Chapter 317 - Chapter 317: 248, Qing Yi
Chapter 317: 248, Qing Yi
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Countdown to return 95:00:00.
City No. 18 at midnight, 1 a.m.
Fourth District, the Everlasting Club.
This place should have been very lively and noisy, but now, the floor looked as if it had just been washed with blood.
Outside the door, more than a dozen people draped in cloaks stood silently, a well-behaved six-eyed crow perched on the shoulder of the girl in the lead.
The girl frowned at the blood seeping through the door crack, pulling a small hawthorn from her pocket and offering it to the crow.
The crow pecked at the hawthorn, but after just two bites, the sour taste forced it to close three of its eyes.
The girl breathed a sigh of relief and said to her companions behind her, “Today only a B-class died, it should be easy to contain. Let’s wrap this up quickly so we can knock off early. I heard there’s a new Jindai Cuisine place in District Five, their sukiyaki is delicious. Once we’re done here, it’s my treat! However, they close at 4 a.m., so I’m not sure if we’ll make it in time.”
The men and women behind her exchanged glances, smiles tugging at their lips, “Qing Yi treating us is rare, let’s finish up before they close!”
As soon as the words were spoken, the group from the Contraindicated Tribunal pushed the doors and entered the Everlasting Club, where the smell of blood hit them immediately upon entry.
But these members of the Contraindicated Tribunal, unfazed and still joking among themselves, seemed to be used to such scenes.
At the bar, Li Dongze sat on a high stool, slicking his hair back into a short ponytail before downing the amber-colored liquor in front of him.
He looked up at the Contraindicated Tribunal, “March didn’t come?”
Qing Yi scanned the room, “This is a minor scene, my sister doesn’t need to come. Speaking of which, next time you make a ruckus, can you tone down the bloodshed? I got my new shoes dirty.”
Li Dongze thought for a moment and responded, “There will be no next time in City No. 18, but the Heng Society will reimburse you for your shoes.”
“Let’s get to work,” said Qing Yi, waving her hand at her companions before turning back to Li Dongze, “Did you bleed? If your blood has spilt anywhere, you must tell me in advance, I’ll have to deal with it carefully.”
The members of the Contraindicated Tribunal, in their cloaks, took them off and from their waists produced small bags, spilling an unnamed powder onto the floor.
Soon, the powder spread like a living thing, infiltrating the adjoining ground.
“I didn’t bleed,” Li Dongze shook his head, “By the way, what’s your sister been up to lately?”
“Why do you always ask about my sister,” Qing Yi said, suddenly cautious.
“Never mind,” Li Dongze adjusted his coat, then walked out of the Everlasting Club.
At the door, a car was already waiting. He sat in the back seat, silently pondering.
The driver asked softly, “Boss, He Sheng Society escaped and was taken to the nearby public hospital in the Fourth District. Do we need to take them out?”
“No need,” Li Dongze thought for a moment before replying, “There’s been enough commotion for tonight.”
He took out his phone and sent a message to Qing Yi, “Is everything going smoothly at the young boss’s end?”
Qing Yi replied, “Smoothly.”
Li Dongze sent another message, “When will he take over Heng Society?”
Qing Yi replied after two seconds, “I guess he doesn’t want to take over Heng Society.”
Furrowing his brow, Li Dongze sat in the car, “If he doesn’t want to take over, then how can I leave?”
Qing Yi countered, “If you leave, what about your subordinates? To be devoured by other forces?”
Li Dongze put down his phone and slightly lowered the car window, lighting a cigarette.
The tip of the cigarette burned, the tobacco curling and sizzling, exuding a sense of loneliness.
Uncle Li Dong had already started a long journey with Lin Xiaoxiao and Ye Wan. Many envied Li Dongze’s conspicuous power, but what he really wanted wasn’t this intangible power. He wished to roam the world with his boss.
Now, the Heng Society had become a shackle on Li Dongze, preventing him from leaving.
When the boss was still in Prison No. 18, the feeling wasn’t so intense. But once he was the only one left, loneliness enveloped him like the sky over City No. 18, severed by the mass of steel and concrete high-rises.
Li Dongze thought for a moment, then took out his phone again and sent a message to Qing Yi, “Tell the young boss that I’ve helped him, and he needs to help me.”
Li Dongze had a drink at the Everlasting Club and smoked a cigarette outside, but the anticipated retaliation from the syndicates never came.
It seems as long as Uncle Li Dong was alive, no one dared to cut ties over such a trivial matter.
At that moment, he took out the old pocket watch he had always worn on his chest, flipping open the golden cover.
But beneath the cover of the watch were not hands and gears, but rather a profound darkness akin to a black hole. When opened, it seemed to suck in the surrounding light.
Gradually, something appeared within the darkness, as if stars were twinkling or snowflakes were dancing.
Li Dongze frowned, “Looks like it’s going to snow again.”
In the cold weather, his breath came out in white puffs. Despite the cold, the holographic neon in the Fourth District wasn’t afraid, with giant goldfish still trailing their long tails in the sky.
Indeed, not all taboo items are extremely dangerous. For example, an individual’s pocket watch could only predict the weather 24 hours ahead.
Sometimes, Li Dongze thought he should become a farmer because he could accurately harvest wheat before the rain and not tell his neighbors about the weather he knew.
He could sit under the eaves in the rain, watching his neighbors’ flustered state.
…
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…
“Hello, excuse me, excuse me.”
At the entrance of a hospital ward in the morning, a middle-aged man apologizing with a smile said, “I was wondering if there are any disabled individuals in this ward. You see, we provide professional mechanical limb installation services and also sell bionic organs. Does anyone here need them?”
Qing Chen stared at the middle-aged man, taken aback for a moment. He then glanced at the doctors and nurses bustling up and down the corridor, noticing that no one seemed inclined to intervene.
Outside the door, Hawthorn, who had just come from the restroom, pulled the middle-aged man aside, “Beat it quickly, nobody wants your shoddy mechanical limbs and bionic organs. We are all fine here, our organs are fine too!”
But the middle-aged man just laughed, “Well, would you sell your organs then…”
Qing Chen was shocked. Are the businesspeople of the Inner World always this wild?
At that moment, Hawthorn approached Qing Chen and, while there were no others in the ward, asked, “So… can I join your organization?”
Qing Chen was silent for a moment before he answered, “Actually, we already belong to the same organization. When I returned last time, I joined Kunlun.”
Hawthorn couldn’t help but have a wry smile upon this, “You’ve joined both Kunlun and Kyushu at the same time, can that even count as joining… But seriously, I want to join you guys, to experience the organizational culture.”
Qing Chen asked with confusion, “So you also want to report your dad?”
Hawthorn was stunned, “What does that even have to do with anything?”
The ‘organizational culture’ the two of them were talking about wasn’t the same thing at all!
As they were talking, a knock on the door was heard from outside.
Qing Chen looked up and was surprised to see that Li Changqing had already arrived at the door.
Hawthorn quickly moved aside and stood there respectfully.
Li Changqing, with a warm smile, sat beside Qing Chen’s bed and gently lifted the gauze from his forehead. Seeing that the bleeding had stopped, he finally relaxed.
Qing Chen suddenly turned his head to look at Hawthorn and the envious look in his eyes. It was only then that he understood what Hawthorn meant by ‘organizational culture’.
This was a big misunderstanding!
However, Qing Chen’s attention was now drawn elsewhere. Out of the corner of his eye, past Li Changqing’s shoulder, he astonishingly saw one of the Shadow Candidates, “Qing Yi,” also standing at the door.
This young boy was thin and frail, only 14 years old according to Lin Xiaoxiao’s files, with a harmless look on his face and a well-behaved watermelon haircut.
As Li Changqing started to peel an apple for Qing Chen, he smiled and said, “See how much I care about you? Today, my cousin’s son came to visit the Halfway Croft and I came to see you first.”
Qing Chen suddenly realized that Qing Yi had profound ties with the Li Family.
Uncle Li Dong had once said that between the conglomerates, interwoven relationships and alliances through marriage were common.
It seems that Qing Yi also had half of his bloodline belonging to the Li Family, which might give him an edge in the struggle for the Shadow position.
Qing Yi stood at the door, smiling radiantly at Qing Chen, “Uncle, hello.”
At this point, Qing Chen again realized, given the relationships as understood by others, he seemed to have become a senior to all the candidates, hadn’t he…?
While analyzing Qing Yi, he found that aside from smiling, it was impossible to discern any other emotion.
Li Changqing stuffed the peeled apple into Qing Chen’s hand. Qing Chen took a bite and suddenly remembered the times in wilderness when someone had given him apples one by one.
However, for Li Changqing, the apple was just a gift for a sick visitor. For that girl in the wilderness, that bag of apples was all her possessions.
The apples from Xiao Yiyi tasted a bit better.
Qing Chen made a judgment in his heart.
For some reason, he suddenly missed his carefree days in the wilderness.
Oh right, Xiao Yiyi said there were delicious persimmons where the Jindai family camps, and he hadn’t tasted those yet.
Qing Yi approached the bed and kindly said, “Uncle, I hope you recover soon.”
Qing Chen looked at Qing Yi, smiling, “First time meeting… did you bring your uncle any gifts?”
Hawthorn nearby marveled at the question, having never seen anyone so shamelessly ask a younger person for a meeting gift.
For a moment, the smile in Qing Yi’s eyes stiffened, then he replied to Qing Chen with a smile, “I came in a hurry this time, so I did not prepare anything. Please forgive me, Uncle.”
“No worries,” Qing Chen laughed, “just remember to bring something next time.”
Qing Yi’s expression replayed in his mind. Qing Chen was certain that behind that youthful and radiant appearance hid a complex soul.
In that moment, Li Changqing asked Qing Chen, “The doctor says you’re clear to leave the hospital now. Why don’t you come back to Halfway Croft with me?”
Qing Chen thought for a moment, “I think I still need some more tests…”
In three days, he still had to pick up ‘Winning Hearts with Virtue,’ so going back to Halfway Croft clearly wasn’t an option.
…
Just to clarify, saying I’ll continue writing after eating means just that, not that I have chapters in reserve and am not releasing them… really, there are no more chapters in reserve, the video on Qidian messed me up!
Thanks to Liu Wogua and Lz_ for becoming the newest allies of this book. Kudos to the bosses for their generosity! May the bosses remain forever young!