Chapter 19: Betrayal, My Name Is on the List

With the police, you could resist and be dealt with harshly, disguise yourself, deceive them, and remain at large.

After all, no matter how corrupt someone wearing official robes might be, he was still wearing a robe and had to maintain the appearance of a respectable human being.

But against the gangs, that line of thinking was simply courting death!

For joining a gang was a process of shedding one’s skin. The higher one climbed, the more completely the human skin and human face were torn away, until nothing remained but the bloody form of a beast.

And beasts relied on instinct. They obeyed the primitive and the innate. Like a dog catching a scent with its nose—the faster you ran, the harder it chased, until it sank its teeth into you or tore you apart.

Against people, one could choose to play a battle of wits and hide-and-seek.

Against beasts, all one could do was send the white blade in and draw out a red one.

Although Feng Mu had watched few gangster films, he understood this simple principle.

For once all the moral lessons were stripped away, every gangster film was really telling the same story: violence answered with violence, blood repaid with blood.

After returning to his room, Feng Mu did not immediately practice the Body-Tempering Exercise. Instead, he sat down at his desk, took out paper and pen, and began sorting through his thoughts.

The dead man, Zheng Hang’s father—the leader of the Azure Wolf Gang, and the chief culprit behind their refusal to let the case go.

At the scene that day, the person who seemed to be the gang’s second-in-command—he appeared fairly intelligent. Had he drawn up the range of suspects?

The thugs outside the school gate—what was written on the list they carried?

The captain of the constables at the scene—he was allowing the Azure Wolf Gang to investigate so freely. Wasn’t that a slap in the face?

Had the Zheng Hang case been formally concluded? What would the police station do next?

Wang Wei’s mother had died in the hospital. What impact would that have on the whole affair?

…

Because he did not know these people’s names, Feng Mu could only identify them on the paper with indirect descriptions.

A quarter of an hour later, Feng Mu drew a bold X after several names in succession. Somewhere in his mind, the outline of a plan had begun to take shape.

“I can’t stop the Azure Wolf Gang from investigating. After all, no one can hold back a father’s love. There’s no solution to that problem, so I’ll just have to deal with the people who created it.”

The order in which Feng Mu circled the names on the paper was the sequence in which he intended to solve the problem.

A knock at the door interrupted his thoughts. His mother, Wang Xiuli, called him out to eat.

Feng Mu answered, then habitually tore the paper into pieces and swallowed it with the iron pellets and water.

During dinner, Feng Mu asked casually, “Dad still hasn’t come back? This case is taking long enough.”

Seeing Feng Mu show such rare concern for his father, Wang Xiuli happily told him everything she knew.

“He’ll probably be gone for a while longer. It isn’t just your father—they say most of the police station’s manpower has been sent to the western part of the city. They’ve already found some leads. I guess they’ll catch the culprits in another two weeks.”

Feng Mu chewed his food and asked, “Are the people they’re after those Fate people my sister mentioned?”

Wang Xiuli had little sense of secrecy—or perhaps the police station was simply a place with too many people and too many leaks.

She replied, “Yes. It seems they’ve already tracked down four or five of them. If they catch them all, everyone at the station will have earned a major commendation.”

Feng Mu licked his lips. “They’ve already located them. Why haven’t they closed the net?”

“They say there might still be an accomplice who hasn’t been exposed. They’re waiting to catch a bigger fish. I didn’t really understand it either.”

A chill ran through Feng Mu’s heart. He thought again of the system’s daily notification: “Reward sent. Please check your receipt.”

He took a drink of water to moisten his throat. “That organization is vicious and ruthless. Are the police sure they can make the arrests? No one’s going to get hurt, are they?”

A trace of concern appeared on Wang Xiuli’s face, but she still smiled. “It should be fine. From the way your father spoke, the police seem to have a great deal of confidence in this operation.”

Feng Mu’s heart sank again. His expression remained unchanged as he gave a noncommittal “Oh,” then scraped the last grains of rice from his bowl and returned to his room.

He locked the door behind him. As he stuffed iron pellets into his mouth, he pondered, “If the police are this confident, then those Fate people are probably finished.”

“I only hope the courier who delivers my packages isn’t among them. Surely he can’t be…”

Feng Mu knew he did not possess the ability to rescue anyone from the police cordon. He simply stopped thinking about it and began practicing the Body-Tempering Exercise.

That night, he did not sleep, grinding away until dawn.

Feng Mu slapped off the alarm clock. In doing so, he accidentally crushed its casing.

He reacted at once and examined his right hand. An ominous, icy chill flowed down his arm, passed through his elbow, invaded his wrist, and seeped into his fingers. Before he realized it, the entire right hand had been enveloped in a bone-deep cold.

“Ironification of the right hand complete!”

Feng Mu’s eyes lit up. He instinctively swung his right arm and immediately felt the entire limb grow heavy, as though it had been filled with iron.

He pulled up his sleeve and compared his arms. The right was visibly thicker than the left by a full circle. When he rubbed his five fingers together with force, they made a creaking sound, and the flesh of his palm hurt from the friction.

Feng Mu seized the alarm clock. Since it was already crushed, he no longer held back and suddenly exerted his full strength. In an instant, the iron-cased clock was forcibly compressed into a lump of metal.

Feng Mu released it. The flesh of his palm had reddened, with several purplish bruises showing through.

The good news was that the ironification of his right hand was complete, and he had grown stronger.

The bad news was that the transformation affected only his bones. His flesh and muscles had not kept pace, so he could still injure himself.

“Of course, with the bones transformed into iron, the recoil damage to the flesh is still lighter than it was when I punched that day. The iron bones can bear and disperse more of the backlash.”

Feng Mu pulled his sleeve back down to cover his arm. He slipped his right hand into his pocket and gripped the knife handle, thinking,

“It seems I’ll need to find a martial art like Iron Palm. Until then, if something can be settled with a knife, there’s no reason to use my fists.”

…

He left the house and rode his bicycle to the crematorium.

The moment he entered the furnace room, Wang Jian hurried over and said mysteriously, “Let me tell you, I was stopped on the road by people from the Azure Wolf Gang this morning.”

Feng Mu’s pupils contracted slightly. “Oh? Why did they stop you?”

Wang Jian’s expression was strange. “They inexplicably asked me where I was and what I was doing on the night of the fifteenth. It gave me quite a fright.”

Feng Mu feigned confusion. “What happened on the fifteenth?”

“I was puzzled too, but they looked vicious, so I told them I had been working the night shift here at the crematorium. Then they asked who could vouch for me. I said that several of the people on duty had seen me.”

Without waiting for Feng Mu to speak, Wang Jian lowered his voice again. “I kept thinking about it on the way here, and I may have figured something out. Do you remember telling me a few days ago about someone dying at your school?”

Feng Mu nodded. “What about it?”

Wang Jian glanced left and right. After confirming that no one was nearby, he lowered his voice even further. “I heard the dead person was the Azure Wolf Gang leader’s son.”

“What?” Feng Mu pretended to be shocked. “That can’t be right. I saw the scene myself. The person who died was a female student.”

Wang Jian took a rumor whose origin he did not know, added his own subjective assumptions, and earnestly explained it to Feng Mu.

“Not only that—there was also a male student who disappeared from the scene. He was the Azure Wolf Gang leader’s son. The police decided he was the murderer and issued a warrant for his arrest, but the gang leader refused to believe it. He thinks there was another culprit, and that his son was actually attacked and abducted.”

Wang Jian gave a cold laugh and declared with absolute certainty, “In my opinion, the police didn’t wrong anyone this time. The Azure Wolf Gang is just putting on a show for the public. That boy was definitely hidden away by his own father.”

Feng Mu narrowed his eyes. He had not expected Wang Jian to be so clear-sighted. He smiled. “I think you’re right.”

Wang Jian looked pleased with himself for having displayed his intelligence.

Feng Mu then asked, “They only asked you those two questions and let you go?”

Wang Jian’s gaze flickered. “They also asked whether any of the students around me had been acting strangely lately. I told them I’d dropped out of school, so how would I know?”

Wang Jian was lying. He had been terrified while being questioned and, in order to get away as quickly as possible, had been forced to give them the name of a fellow student.

Feng Mu noticed the evasiveness in his words, and his heart sank.

Feeling guilty, Wang Jian hurriedly changed the subject and dropped another bombshell.

“Feng Mu, you’d better be careful these next few days too. I saw a list in the hands of the Azure Wolf Gang. It had your name and portrait on it.”

Wang Jian paused, then added, “It wasn’t just you. Luo Ji, Tao Fei, Sun Yi… They all seemed to be on the list.”

A suitably grave expression appeared on Feng Mu’s face. “I understand.”