The rotting wooden door let out a teeth-gritting groan, creaking open just enough to reveal a gap wide enough for a single person.
No light came from the crack; instead, a thick wave of cheap tobacco, stale sweat, herbal ointment, and the strange, foul odor of decaying wood rushed out to meet him.
In the darkness, a bloodshot, clouded eye pressed against the opening, filled with unmasked vigilance and scrutiny, like a lone wolf in the night.
"Who are you?" a voice as raspy as sandpaper rubbing together came from behind the door.
Yi Zhonghai forced himself to stay calm, pulling the cloth covering his face a bit higher so only his eyes showed. He lowered his voice, making it urgent and sharp, "Master Liu? An underground acquaintance recommended me. I've got a thorny issue and wanted to ask Master Liu to lend a hand and smooth things over."
There was a moment of silence behind the crack, and that eye swept back and forth over him like a searchlight.
Yi Zhonghai could even feel the other man's gaze linger on the heavy bulge at his chest where he had hidden the money.
"Come in!" Limping Liu's voice remained raspy.
The door was yanked wider. In the faint moonlight, Yi Zhonghai made out the figure standing inside.
He was a short man, somewhat hunchbacked, leaning on a filthy wooden stick, his left leg obviously gimpy as he walked.
It was none other than the legendary "Limping Liu." The wrinkles on his face looked carved by a knife, his skin rough and dark. His triangular eyes flickered with a fierce light in the dimness; he was definitely bad news.
Yi Zhonghai had no choice but to squeeze sideways through the narrow gap.
The door slammed shut with a bang right behind him. Inside, the only light came from a kerosene lamp lit by Limping Liu, its chimney blackened by oily soot.
The room was extremely cramped and messy, furnished with a broken wooden board bed and a stool with a missing leg. The air was thick with the same complex stench from before.
Yi Zhonghai felt his heart hammering against his ribs like a war drum. Every single second was a death warrant!
No longer caring about anything else, he went straight to the point, fishing a small bundle wrapped in a handkerchief out from inside his tunic.
Carefully, he placed the cloth bundle on the oil-stained, ruined table, where it landed with a heavy, dull thud.
Slowly, he peeled back the layers of the handkerchief. Under the dim light, a thick stack of neatly rolled bills was suddenly exposed! Along with a few bottom-of-the-chest silver dollars and a small, high-purity gold bar!
Seeing this hard currency, Limping Liu's clouded eyes flashed brightly.
Yet his expression remained unchanged. He reached out a filthy hand with thick knuckles, weighed the thickness of the stack of money, pinched the small gold bar, and glanced over the few silver dollars.
Finally, he pushed the items lightly toward the center of the table, lifted his eyelids, and cast his gaze back onto Yi Zhonghai's masked face. The look of vigilance was gone, replaced only by calculating precision and naked greed.
"Where do you need smoothed over?" Limping Liu's voice was completely flat, as if they were discussing breaking a cup.
Yi Zhonghai swallowed hard, his voice as tight as a bowstring about to snap: "East City! Front courtyard of 95 Nanluoguxiang. There's a little bastard named Su Changshun—break one of his legs right tonight! Make it clean and keep him from yelling, don't kill him, just cripple one of his legs!"
He gritted his teeth, every word packed with ruthlessness and resolve. "The sooner the better, I need it done right now!" He anxiously pointed toward the window outside. "Dawn is almost here, once he steps outside, it'll be trouble!"
"Oh?" Limping Liu drew out the syllable, his triangular eyes narrowing slightly, a trace of amusement flashing in the depths of his gaze, just like a cat toying with a half-dead mouse under its paw.
Instead of looking at the money on the table, he leisurely felt around for a blackened pipe from the corner, dug out some cheap tobacco, held it to the kerosene lamp, and puffed away noisily.
Time ticked by second by second, and the silence pressed down on Yi Zhonghai's heart like a heavy stone.
"Right now?" Limping Liu finally blew out a thick cloud of smoke, speaking at a leisurely pace, his voice still raspy. "Nanluoguxiang? Front courtyard? Sneaking in there in the middle of the night to pull a job like this?"
He abruptly lifted his eyelids, his gaze as sharp as a needle pinning Yi Zhonghai in place. "Comrade! You probably don't know what year it is, do you?"
"Liberation was nearly six years ago! The Joint Defense Team here in Sijiu City aren't just sitting around! Night patrols are even more vicious than in broad daylight!" Limping Liu's voice suddenly rose a notch, carrying the ruthless and slick edge unique to a desperado.
"Nanluoguxiang is a proper, inhabited neighborhood! Sneaking in at midnight to smash someone's leg? And making sure he doesn't scream? That easy?"
He forcefully knocked his pipe against the edge of the table: "That's gambling with your head tied to your belt! Understand? Even the slightest noise! Waking up the people sleeping next door! Even a single cough! My old neck would be finished right here tonight! The Public Security Bureau's handcuffs aren't for show! Once you're dragged into the station, there's no telling if your life will even cover it! You want me to go right now?"
Limping Liu leaned slightly forward, his voice dropping lower yet growing colder: "You want instant results? Fine! It's going to cost extra. Whatever's on this table…"
He disdainfully flicked the money, silver dollars, and gold bar with his finger. "Is only enough to pay for the sweat of a routine job on a normal day. It's not enough to buy off the risk to my own head!"
He raised three blackened fingers, waving them forcefully in front of Yi Zhonghai's face. "Add another three hundred! Not a single copper less is up for discussion! It has to be converted into silver dollars or gold bars! Hand it over now! Those paper bills aren't even soft enough to wipe your ass with, I don't care for them!"
Proppping his body up on his single leg, his gaze looked down from above, carrying a desperado's unique ferocity and unquestionable authority. "Can't cough it up? Get lost while you still can! I still want to live a couple more years!"
Yi Zhonghai's head buzzed! This Limping Liu was asking for the moon! This was practically skinning him alive and dipping into his coffin savings.
A rush of blood surged to his head, and Yi Zhonghai's vision darkened; he almost passed out on the spot! He wanted to roar, he wanted to curse!
But... looking at the deeper night outside the window? He guessed midnight must have nearly passed! Shazhu and Su Changshun would be heading to the post office at dawn, and there was no turning back!
Yi Zhonghai nearly crushed his own teeth, his back molars emitting a hair-raising grinding sound! He stared straight into Limping Liu's greedy, cold eyes, which left no room for negotiation.
With a sudden reach, he plunged his hand back into his innermost tunic pocket, his trembling hand slamming the last cold, heavy gold bar down hard next to the pile of money on the table with a sharp smack.
Then, he fumbled to pull out all the remaining loose bills from his pocket, piling them haphazardly onto the table.
His voice was hoarse and distorted from extreme heartache and physical pain: "That's... that's all of it, take it all! It's right here! Master Liu, my entire fortune is here! If you agree, take it all, get the job done for me, and go break that leg right now!"
Limping Liu reached out a blackened hand, first grabbing the large gold bar to weigh it in his palm, then sweeping all the valuables and less valuable items off the table in one go into a tattered cloth sack. Tying the filthy sack around his waist, Limping Liu said, "Wait here! One hour!"
From a pile of junk in the corner, he deftly pulled out a jujube-wood short club as thick as a child's arm, polished to a greasy sheen, and tucked a sharply honed boning knife into his waistband.
His movements were so swift he looked nothing like a cripple, and in a few strides, he flashed to the door. "Wait right here for the results, don't you fucking follow!"
Dropping this icy remark, Limping Liu's figure instantly melted into the thick, impenetrable darkness outside the door.
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The suffocating stench inside the tiny room was almost enough to swallow Yi Zhonghai whole; how could he possibly stay?
"Wait? Wait for your mother's head!" he cursed inwardly. "I'm supposed to stay and wait? Wait to get caught red-handed or wait for you to double-cross me, you bastard?
Even if the sky falls, I, Yi Zhonghai, have to show my face back at the Quadrangle Courtyard!"
Not daring to waste another second, Yi Zhonghai stepped out of the small courtyard, pulled the door half-shut behind him, and plunged back into the freezing night.
He didn't dare take the original path; he had to take a shortcut to return to the compound ahead of time, and then step forward to preside over justice once the incident happened.
Relying on his familiarity with the nearby alleys, he scrambled tremblingly from the end of a nearly abandoned dead-end alley behind Nanluoguxiang up onto a relatively low, weed-choked courtyard wall.
Yi Zhonghai climbed up hands and feet, scrambling and tumbling over the top.
He landed with a dull thud, but ignoring the pain, he climbed up grimacing, identified his direction, and ducked into an even narrower alley. After this whole ordeal, he finally caught sight of the gate to the Number 95 Compound.
Crouching down and holding his breath, he slipped along the base of the wall straight to his own front door.
The compound gate was still left slightly ajar! This was the opening he had deliberately left for Limping Liu, and he slid through his front door as silently as an eel.
"Who is it?" Chen Guihua's terrified, trembling voice came from the dark.
"Shh, it's me!" Yi Zhonghai clapped a hand over Chen Guihua's mouth just as she was about to cry out, his voice dropped extremely low. "Don't make a sound, let's just wait and listen for any noise!"
Pulling Chen Guihua down, he made her sit against the freezing wall by the door, the two of them curled up in the pitch-black room with pricked ears, leaving only their heavy, suppressed breathing behind.
Time seemed to stand still, every single second stretching out as long as a century.
Yi Zhonghai's ears desperately strained to catch any sound from inside the courtyard—was it the dull thud of a club striking bone, or the dying shriek of that punk Su Changshun?
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In the front courtyard's east room, Su Changshun was sleeping like a dead pig.
Suddenly, a "jingling!" sound rang out in the room.
It was a makeshift alarm rigged up from thin wire hanging a few broken pieces of metal, sounding exceptionally sharp and explosive in the silent room!
Su Changshun hadn't been sleeping deeply to begin with; his eyelid had been twitching ever since he left Shazhu's place. He had carefully checked it—left eye for wealth, right eye for disaster—and upon returning to his room, he had mentally cursed himself for overthinking, calling it all superstition.
The slight, jarring noise of the alarm pierced his eardrums like an ice pick, shocking him so hard he bounced right off the bed!
"Who's there?" Su Changshun's fierce shout exploded in the room like a thunderclap, carrying the grogginess of just waking up, but even more of an unmasked, angry vigilance! Reacting on instinct, he got up and slowly reached for the only small bench in the house!
This simple little alarm was something he had rigged up three months ago right after he first transmigrated here. When he first arrived in this era, he had felt disoriented, panicked, frightened, and above all, lost.
This east room was his only spiritual sustenance. Having transmigrated into this chaotic, sprawling compound with the wariness of a modern soul, could he possibly sleep like a log without a care in the world like Shazhu?
Only by hanging this contraption could he fall asleep peacefully every night.
Outside the door, Limping Liu—who had just used a thin blade to pry open the old wooden latch and was preparing to make his next move—was frightened out of his wits by this sudden bell and the roar that followed right after!
His crippled leg had almost jumped out of joint! Damn it, there was a trap hanging behind this door?
The old bastard hadn't mentioned this household was on guard. He didn't dare move another muscle, just waiting to see what the little punk inside would do.