Chapter 37: Ghost

1ST MAR 2023~ VERALUCTL

Obviously Mo Cong had no clue what was up with this multi-petaled weed, but the righteous man on the roof was shocked. 

An Jie had thought Mo Cong was walking too slowly and that the atmosphere was rather awkward, so he had chased after He Jingming instead, making it just in time to witness a historic reunion. But his confusion didn’t lessen at all. It was only when the head with the flower tattoo was placed on the table that he realized why Zui She had involved so many people. 

The German iris… the holy flower of legends. 

He Jingming reached out a finger to touch the flower, but quickly retracted it as if fearing something. He said hoarsely, “He’s alive?”

Shui Shi’s smile did not reach his eyes. “I don’t know about that, but this method of killing… I find it very familiar.” At that moment, someone walked in and whispered something in his ears. Zhai Haidong, the Sleeping Lion, nodded and held his prayer beads tightly in his hand. “Zui She is also here, he just got off his plane. All of us old friends are gathered here now.”

He Jingming paused, his tone a little strange. “Zui She?”

Zhai Haidong didn’t seem to notice. “The Iris is showing his powers to me… to us. In this ‘us’, how could Zui She possibly escape?”

“Then…” He Jingming suddenly stood up. “He…”

Zhai Haidong sneered. “Who?”

He Jingming seemed dazed, unable to speak for a long time, looking numbly at the disgusting head on the table. It was a long time before he said in a very dry voice, “What about Yin Hu?”

“Who?” Zhai Haidong raised his eyebrows. His brow bones protruded, his eyebrows faint. In general, they didn’t match that pair of unfocused, slightly dreadful eyes. They were a slight disruption to his features, like the hominids of old. As the question “Who?” left his mouth, he seemed to have heard a joke of the ages and laughed hoarsely with increasing joy until he threw his head back hysterically. “You mean An Yin Hu? You’re asking if An Yin Hu will come?”

He Jingming’s expression cooled again. He slowly sat down, staring gloomily at this blind madman. Zhai Haidong cried from laughter, slapping his thighs, the sounds coming from his throat no longer able to be distinguished from weeps. 

He laughed so hard that he choked on his own saliva, then he started coughing, his thin, dry body curled up, his face red like a boiled prawn. Bai Zhihe gently knocked on his back and he quieted down after a while. 

Zhai Haidong slowly shook his head. “I really didn’t expect this, Du Lang. They said you went mad but I didn’t believe them before.”

He Jingming didn’t say anything, but the muscles on his cheeks tensed. 

An Jie really wasn’t interested in listening to people discuss him behind his back. Especially when the two discussants were a blind man and a madman respectively, coming together like it was the paralympics. 

Since Zui She was already in Beijing, he would have some way of finding out what happened next. 

His gaze lingered on that bewitching iris for one final round, before he quietly shifted, ready to leave. 

Suddenly, An Jie looked back, a long-forgotten sense of life and death urgency rising in him. He had no time to hesitate and swiftly dodged to the side. At the same time, a bullet fired from an extremely cunning angle, lodging itself into the wall he had been leaning on just then. A circle of dust floated up. 

The sound of a bullet firing obviously startled the people inside. An Jie cursed and chased out in the direction the bullet came from.

His reaction was faster than lightning, yet that figure seemed to disappear from in front of him in a flash. An Jie couldn’t catch anything of them except for a head full of golden hair. An Jie narrowed his eyes to ascertain the direction he came from, then quickly hid himself in a corner. 

In just a short while, Bai Zhihe personally ran outside with his men. As the last grunt passed by An Jie, they were forcefully grabbed by the neck and dragged to the corner. They didn’t even have the time to shout before they felt a pain on the back of their neck and went to see Morpheus with hazy eyes. An Jie chuckled. He stole a gun and a taser from the unlucky bastard, then stepped on his body without a hint of remorse and quietly climbed up a wall. 

Bai Zhihe had already arrived by the intersection. On one side was the busy main road, on the other an empty alleyway. An Jie saw Bai Zhihe hesitate from his position up on the wall: the mafioso split his men into two parties, one led by himself toward the main street, the other into the alleyway. 

At a time like this, a startled thief would instinctively choose the small alleyway of flooded chutes and rat infestations. But for someone who had the guts to fire outside the window of Zhai Haidong and He Jingming… alright, and considering the target of his bullet, An Jie was sure that this was some outstanding person. 

Bai Zhihe’s judgement was very conventional. After missing the first shot, the person would never remain where they were, and walking onto the main street and mixing in with the crowd would be the most probable choice; the alleyway was narrow and straight. Even though it was hidden, it was difficult to escape from it. Zhai Haidong’s first hand made a thorough plan in a split second. In order to prevent that tiny possibility from happening, he also sent some men to look in the alleyway. 

An Jie hesitated. He suddenly ducked and flipped down from the wall, quickly moving to the corner of the road. After carefully observing the surroundings, his eyes locked onto one place – right there, the assassin had almost stayed completely unmoved!

An Jie’s pupils dilated and he rolled away. From behind that unsuspecting stone wall flashed a golden shadow who fired a second shot at him. 

This time, An Jie saw the enemy out for his blood. They were actually a blond foreigner with blue eyes, leaning on the slim side, very tall, his appearance somewhat handsome, but that provocative, mocking expression on his face destroyed whatever sense of beauty it had. To not return a gift with another would be the most impolite. As a man from the nation of courtesy, An Jie immediately shot back with a bullet the moment he dodged, then the two hid themselves before attracting a crowd. 

An Jie really wanted to beat this bastard up. Ignoring the crappy gun he had robbed just then, his opponent had obviously come here planned, yet hadn’t muted his gun and was enjoying this cat-and-mouse chase with everyone present having unclear stances. 

That unevolved monkey! An Jie gritted his teeth. He decided to give up this deadly joke of a hide and seek game, turned, and left.

The sound of the second round attracted Mo Cong’s attention as well. The direction he chose just happened to be the exact same as An Jie’s and out of the corner of his eyes, he saw the tail… the tail of a somewhat familiar jacket. He immediately paused, frowning. “An Jie? Why is it him…”

The day had been too rattling – after crawling home, An Jie threw himself onto the sofa, accidentally pulling on the wound on his hand. He grabbed some gauze and medicine from under the sofa with bared teeth, and with an absent heart, began poking at what remained of his pain nerves. 

He Jingming heard about this ‘nephew’ named An Jie and came personally to Beijing for a visit. With this mentally damaged man’s thoughts and ways, it was definitely possible. What was strange was the time this old madman had come – right when something had happened to Zhai Haidong’s men, when the Old Lion could no longer sit tight and wait for him. 

Furthermore, was the German iris that person – that person who had stepped into the many traps set for him and been forced to die, that person who had once sat firmly on the throne of darkness?

What was he back for? Or rather… who was he back for?

Finally, that yellow monkey; why had he left the two old bosses alone and insisted on firing at him?

This was no longer a simple fight of some country bumpkins from a few gangs in the small city of Beijing. 

An Jie bandaged his hand and took out a piece of paper from under the tea table, sketching on it a drawing of an iris flower. His hand shook a little from the wound, the lines slightly wobbly, but on closer inspection, the drawing seemed to have received the quintessence of the tattoo on the human head with an aura of… eeriness that made one sick physically. 

He subconsciously wrote down a “R·Li” on the bottom right corner of the flower. The flowery English letter and the Chinese character didn’t match together; it looked like a child who had just learnt English made himself a mongrel name like a dog putting on horns to pretend to be a sheep. But as An Jie stared at these two characters, his face grew uncommonly serious. 

It was even somber—

Several years ago, this person’s name represented unmatched respect. This man was powerful, elegant, no one knew what he was thinking; it was as if no one could escape his control. In the heart of the young, he could not be exceeded. 

Including An Yin Hu, He Du Lang, Zhai Shui Shi, and Zui She from back then, they who had ruled for the ages and had even been called outstanding, they had all seen the man as their goal… even their teacher. 

But that didn’t mean they had permitted his sins. 

Sins. An Jie recalled that old man. The old man who the four of them, before turning against each other, had treated as their birth father. He was even worse than Mo Yannan, not even leaving behind a photograph – 

An Jie thought, if it hadn’t been clearly proven that the old man had died by Li’s hands, there would never have been a day where he could have thought that he would grow to rival that man’s authority.

But since the beginning of time, the enmity of a murdered father and the hatred of a stolen wife could not be forgotten. 

But now, this man who had vanished for decades, this man who should have been dead, had returned to the living like a ghost and openly revealed his iris. 

An Jie leant into the sofa, crumpled the paper on the table into a ball, and threw it into the nearby paper bin. 

This was a declaration of war – a war for vengeance.

Author’s Notes: We welcome a new chapter with the gongs and drums of this mess of a fight~~~ Flowers for myself!