expression. Those with stronger nerves were drenched in sweat, their hearts racing. As for those with weaker nerves... one fat, white-haired old man with a goatee clutched his chest, gasped several times, and toppled to the floor in pain.

A man beside him with a neatly trimmed little mustache immediately knelt beside him and looked at him with concern. He raised his head toward Gambling Snake. “He has a heart condition! At least let this dying old man leave! He's never hurt anyone!”

“Then how about you take him to the hospital?” Gambling Snake said.

“Huh?” The mustached man froze. Strange, he thought, wasn't that supposed to be my line? I was just about to ask. Who knew this hitman was such a decent fellow?

But in exactly the same calm tone, Gambling Snake immediately said something entirely different. “Please return to your seat and shut your mouth. If anyone moves without permission again, I'll cut open the floor-to-ceiling window and throw him out.”

At that, the mustached man promptly abandoned the “dying old man” and returned to his seat.

Gambling Snake approached the fat old man writhing in pain on the floor, one step at a time. “I'm very good at stopping people's hearts. Naturally, I also know how to make them start beating again.” He drew closer. “Get up on your own now, and I can pretend none of this happened. If you refuse, I can pick out a few interesting killing devices and give you a few rounds of CPR.”

The fat old man shot upright. “I... I'm fine...” He clambered back into his seat, calmly accepting everyone's contemptuous stares.

Gambling Snake walked to the chairman's seat at the head of the long table, opened the laptop there, and connected it for a slide presentation. “I have some materials to show you.” He glanced at Li Wei. “I hope you'll remain quiet while I explain.”

...

Waiting in the vehicle outside the building, Ji Cheng and the HL agents were caught in a bind. They didn't know whether to rush inside. If they barged in, the kidnapper might regard it as breaking the rules, endangering both the hostage and Li Wei. But with all of Li Wei's tracking and listening equipment out of action, they didn't even know whether he was alive. If anything happened to Young Master Li, they couldn't shoulder that responsibility, either.

Time slipped by. Fifteen minutes had passed since they lost the audio feed, and they still had no way of knowing what was happening on the top floor. Just as HL's armed team was preparing to throw caution to the winds and move in, a rocket trailing bright flame shot from the second floor of a large seafood restaurant across the street. Leaving a plume of white smoke, it struck the surveillance van carrying Ji Cheng and the monitoring team. As a specialized HL vehicle, the van had excellent armor. After taking the blast, rolling twice, and skidding some distance along the ground, it actually remained in one piece and wasn't even leaking fuel.

Ji Cheng kicked open the van's rear doors and dragged his unconscious team members out. The driver was largely unharmed and pushed open a front door to climb out on his own.

The armed team had been lying in wait nearby, and the sudden thunderous explosion served as their bugle call to charge. Several sergeants first class and second lieutenants commanding at the scene promptly issued the same order. More than eighty fully armed assault troops converged from the three surrounding streets and surged toward the seafood restaurant across the road.

At that moment, three men in Steel Commandment uniforms stood on the restaurant's second floor, their faces blackened with soot as they coughed incessantly.

“Who the fuck told you two to fire a rocket launcher indoors? You want to die?” the shorter one shouted from some distance away.

“Huh?” The two hulking men by the window turned to look at him in bewilderment.

“A pair of complete idiots... Probably damaged their own eardrums...” the short man said bitterly. “Is there anyone left with a working brain who isn't deaf?”

An errand runner cautiously poked his head through the doorway and came in. “Cl... Cleric... I'm still here.”

The short cleric said, “Are the brothers downstairs ready to fight?”

“Yes. We've just finished clearing the data, too. We can break out at any time,” the man replied.

“Good!” the short man declared with righteous conviction. “Since the grand master has given the order, we must devote ourselves to the faith and serve until our dying breath! Since HL has us surrounded, we'll fight them to the death!” He kept one more sentence to himself. “Whatever it takes, I've got to get out of here...”