“Don’t you feel that China nowadays, the whole society is universally restless? Everyone wants to make quick money. Traps and scams are everywhere. Take phone calls for example—out of ten calls you receive, nine are marketing scams. And look down there—”
Fang Chao held a gun in his hand, standing by the hotel room window. He parted the gap between the two curtain panels and pointed toward the storefronts lining the street across from them. “Look, real estate agents, prostate treatment clinics, free travel packages, cosmetic surgery places, and all kinds of financing schemes and pyramid schemes. The market is full of these stores now. Rent is too expensive, so businesses that operate honestly have all closed down. The ones that survive all rely on swindling and cheating! But speaking of the most infuriating one, it’s still that foot bath shop at the intersection!”
Liu Zhi, who was bent over organizing his backpack nearby, stopped and asked curiously, “What’s wrong with the foot washing place?”
“I went to that foot bath shop last night, and they actually washed my feet!”
“What else would they do?”
Fang Chao turned around and walked to the dressing mirror, carefully inspecting the beard and wig on his face. He said wistfully, “A real foot bath shop doesn’t actually wash feet.” He looked back at the completely bewildered Liu Zhi and patted his shoulder with a smile. “Let’s go. After we finish this job, I’ll take you to experience a real foot bath!”
Fang Chao put the safety on his handgun and hid it behind his waist. Liu Zhi shouldered his backpack. Both of them had disguised themselves from head to toe so thoroughly that even their own parents wouldn’t recognize them. Only then did they calmly leave the hotel, hailed a taxi, and drove straight to an intersection in the suburbs. They walked into an alley, wandered around for a while, reached the main road outside, took another long detour, and finally arrived at a T-intersection.
At the corner across from them was a medium-sized private gold shop—this was precisely the target they had decided to hit after days of surveillance.
Fang Chao observed the surroundings for a while, then looked down at his watch. It was now four-thirty in the afternoon. Soon the city’s evening rush hour would arrive. The timing matched his plan perfectly. He pulled out his phone from his pocket and pressed the dial button.
A few seconds later, five kilometers away in the city center, at a planter box in front of a bank, there was suddenly a “bang.” A fist-thick evergreen shrub in the middle was blasted apart at its trunk. Two electric scooters parked nearby were blown several meters away. The scene immediately filled with billowing smoke, accompanied by the terrified screams of passing pedestrians. A hundred meters away, a female driver was so frightened that she lost control of her car, causing a multi-vehicle pile-up.
Immediately afterward, two other busy streets in the city center also experienced similar small-scale explosions in succession.
A few minutes later, emergency calls flooded into the Public Security Bureau. Terrorism alerts were always the police’s top priority. In an instant, police forces throughout the entire city rushed collectively to the three scenes.
Ten minutes later, Fang Chao opened his phone’s navigation app and saw that all the main roads in the city center had turned completely red, indicating that the entire city was thoroughly gridlocked. He chuckled softly, nodded at Liu Zhi, and ordered in a low voice, “Move!”
The two put on rubber gloves and strode toward the gold shop. Just before reaching the surveillance area at the shop entrance, they quickly pulled out plastic masks and put them on their faces. Liu Zhi took out two stickers printed with “Closed for Renovation,” slapped them on the left and right sides of the shop’s glass door, and the two flashed inside, closing the door behind them. Fang Chao drew his handgun, Liu Zhi pulled out a long dagger, and both pounced in front of three completely unprepared female salespeople in the shop, threatening them with loud shouts: “Nobody move! This is a robbery! Be obedient, or we’ll shoot if anyone moves!”
Fang Chao controlled the entire situation with his gun while Liu Zhi, gripping the dagger in one hand, grabbed one of the female salespeople and shoved all three toward a corner near the counter, ordering them to squat down with their hands raised and clasped behind their heads.
In the blink of an eye, the gold shop was under their complete control. Fang Chao calmly stepped forward, moving the gun barrel back and forth over the three women’s heads, saying unhurriedly, “Don’t be afraid. Everyone just cooperate a little. Hand over the keys to the display cases, and we’ll take what we came for and leave. We won’t hurt anyone.”
The three women huddled together, trembling with fear, not even daring to lift their heads.
Seeing them completely unresponsive, Liu Zhi immediately lost patience and began shouting while brandishing his dagger: “Did you hear that? Hurry up and hand over the fucking keys! I’m counting to three, and if you don’t hand them over, I’ll start killing people! One—”
“Stay calm. Violence doesn’t solve problems.” Fang Chao interrupted. His style was completely different from Liu Zhi’s. He always believed that robbery required brains, and violence was merely an auxiliary means. So he employed his consistently steady approach, reasoning with them slowly and deliberately. “I’m sure this is the first time you’ve all encountered something like this. You must be very scared. You’re considering whether or not to hand over the keys. Actually, the reasoning is very simple. How much do you earn working here? Is it necessary to risk your lives for such a small salary? Remember this saying: your life is your own, but the money belongs to the boss!”
One woman weakly raised her head: “I am the boss.”
Fang Chao swallowed and immediately raised his hand and fired. With a “bang,” a glass display case nearby shattered into pieces. The three women’s legs gave out, and they collapsed to the floor in fright. The female owner tremblingly pulled out the keys and held them high above her head. Liu Zhi snatched the keys away and muttered, “Should’ve just fired the fucking gun from the start.”
According to the plan, Fang Chao guarded the three salespeople with his gun while Liu Zhi was responsible for collecting the goods. The entire process shouldn’t exceed three minutes. When three minutes arrived, Fang Chao saw that Liu Zhi’s backpack was already quite heavy. Any more weight would be too much and would hinder their escape, so he could only reluctantly abandon the other gold jewelry in the display cases. He waved his hand, Liu Zhi zipped up the backpack, pulled out rope and quickly bound the three women on the floor, sealing their mouths with tape.
The two took a deep breath, straightened their backs with feigned composure, and quickly left the gold shop.
Half an hour later, a friend from a neighboring shop came over to visit and rescued the three people trapped in the store. Everyone immediately called the police. At that moment, all the police were gathered at the terrorism scene in the city center, and the surrounding traffic was completely paralyzed. It wasn’t until over an hour later that they arrived.
That evening, various news outlets, WeChat groups, and internal police channels were all intensely discussing the afternoon’s explosion case, while the robbery at this small gold shop and other cases in the city that day all seemed far less important.
Fang Chao and Liu Zhi sat in their hotel room, staring blankly at a white jade and gold-inlaid statue of the God of Wealth on the table, with a small pile of gold jewelry beside it.
After a long while, Fang Chao lit a cigarette, took a deep drag, and sighed heavily: “I really don’t understand. The first two times we robbed jewelry stores, it was indeed our lack of experience. We didn’t realize that those jade pieces with price tags of tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands were worthless. In the end, we could only sell them by weight at rock-bottom prices. This time we learned our lesson and went for gold, which is hard currency. As a result, after so many days of preparation, we found a good target, the robbery was successful, but then you pull this stunt again. Instead of taking more gold, you stuff a twenty-some-pound statue of the God of Wealth into your bag—what’s that all about?”
Liu Zhi argued vaguely: “I… I saw this thing placed right in the center, so I thought it was very valuable. It felt like Hetian jade to the touch.”
“Hetian jade my ass! A twenty-some-pound piece of Hetian jade? For a shop the size of a fingernail, you think it’s the Palace Museum or something!”
“I—”
Fang Chao shook his head with an expression that suggested Liu Zhi was beyond hope: “In all of China, you’re probably the only one who robbed a gold shop and ended up hauling away the statue of the God of Wealth.”
Liu Zhi was silent for a moment, then said in angry embarrassment: “At worst we’ll just do it again next time. It’s just robbery—what’s there to be afraid of!”
“There won’t be a next time.” Fang Chao’s brow furrowed. “Three times in a row, detonating homemade explosives to disperse police forces for robberies—there’s a saying that things don’t go past three. If we pull another job, the police will definitely discover the connection.”
“Then what do we do? If we’re not doing robberies, what are we doing?”
“Robbing shops on the street, at its core, is trading our lives for money. One misstep and we’ll end up inside. This isn’t a long-term plan! Neither of us has any particular skills, so finding a proper job is impossible. Starting a business—we’re not cut out for that either. Looking back, we need to change our approach and do something else that’s easier and doesn’t require capital!”
“Become gigolos?” Liu Zhi looked at Fang Chao, then thought about himself, and felt somewhat tempted. “This… I’ve never tried this before, and I don’t know if I’d be any good at it.”
“Good at your ass!” Fang Chao slapped him on the head. “I’m saying robbing shops isn’t working, so we should switch directions—rob people!”
Under Liu Zhi’s curious gaze, Fang Chao found a newspaper, spread it flat, and pointed to a news headline—”Corrupt Official Had Millions Stolen from Home but Dared Not Report to Police”—and sneered: “Millions! You figure it out—how many shops would we have to rob to earn ten million? Get one corrupt official, and it all comes at once! Hurry up and pack. Tomorrow we’ll head to San Jiang Kou and make our fortune off a corrupt official.”
“Why go to San Jiang Kou?” San Jiang Kou was a county-level city on the Zhejiang coast. Although its economy was fairly developed, it couldn’t begin to compare with the provincial capital Hangzhou, so presumably its corrupt officials wouldn’t be as wealthy as those in Hangzhou either.
“Because San Jiang Kou is the safest.” Fang Chao turned to another page of the newspaper and pointed to an inconspicuous piece of news in the bottom corner, about the size of a palm. “The deputy director of the San Jiang Kou Public Security Bureau has been missing for half a year and can’t be found. They’ve even put a missing person notice in the newspaper. Think about it—the San Jiang Kou police lost their own boss and can’t find him. Can they catch us? Give me a break!”
Provincial Public Security Deputy Director Gao Dong received a complaint letter. The person being accused was none other than his mortal enemy—Zhou Weidong.