Pull down the shutter

Inside the hall.

Su Tianyu saw that his third sister had already run upstairs. He had intended to hold the stairway himself, but when he looked up, Da Xiong was already surrounded by six or seven men, spinning around with a table raised in both hands and swinging wildly. He was in a desperate spot.

In the corner along the left wall, the Su Family workers obediently crouched in a row with their hands over their heads, showing no intention of helping. Su Tianyu knew that unless he rushed in, the moment Da Xiong took a hit, he would end up dead or crippled.

Without further hesitation, Su Tianyu charged toward Da Xiong's flank, his steps fast and decisive, without the slightest evasive movement.

In an instant, Su Tianyu reached the edge of the crowd. The thugs spotted him too, and one shouted, "Him! He's the one who stabbed Brother Feng in the ear!"

In his panic, the lackey blurted out what was on his mind, effectively admitting that he belonged to the Changqing Company. Clearly, both sides had their share of idiot teammates.

Two men turned toward Su Tianyu at the shout, weapons in hand, then charged without hesitation.

At that moment, Sixth Su, whom Su Miaomiao had dubbed the Su Family's biggest coward, showed no fear whatsoever in the face of two knife-wielding thugs. Instead, he nimbly sidestepped and turned his body, avoiding the weapon swinging at his head.

Thump!

As his opponent raised his arm again, Su Tianyu drove a punch straight into his Adam's apple.

That single blow made the knife-wielding thug tuck his neck and stagger three steps backward. He doubled over, breathing raggedly, his eyes nearly bulging out from the pain.

Seeing how quickly Su Tianyu reacted, the other burly man immediately advanced with his blade raised and swung twice with all his strength.

Su Tianyu sidestepped and retreated, much like a soldier fighting with a bayonet on the battlefield, dodging two vicious attacks in succession. The lackey, however, rushed his steps and missed twice, leaving himself off balance.

Smack!

After retreating two steps, Su Tianyu raised his arm and caught the man's weapon hand by the wrist with the same precise accuracy. He yanked hard, making the man instinctively pitch forward.

Su Tianyu turned sideways and raised his leg, driving his heel into the man's right knee twice. Each kick came with a distinct crack.

Thud!

The burly man stumbled under the kicks. With his knife arm still held by Su Tianyu, he was instantly dragged facedown onto the floor.

Acting in self-defense, Su Tianyu held on to the man's arm and stomped three times with his heel, targeting his temple, the back of his head, and other vulnerable spots. The man was dazed on the spot and dropped his weapon.

Su Tianyu's movements were hardly pretty, but they had a clear defining quality: he struck fast and accurately, targeting vital points with crisp, decisive motions.

After taking down the two men, Su Tianyu retreated again, because half the lackeys in the room were now charging toward him with weapons.

In the middle of the crowd, Da Xiong held the registration desk, which had already been smashed to pieces. With the pressure on him easing, he used his size and brute strength to batter two men back, then immediately ran toward the stairs.

Su Tianyu backed up to the entrance of the dimly lit corridor, now gripping a knife he had seized. Despite their numbers, he still showed no fear. Rather than run, he stood facing them at the corridor entrance.

"Get him!"

The thugs shouted and charged.

Their leader, Floral Shirt, also climbed off the floor. Touching the blood on his head, he cursed through gritted teeth, "Fucking stinking porter thinks he can fight back? Pin that dumb bastard down!"

Barely had he finished speaking when hurried footsteps suddenly sounded outside the main building's hall. Thirty or forty people burst inside without warning.

Floral Shirt turned at the sound and was momentarily dumbfounded by the sight of so many people charging in together.

At the front of the crowd, Su Tianbei wore a short-sleeved shirt, with gauze wrapped around his arm. His face expressionless, he called, "Pull down the shutter."

Clatter...!

The three Su Family men at the rear reached up and pulled down the roller shutter over the main building's front entrance, then secured it with an iron pin.

The door was shut!

Silence. For a moment, the room was as quiet as a morgue. Floral Shirt and his dozen-odd lackeys huddled together, sweat beading on their foreheads.

"So what if you brought a few people? Whoever comes at me first, I'll fucking kill him first!" Floral Shirt had some fight in him, at least. He roared through gritted teeth and charged at Su Tianbei with his weapon.

Footsteps sounded upstairs. With her hair sticking up, Su Miaomiao came storming down with two cleavers taken from the second-floor cafeteria, shouting, "You've come right into our home to bully us? Breaking in and attacking people? Beat them!"

"Pin every last one of them down!" Su Tianbei's injuries had yet to heal fully, but he was the first to charge.

The thirty or forty people who had arrived this time were not employees of the Su Family's company. They were all members of its inner circle: brothers and cousins, with at least twenty sharing the same surname. The rest were respected worksite partners within the Su Family, old hands who had helped Second Master Su build the business. Together, they were a tightly knit group.

Su Tianbei had arrived so quickly because Su Tianyu had made arrangements beforehand. All thirty or forty of them had prepared in advance to apprehend the thugs, and every weapon they carried was a tool they normally used at work: garbage hooks over two meters long, long, narrow lengths of triangular angle iron, and steel chains for bundling scrap metal. Altogether, they looked thoroughly intimidating.

When Floral Shirt saw that his threats had failed to scare them, he knew he was finished. By the time Su Tianbei and the others charged together, it was too late to run.

Heavy lengths of angle iron and long hooks rose into the air, then rained down on the dozen-odd vicious thugs in the middle of the hall. Screams and curses instantly filled the room.

This was an organized, deliberate armed assault inside the premises, so anyone in the factory grounds had the right to defend themselves. Put plainly, even if they beat a few of these men to death, there would be no consequences.

Su Tianyu had received a higher education and still wanted to enter public service. He could not act with the same reckless disregard as a thug. In his mind, even retaliation had to be reasonable and lawful.

Standing at the front of his group, Floral Shirt fought for less than three seconds before four or five men knocked him down. He never got back up, instead being trampled until he rolled limply around like a wad of chewing gum.

Less than two minutes later, the sound of breaking windows came from inside the room. A few thugs saw things going badly and immediately fled together. The Su Family men chased them for less than a hundred meters, then stopped when they saw the men scatter and climb over the walls.

Su Tianbei crouched and grabbed Floral Shirt by the hair. "An airborne tough guy, huh? Daq Quanzi, right? Real fucking fierce, aren't you?"

"If you're a real fighter, take me on one-on-one...!" Floral Shirt still refused to give in, answering hoarsely from the floor.

"Sure. Take him on!" Su Tianbei stood and pointed at Floral Shirt with a shout.

A dozen workers raised their feet and continued taking Floral Shirt on "one-on-one."

Su Tianyu had stopped fighting as soon as his second brother entered. Now he walked over quickly, put an arm around his brother's neck, and whispered, "Third Sister cleared out the old warehouse on the left yesterday..."

"I know. There are people outside," Su Tianbei replied quietly.

Just as the two finished speaking, the two dilapidated warehouses to the left of the Su Family Garbage Dump's main building suddenly caught fire.

"Fire! The people who came to smash up the place set the warehouses on fire!" a Su Family employee shouted outside.

Zhannan District.

Playing mahjong, Lu Feng answered his phone. "What's going on?"

"Brother Feng, the Su Family Garbage Dump was ready for us. We'd barely gone inside when fifty or sixty people rushed out and attacked us..."

"What? How could they have been ready?!" Lu Feng shot to his feet and asked in disbelief, "Where's A Ming-Floral Shirt?"

"I... I don't know. We got into a fight with them inside, then got split up and all ran separately. I don't know whether Brother A Ming made it out either," the man replied.

At that, Lu Feng shoved aside the mahjong tiles in front of him, turned, and left.

Ten minutes later, Kong Zhenghui heard that something had happened at the Su Family yard and immediately called Su Tiannan. "Have the Police Affairs Bureau people gone over yet? Right, right. Keep the injured workers there for now. I'll bring people over immediately!"