Special District 9

Yong Dong, together with his four subordinates, came out of the train station, and they soon met up with the Third Young Master of Prosperous Dragon Pharmaceuticals, Xing Zihao.

“Pleased to meet you, Zihao.” Yong Dong courteously extended his hand over.

Xing Zihao sat in his car, not bothering to stand up at all. He symbolically shook his hand with Yong Dong before saying, “Come in.”

Yong Dong beckoned for his subordinates to take the car behind before getting on to Xing Zihao’s car all alone. With a polite tone, he said, “Young Master Xing, I’m really sorry for troubling you.”

“Aren’t those competing with you at Songjiang just a bunch of street ruffians?” Xing Zihao asked in displeasure. “Yuan Hua has been on the streets for so long, but he can’t even handle these people by himself?”

Yong Dong quickly explained, “Those ruffians have some connections behind them. The superintendent of Black Street Sector is backing them right now.”

“What can a mere superintendent of a Police Bureau do?” Xing Zihao replied impassively. “Didn’t Yuan Hua say that he is good friends with the higher-ups of the Police Headquarters and the City Government? Why isn’t he tapping into those connections properly then?”

Of course, there was no way Yong Dong would dare to refute this conceited young master, and he couldn’t be bothered to explain the intricacies surrounding the fights on the streets either. So, he simply replied with a smile, “We got careless and made a few mistakes when we first started out.”

Xing Zihao remarked with a frown, “Our company partnered with Yuan Hua in order to spare us the trouble of handling the business there, but it seems like you lot aren’t that reliable either.”

“My apologies. We’ll be more careful in the future,” Yong Dong replied with a nod.

Xing Zihao contemplated for a moment before he took out his phone and asked, “What’s the name of that lad working in Duke Carnival?”

Yong Dong blinked his eyes first before saying with a smile, “We won’t be finding him yet.”

“What do you mean by that? Aren’t you here to get him?” Xing Zihao was perplexed.

“Well, it’s like this. I have been thinking on the train all this while, and I realized that since Little Qu is the crux to this matter, it’s likely that our enemies are in as much of a hurry to find him as we are. So, I had my men look into it and…” Yong Dong began to share his plan together with Xing Zihao.

…

Inside a light music bar known as Warm Winter.

Qin Yu miserly ordered a cup of lemonade for Old Cat and Guan Qi before glancing at his watch.

“Calm down. There are still no movements from Ma Lao-er’s side, right?” Old Cat said. “It won’t help for us to get flustered at a moment like this. Let’s just wait patiently.”

Right after saying those words, a ravishing figure entered through the main entrance and waved her hand toward the trio with a beautiful smile, “Hello, my fellow brothers.”

“Aiyo, you’re finally here!” Old Cat exclaimed with a chuckle. He quickly beckoned her over, “Come, have a seat here.”

Lin Ninalei casually placed her bag on the table before taking the opposite seat to Qin Yu as he teased, “Oh my. Three grown men coming to a bar to have lemonade? Shouldn’t you get something more appropriate for someone of your age?”

“I’m already on the verge of dying of worry over here. If we don’t settle the matter properly, I might just drink rat poison, let alone this lemonade,” Qin Yu grumbled in frustration.

“Isn’t it your friend’s business? Why are you the one drinking rat poison?” Lin Nianlei asked curiously.

“Sigh. This is how the matter is…” Old Cat began to explain the matter with a softer voice to Lin NIanlei, but he chose to skip some of the details, such as their relationship with the Ma Family and the political fights amongst the higher-ups.

Lin Nianlei was a person who had a strong sense of justice. After hearing Old Cat’s words, her eyebrows immediately knitted together into a deep frown as she remarked, “How can the Yuan Family be so reprehensible?! I snapped a photo of them selling overpriced medicine a while ago, and they smashed my camera due to that… And now, in order to fight for market share, they actually poisoned two innocent people to death… How can they have no regard for human life at all?!”

The other three men fell silent.

Lin Nianlei gritted her teeth together as she turned to Qin Yu and said, “I can help you on this matter, but I’ve never been to Duke Carnival before. We’ll wait here for a while first. My older brother will be discussing some business on the floors above later on, and I can get him to help you look into this once he’s done. He has quite a lot of friends here in Fengbei.”

“Your older brother? Blood-related?” Qin Yu asked curiously.

“Nay, my cousin,” Lin Nianlei replied.

“Alright, let’s wait here then,” Old Cat replied. “What are you drinking?”

“I got nothing up today, so I can have a small drink with you,” Lin Nianlei said as she took off her coat. “Get me an alcopop.”

Qin Yu rolled his eyes upon hearing those words. “Just get a lemonade. Alcohol is expensive, you know.”

“Hey hey, is that the attitude you should have when asking for a request? I want to drink alcohol, what about it?” Lin Nianlei glared at Qin Yu with her displeased large eyes as she retorted.

“He’s a miser, I’ll treat you instead.” Old Cat’s show-off personality was showing through once more, “Order whatever you want. I’ll foot the bill even if you want to drink the Jade Emperor’s saliva today!”

“You are disgusting,” Lin Nianlei’s face crumbled as she berated.

Just like that, the few of them chatted amongst themselves while waiting for Lin Nianlei’s cousin to arrive.

An hour ticked by. By this point, more than half of the people in the bar had left. It was at this point that Qin Yu’s phone suddenly rang.

“Hello, Uncle Ma?”

“I’m already at the entrance of Warm Winter,” Old Ma’s voice sounded from the phone.

Qin Yu immediately got up as he replied, “Noted. Come to the entrance, I’ll fetch you.”

“Alright.”

The two of them ended their call there. Qin Yu turned to the group and said, “You all continue talking, I’ll go fetch an elder.”

…

On the floor above.

A good-looking young man dressed in a woolen overcoat was seated on a sofa as he looked through a stack of documents.

The brilliant lighting shone on the young man’s face, highlighting the outlines of his facial features and his physique. He appeared to be around 1.82 meters, and he had fair skin. His facial features were exquisite, giving him some semblance of a pretty boy.

If one were to take a closer look, one would find that he resembled Lin Nianlei quite a bit, though it would be hard to put one’s finger on where the similarity was.

“Do you think that it’s fine for us to proceed in this direction? If so, I’ll draft up a new contract after I return to Special District 7,” the middle-aged man seated on the opposite sofa asked with a smile.

“No hurry. Let me digest the information first,” the young man said. “I’ll give you a response tomorrow.”

“You and your dad are really different from one another,” the middle-aged man remarked as he placed his wine glass down. “You are already quite stable despite your young age. Seems like you have a bright future ahead of you!”

“You think too highly of me. I just don’t want to make a mistake on this matter,” the young man replied with a smile. He stood up and refilled the middle-aged man’s glass as he said, “Come, uncle. Allow me to propose a toast to you.”

…

In the lounge of Warm Winter, Qin Yu had already come into contact with Old Ma’s group, and they were on their way to the light music bar.

On the streets.

Xing Zihao had his phone held up to his ear as he instructed authoritatively, “Come over right now. Un, it’s the address that I just sent you. Yes, that’s all.”

Watching as Xing Zihao hung up the phone, Yong Dong immediately advised with a frown, “Young Master Xing, you have misinterpreted what I said. There’s no need for us to handle this personally. You can be spared from a great deal of trouble if you tap into your connections with officials, and you’ll be doing them a favor even…”

Xing Zihao barely heard half of what Yong Dong had to say before waving his hand impatiently. He interjected with a derisive sneer, “Do I need to tap into my connections to deal with this bunch of hoodlums? Let’s just hurry up and get the matter done and over with.”

“I think that this might be a little risky. The other party won’t be that easy to deal with. They have weathered through…” Yong Dong tried to persuade Xing Zihao otherwise.

However, Xing Zihao turned his head over and bellowed into Yong Dong’s face, “If you’re going to coward out at every little thing, how can we trust you to run our medicine distribution channels well?”

Yong Dong immediately shut his mouth there.