WHF Ch 73 – “It’s time to fulfill your promise.” 

Yu Tianbai always had excellent aim.

So when the microphone hit the bullseye, everything seemed to happen in slow motion. The microphone was a cormorant diving into the water, and Sun Jiu’s face was the previously calm surface. The cormorant hit the water, the surface exploded, and saliva and blood burst in the air like fireworks. His crumpled features were like distorted ripples. Sun Jiu used all his strength to raise a hand and point at Yu Tianbai, but his furious expression wasn’t complete—probably because of the external obstruction. Then, his entire body fell backward.

Bang.

It was hard to tell if it was the sound of a skull hitting the floor or a starting gun, but in the next second, Yu Tianbai lunged toward Xiu Ma.

Because at the same time Sun Jiu’s face began to contort, he had clearly seen Yan Guoxian’s raised arm, a sharp command leave his lips, and the weapons raised by the soldiers behind him.

“Get them!”

The shout reached Yu Tianbai’s ears two seconds late. Along with it came a flurry of blows, like raindrops exploding and falling.

If a punch comes too fast, you don’t feel the pain at first. So Yu Tianbai only felt a cold numbness. He didn’t know how many hits he took, but at least Xiu Ma definitely took fewer than he did. In the chaos, he vaguely heard the scraping sound of a metal pipe.

Not good.

As Yu Tianbai struggled to turn and look toward the source, all he saw was the ferocious face of the guy holding the pipe, and the white blur of the pipe as it swung down. But at the same time, he felt the person beneath him suddenly reach out an arm and pull him closer.

Clang!

After a loud crash, the entire physical world went black.

At first, Yu Tianbai thought the iron bar had hit him in the head. Damaged optic nerve, of course he couldn’t see anything. But then he realized the power was out.

Amidst the shouts and cries of the guys behind him, Yan Guoxian’s roar was particularly prominent, interspersed with Sun Jiu’s muffled groans. If you didn’t know the situation, you might have thought the microphone had been shoved straight into his mouth, knocking out a few teeth.

How did the power go out?

In the confusion, Yu Tianbai suddenly felt a small, cold hand touch his wrist. It was a woman’s hand.

Fang Hui.

Yu Tianbai’s first thought was that Fang Hui had returned, the little girl who wandered alone in the wilderness. But the next second, that hand gripped his wrist tightly.

Can spirits make direct contact with people?

The hand started to pull, and with considerable strength. Then a voice came from beside his ear: “Hurry, go!”

It was definitely a woman’s voice, and not a ghost. Yu Tianbai came to this conclusion for two reasons: one, ghosts probably don’t help people, and two, the voice was very familiar.

He pulled Xiu Ma up from beneath him and followed the direction the hand was leading him. In the dark, it wasn’t easy to find your way through a suite, especially with guys swinging clubs and fists above your head. After a full minute of stumbling and crawling in the pitch-black room, the space around them suddenly opened up.

Click.

With the sound of a switch flipping, the room lit up.

It was a storage room, connected to the private room they were just in, most likely through a hidden door. The light was dim, the wallpaper was peeling, tools were piled in the corner, and the clamor from the other room could still be faintly heard. Yu Tianbai blinked, adjusting to the light. He was kneeling on the floor, not yet up. Xiu Ma was beside him, not looking much better, half-sitting, half-kneeling, his face a mask of bewilderment.

The person who had led them was standing in front of the circuit breaker, dressed in the shirt and apron of a KTV waitress. After the light bulb overhead finally stopped flickering, she turned to look at them.

“Xiao Juan?” Yu Tianbai was the first to ask in disbelief.

Xiao Juan’s expression immediately changed. She quickly crouched down and shushed them. From the sounds next door, the lights in the private room had come back on as well.

The lights came on, followed by a chorus of jeers, then the chaotic sound of tables, sofas, and beer bottles being kicked over. Secretary Yan’s curses were not the most prominent this time, as Mr. Sun’s voice was overriding them. Sun Jiu had likely recovered from the stinging pain of a direct hit to the face. He was bellowing for fists and kicks, his voice moving from near to far, sounding as if he had chased them out of the room.

Only when the shouting had completely faded into the distance did Yu Tianbai remove the hand covering his mouth.

Xiao Juan was squatting beside them, looking with concern at the two desolate figures.

“You, what are you doing here?” Yu Tianbai was the second to ask in disbelief.

The young woman squatting on the floor looked rather exasperated herself. She retorted, “I was about to ask you the same thing. I got kicked out by my employer, so I had to find a new job to make a living, didn’t I?”

Behind him, Xiu Ma finally spoke. His first word was an apology: “Sorry.”

This apology successfully made Xiao Juan feel embarrassed as well. She quickly waved her hands, insisting that wasn’t what she meant. Amidst the chaotic exchange of apologies, Yu Tianbai interjected:

“Was it you who pulled the circuit breaker for us just now?”

Xiao Juan stopped her incoherent apology, nodded, and replied, “I saw you as soon as you came in. I didn’t recognize the person leading you, and it felt wrong, but I couldn’t intervene directly, so I slipped back here to shut off the power.”

A real lifesaver.

Yu Tianbai sighed deeply. He shifted from a kneeling to a sitting position, rubbing his head with another sigh.

He never thought that none of the hundred escape plans swirling in his head would be used. In the end, he was saved by a young woman. Of course, in that situation, the tip of a knife was practically at Xiu Ma’s neck. There was no way they could have escaped on their own. Back to the original point, Xiao Juan was still a great lifesaver.

As his mind relaxed, the pain in his body made itself known in earnest. In the few short seconds it took to go from his knees to sitting on the floor, Yu Tianbai was already grimacing in pain. The worst of it was in his back. It wasn’t a broken bone, but it would definitely be a large patch of red and purple the next day.

All these injuries were sustained protecting this kid, Xiu Ma. He would have to make him pay it back.

Yu Tianbai turned around, rubbing his shoulder. Xiu Ma was still sitting obediently behind him, his expression clear and innocent, his gaze shifting from Xiao Juan to Yu Tianbai.

“Sorry,” Yu Tianbai said directly. 

“I followed you here secretly because I was worried.”

These were the words he had wanted to say at the hospital entrance but hadn’t had the chance.

He had imagined a thousand different reactions from Xiu Ma, but he never expected the young master to choose the most ordinary one. He replied:

“Ah, oh.”

It was unclear if he had calmly accepted it or if his brain had simply shut down, but in any case, it was very flat. This response immediately stuffed all of Yu Tianbai’s other explanations back down his throat.

“Okay, as long as you accept it.” Yu Tianbai chose to face it calmly. 

“So, shall we stand up and talk?”

It wasn’t right to stay sprawled on the storage room floor. Yu Tianbai pushed himself up with one hand. But he didn’t get up smoothly; he twisted and turned, a clear sign that the pain was coming from all over.

Xiu Ma watched him stand up straight, then reached out to push himself up from the floor. But almost at the same instant, he tilted sideways and fell, face-first.

Amidst Xiao Juan’s gasp, Xiu Ma quickly raised a hand to signal that he was fine, then said hesitantly, “I think my arm is broken.”

It had to be said, this kid Xiu Ma could really endure pain. If this were the old days, in Japan, he would have made a decent ninja.

His arm was injured while protecting Yu Tianbai. Yu Tianbai had taken so many hits for Xiu Ma, and Xiu Ma had taken the heaviest one for Yu Tianbai. It was a fair exchange—this was how Yu Tianbai tried to console himself. But standing in the hospital room with the bill in hand, watching the doctor set the bone, Yu Tianbai still felt terribly guilty.

He didn’t cry out when he was injured. He didn’t cry out when Yu Tianbai carried him to the ambulance. He didn’t cry out when they were registering at the emergency room. Not until the orthopedic doctor, after looking at the X-rays, called Yu Tianbai in to help hold him down.

With the cast on and the sling in place, after the doctor had given his instructions, standing in a corner of the emergency room in the early morning, Yu Tianbai’s ears were still ringing. The source of the noise now had red eyes, seemingly quite embarrassed about what had just happened.

The black, white, and gold stars flashed before Yu Tianbai’s eyes for a little longer. He raised the medical record again and said, “The doctor says you’re young and will recover quickly. It should be healed in two months.”

The person to his left grunted in acknowledgment and said nothing more. His free hand scratched at the cast, as if the bone was already growing back strong.

When the last patient had passed, Yu Tianbai finally broke the silence. 

“Didn’t you ever think you’d get hurt protecting me like that? That’s not how you fight. Didn’t anyone teach you that when you were learning martial arts?”

Given Xiu Ma’s good-student history, it was likely no one had ever taught him how to fight. But after Yu Tianbai said this, his eyes grew even redder, so red it was hard not to feel sorry for him.

“Alright,” Yu Tianbai relented. 

“I’m not blaming you—”

Unexpectedly, the person with red eyes immediately spoke up, his tone steady, without a trace of sadness:

“I had resolved that the next time I saw you, I would punch you.”

Alright then. So the red eyes were just from the lingering pain of having his bone set.

Since it had come to this, Yu Tianbai did feel he deserved a punch. First, he had secretly followed him back to his hometown without a word. Then, he had paraded around town with several pairs of eyes on him, which had indeed caused trouble. He had also resolved the trouble, but trouble was still trouble.

Yu Tianbai admitted his fault and faced it calmly. He said directly:

“Fine, then give me a punch.”

This time, it was Xiu Ma’s turn to look at him as if he were crazy. As Yu Tianbai was trying to confirm if he was really going to hit him, Xiu Ma asked first:

“Did you… really kill someone?”

Yu Tianbai finally remembered the streaks of blood still caked on his forehead. He raised a hand and rubbed at them twice, sending flakes of dried blood flying. Then he answered:

“No. Laowu left on his own.”

Seeing the obvious relief on Xiu Ma’s face, Yu Tianbai couldn’t help but be surprised. 

“You didn’t really think I would kill someone, did you?”

He asked a bit too loudly. A passing nurse glanced over, but her expression was completely normal. She pushed a medicine cart and walked away without looking back. Yu Tianbai once again pondered just how many hidden talents there were in the hospitals of the Northeast.

The waters ran deep.

When the area was clear, Yu Tianbai turned his gaze back to Xiu Ma, his expression serious, and said word by word, “The mastermind behind all of this is Yan Guoxian.”

Xiu Ma’s expression didn’t flicker in the slightest, as if he had just heard that “Shenzhou 7 has launched.”

“I knew that already,” Xiu Ma said. 

“I deduced it.”

Yu Tianbai really wanted to ask him how he deduced it, but then he remembered every time Xiu Ma went over the accounts with him at lightning speed, while he, as the boss, could only nod in agreement, ignorant of the details. It seemed there was no point in hearing the deduction process; he wouldn’t understand it anyway. As long as they had reached the same conclusion.

He had escaped when the car reached the center of Songyuan. First, he punched Yan Guoxian beside him, then he jumped out the window. At that time, Yu Tianbai didn’t know the destination was the KTV at the intersection ahead. He never would have imagined Sun Jiu would be so petty as to choose such a place for revenge, nor did he expect Xiu Ma to be captured right after he ran off. Man’s plans are no match for heaven’s.

In any case, although Laowu’s legs weren’t what they used to be, he was familiar with the terrain. The two of them met again at the end of a dark alley five hundred meters away. He threw the gun in his hand, knelt on the ground, and asked Yu Tianbai to tell him the truth, asking if he had seen his nephew.

It turned out that after leaving Yan Guoxian, Tu Laowu himself had already sensed that something was wrong. He had a gut feeling that his nephew was in danger.

Yu Tianbai hesitated for a moment before the words “Weren’t you the one who did it?” could escape his lips, and chose to tell the truth instead.

It proved to be the right choice. Laowu was tired of all the fighting. He stood up, dusted off his knees, and handed the gun to Yu Tianbai.

“I’m going to do what I have to do.”

With that, he turned and left.

And the blood on Yu Tianbai’s face had nothing to do with Tu Laowu. The blood on his face was Yan Guoxian’s, the nosebleed that had splattered on him before he jumped out of the car.

“I don’t know what he’s planning to do,” Yu Tianbai subconsciously reached for a cigarette, but quickly remembered this was a hospital. 

“It can’t be suicide to atone for his sins, right?”

Before Tu Laowu turned to leave, he also told Yu Tianbai something they had been searching for all this time—Fang Hui’s whereabouts.

“Fang Hui is gone,” Yu Tianbai calmly told Xiu Ma this conclusion, even though they had already anticipated it.

Now, Xiao Juan was really going to be sad.

In the hospital room five meters away, Xiao Juan was still discussing post-care instructions with the doctor. The two of them sighed in unison.

“Alright,” Yu Tianbai said. 

“It’s time to fulfill your promise.”

After saying that, he turned to face Xiu Ma directly.

Promise?

Xiu Ma remembered. He was supposed to punch Yu Tianbai. He still had some conscience left; he just raised his fist, without a running start or a step back. But Yu Tianbai still chose to simply close his eyes.

But what greeted him was not a powerful, savage punch, but an unexpected warmth. Then he realized that Xiu Ma had rested his forehead on his shoulder, and his uninjured arm was wrapped around his lower back.

He heard the sound of soft sobs next to his ear. This time, it was for real.

Yu Tianbai hesitated for a long time, then raised his hands. He placed one on Xiu Ma’s back, and with the other, he gave the back of this twenty-one-year-old kid a solemn pat.