WHF Ch 53 – The Damn Bastard’s Damn Handsomeness

Xiu Ma raised his left hand and pried open the unlucky boss’s hand that was covering his mouth, but he did not bother with the arm that was around his neck. With their heads pressed together, he glanced in Yu Tianbai’s direction and replied:

“He looks like a boss at first glance. I would know even if you didn’t tell me.”

Yu Tianbai did not care about his darting gaze. Instead, he tightened the arm around him a little, raised the hand that the young master had swatted away again, pointed out the window, and continued to offer his guidance: “The main point isn’t just this fat bastard. His subordinates are the key. We have to be careful with every single one of them.”

While the two sunglasses-wearing oddballs on their side of the Chu River and Han Border whispered to each other, the restaurant manager had already entered the door with his group of underlings. The door closed, and the north wind howled.

“So how do we meet with him?” Xiu Ma asked the crucial question.

A good question, to which Yu Tianbai had no comment. He released the arm around the young master’s neck, and the two of them separated.

“Go in and perform,” Yu Tianbai said, firm and decisive.

“I’m not doing it,” Xiu Ma rejected on the spot.

“Why aren’t you doing it?” Yu Tianbai turned halfway, resting his arm on the steering wheel. Even through the sunglasses, it was clear he was cursing with his expression. “How many times have we worked together? You know my professional standards. You just need to go up there and brandish your swords and spears.”

“And what happens after I’m done brandishing swords and spears?” Xiu Ma also turned his body to look at him. “Don’t forget that besides getting them to throw coins, you still have to go down and ask people questions.”

Inside the grand restaurant, in the banquet hall, in front of the stage covered with a red carpet, Yu Tianbai, wearing sunglasses and a coiled dragon patterned shirt, sauntered over to the fat bastard with a playful grin, leaned in and asked: “Boss, can I ask you about something?”

The result was that the two of them, along with their sunglasses and the swords and spears from their dance, were kicked out of the door, together with the trash can and the swill truck outside the back door.

“Oh come on, what’s the big deal? Aren’t you just afraid of being recognized every time you perform martial arts?” Yu Tianbai stretched his arms in the driver’s seat, striking a new pose. “We’ll try a different approach.”

Still inside the grand restaurant, in the banquet hall, in front of the stage covered with a red carpet, the two of them had changed from sunglasses and short shirts to long gowns. Behind the table for a crosstalk performance, Yu Tianbai snapped open his fan and spoke with conviction: “Esteemed audience, listen closely as I explain—”

The result was still the two of them being kicked out of the door, along with their sunglasses and fans, once again lying next to the swill truck outside the back door.

“Just give up on the performance route,” Xiu Ma said. “Try my method.”

The corner of Yu Tianbai’s mouth under his sunglasses showed his disdain. He tilted his chin up: “Let’s hear it.”

Still inside the grand restaurant, in the banquet hall, in front of the stage covered with a red carpet were just some ordinary opera troupes singing some opera-style tunes. The two of them had already taken this opportunity to climb in through the back window, heading straight for Fatty Lin’s office. The door was unlocked, and the two of them slipped in with ease. And the document recording the whereabouts of the money related to Fang Hui was sitting right in the middle of the desk.

To find something after a long and fruitless search, only to get it with no effort at all. However, just as they were about to claim their victory prize, the office door suddenly swung open. Outside stood one of the fatty’s many underlings. The underling shouted loudly:

“Who goes there!”

The result for the third time was the same. The two of them were kicked out of the door together. This time there were no sunglasses because the sunglasses had been knocked off. There was no swill truck because even the swill truck could not bear to watch and had long since driven away.

Lonely Jiamusi, a lonely garbage heap, two lonely people.

Of course, all three of the above scenarios occurred in the imaginations of the young master and his unlucky boss. In reality, the two were still sitting in the Wuling Hongguang, not having even touched the scraps of important intelligence.

Yu Tianbai silently straightened his body, pushed up his glasses with his knuckles, and gave the next decision:

“I’m going down for a smoke.”

At ten in the morning, this small northeastern city had just woken up. Residents were strolling on the streets, out to buy breakfast and snacks. The slow pace made Yu Tianbai yawn as well. He stood a few steps away from the car door and took out a pack of cigarettes from his jacket pocket.

If he did not need to sneak into the restaurant for intelligence, this would indeed be a nice morning.

The slow pace not only fostered a leisurely life for adults but also cultivated the idleness of clueless young people. Before he had taken two puffs of his cigarette, a series of scuffling footsteps came from behind the alley. Besides the footsteps, there was also the sound of rolling wheels, and laughter and curses that sounded very young. Without turning his head, he knew it was a group of young people who thought they were the center of the universe.

Just like when he was young.

Yu Tianbai tilted his head up and blew a puff of smoke towards the blue sky of Jiamusi. In the next second, as he put the filter back between his lips, a ridiculously young voice sounded from behind him:

“Bro, can I bum a smoke?”

After a pause of about two or three seconds, Yu Tianbai turned his face to look at the person, incidentally pushing out a perfect smoke ring with the tip of his tongue. After this rather perfect cloud of smoke was waved away by the young man in front of him, Yu Tianbai flicked his cigarette and answered him:

“You clearly smell of smoke yourself. It would be more believable if you asked to borrow a light.”

His reply was not funny, certainly not as funny as this kid himself, but the person in front of him still laughed. Not only did he laugh himself, but he also turned his head to gesture to his companions with his eyes, carrying on a conversation that no one else could understand.

Yu Tianbai’s eyebrows knitted together, and he squinted to size up the people—three of them, all quite tall, looking like they came from well off families. They were no older than high school seniors, with a perception that knew neither heaven nor earth. The kid in the lead held a skateboard. He looked a bit like Xiu Ma from two years ago, most likely a popular figure on campus, but still not in the same league as the young master currently in his car.

“It’s just that I haven’t smoked the good stuff, you know?” That kid finished laughing and put on a乖-looking expression that was obviously fake. “Bro, I can tell yours is the good stuff just by the smell. I’ve never had it.”

After he finished speaking, there was another burst of cackling laughter, like a taxi driving through an old tunnel, loud and unpleasant.

In the minds of high school students, there was no need for a reason to pick someone to have fun with. It could be because Yu Tianbai was standing by the road, or because he was dressed like a fortune telling immortal, or perhaps his entire being was just out of place on Guangfu Road, and he was good looking. Yu Tianbai felt deeply apologetic about this.

After their mutual laughter had lasted to an awkward extent, Yu Tianbai pushed his sunglasses down a notch from the bridge of his nose, looked the skateboard-wielding one up and down with a meaningful gaze, then put his sunglasses back on properly and asked:

“High school student?”

Asking about the actual situation was no fun. The few of them finally stopped laughing. Silence meant he had guessed correctly. Yu Tianbai smiled knowingly, pointing at him with the cigarette between his fingers: “Get into Beihang University, and I’ll buy you a few more cartons. You can have as many as you want.”

Bringing up academics was even less interesting than asking about the actual situation. The skateboard kid’s smile vanished on the spot. The few of them exchanged glances. The atmosphere changed. Yu Tianbai tossed the cigarette in his hand to the side.

Are we going to fight?

But just before things could develop uncontrollably, the van door behind him suddenly opened, and a long leg stepped out.

Martin boots, black satin pants, gold dark patterns, sandy blond hair. Why was it that the same outfit looked so different on Xiu Ma? The three young punks all shut their mouths, watching as the person from the car emerged in what seemed like slow motion, like a martial arts master hidden from the world, like a deus ex machina from a classical play.

His long legs landed on the ground, and the young master stood up straight, heading directly this way.

Yu Tianbai was used to seeing him like this, but the point was not his feelings, but the feelings of these three kids on the ground. This kind of debut must have been shocking enough. The three of them consciously and automatically made way for a path to Yu Tianbai, but the person who got out of the car did not have that as his target.

He stopped in front of the skateboard boy who had spoken first, looking from his feet to his neck, and finally to his eyes.

The skateboard boy was about the same height as Yu Tianbai. Standing together, they were on equal footing, but from the moment Xiu Ma got out of the car, his stature had shrunk by half. It seemed that this species of teenagers still needed to be dealt with by their own kind.

But the words the young master uttered were unexpected:

“Nice skateboard.”

The skateboard kid did not expect him to open with a compliment. He was stunned for a moment, and the height that had shrunk down straightened back up.

“Brother, you’ve got good taste,” he shifted the board he was holding. “You play longboard too?”

“I can’t do the technical stuff,” To his surprise, the young master replied to him with mutual respect. “Looks like you mainly focus on technique. Professional.”

As soon as he finished speaking, the whole scene fell silent. Yu Tianbai’s disbelief was plain to see even through his sunglasses, but the focus was not on him now. In the back alley, next to the van, it had clearly become a communication ground exclusively for aimless youths.

Of course, the young master could absolutely not be considered aimless, but you could find these flashy hobbies on him one after another. The butterfly knife Yu Tianbai had in his pocket was clearly just one in a million.

The conversation ended, and the leader even took the initiative to offer his phone number to the young master.

“Let’s go out for drinks and fun sometime!”

When the skateboard kid shouted this, Yu Tianbai took out another cigarette. He lowered his head and sneered. It was not so easy to ask the young master out. First, you had to get past his boss.

However, the young master did not think so. He saved the number, locked his phone, put it in his pocket, and then looked at Yu Tianbai in silence, showing no intention of reporting anything to his boss.

Yu Tianbai looked at him, then lowered his head to look at his chest, not to be a pervert, but because his phone was right there.

“You just kept his number like that?” Yu Tianbai asked.

“I rarely take the initiative to delete someone’s contact information,” Xiu Ma silently bathed in the smoke his boss exhaled, “before you ask me to.”

This was not a lie. The last time they came out of the bar, Yu Tianbai had personally seen the young master open his contact list, which he had not touched in ages. It was filled from top to bottom with unidentified people without any notes.

“But you yourself said you deleted twenty contacts,” Yu Tianbai held the filter between his lips. He knew a silent war had already begun.

The young master had said this himself after being kicked out of the car by him, after drinking twelve non-alcoholic drinks at the bar and deleting twenty people who had hit on him.

“Wasn’t that just to let you know the number?” Xiu Ma actually smiled. His mouth widened, revealing neat teeth, brilliant blond hair. Waking up early and staking out a place could not affect this damn bastard’s damn handsomeness.

Faced with such shamelessness, the unlucky boss could not even roll his eyes.

“I don’t like the look of this one. Delete him as soon as you get back.”

After saying that, Yu Tianbai, with the cigarette in his mouth, looked in the direction where the few kids had left. The weather was clear, and the street was once again submerged in ordinary pedestrians.

But then again, the young master had appeared at just the right time. If it were up to Yu Tianbai alone, these few punks would not have left without pestering him for a while longer—not that Yu Tianbai had any intention of admitting defeat. His body, trained for several years in the army, was more than enough to handle a few minors.

But due praise still had to be given.

“You’re quite good at dealing with those few,” he gestured to the distance with his chin. “Looks like it still takes the king of the kids.”

“People of this age are like dogs,” Xiu Ma put his hands in his pockets, looking into the distance with him. “Primitive, instinctual. When there’s a leader with a beautiful coat who looks like he can fight, no one will disobey.”

What he said was very reasonable, but it was hard not to find a loophole.

Yu Tianbai asked: “Are you saying you’re a dog?”

Xiu Ma retorted: “Even if you’re a human, you’re not much better!”

The atmosphere was harmonious, full of laughter and cheer, birdsong and fragrant flowers.

“You go back to the car first,” Yu Tianbai straightened his back. The cigarette was finished, and another need arose. “I’m going to find a toilet to take a leak.”

The young master was stunned for a moment, then immediately started complaining about how troublesome he was. Amidst the curses of the handsome man who seemed perfect to outsiders, Yu Tianbai walked away contentedly.

But he could never have imagined that when he returned, things would have turned into such a state.