“Miss, all our men are in position. We can move in at any time.”
“Not yet.”
“Have everyone wait where they is. No one is to rush in without my signal. Qi Tianhu has a hostage, so we’ll get him back first.”
“Understood!”
With that, Liu Yutong got out of the vehicle with Yun Cheng, Lan Die, Yu Xin, and the others, then headed toward the construction site on foot.
The more than three thousand men behind them remained where they were.
By then, the two sides at the construction site had already been locked in a standoff for quite some time.
The first group, consisting of more than eighty men in black led by Zhao Tianyi, stood glaring at the men Qi Tianhu had brought.
The moment Liu Yutong and the others entered the construction site, more than a thousand pairs of eyes turned toward them in unison.
Judging by the situation, Qi Tianhu clearly had the numbers. Nearly a thousand men stood packed together in a dark mass, at least eight or nine hundred of them. Each carried a steel pipe, machete, or baseball bat, and every one of them looked ready for bloodshed.
At the very front of the open space sat a large square table. A copper hot pot rested on top of it, its spicy red broth bubbling and sending clouds of steam into the air.
Qi Tianhu sat behind the hot pot, casually swishing slices of mutton in the broth.
Kneeling at his feet was a man who had been bound tightly and beaten until he was covered in wounds.
It was Zhou Ming, the investigative journalist who had spent more than three months undercover at a black-coal mine. After being discovered, he had been beaten within an inch of his life.
Qi Tianhu was still dipping meat into the hot pot when he saw the group of men in black part to form a passage. Several young men and women emerged from within.
When he saw the young woman at the front, dressed in a black suit with a golden dragon emblem pinned to her chest and carrying herself with extraordinary poise, he finally set down his chopsticks and looked at her.
“You’re the Dragon Society’s Young Mistress?”
She was completely different from what he had imagined.
He had assumed that the head of the Dragon Society would be, if not some terrifying harridan, then at least a broad-faced, heavily built woman. Otherwise, how could she possibly keep all those arrogant and unruly subordinates in line?
Yet the woman standing before him looked barely twenty. Her features were delicate, and her bearing was refined. She looked nothing like a crime boss—instead, she resembled the young mistress of some wealthy, powerful family.
Liu Yutong nodded. “That’s right.”
Yun Cheng and Lan Die stood half a step behind her, guarding her on either side.
“Did you bring the things?” Qi Tianhu picked up the towel on the table, wiped his mouth, and got straight to the point.
“I did.” Liu Yutong lifted her chin slightly.
Yun Cheng stepped forward, pulled a brown paper envelope from inside his coat, and took out its contents: a stack of photographs and a USB drive. He held them up so Qi Tianhu could see them clearly.
“These are the originals. I didn’t keep any copies.”
“How do I know you didn’t make backups?” Qi Tianhu asked.
“You don’t have to believe me, but you have no choice.”
“Either release the man and I’ll give you the evidence, or I’ll hand everything over to the police and call them right now.”
The instant she said that, the entire site fell silent.
The two locked eyes, neither showing the slightest intention of backing down.
After a moment, Qi Tianhu suddenly laughed and clapped his hands.
“Good! Good! As expected of the Dragon Society’s leader. You’ve got guts!”
He then motioned directly for his men to untie the journalist.
Zhou Ming, who had been kneeling on the ground, suddenly began struggling violently. Summoning every ounce of strength he had left, he shouted toward Liu Yutong, “Don’t give it to them! The worst they can do is kill me! Take the evidence and leave! Hurry! Don’t worry about me!”
Centipede kicked him hard in the back.
Zhou Ming went sprawling, his chin striking the concrete floor. Blood sprayed from his mouth.
He let out a muffled groan, his body twitching twice as he nearly lost consciousness.
The sight instantly sent Yun Cheng and the others into a fury. They were about to attack when Liu Yutong raised a hand to stop them.
“Don’t be impulsive!”
Seeing their reaction, Qi Tianhu’s smile grew wider.
The more desperately the journalist tried to stop them, the more it proved that the evidence was genuine.
“Reporter Zhou, save your breath. You spent three months undercover and took all those pictures, but in the end, you still have to hand them over to me. If you’d known this would happen, why did you do it in the first place?”
Qi Tianhu rose to his feet and gestured toward Liu Yutong. “Miss Liu, please.”
“Untie him,” Liu Yutong said coldly.
“Untie him,” Qi Tianhu repeated.
Centipede crouched down, pulled out a knife, and cut through the ropes binding Zhou Ming.
At the same time, Yun Cheng stepped forward and placed the brown paper envelope on the square table before retreating to his original position.
Two men in black helped Zhou Ming to his feet and carried him toward the exit.
As he passed Liu Yutong, she lowered her voice and said to him, “Don’t worry. I’ll make sure every one of these men is brought to justice.”
Zhou Ming froze for a moment.
With great difficulty, he raised his battered, bloodied face and took a long look at her. His cracked lips formed two words:
“Thank you.”
Then the two men carried him out through the construction site’s entrance.
After confirming that Zhou Ming had left safely, Liu Yutong turned around and prepared to lead her people away.
“Stop!”
Qi Tianhu’s sudden shout brought them to a halt.
Liu Yutong stopped without turning around, though the corners of her lips lifted slightly in a cold smile.
“Our transaction is complete, isn’t it? Is there something else, Chairman Qi?”
“The transaction is complete, but my son’s debt still hasn’t been settled!” Qi Tianhu suddenly waved his hand.
Whoosh!
A large number of thugs poured in from all directions, surrounding Liu Yutong and the more than eighty men in black at the site.
Nearly a thousand men surrounded fewer than a hundred, leaving them no room to escape.
Liu Yutong turned around and glanced at the vicious-looking thugs before finally saying to Qi Tianhu, “You want a fight?”
“That’s right.”
Qi Tianhu spoke through clenched teeth, his voice filled with hatred. “Today, neither you nor a single one of your men will leave this place alive! The Dragon Society must pay for my son’s life in blood!”
The veteran associates behind him also revealed sinister smiles, pulling out their weapons one after another.
A thousand men against eighty. The odds were roughly fifteen to one. No matter how anyone looked at it, this was an overwhelming advantage.
They had absolute superiority.
Yet no fear appeared on Liu Yutong’s face or on the faces of the people with her. Every one of them remained perfectly calm.
That made several of Qi Tianhu’s men uneasy.
Could it be that they still had another card to play?
Liu Yutong said calmly, “You’re planning to use your numbers to bully the outnumbered, aren’t you?”
“That’s right!” Qi Tianhu replied resentfully. “I’m going to use my numbers to crush you!”
“I’m going to make sure none of you leave this place alive!”
“Qi Tianhu, are you certain you want to take this all the way?”
“You’re the one who went too far first! You killed my son!”
Liu Yutong stopped looking at him. She turned her head slightly and nodded at Yun Cheng.
Yun Cheng understood. He turned to face the entrance of the construction site and raised his right arm, making a hand signal.
Outside the entrance, everything remained quiet for roughly five seconds.
There was no reaction at all.
The thugs exchanged puzzled glances. A few even laughed, their faces full of disdain.
“He’s on the verge of death and still putting on an act—”
The sentence was cut short.
Suddenly, a voice blared through a loudspeaker from the construction site’s entrance, loud and clear.
“Everyone inside, listen up!”
“You’ve been surrounded by the Dragon Society!”
At the unexpected sound, the thugs instinctively turned toward the entrance.
The moment they looked over, every one of them was stunned.
Even Qi Tianhu, who had been certain of victory, froze with his sinister smile still plastered across his face.
Outside the construction site’s gate, the once-empty dirt road was suddenly covered by a sea of black.
Looking closely, they were all young men dressed in black suits, each wearing a silver dragon-shaped insignia on his chest. There were so many of them that their ranks stretched beyond the eye’s ability to take in.
Although it was noon, the arrival of this crowd seemed to dim the sky itself, creating the eerie impression that night was about to fall.
At the very front of the group, a chubby young man stood atop a black Mercedes-Benz. He held a megaphone in one hand and a bowl of half-finished braised-meat rice in the other as he shouted at the top of his lungs:
“Let me repeat myself! You have been surrounded by the Dragon Society!”
“Please do not put up any pointless resistance! Put your hands on your heads and squat down! The Dragon Society is a legitimate company that obeys the law. We won’t make things difficult for you. We’ll even provide you with a job that includes food and lodging!”
All the thugs at the construction site were stunned for a full second.
Obeys the law?
A legitimate company?
You’ve got at least three or four thousand men in black blocking the entrance, and you expect us to believe that? Who the hell would buy that?
Still, a job with food and lodging did sound rather tempting.
When Qi Tianhu finally came to his senses, he spun around and glared at Liu Yutong.
“What the hell are you playing at?”
Liu Yutong tilted her chin toward the construction site’s gate.
“Isn’t it obvious? It’s a matter of strength in numbers! That’s what you said just now, wasn’t it?”
“Only now, I’m the one with the numbers!”
