“Damn it — gone!” Pang Hou returned to Long Ge’s tent, seething. “That A’Shui has run off!!”
“What A’Shui?” Li Haozhang was already frustrated from failing to find the item Long Ge had taken, and asked irritably.
“Someone from a mountaineering association.” Pang Hou didn’t know A’Shui’s true identity, and had no idea that Li Haozhang actually knew A’Shui, so he snapped back in exasperation.
“To hell with it,” Li Haozhang said dismissively. “Who even knows if he’ll make it down the mountain alive.”
Pang Hou didn’t think someone from a mountaineering association could cause any real trouble, but he felt unsettled all the same. He leaned over and watched for a while longer. Outside, Diao Zhuo was thrashing his legs and swinging his head from side to side, his face flushed a deep red, clearly in agonizing distress, on the verge of suffocating — slowly, his head drooped down. Ge Mingliang was still struggling, and Da Qin, who had been struck down first, was already injured and even less likely to mount any kind of resistance.
“I didn’t kill him… I didn’t kill him…” Pang Hou murmured to himself, like a self-hypnosis, his face already turning pale. He thought that if he needed to pose as a victim later, he would have to finish off Ge Mingliang as well. He raised the gun, but hesitated for a long time and still could not bring himself to pull the trigger. At that moment, Red Beard and the others — wearing filtration masks — arrived with their guns trained on Ba Yunye and the rest of the group, herding them back. Every one of them had their hands locked behind their backs with plastic zip-ties.
Ba Yunye had still been thinking of how to free herself, but the moment her eyes landed on Diao Zhuo, she froze in her tracks. “Diao Zhuo!!” she cried out. Red Beard answered with a backhanded slap to her face. She lurched sideways and fell to the ground; her teeth caught her lip, and blood immediately poured out.
“Find the item,” Red Beard ordered Pang Hou in a cold, clipped tone. He didn’t seem to have any intention of killing them outright — after all, slaughtering this many Chinese people on Chinese soil would inevitably draw intense attention from the Chinese authorities, and even if he managed to flee the country, he might not escape the consequences. So for him, what mattered most right now was finding the crucial item Long Ge was carrying on his person.
Pang Hou went back into the tent and searched again, sweat beading all over his forehead.
“Can’t find it…” Li Haozhang was growing anxious; he had searched every crevice on Long Ge, and the tiny memory chip was still nowhere to be found.
“Search again,” Pang Hou urged. But as the words left his mouth, the seemingly lifeless Long Ge suddenly sprang up, knocking the gun clean out of his hand in a single blow. With a nimble roll, Long Ge locked the gun firmly in his own grip, then thrust it against the side of Li Haozhang’s neck.
Pang Hou reacted quickly and scrambled back out of the tent. Li Haozhang, now Long Ge’s hostage, knew the situation had turned disastrous — those outside, seeing Long Ge awake, might kill him first just to remove the threat.
Long Ge pressed one hand against Li Haozhang’s neck, the other lifting the tent flap as he stepped outside. His legs were still weak and unsteady, but the moment he emerged and saw Diao Zhuo hanging limp and unresponsive, Ba Yunye half-kneeling on the ground with blood at the corner of her mouth, and the several other members of the Beidou rescue team he had met before — he understood immediately what kind of situation he was now in.
The rescue team and Ba Yunye had come to save him, and now they had fallen into danger themselves. Long Ge was a man who prized loyalty and brotherhood. He gritted his teeth and held himself together, his mind working through how to keep them alive.
Because she had no way of knowing whether Diao Zhuo was alive, Ba Yunye was filled with grief. Seeing Long Ge emerge with Li Haozhang as his hostage, she called out softly, “Long Ge,” but had no strength to say anything more.
“Long, I will be frank with you — all your people are in my hands, and the man you’re holding is not important to us.” Red Beard said in broken Chinese. “We do not wish to kill so many people, unless you force us to. So please, hand over the chip. We can discuss the terms. I trust you are a wise man who knows when to yield.”
Long Ge stood his ground with unyielding dignity, glaring at Red Beard and his men with fierce indignation, squeezing Li Haozhang so hard the man was nearly strangled. He let out a dry, short laugh. “Cough, cough! Do you have any idea how much I, Renlong Duoji, have given up all these years just to investigate the cause of my wife’s death? And you think I’d just hand it over because you said so? Name your terms!”
“Regrettably, I know nothing about whatever caused your wife’s death — but the chip you’ve hidden is very important to me. Since you’re willing to name terms, then go ahead. Whether it’s letting these people go, or money, I am open to consideration.” Red Beard kept his gun trained on Ba Yunye as he spoke, not relaxing his threatening posture one bit.
“What does his chip contain, that’s worth deploying notorious mercenaries like yourselves?” Long Ge spat on the ground. “My terms are simple: I want He Zhengren to tell me in person exactly why that vehicle went over the cliff.”
“Oh, good heavens — then you’ll have to go down and ask him yourself,” Red Beard shrugged.
Long Ge tightened his grip on Li Haozhang. “You really killed him, kid?”
This question made everyone start. Ge Mingliang let out a louder volley of muffled cries, and Ba Yunye lifted her head in shock. Red Beard was thoroughly desensitized to killing and didn’t care in the least who had killed whom. Li Haozhang’s whole body trembled as he shook his head repeatedly.
“A dog that even turns on its own master.” Long Ge laughed coldly. “No wonder he doesn’t value you people at all.”
“The man was clearly killed by you,” Li Haozhang said.
“Ha.” Long Ge snorted, too contemptuous to argue with a cur, utterly unbothered.
“Hand over the chip,” Red Beard issued his final ultimatum.
“Do you really think I’d carry something like that on my person?” Long Ge refused to yield even an inch; he seemed utterly prepared to die.
Red Beard’s eyes hardened. Ba Yunye shouted frantically, “Watch out!” — but her warning had barely left her lips before Red Beard fired a single shot into Li Haozhang, then simultaneously seized Ba Yunye, stepped behind her, and pressed the barrel of his gun against her temple.
What Ba Yunye cared about most was whether Diao Zhuo was alive or dead. With a gun pressed to her own head, he still hadn’t made the slightest movement. Could it be that he…
“Long — tell us where the chip is, and she lives.” Red Beard said through gritted teeth. He had maintained an absolute advantage throughout, precisely because he had never cared who the other side took hostage. Even if every one of his own men were killed, he would still get that chip. This command style paradoxically made his subordinates all the more desperate to survive, and all the more ruthlessly driven.
“What chip is this, exactly…” Ba Yunye bit down on her lower lip.
“I don’t know exactly what’s stored on it, but they want to sell it to foreign buyers — they even mobilized mercenaries of your infamy for it — so it must be extremely important information.” Long Ge kept his gun trained on Red Beard, holding his ground against one man facing five or six. He did not flinch. “Perhaps He Zhengren is actually a spy!”
Red Beard didn’t respond, instead jamming his gun viciously against Ba Yunye’s head again. “I’ll give you to the count of three. If you still won’t tell me, her head will bloom like a flower. One!”
Ba Yunye’s palms were already soaked through with sweat. The surrounding area was utterly still — no one dared make a single sound. She watched the perspiration stream down Long Ge’s face, and she could see the fire of restrained fury in his eyes. Was the chip actually on him or not? Would he hand it over? No — he couldn’t hand it over. Even if Red Beard didn’t act, the other criminals would never allow everyone to walk away alive. So the chip didn’t just represent her life, Ba Yunye’s life — it was far more than that.
“Two.”
Ba Yunye thought: better to take a gamble. So she held her breath, preparing to throw herself backward into Red Beard. If she could buy Long Ge just one second, he could fire first — take out the leader and the rest would crumble. Right. Do it now.
Just as Ba Yunye was about to make her move, Red Beard seemed to be shoved from behind. She lost her footing and pitched forward. Before she hit the ground she spun around — and saw Diao Zhuo, appearing as if from nowhere, having broken free of his restraints and come charging out, now locked in a fierce grapple with Red Beard. Ge Mingliang had just managed to grab a gun, but the other criminals immediately pressed their own weapons to his head and wrenched it back.
Diao Zhuo gripped tight the hand in which Red Beard held his gun, refusing to give him any chance to aim. Red Beard was enormously strong and tried to shake Diao Zhuo off, but Diao Zhuo held his own, meeting force with force. Both men fought in an explosive, direct style, making for a fierce and tangled struggle. But Red Beard had the gun — regardless of technique, his sole purpose was to get the barrel pointed at Diao Zhuo, and Diao Zhuo kept just barely evading it, though the situation remained decidedly against him.
Pang Hou saw that things had taken a bad turn; at almost the exact moment Ba Yunye hit the ground, he turned and bolted. Long Ge raised his gun, took aim, and fired into one of Pang Hou’s legs, rendering him completely immobile. Pang Hou collapsed to the ground, wailing.
Red Beard was powerfully built, and his struggle with Diao Zhuo remained locked in a deadlock with neither gaining the upper hand. Long Ge’s single gun was pitted against the criminals’ several, which meant he was at a disadvantage too — but because Long Ge held the key to the chip’s whereabouts, no one dared fire first. So the criminals fanned out in multiple directions: one gun on Long Ge, one on Ba Yunye, one pressed to Ge Mingliang’s head, and one aimed at Diao Zhuo.
“Diao Zhuo!” the criminals called out. “Stop right there — or those three are dead!”
“Damn it! Diao Zhuo! Don’t worry about me — shoot him! Take him down!!” Ba Yunye struggled and screamed.
Red Beard seized on the moment Diao Zhuo was distracted, landed a punch that knocked him to the ground, and pressed the gun hard against his forehead. At the same time, his eyes blazed with furious resolve as he barked the order: “Kill them! Kill every single one of them!”
“But the chip—”
“Kill them all! Chop that Long into pieces and search him!” Red Beard’s murderous intent surged. He knew that any further hesitation or mercy would let this group escape, so he resolved to carry out a massacre.
The other criminals considered it for a moment, all of them tightening their fingers on their triggers.
“I’ll tell you where the chip is!” Long Ge bellowed.
Red Beard narrowed his eyes, glaring at Long Ge with cold, vicious calculation. “Too late. They’re all a pack of nuisances. I’ll settle them first, and then I’ll be happy to listen to what you have to say.” With that, he swept a look around at the other criminals, signaling them to act.
The criminal pressing his gun against Ba Yunye’s head drew a deep breath. Ba Yunye closed her eyes. Then came a sharp crack — “Bang!” Her heart lurched, and she nearly blacked out — only to realize she was unharmed. The criminal toppled with a cry, a perfectly placed hole dead center in his forehead.
“A sniper?!” Ba Yunye said instinctively.
“What?! There’s a sniper?!” The criminals were thrown into panic, scrambling to look in every direction — but a sniper’s position was never something they could find so easily. Another shot rang out; a criminal screamed and clutched his wrist, a bloody hole punched clean through it, his gun falling to the ground. The precision of the marksmanship was extraordinary.
The criminals grew desperate and opened fire in a frenzied volley toward the direction from which the shots had come.
“Put down your weapons! Put down your weapons!” came a voice over a megaphone from somewhere in the forest. “We are the Chinese People’s Armed Police! You are surrounded! We are ordering you — put down your weapons! Release the hostages!”
Red Beard let out a stream of foul curses, hesitated for a long moment, then finally dropped the gun in his hand and slowly rose to his feet, still muttering a string of obscenities.
A dense rustling swept through the forest. In an instant, the trees were lit up as bright as day by powerful tactical flashlights, and a large contingent of armed police in uniform poured in, pressing the criminals to the ground.
Long Ge stumbled, then dropped heavily to the ground. He had been running entirely on willpower until now; in reality his entire body had not an ounce of strength left, and with the crisis resolved, he collapsed back into a state of complete exhaustion. Everyone’s zip-ties were cut away, and one by one they were fitted with filtration masks.