A Thrilling Night

Zhannan, inside the Su Family Garbage Dump.

With Su Tianyu leading the team, Kong Zhenghui, Bai Hongbo, Su Tianbei, and the other core members of their families had all assembled. This was their first job, after all, and everyone took it seriously. They had brought out their entire main force.

After working out the pickup route, everyone was ready to leave together. But before they set off, Da Xiong, who had not gone home that evening, approached Su Tianyu alone. "B-Brother Xiao Yu... there's work tonight... right?"

Da Xiong usually disliked going home. Even when he finished work early and had nothing to do, he preferred staying at the garbage dump. Sometimes he even slept there.

Su Tianyu glanced at him. "Who told you?"

"I heard Third Sister mention it at noon. Hehe." Da Xiong gave an earnest smile. "C-can you take me along?"

"This job's a little dangerous. We're picking up cargo out at sea."

"I... I'll be fine... if you guys can do it, so can I. I'm not afraid of hard work. I want to earn a little more." Da Xiong eagerly replied, "Just take me with you."

"Why are you so keen on earning extra money?"

"...I... I need to support myself... save up to buy... buy a house and get married," Da Xiong answered honestly.

"All right, come along, then. Follow orders, okay?" Su Tianyu reminded him.

"Okay. I'll do what I'm told." Da Xiong nodded firmly.

Once the two finished talking, Kong Zhenghui waved and called out, "Let's go. Everyone get in."

Around eleven thirty that night, beside a shoal over thirty kilometers from Zhannan District's civilian harbor, Su Tianbei and Bai Hongbo led their men in pushing three speedboats into the water. They covered them with tarps to keep the metal from reflecting the moonlight.

Smoking a cigarette, Su Tianyu stood on a rock at the water's edge and gazed out to sea, then lowered his head to check his watch.

"They're still not here?" Kong Zhenghui walked over and asked.

"Not yet." Looking a little doubtful, Su Tianyu asked him, "You think the people upstairs can really cover us? With this much cargo coming in, if the coast guard catches us, we'll fucking be locked up till we're sixty."

"Brother, tell me what kind of work comes without risks these days?" Kong Zhenghui countered.

Su Tianyu fell silent.

"This is the age we live in. The bold feast while the timid starve." Kong Zhenghui also looked out to sea. "When an opportunity comes, you've got to grab it."

Su Tianyu smiled. "True."

A cold wind swept over them as everyone sheltered behind the rocks, waiting quietly.

More than an hour passed. Just as Su Tianyu was about to hurry Yu Mingyuan along, the phone with the new SIM card in his pocket rang. "Hello?"

"Get on the water. I've sorted things out here," Tang Baiqing said.

"All right, got it!"

"Move quickly. The tide goes out in an hour and a half," Tang Baiqing urged.

"Understood." Su Tianyu nodded and hung up, then turned and shouted, "Push the boats out! Get on the water!"

At his command, over twenty men pulled off the tarps and nimbly jumped aboard the speedboats. The helmsmen immediately fired up the diesel engines, and the deafening roar of motors followed.

Sitting in the lead speedboat, Su Tianyu couldn't help lamenting, "Fuck. A proper Staff College graduate like me, reduced to this sneaky shit."

"Quit bitching. You want money or dignity?" Crouching inside the speedboat, Bai Hongbo urged, "Come on, come on! Let's go!"

Vrooom!

With their motors roaring, the three speedboats left the shore and headed straight toward the outer harbor.

Cold winds howled across the sea, and waves churned.

After racing along for about half an hour, the three speedboats reached the edge of the inner harbor and spotted a freighter with a carrying capacity of roughly eighty thousand tons.

Su Tianyu turned to scan their surroundings. In the distance, he could faintly make out the lights of coast guard patrol boats and ships.

"Send the signal, quick!" Su Tianbei ordered.

At his words, three men took out flashlights and flashed a coded signal toward the freighter.

About half a minute later, someone on the freighter's second deck answered with a flashlight.

"Pull alongside." Su Tianyu waved the speedboats over.

The three speedboats circled around to the freighter's port stern and used their own ropes to tie up to an iron anchor hanging against its hull. The sailors responsible for supplying the cargo then began lowering the goods on ropes.

Sealed crates descended one after another. Below, everyone swiftly stacked them in neat rows to save space.

Throughout the process, Su Tianyu kept watching the distant coast guard patrol vessels, but none of them moved toward this side.

Minute by minute, all the cargo, worth a little over four hundred thousand, was stacked aboard the three speedboats. By then, there was almost no room left for anyone to move, and they could only sit on the crates.

This was their first shipment, mainly a trial run to establish the route, so the load was small. Even so, the profit margin on this first run would be at least around fifty percent.

"Does the count match?" Kong Zhenghui asked Su Tianyu.

"It's all here." Su Tianyu nodded.

"Signal them. We're pulling out," Kong Zhenghui ordered.

The men aboard the speedboats waved their flashlights again, signaling the other party. Then Su Tianbei and the others unfastened the chains securing them to the freighter's hull, and everyone quickly left the pickup area.

On the return trip, the speedboats cut through the wind and waves. Everyone sat on the cargo with grim faces, not saying a word.

In truth, they were all nervous. Everyone knew this was good money, but they also understood what would happen if they got caught.

Soon, the shoreline came into view. When the speedboats returned to their mooring spot, even Kong Zhenghui, with his nerves of steel, breathed a sigh of relief and wiped the sweat from his forehead.

"Fuck, finally back. That hour or so felt like a whole century." Su Tianbei climbed off the boat, cursing. "I wasn't even this shaky when I fought Lu Feng."

He wasn't exaggerating. Courage could be a strange thing. Some men might fight like they had nothing to lose, but ask them to steal something and they wouldn't dare. They just didn't have the nerves for it.

Everyone got off the speedboats and transferred the cargo into three trucks used exclusively by the Dirty Gang. Then Su Tianyu called out, "Let's go. We're leaving."

"Come on, get in!" Bai Hongbo called as well.

"Leave a few men to get the speedboats back to the third floor and clean up our tracks," Kong Zhenghui instructed.

"I... I'll stay." Da Xiong seemed to care a great deal about this side job. He had worked hard the entire time, keeping quiet and getting things done. He was an excellent employee by any measure.

"Okay, help wrap things up." Pulling open a truck door, Su Tianyu answered softly, "Everyone else, get the cargo out first."

Just as he finished speaking and everyone was about to get in and leave, the sound of engines suddenly rose from the desolate road to their left.

Su Tianyu looked up into the distance and saw the headlights of two vehicles sweep toward them.

"Holy fucking shit, coast guard! Run!" Bai Hongbo yelled, ready to bolt.

"Fuck, quit talking shit. The coast guard wouldn't come in just two cars," Su Tianbei cursed. "What the hell are you panicking for?"

Hearing that, Bai Hongbo stopped and ducked beside a vehicle, looking toward the road junction.

The two vehicles hurried over and stopped in front of the trucks.

Their headlights glared as seven or eight burly men climbed out of the two SUVs. Their leader was about five foot nine, with a buzz cut, a square face, thick eyebrows, and strikingly bold features. He was powerfully built and approached with steady steps.

"They really are Dirty Gang trucks." The square-faced man glanced at the trucks, walked up to Bai Hongbo, and said evenly, "Brothers, you've crossed the line, haven't you?"

"Who are you?" Once Bai Hongbo saw they weren't coast guards and there were only seven or eight of them, his confidence immediately returned.

"You make your living on land, but you're muscling in on the sea trade without even saying hello. That's a little out of line, isn't it?" A young man beside the square-faced man smiled with his hands behind his back. "Leave the cargo and go. Have your boss come collect it later."

"Who the hell are you to seize our cargo?!" However dim Bai Hongbo might be, he could tell these men were gangsters too, and they had clearly come to shake them down.

"I said leave the cargo. You can go," the young man repeated.

"Leave your fucking mother!" Seeing how few of them there were, Bai Hongbo didn't take them seriously. He simply stepped forward. "Move!"

At his words, two members of the Bai Family drew daggers from inside their clothes and moved in around them. Su Tianbei, Kong Zhenghui, and the others stepped forward as well.

"You want to fight?" the young man demanded, giving Bai Hongbo a sidelong look.

"I told you to move!" With a dark expression, Bai Hongbo reached out to shove the buzz-cut man.

Smack!

The buzz-cut man knocked Bai Hongbo's wrist aside, then lashed out with a lightning-fast kick to his stomach.

Thud!

Bai Hongbo, who weighed at least two hundred pounds, went down from that single kick.

"Fuck you!" The Bai Family member on the left thrust his knife at the buzz-cut man.

Smack!

Without moving his left hand, the buzz-cut man sidestepped, caught the Bai Family member's wrist with his right hand, and wrenched it downward with a crack. Then he drove a raised knee straight into the man's stomach.

Thud!

The knife-wielding young man toppled sideways to the ground.

The buzz-cut man's movements flowed seamlessly. He took just one step back to evade the other man, bent his right arm, and viciously drove his elbow into the side of the last Bai Family member's head.

Bang!

The blow left the young man seeing stars. His back slammed into a vehicle, but he stayed on his feet.

Su Tianbei and the others froze for a moment, then grabbed their weapons and prepared to rush forward.

The buzz-cut man remained where he stood. The young man beside him drew a gleaming black pistol and pressed it straight against Su Tianbei's head, saying in an ordinary tone, "Motherfuckers! Are you blind? Do you know who he is? This is Wei Xiangzuo, the Zhannan Wharf Gang's hall boss! You still dare throw punches here? Got a fucking death wish?!"