Chapter 163: Seven Men

Chapter 163: Seven Men

Ding Ruilong sounded as though he had lost his mind.

“Young Master, if this becomes an outright murder case, there could be trouble,” Jiang Chuan reminded him.

“I’ll handle the trouble! You just do as I say! Wu Chen dies today!” Ding Ruilong roared.

He sounded crazed, and yet there was a kind of reason under it.

The best way to kill a man was to make it look like an accident.

A “suicide.” A traffic collision. Methods of that sort.

With a flawless setup, nobody would ever prove anything. Take a traffic accident: if the hit-and-run driver vanished afterward and was never found, the case became nearly impossible to trace.

It was an “accident.”

No trouble.

And no trouble was precisely what Jiang Chuan had come to Donghai to achieve. If the job could be done clean, there was no sense making a mess and inviting complications.

But now Ding Ruilong was ordering him to simply send men to hack Wu Chen down.

That would be murder.

Donghai was not Ding-family ground. If the case blew open, investigators could follow the threads and implicate a great many people. They would never trace it all the way back to Ding Ruilong—but unless every attacker fled at once and got out of the country, someone would have to come forward and take the fall.

And Ding Ruilong wanted it done anyway.

In truth, he was being “rational.”

That rationality rested on a single premise:

Wu Chen had to die.

Once that premise was absolute, Ding Ruilong understood very clearly that after today, Li Ruobing and Li Ruotai would never hand him a second chance at Wu Chen.

Donghai was Li Ruotai’s ground.

So—

It had to be now.

Hack Wu Chen down immediately.

Before the Li siblings finished arranging things. Before they put Wu Chen under full protection.

Act now.

There would certainly be a price.

But Ding Ruilong believed he could bear it.

And that it was worth bearing.

“All right, Young Master. I’ll arrange it…” Jiang Chuan agreed.

Once the call ended, Jiang Chuan strode out of the villa’s living room onto the balcony, pulled the glass door shut behind him, and only then made his next call.

What he was about to arrange was of the highest importance.

The fewer who knew, the better.

It connected quickly.

“Hello, Old Dao…” Jiang Chuan said.

“Master Chuan…” The voice on the other end was deep and heavy.

“The men on the operation were all taken by Li Ruotai,” Jiang Chuan said first.

“What?” Old Dao sounded startled, then hesitated. “Then I… fuck…”

He seemed at a loss and settled for a curse.

There was not much to say.

They lived by the blade. A day like this was bound to come sooner or later.

Strictly speaking, the men who had been taken were not Jiang Chuan’s at all.

They were Old Dao’s.

Because coming to Donghai carried enormous risk, Jiang Chuan had brought in outsiders for the job.

Old Dao’s group had been fetched from the border region of Yun Province. They had deep ties to illegal organizations in the areas bordering Myanmar, and the two sides had worked together before.

“I’ll pay you double,” Jiang Chuan said, then turned straight to it. “Where are you now?”

“Xinmao Shopping Center. Parking garage. In the car… I’ve already got a man inside keeping eyes on the kid,” Old Dao said.

“Did you bring knives?”

“Yeah. No guns, though… I can have some brought over.”

“Hack the kid down right now! I don’t care how you do it—keep it as clean as you can, and leave the moment it’s done,” Jiang Chuan said rapidly. “And no guns. We can’t have a firearms case.”

The instant a shooting occurred—once a body turned up and was confirmed killed by gunfire—it became a major case.

The authorities above would come down on it hard.

Jiang Chuan would never use a gun in Donghai.

He was afraid desperadoes like Old Dao’s men would do something reckless for money, then vanish and leave every bit of the mess to the Ding family.

“No guns, definitely. I understand,” Old Dao said, still sounding faintly hesitant. “But… Master Chuan, you’re sure? We just go straight at him?”

“Don’t worry. The moment it’s done I’ll arrange to move you south and out of the country. After that it has nothing to do with you. We’ll handle what comes after… Any problem?”

“No problem.” Old Dao gave a short laugh at the question. “I was only confirming. If you’re not afraid of the trouble, I’ve got no problem at all.”

“Then do it.”

“Right.”

…

Xinmao Shopping Center, fifth-floor cinema.

Not long after Wu Chen bought his coffee and sat down in the lobby, a man in a mask and a black jacket rode the elevator to the fifth floor and came into the specialty theater.

Inside, he looked around.

Then he bought a coffee as well and took a seat neither too near Wu Chen nor too far.

He did not drink it.

He took out his phone and scrolled, typing something now and then, as though trading text messages with someone.

Wu Chen glanced at him over his coffee.

He did not need a second look.

He knew the man was following him.

Wu Chen had only changed routes after entering Shangmao East Road.

He knew that besides the vehicles whose plates he had already confirmed, there had to be other cars on his tail.

After the change he had not driven far before pulling into the shopping center. It had been easy for them to keep up.

Wu Chen sat in the theater lobby for nearly an hour.

Just before nine-thirty, his phone rang.

Li Ruotai.

Wu Chen answered and listened briefly.

“I know,” he said.

Then he hung up.

Li Ruotai had called to say all four vehicles had been intercepted and everyone inside taken.

A few minutes later.

The phone rang again.

This time—

Li Ruobing.

Wu Chen knew exactly what had happened. After calling him to report it was all handled, Li Ruotai had called his sister and explained.

Wu Chen answered.

“Where are you?” Li Ruobing asked, straight to it, her voice ice.

“Xinmao Shopping Center. The coffee cinema. Why?” Wu Chen said, smiling.

“Are there many people around?”

“It’s all right. Staff and so on.”

“Good. Stay there and don’t move. I’m coming now!”

She hung up without waiting for another word.

Wu Chen looked at the phone and smiled again.

She was bringing men to protect him.

He did not need her protection, but—

He liked the thought behind it.

Another ten minutes or so passed.

She should be nearly there.

Wu Chen had even allowed for the time it would take her to get downstairs. The timing was about right.

He took another sip of coffee, set the cup down, and stood.

He straightened his suit with one hand, slipped the other into his pocket, and walked toward the exit.

He was leaving.

Li Ruobing was about to arrive with a large number of bodyguards. There was no reason to keep idling here; even if he waited for her to come up, they would only leave together anyway.

He might not get to see Ding Ruilong’s next move.

But it hardly mattered.

As Wu Chen walked out of the cinema and went to call the elevator, the masked man in the lobby typed rapidly into his phone and sent a message.

Then he stood and followed several meters behind.

Wu Chen stopped before the elevator doors.

The man took up a position behind him and slightly to one side.

The elevator was stopped on the third floor.

Wu Chen reached out to call it up, and the display suddenly showed a downward arrow.

Someone had called it down first.

He pressed the button anyway.

He waited.

The car reached the basement. Someone had presumably gotten in.

Soon it began to rise.

It stopped on the fourth floor, presumably to let that passenger out.

Ten seconds later it continued up.

At last it reached the fifth floor.

The doors opened.

The car was empty.

Wu Chen glanced at the shattered surveillance camera inside.

Pretending he had noticed nothing, he let the corner of his mouth lift.

He stepped in.

The masked man followed.

Only the two of them.

The doors closed.

The car began to descend.

At the fourth floor it stopped again, unexpectedly.

The doors opened.

Six men stood waiting outside.

All in casual clothes of various cuts. Some tall, some short—but every one of them male, every one masked, several in baseball caps besides.

All six came in as soon as the doors opened.

Wu Chen shifted farther back to make room.

The mall’s elevators were fairly roomy, but with eight men inside it was still close.

The doors closed.

The car continued down.

Silence.

Then—

All seven men but Wu Chen reached inside their clothes at almost the same instant.

Cleavers and daggers came out.

Slashing, stabbing—

Every blade went for Wu Chen.