Song Chunzhong nodded and lit a cigarette with Song Tianyao's match. "I only came back to see if your grandfather, Dad, and third uncle were still alive. I was thinking of taking your grandfather to Malaysia to enjoy his retirement, but now that I see he's healthier than me and you're so successful, of course I have to go back to Malaysia. I've lived Malaysia for so long, and I have a family business there, it's already very difficult to move back to Hong Kong."
"You settled in Malaysia, so how did you meet Ning Zikun outside?" Song Tianyao tilted his head towards the door and asked Song Chunzhong.
Song Chunzhong touched the bloody scratches on his face from Ning Zikun's bite and said calmly, "It's old news. Let's call him in and have him explain everything clearly."
"Mr. Ning, please come in for tea," Song Tianyao said to the door.
It seemed that after Sister Xiong said something to Ning Zikun outside, Ning Zikun reluctantly walked in, his eyes fixed on Song Chunzhong.
"Fourth Brother, back then I..." Seeing Ning Zikun enter, Song Chunzhong stood up and spoke to Ning Zikun.
"Shut up, I'm not your Fourth Brother, I don't deserve that title." Ning Zikun sat down on the edge of Song Tianyao's single bed and said with a sour face.
Song Tianyao smiled at Ning Zikun and said, "Mr. Ning, you usually advise me not to get angry, that young people should be calm and control their temper. How come you yourself seem to be burning up today?"
"Mr. Song, I am deeply grateful for your taking me in at the factory and supporting this old ghost for almost a year. However, Feng Yifa is not someone you can easily swallow your anger with just a few words of advice. He is a conman, and so am I. Being conned and cheated are commonplace for both of us. But the rules of the underworld dictate that if we're going to work together, we should trust each other and work together to make money. But Feng Yifa betrayed everyone, ran off with the money, and killed many people who considered him a brother and friend. Conmen are bad people, but even bad people have rules!" Ning Zikun's eyes seemed to redden as he recounted the past. "My three apprentices and one confidante all died in that scheme. Otherwise, do you really think I would have willingly gone to Guangzhou alone, hiding my identity, to make wigs and beards for actors? I did it all to find that bastard Feng Yifa and avenge them!"
"Since you're already a bad person, why bother with rules?" Song Tianyao wanted to ask Ning Zikun, but seeing the other's agitated expression, he ultimately didn't say it.
Song Tianyao asked Song Chunzhong, "What exactly did you do back then to make Mr. Ning so angry?"
With a cigarette between his fingers, Song Chunzhong seemed to reminisce for a while before beginning to tell Song Tianyao about his experiences after leaving Hong Kong.
After escaping from Kowloon to Hong Kong Island, he did not choose to stay and struggle to survive like Song Chunliang's family. Instead, he used stolen money and jewelry to pretend to be a wealthy person and escaped to Sandakan Malaysia, by taking a Britain mail ship.
As a result, not long after Hong Kong fell, Malaya was also occupied by the Japanese army. The Japan supported Malays in Malaya and discriminated against Chinese. Chinese villages were often massacred. So at the end of 1942, Song Chunzhong pretended to be a Malay Chinese businessman who was preparing to return to China to participate in the war of resistance. He boarded a ship sent by the Kuomintang government to Nanyang Asia to raise funds and returned to the mainland. At that time, the Kuomintang did not carefully investigate whether Song Chunzhong was a true patriotic overseas Chinese. They just thought that a Malay Chinese who was willing to return to China to fight the war would not lie. So they appointed Song Chunzhong as the captain of the Hainan Island Medical Team of the Red Cross Society of the Republic of China Malaya. Their intention was to let Song Chunzhong play a role in this idle position and recruit Malay Chinese to donate money to support the war of resistance.
As a result, Song Chunzhong discovered that many Kuomintang officials were extorting money on Hainan Island. They were not good at fighting the Japan, but they were good at making money. He immediately followed suit. Not only did he fail to help the Kuomintang government raise funds, but he also resold the drugs controlled by the medical team and made a fortune for himself. In particular, he made a last deal before leaving, almost emptying the warehouse of medicines, which led to his superior being executed by military law.
From a young age, Song Chunzhong was surrounded by low-life gangsters in East Liang Mountain, learning their underhanded tricks with ease. Several skilled thieves mingled among them, and Song Chunzhong mastered all their petty tricks. After making a fortune in Hainan Island and fleeing, Song Chunzhong used the money to buy a new identity, posing as a fleeing Guangdong merchant under the alias Feng Yifa East Liang Mountain, and arrived in Chongqing with a lavish display of power and influence.
He had assumed that Chongqing, the Kuomintang's stronghold, would be safe and sound. Even if the Japan attacked, the Kuomintang army would be there to hold them off. However, Song Chunzhong was not dealt with by the Japan, but by the Kuomintang. At that time, the Kuomintang forced merchants in Sichuan to contribute money to support the war effort. Four-fifths of the money Song Chunzhong earned by reselling medicine was taken by the Kuomintang. In addition, the Fabi was depreciating too quickly. Within half a month, the several million Fabi he had was only enough to barely make ends meet.
Left with no other choice, Song Chunzhong returned to his old ways, continuing his swindling and fraudulent activities. He started as a lone wolf, then recruited several companions to expand his gang. Later, he met even more like-minded people. He also met Ning Zikun and his gang of con artists in Chongqing. After staying in Chongqing for more than a year, Song Chunzhong had become acquainted with almost all the pickpockets and con artists in the Sichuan, Shaanxi, and Guizhou regions. He now had more than a dozen disciples and apprentices around him.
After Japan surrendered and China won the War of Resistance against Japan, Song Chunzhong first went to the capital Nanjing. Later, he discovered that Shanghai, because it had been a concession, was more prosperous than Nanjing and had more wealthy people. So he went Shanghai Bund and contacted the sixty or seventy people he had met before. They agreed to join forces to do a big business in Shanghai Bund, then split the profits and go into hiding, living out their lives in peacetime.
Song Chunzhong, Chen Zhifeng (the leader of the Guizhou swindlers organization), Luo Zongchang the leader of Ning Zikun's gang of con artists) joined forces to set up a Heavenly Immortal Scheme called "Heavenly Immortal Scheme." The operation was organized with personnel in three locations: Shanghai Bund, Hunan, and Western Hunan.
Among this group, Chen Zhifeng was handsome and had attended a private school in his childhood and Jiaotong University later in life. He was proficient in both Chinese and Western cultures, not only fluent in English but also able to speak the dialects of more than a dozen provinces. He once led his men to impersonate the county magistrate in a remote county in Guizhou Province, ruling for a full eight months and embezzling tens of thousands of yuan in tax revenue from the county. When he and his men successfully left, their superiors were still unaware of the scheme and were preparing to request a commendation for him, praising his effective governance.