Li Xun called Dong Siyang, and in a few short exchanges had the location. After he hung up, Zhu Yun asked, “Why does the call go through when you call him, but not when I do?”
Li Xun: “Because he’s had your number blocked. Did you not know?”
Zhu Yun: “…”
Li Xun added, “Dong Siyang has already found Hou Ning.”
Zhu Yun’s eyes went wide. “He actually tracked him down? How did he find him?”
Li Xun gave her a look. “He has his methods. The world doesn’t revolve around computers.”
Zhu Yun clicked her tongue.
“You pulled one random business card that day and ended up with a whole company full of unusual characters. Dong Siyang must have been at it for days and nights on end to find him — quite a commitment.”
Li Xun: “Do you know why he’s so committed?”
Zhu Yun looked at him. Li Xun smiled. “He’s put all his chips on you and me. He’s more anxious than we are. We can fail a few times and start over, but he doesn’t have that kind of leeway. Win and he claws his way back. Lose and Jili grinds him into the ground.”
Hearing his tone, Zhu Yun got the sense that he was already placing the two of them in the same category. Though on the subject of Jili, she still felt a pang of guilt. She said to Li Xun, “The truth is, if it weren’t for us, Feiyáng wouldn’t have gotten onto Fang Zhijing’s radar in the first place.”
“What kind of talk is that?” Li Xun looked at her coolly. “Does tucking your neck in mean you get to live?”
Zhu Yun, chided again, instinctively lowered her head.
Li Xun: “Look at you — so much more charming when you’re being obedient.” He ground the cigarette out under his foot, hooked a finger under her chin, and forced her to look up at him. His eyes were cold and still as water.
“There are only two roads in this world. One where you wait to die, and one where you go out to meet it. Dong Siyang isn’t the kind of man who waits. Neither are you and I.”
---
Late at night, the lights along the second ring road’s elevated expressway blazed. The evening rush was long over, and traffic moved freely.
A car cut beneath a pool of streetlight and vanished into the dark, leaving a streak of white behind it.
Zhu Yun glanced up at the road signs, confirmed her route, and drove on. She looked over at the man in the passenger seat. After Li Xun had gotten Dong Siyang’s location, they had set off at once — one driving, one resting.
“Have you ever considered getting a driver’s license?” Zhu Yun said.
Li Xun: “No time.”
Zhu Yun: “You had time when you were technically on leave.”
Li Xun said nothing.
Zhu Yun added, “Though with your coordination, you’d probably take forever to pass anyway.”
Li Xun’s eyes finally opened. He gave her a single, expressionless look. Zhu Yun said, “Or am I wrong? You saw how you played volleyball.”
Li Xun kept watching her. Zhu Yun glanced at him. “I’m just saying what’s true.”
He smiled. The shadows of trees outside flashed across his face and were gone. Zhu Yun closed her mouth.
The road ahead fell into a deep quiet. It wasn’t long before they arrived at the address Dong Siyang had given. This was close to the outskirts of the city, a newly developed area. Zhu Yun had passed through it several times before, but had never stopped.
Following the GPS coordinates, Zhu Yun pulled up in front of a residential apartment building. It was tucked away at the very end of a street, with few people around and barely a sound.
When Zhu Yun first turned in, she thought she’d taken a wrong turn — but almost immediately she spotted two vans parked below the building. They were on the older side, their windows blacked out with dark tinting. The general feel of these vehicles was far too reminiscent of the van Dong Siyang had used to take everyone to the company retreat.
Moonless and windy, the sight of those two vans made Zhu Yun’s nerves pull tight.
“Li Xun — nothing’s going to go wrong, is it?” she asked quietly.
Li Xun was already awake. He opened the car door. “I’ll go check. You stay here.”
Zhu Yun watched Li Xun get out. At the same moment, someone climbed out of the opposite van — a scruffy-looking young man. Zhu Yun had already killed her headlights; she leaned in close to the window, using the faint light from the roadside to study him.
Li Xun went over and exchanged a few words with the young man, who raised his hand and pointed somewhere. Li Xun looked. Inside the car, Zhu Yun pressed herself against the glass and craned her neck.
The apartment building was roughly ten or twelve stories — a plain old public housing block with no elevator, external stairwells running up the side, and a long row of balconies on the outside.
Li Xun came back quickly and knocked on Zhu Yun’s window.
Zhu Yun lowered it. “What’s going on? Are they inside the building?”
“Yes.” Li Xun said quietly, “I’m going up. Wait here.”
Zhu Yun nodded.
The moment Li Xun left, her nerves wound tighter. He had barely entered the building when the young man by the van let out a low whistle. Zhu Yun’s heart jumped — she thought it was directed at her, but she looked up and saw he was whistling toward the balcony the young man had pointed to earlier. And it wasn’t just him — shortly after, five or six more people climbed out of the two vans, all of them looking upward like spectators at a show.
Zhu Yun lowered her window and looked out.
At first Zhu Yun had assumed the young man was pointing Li Xun toward the building to let him know Dong Siyang and Hou Ning were both inside — but now it clearly wasn’t that simple. Otherwise, what were they watching?
With that thought, Zhu Yun narrowed her eyes and began to study the building carefully.
She went up the row of balconies floor by floor, looking for anything out of the ordinary, and found nothing — until her gaze reached the rooftop, and her blood ran cold.
Up there, several silhouettes were visible, standing on the open, unguarded roof. One of them was standing very close to the edge. Zhu Yun looked for a few seconds and realized it wasn’t just one person up there —
The rooftop.
Dong Siyang stood with his suit jacket hanging open. The wind up there was fierce, and it caught the fabric and sent it whipping — making him look even more rooted to the spot. A cigarette sat in the corner of his mouth, and the smoke made him squint faintly, the corners of his mouth curved in a cold smile.
His hand had hold of Hou Ning — who looked frail to the point of seeming skeletal.
Dong Siyang was built like reinforced steel. The arm gripping Hou Ning by the collar was practically holding him up entirely, and didn’t move so much as a centimeter. Hou Ning was half a step away from the void behind him. He didn’t dare look back, didn’t dare struggle — one wrong move and Dong Siyang might let go.
And even now, he refused to back down.
“I know who you are,” Hou Ning said, his voice edged with a kind of manic energy. “You’re the owner of Feiyáng. Used to run with a rough crowd. Arrested for violent assault three times.”
Dong Siyang tilted the corners of his mouth. His expression made cold sweat break out across Hou Ning’s forehead. Hou Ning shouted, “You won’t throw me off! Let go of me! Do you want to go back to prison?!”
Dong Siyang looked at him. The curve of his smile deepened. He said, with absolute calm:
“Say that again — what exactly is it you think I won’t dare to do?”