Chapter 48 Humbleness
Stumbling out of the Devil’s Eye, Zhao Zichen walked alone by himself, strolling down the street through the heavy rain, with his long hair plastered onto him from the wetness.
Seeing him acting the way that he did, if I didn’t know that he was actually the Vice Department Head of the Tong City Hospital Cardiology Department, I’d say that he was either a nutter or a homeless bum.
Behind him, Bao and a limping Jin followed him from a distance, and I followed behind them even further back.
Though it does seem a little odd with Zhao Zichen. Maybe he was so drunk that he couldn’t recognize his way around anymore. The more he walked on, the darker and tighter the way became. From the road, then to the streets, and even now he was turning off into an even narrower alleyway.
The crude stone pavement of the alleyway glistened with wetness from the rain, looking like a terrible slipping hazard. In the alleyway, there was only one dim street lamp, glowing yellow in the dark of the rainy night. It was quiet, with no one else around us, just the sounds of our footsteps and the raindrops hitting the ground.
Then Zhao Zichen suddenly whipped back around, and looked right at Bao straight in the face.
“Oh, I see you people are still here.” Zhao Zichen said, in perfect consciousness. He was completely sober all along!
I was startled, to say at the least, and Bao was even more so. He growled dangerously, “Zhao Zichen, are you nuts!? You mean you did all that on purpose? You think you can get away with pointing a gun at us Black Dragons!?”
“Gun? Oh, you mean this thing. So what about it? Why didn’t you say so when you’re acting like a whimpering dog before?”
“Screw this!” Jin rasped, “Don’t be afraid, he won’t dare shoot anyone. He is a doctor. If he fires that gun and hurts anyone, that’d cost him his entire career.”
Before Bao went on to say anything, Zhao Zichen once again surprised everybody. He threw the gun on the ground and stepped on it, and it shattered to pieces under his shoes.
He laughed, “It’s a toy.”
Knowing that they’ve been played well and good, Jin and Bao was so livid that they couldn’t even think of anything to say. They looked at each other, then at themselves, and after a moment of silence, the only
Those Black Dragons were furious beyond sanity. They went at him as if they wanted to rip Zhao Zichen apart with their bare hands.
Zhao Zichen on the other hand only responded in cool calmness and complete control, keeping his wits about him as he dealt with whatever attacks they threw in his way. From behind the Black Dragons, one by one I began picking them off one by one as they had all their attention focused on Zhao Zichen. It was easy routine work. Find someone, catch, then twist and turn and pop. Wherever I go, I left behind a trail of dislocated shoulders. With one of their arms out of commission, they could only roll around on the ground in pain.
To me, fights like this were as easy as a walk in the park. The enemies were pincered and had their backs to me. I cut into their numbers as easy and as smooth like a hot knife through butter.
A moment later, I got three more of them, and only then did they begin to realize that something wasn’t quite right back here. Some of them turned around and came at me.
Taking a glance at how Zhao Zichen was doing, he seemed unharmed as of yet, with a few people lying on the ground, incapacitated. From the looks of things, he seemed to know his way around his punches and kicks as well.
Now this was really getting odd. If he was this good, why does Daddy Zhao want me to look after him? If anything, these people should be thanking every gods they knew just to have him stay off their backs.
But regardless, the Black Dragons still had the advantage of numbers on their side. This fight won’t be ending any time soon. As I dealt with the Black Dragons that began to flock over in my direction, I saw Zhao Zichen looked at me in surprise, that there was actually someone helping him out in this mess.
Jin also turned his head around, and as he saw me, his face immediately became as scrunched up as bitter melons, and as green and bitter too. He was terrified to see me. Think as he might, but he’ll never knew why he was unlucky enough to run into me in this place.
He frantically pulled Bao and hid inside the crowd of Black Dragons, and a while later, an uncomfortably piercing whistle sounded and cut across the dark of the night, echoing down the otherwise silent alleyway.
Zhao Zichen made a pass at me with his eyes, and then yelled, “Run!”
Then he did exactly as he said, and disappeared around a corner. I didn’t know what was going on exactly, but if Zhao Zichen wasn’t going to stick around, then I had no more reasons to stay here either. I disengaged myself from the crowd and ran out of the alleyway.
Coming out, I looked around and took a guess which direction might be the closest to where he was headed, and began running at full speed, and I almost ran into him as he somehow magically came out of an obscure exit.
He took a look at me, but unfortunately we have no time for words. He motioned at me with his hand to follow him, and we headed even deeper into yet another alleyway.
This one was even darker than the one before, and it didn’t help that the heavy rain had made its dirty and greased ground even more slippery than it normally is. On top of that, it was littered with piles of trash and junk. If it wasn’t for Zhao Zichen, I’ll definitely get myself lost in here.
“They’re there, get them!”
From behind us, yelling and shouting never ceased. Zhao Zichen was running his lungs out, and when he took a glance backward and saw that I kept up with him as if it was a stroll through the park, he gave me a look and flipped his eyes at me.
“What are you, some kind of superman!?”
“Oh, not much, just did a few years in the forces.”
“Here, we’re going this way!”
And once again we turned off into an even narrower alleyway. The alleyway in Tong City had always been a complicated mess. If someone accidentally got lost in it, the best way to get out would be to ask a local for help. And even then, sometimes even the locals themselves get lost around the alleyways in parts that they weren’t perfectly familiar with.
The longer I stayed with him, the more I felt that something wasn’t quite how it seemed. The number of footsteps behind us didn’t lessen one bit, but grew instead. I remembered that there were perhaps 50 odd people then, but now there seemed to be a few hundreds of them. Just where might these people had came from?
On the other hand, it doesn’t seem like Zhao Zichen was in a hurry to get rid of them either. Judging by the way he ran, he seemed to be gathering them behind him and herding them to a specific place.
We ran on for a bit more, and then, the alleyway in front of us came to a halt. A tall wall stood before us, it was a dead end.
I also grew a little tired of playing this game of cat and mouse. Turning my head to look at Zhao Zichen, I asked, “Well, now what? We calling the cops?”
He said only one word in reply, “Through.”
He ran to a corner of the wall, then moved a few things aside to reveal a small door. He unlocked it and went through, dragging me along with him.
Behind the door on the other side of the wall was filled with people. Before I could ask what was going on, these people put their fists together in front of their chest in unison, and gave Zhao Zichen a slight bow, and then went out through the door that we came through before. As they did, I noticed that all of them were equipped with a machete hanging at their waists. In the darkness, their blades glistened occasionally with a metallic sheen reflecting off the dim light from the street lamp.
After this, I could only imagine that Jin and Bao would hate Zhao Zichen and I so much that they could chop us up and feed us to the dogs if he ever gets the chance. Especially Jin, this would be the second time that I wrecked his day. Even if he didn’t used to have a personal grudge against me, he has now.
“Jin, those two went that way, I remember that it leads to a dead end!”
Jin said, pleasantly surprised, “Those bastards, both of them, I swear, I’ll be damned if I don’t mess them up real good today. Come on boy, follow me!”
Then they happily took the lead and flocked into the alleyway.
Then Jin fell into a dumbstruck silence.
And Jin also fell into a dumbstruck silence.
Jin wiped at the wetness on his face, which came from more than just the rain. At the supposed dead end of the alleyway, around 20 muscular men waited for him to show up with all of their weapons drawn. Jin could do nothing but give them a somewhat awkward smile.
“Well, well, look who it is, if it isn’t our old friend Jin. Oh, don’t be in such a rush to leave, not that you can anyway.” One of them came forward and patted Jin’s face with the flat side of the machete in his hand.
Jin almost wanted to cry at his misfortune in his jianghu walk today. He lost in a head on fight, got played and threatened with a toy gun, and even when he called his people to corner them, he instead found himself walking right into the heart of their elaborate trap.
Bao backed off slowly. The Black Dragons do have more people than the 20 odd men standing in front of them, but all of their enemies had a menacing machete in their hand. Right now, even their leader was backing away, who would be stupid enough to stand up for them? Despite their number, the Black Dragons began backing away out of the alleyway slowly, while the 20 walked forward casually.
But soon, the Black Dragons stopped backing off. Not because someone had a burst of courage, but because they can’t.
A few hundred other people gathered at the mouth of that alleyway, and they all grinned at the Black Dragon members bottled up inside the narrow alleyway.
Jin cried out, “It’s a trap!”
But it was too late for him already. Zhao Zichen was another man again completely. He gave my shoulder a few pats, “Hey brother, thanks for that. Just give me a few seconds to wrap up the things over here for a bit. Dinner is on me tonight.”
Then he yelled, “At them, everyone! Remember, hurt them as badly as you can, I don’t want to see any of them walking out of here today with only minor cuts and grazes! We hospitals and doctors need to make a living somehow too. Do it!”
Zhao Zichen’s voice seemed to have lit a fire in their heart. All of a sudden, in a burst of emotions, the two groups collided, and for a long while, the sounds of shouts and screams never ceased, as well as the sound of punching and kicking and things breaking.
Though the Black Dragons had just as many people as Zhao Zichen, he set an ambush on them, and had them surrounded and cornered. Tactics wise, Zhao Zichen clearly had the upper hand in this.
Also, Jin had never been a tough. In our few exchanges, when the going gets tough for him, he always gets going. Looking at him trembling in his boots now, he has more or less lost half of the fight already. In fact, he looked like he was close to dropping to his knees begging for mercy.
Shortly after, Zhao Zichen’s people had subdued the Black Dragons along with Jin and Bao. Some of them just gave up and never resisted in the first place.
As I looked on throughout all that happened in the last few minutes, I was taken aback on so many occasions. Just how would such a terrifying character like Zhao Zichen need any of my protection anyway? From those doctors’ interactions with him back at Devil’s Eyes, they obviously knew that there is more to Zhao Zichen than what people took him for on the surface, so how could it be possible that Uncle Zhao didn’t know anything about this? And if not, just what was he after in his mind exactly when he asked me to “watch over” his son?
Seeing that they were almost done with the Black Dragons, I reminded him, just in case, “These people belong to the Black Dragon. If you’re too rough with them, there’s a chance that the Black Dragons won’t let you off that easily.”
As soon as I said that, a slightly older and buff looking man standing beside Zhao Zichen roared with laughter, “Now just why would we of the Red Lantern have anything to be afraid of them Black Dragons? Right, Boss?”
Zhao Zichen only gave him a slight smile, “Don’t make me remind you all the time. Humble. Low profile. Remember?”
