UE CH46: Connecting Links

The moment Jin Hu rushed upstairs, he effortlessly grabbed the culprit.

—A spoiled second-generation heir, so drunk he could barely stand straight, with more alcohol than blood in his veins.

Jin Hu couldn’t even remember whether this guy had ended up here for stabbing someone after drinking or for plowing into pedestrians in a downtown street while drunk driving.

In any case, he was a seasoned drunkard.

The heir’s hangover was a full-blown, all-night bender. Even now, he was still reeking of alcohol, holding a half-empty glass in his right hand, slouched against the railing and peering down.

The moment Jin Hu saw his muddled, drunken state—with his sleeves still rolled up and smeared with mud—his heart filled with bitterness.

Having clawed his way up from the bottom, Jin Hu knew all too well what kind of trash this type of person was.

No matter their status, once drunk, they all behaved like the same worthless mess.

And yet, they were the hardest to deal with.

First, someone like Jin Hu couldn’t lay a finger on him.

Truth be told, of all the inmates here, the only one Jin Hu could consider an equal was Ning Zhuo. He couldn’t afford to offend anyone else.

These were pampered young masters, stars in the sky. Without direct orders from the main prison authority, Jin Hu couldn’t even scrape a bit of grime off them.

Second, this guy was so wasted it was ridiculous. Even if he sobered up, he probably wouldn’t remember a damn thing.

The idea that he had to extract information from a drunken idiot, and couldn’t even use force, made Jin Hu’s head throb.

He composed himself and forced a polite expression as he stepped forward. “Good evening.”

The heir slouched against the railing, tilting his head as he slurred, “What d’you want?”

Jin Hu made his voice as gentle and respectful as possible. “Sir, did you just drop something from up here?”

The drunk heir opened his mouth—and before saying anything useful, let out a reeking belch straight into Jin Hu’s face. The stench made Jin Hu’s features twist involuntarily.

Only once his stomach settled a bit did the heir start mumbling.

Thankfully, the belch seemed to loosen his tongue a bit.

“I just… talked to someone. Said when someone poked their head out, I’d drop… drop… a flowerpot down. Play a little game with the guy downstairs.”

“…Who?” Jin Hu’s eyes lit up.

He needed to get as much out of the guy as possible before the alcohol completely took over.

“Who?”

The heir’s thoughts were already dissolving in booze again.

He struggled to remember. “Just… a person. Not a dog, right?”

Then he giggled, pleased with his terrible joke.

Jin Hu: “…” Motherf—

He resisted the urge to slap the guy sober and softened his voice even more, almost tender. “He told you to throw it, and you just did it?”

The drunk heir nodded earnestly. “Yeah. He said someone’d be down there… hic! Soon as someone popped up, I drop it. Give ‘em a scare, hehe… Then he said, if I scared ‘em, he’d give me… hic! A bottle of sherry… Did I scare him?”

Jin Hu’s muscles twitched from head to toe.

He gritted his teeth. “And the wine?!”

The heir blinked and looked around in confusion. “Right… where’s my wine?”

Failing to find his target, his eyes settled (barely) on Jin Hu. “…Where’d you put my wine? Didn’t we have a deal?”

Jin Hu’s heart skipped a beat.

Drunk people were unpredictable. Say too much and you’d dig your own grave. If this guy mistakenly pinned the whole thing on Jin Hu, it’d be a disaster.

Just as Jin Hu was thinking about bailing, the heir had a brief moment of clarity and blurted something coherent:

“Oh, right… I remember. He gave me a name. Said he wasn’t going to cheat me.”

Jin Hu, whose heart had already sunk, suddenly perked up. Even if something seemed off, it was still a lead. “What name?!”

Then the heir clearly said the most lucid sentence of the night: “He said his name was Jin Hu! Said he couldn’t stand his young master anymore and wanted to teach him a lesson!”

…

Half a minute later.

Jin Hu came down the stairs, face like thunder.

His lackey, who’d gone up with him, was furious. “Damn it! Must be that Ning brat! He’s had it in for you since the start!”

Jin Hu’s expression was grim as he silently ran calculations in his head.

The lackey kept ranting. “Let’s tell Boss Takeshi!”

Jin Hu gave him a sideways glance. “Tell him what?”

The lackey huffed, “There’s no surveillance up there—just say it was Ning! That drunk idiot’s spouting nonsense and doesn’t remember a thing. Isn’t that perfect?”

Lowering his voice proudly, he added, “Doesn’t matter if it’s him or not. He’s in our hands—no complaints. With Boss Takeshi backing us, we can deal with him!”

Jin Hu thought about it. Made sense.

But that little scheme was instantly crushed when they reached the ground floor and saw Ning Zhuo standing face-to-face with his boss.

Master Takeshi still wouldn’t leave his hidden room, keeping a safe distance while talking to Ning Zhuo. No telling what they were discussing.

Ning Zhuo had his hands in his pockets, his posture relaxed and casual—he even managed to make a prison uniform look suave.

When he noticed Jin Hu return, Ning Zhuo gave a quick nod to end the conversation and walked off.

Honbu Takeshi watched him go, unable to hide the longing in his expression.

But there were more pressing matters.

He turned back to Jin Hu, waiting for a report.

Jin Hu swallowed the half-baked lies he’d been preparing and gave a simple answer.

“An accident,” he said. “The Hans family’s young master got drunk and knocked over a flowerpot on the third floor.”

Honbu Takeshi nodded, satisfied.

Now that he knew it was an accident, he was relieved.

He scraped the muddy dirt off his shoes and returned to his usual aloof, upper-crust demeanor.

Then he asked, “Hans’s kid didn’t have a hired escort in here, did he?”

Jin Hu shook his head.

Anyone locked up in the top-security Atterbo District already came from a background powerful enough to guarantee their freedom within the prison. Not every rich prisoner came with a private mercenary team.

With that confirmation, Honbu Takeshi casually issued an order.

“Find a chance. Smash a bottle over his head—make it look like an accident. He won’t remember anyway. Got it?”

Jin Hu agreed but looked toward Ning Zhuo’s direction with unease. “Mr. Honbu, what did he come over for?”

“Him?” Honbu Takeshi thought it was a dumb question. “A flowerpot fell. He came to ask what happened.”

Jin Hu clenched his jaw.

He would’ve liked to slander Ning Zhuo, but things like that were better done behind someone’s back.

If he accused him to his face, with Ning Zhuo’s temperament, he’d definitely drag back that drunk young master who hadn’t gotten far yet.

And that drunk certainly hadn’t remembered Ning Zhuo’s name.

What he remembered was Jin Hu.

At this point, Jin Hu had already reported the whole incident to Honbu Takeshi and chalked it up as an “accident.”

If he tried to change his story now, Honbu Takeshi would surely demand evidence.

Even if it had been Ning Zhuo who took advantage of Hans’ drunken son and incited the attack, was Jin Hu really going to risk that drunken bastard blurting out his name, hoping he’d just happen to correctly point to Ning Zhuo instead?

No matter how he calculated it, it was a risky bet. Might as well let it stay muddled.

Honbu Takeshi folded his arms and watched the slight sway of Ning Zhuo’s waist as he walked. “You said he’s been broken in for a while?”

Right now, Jin Hu hated Ning Zhuo to the bone, so of course he had nothing good to say about him. Without thinking, he replied, “Yeah. Otherwise, how could someone so young become the Wakato¹ of Haina?”

Honbu Takeshi said nothing.

With his years steeped in this business, just by looking at the way Ning Zhuo walked, he figured the boy was still a virgin.

Even if the front wasn’t clean, the back definitely hadn’t been touched—still qualified as “clean,” barely.

The only issue was this one was stunning but carried a dangerous edge. Who knew if taking a bite would give you indigestion?

Honbu Takeshi rubbed his chin and once again turned his gaze to Shan Feibai, who was closely following behind Ning Zhuo.

Jin Hu held his breath slightly. Seeing that Honbu Takeshi hesitated for a moment and then turned around—apparently not planning to punish them for their failure to protect—he relaxed completely and hurried to catch up.

He took the lead, intending to unwind with some singing in his private KTV room.

Jin Hu’s gang fell in behind.

The underling who had followed Jin Hu upstairs understood exactly what had happened: Jin Hu couldn’t speak up because Ning Zhuo had just happened to appear right in front of him.

He whispered, “No need to worry. We’ve got our eyes on Ning Zhuo. There’s plenty of time to deal with him.”

“I’m not worried,” Jin Hu ground his molars and replied coldly. “Have you figured it out yet? Why the hell did they come in here?!”

The underling quickly reported, “We asked around. The story going around is they couldn’t strike a deal with someone, got into a fight, and injured a B-class citizen.”

“Bullshit!” Jin Hu cursed immediately. “If that were true, would they have been sent so comfortably to the high-security wing?! They’d have been packed off to the factory dorms already, sleeping in eight-man rooms and stepping on sewing machines!”

Sensing Jin Hu’s frustration, the underling quickly added, “Right, right, we thought it sounded fishy too. So we dug deeper and found out that the B-class citizen was some old guy—an advisor to a big company. Apparently, Ning Zhuo pulled a knife on him in broad daylight… Which makes even less sense! Haina does business. Why would they be so unprofessional? If they wanted revenge, they could’ve done it from the shadows!”

Jin Hu mused, “Hmm—”

With how crazy Ning Zhuo could be, it wasn’t impossible that he’d beat up a client in person.

But that was an old man.

From what Jin Hu knew of Ning Zhuo, he had no taste for bullying the elderly. He only ever picked the toughest fights.

He asked, “What’s your take?”

The underling eagerly shared his theory: “My guess? He came in on behalf of someone else. That guy probably hurt the old man in a fit of rage and didn’t want to do jail time, so he hired Haina and made a deal with Ning Zhuo—promised to get him into the high-security zone and keep him comfortable.”

It was a reasonable guess.

Taking the fall for someone else was a common sideline in this world—just like sleeping with clients.

Still, Jin Hu wasn’t entirely convinced. “And the rest of Haina’s people were dead or something? They had to send someone like Ning Zhuo for that?”

“That’s why Shan Feibai came in with him.”

The underling got more excited as he talked, almost nodding to himself. “Didn’t we hear last night? Haina and Panqiao are merging. I heard the guy named Shan owed Ning something… Anyway, the two groups are in transition, it’s a mess. At a time like this, Ning bringing Shan in here is like using Haina’s number two to suppress Panqiao’s number one. Even if Panqiao wanted to cause trouble, they’ve got no leader. Haina still has Boss Fu to hold things down, so it won’t get out of hand.”

Another underling chimed in, “I heard the same from a guard. Someone gave orders to send Ning Zhuo and Shan Feibai here, but didn’t request any special treatment. That means their backer can’t be that powerful!”

Jin Hu processed their logic and summarized, “So basically, they’re here in prison… to lay low while the merger happens?”

The underlings nodded in agreement. It sounded like the most reasonable explanation yet.

And with the confirmation that Ning Zhuo likely didn’t have a powerful backer—just took a job for money—Jin Hu’s mind started working.

The patron had already done his part by sending Ning Zhuo into prison with decent accommodations. He wasn’t going to treat him like a real insider and offer full protection.

Which meant… Ning Zhuo was on his own now!

That slap from back in the day, the shame of being chased and beaten—he could finally take revenge with no strings attached!

Jin Hu looked at a small, dark-skinned man who’d been silent the whole time. “Xin, can you take Ning Zhuo?”

The man named Xin was a recent favorite of Jin Hu’s—came from the underground boxing circuit, had a faint Thai-Philippine accent, and had been mocked often enough that he developed a habit of speaking as little as possible.

He said in his odd accent, “Yes.”

The breath that had been stuck in Jin Hu’s chest since earlier finally relaxed.

They’d take care of Ning Zhuo first—and deal with the rest later!

Mr. Honbu already saw him as a piece of trash. He probably wouldn’t be interested in him again anyway!

Jin Hu was beaming at the thought, and the underlings were enthusiastically tossing out suggestions—so much so that no one rushed ahead to turn on the light in Honbu Takeshi’s private room.

The lights in the room were completely off—not a single bulb left on. It was pitch black inside.

Honbu Takeshi preferred bright spaces. The moment he stepped in, he instinctively reached for the switch.

Immediately, his entire body jerked violently. Then he froze where he stood, limbs flailing in convulsions.

One underling reacted instantly and shouted, “Mr. Honbu is being electrocuted!”

…

While chaos broke out in the high-security block of Yatebo District’s First Prison, Lin Qin arrived at an apartment and knocked on the door.

Soon, it opened.

The man inside was refined in appearance but visibly exhausted, with a thin bandage wrapped around his neck.

He wore comfortable, slightly worn loungewear. His whole demeanor was like a weary, harmless sheep—no aggression at all.

Lin Qin showed his badge. “Associate Professor Xue, hello, I’m Lin Qin from the 930 Task Force.”

Professor Xue nodded at the strangely dressed officer, then looked past him at the young cop behind him, eyebrows slightly furrowed in mild confusion. “…Hello?”

“We have a case and would like to ask you some questions,” Lin Qin said politely, a recording device already palmed in his hand. He smiled warmly. “Is now a good time to talk?”

---

Author’s Note:

¹ Wakato: A Japanese term referring to the second-in-command in a yakuza organization, just below the boss.

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