While Shan Feibai was secretly eating butter bread, the door to the little black room was suddenly pushed open from the outside by Ning Zhuo.
Ning Zhuo: “……”
Shan Feibai: “……”
Ning Zhuo strode forward and snatched away the butter bread Shan Feibai had only just bitten twice, examining the fresh ring of teeth marks on it.
His teeth were pretty good.
Seeing Shan Feibai blink at him with a somewhat wronged look, Ning Zhuo took a bite from the bread right where his teeth marks were, then lowered his arm and asked, “Where’d you get this?”
Shan Feibai quickly swallowed the bread in his mouth and casually lied, “It grew out of the ground.”
Ning Zhuo hadn’t brought a whip, so he simply unfastened his belt, wrapped it once around his finger, and it was still warm with body heat.
He lightly slapped Shan Feibai’s face twice with it.
Shan Feibai immediately behaved himself and shouted, “Boss Fu——”
Boss Fu, who had been hiding not far outside the door, didn’t expect to be betrayed so quickly. He timidly poked his head out and said with a careful smile, “The kid said he hadn’t eaten for two days, and he was crying to me just now.”
Ning Zhuo covered his eyes and felt a bit of a headache. “When did you find out he was here?”
Boss Fu put both hands behind his back. “Just… earlier…”
Ning Zhuo looked at him.
Boss Fu immediately changed his answer. “I was here when you arrested him yesterday.”
Ning Zhuo: “……You’re not even going to ask me why I locked him up here?”
Boss Fu answered honestly, “I don’t know. But we can’t exactly not feed him, can we?”
Ning Zhuo couldn’t lose his temper at Boss Fu.
He took the belt, which had only been removed by Shan Feibai himself two hours earlier, and looped it around Shan Feibai’s neck like a necktie. Then he pulled a string of keys from his pocket and hurled them at Shan Feibai.
“Get out. Time to work.”
On the way after trailing Ning Zhuo to Jin Xueshen’s office, Shan Feibai rubbed the faint red marks on his wrist where the lock had rubbed him raw, while quickly taking in the details of Ning Zhuo’s new job.
He clicked his tongue. “Five million! Charlemagne must be going crazy because of you.”
Ning Zhuo said, “I didn’t want him crazy. I want him dead.”
Shan Feibai asked, “Then we’re not going to kill Motobu Takeshi?”
“Kill him.” Ning Zhuo picked up the communicator. “We’re not going out today. We’ll get this done as soon as possible.”
“If we’re not going out, who’s going to do it?”
Ning Zhuo said flatly, “I hired subcontractors.”
Shan Feibai was curious. “How much?”
Ning Zhuo: “Free.”
As soon as he finished speaking, the call he had just placed connected.
Before the other side could speak, Ning Zhuo stated his request in plain terms: “Dialectician, I’m not coming to see you today. You know why. On the strength of our friendship, give me one more piece of information: at 8 a.m. this morning, a patient who had undergone full-body modification was urgently sent to a White Shield affiliated hospital and admitted to a single-bed intensive care room. Monitor his vital signs. If he dies, inform me immediately so I can report back to the client. That’s all.”
He paused, then added, “I’m assigning this job to Third Brother.”
Ning Zhuo hung up.
The next second, he pushed open Jin Xueshen’s office door.
Jin Xueshen had been quietly discussing something with Yu Shifei. The sudden door slam startled him badly.
Yu Shifei was the first to notice Shan Feibai. Seeing him appear again, the corner of his mouth lifted slightly. “…Feibai.”
Maybe because of what Yu Shifei had heard him say before, Jin Xueshen felt something was off every time he saw Ning Zhuo and Shan Feibai coming and going together.
He quickly corrected his wandering thoughts, coughed awkwardly, and said in a bad tone, “Hey! Hands are for knocking!”
Ning Zhuo went straight to the point. “I found Motobu Takeshi.”
Motobu Takeshi was the culprit who had ruined Jin Xueshen’s entire family and left them shattered.
Jin Xueshen would never forget that name, even in death.
After receiving that information, Jin Xueshen froze in place.
He pressed one hand against the desk to steady himself against the sudden dizziness.
When Jin Xueshen’s world abruptly went quiet, the mechanical sounds inside his body and the blood rushing in his ears became especially clear.
He heard himself ask calmly, “Is Motobu Takeshi still alive?”
“Alive.”
Jin Xueshen: “He didn’t die?”
“He didn’t die.”
Jin Xueshen: “…Oh.”
He raised bloodshot eyes, and his body had already begun to tremble slightly. “Where is he? I’m going to kill him.”
Ning Zhuo tossed over the data chip containing Motobu Takeshi’s electronic records. “All the information is in here. Read it and then come find me. Don’t rush in alone. There are plenty of ways to make him die, and there’s no need to let him off that easily.”
Jin Xueshen had always had a violent temper, and the stimulation he had just received was so intense that he was almost starting to hyperventilate.
But Ning Zhuo dropped that line and turned to leave, his attitude almost cold.
Shan Feibai hurried after Ning Zhuo, only tossing out one line on the way out: “Yu-ge, keep an eye on him. Don’t let him run off.”
After leaving Jin Xueshen’s room, Shan Feibai quickly caught up to Ning Zhuo.
He tried probing him. “Ge, you seem pretty anxious?”
“Yes.” Ning Zhuo admitted it without hesitation. “Charlemagne’s wife didn’t do the job properly. If Motobu Takeshi had died cleanly, with no body and no proof, Lin Qin wouldn’t have suspected me so quickly. There are going to be a lot of eyes on Haina next—Charlemagne’s people, and Lin Qin’s people too. There’s no time to drag things out. We need to make a plan quickly, end everything quickly. Then…”
He stopped at that “then.”
Ning Zhuo had just been as fierce as fire, wild and sweeping through everything around him, dealing with several difficult matters in a forceful, decisive manner.
Now that he had suddenly gone quiet, one could finally see that his clear, beautiful green eyes were always veiled with a thin layer of moisture.
The fire that had sustained him had burned for more than ten years, and now it seemed to have reached the brink of going out.
Ning Zhuo leaned back against the wall and pulled a lollipop from his pocket.
He had been busy for so long that his hidden hypoglycemia was flaring up again.
Ning Zhuo said, “I made five million from this job. I’ll give it all to you.”
Shan Feibai glanced down secretly and felt a little embarrassed. “I’m not worth that much, am I?”
Ning Zhuo closed his eyes. “You said you’d take me away. If I give you these five million, can you take Haina away too?”
“What about you?”
Ning Zhuo didn’t answer.
Shan Feibai’s smile stiffened slightly.
He confirmed, “You… don’t want to go with me?”
Ning Zhuo opened his eyes and looked toward the end of the corridor.
His mother, scorched black all over, was holding a similarly charred swaddled bundle and waving at him, signaling for him to come to her side.
Ning Zhuo lowered his head and looked at the tip of his shoe.
The faraway charred hand slowly moved, calling him back to his family, to end his long years of pain and sorrow and bring him to a place of true peace.
Meanwhile, beside him was a hand he could reach for—warm, soft, and right within arm’s reach.
Ning Zhuo didn’t know whom he should disappoint.
In his dim field of vision, Shan Feibai suddenly appeared.
Shan Feibai crouched down, hugging his knees. He wasn’t angry at all about Ning Zhuo’s “refusal to choose,” nor was he anxiously pressing him for anything.
He only showed his trademark cheerful smile. “Ning-ge, if you don’t know how to choose, let me take a look at your palm—let’s see how long you can still live.”
Ning Zhuo subconsciously lifted his hand and stroked the lines of his palm with his cold mechanical fingers, commenting, “Childish.”
But Shan Feibai insisted, pressing on with the force of someone determined to achieve his goal. “Hand.”
Ning Zhuo gave him his hand.
Shan Feibai placed his own chin on Ning Zhuo’s palm and rubbed against it with a grin, revealing his playful little dimples.
Ning Zhuo didn’t pull away. He held Shan Feibai’s head and asked, “What are you doing?”
Shan Feibai said solemnly, “This is a wise crystal ball. It says Ning-ge can live to be a hundred.”
Ning Zhuo: “……”
He couldn’t help laughing. “Even if I live to be a hundred, what would I do?”
Shan Feibai was full of energy. “There’s so much we can do! We can surf, fish, play cards, skydive, daydream, play mahjong, play tennis! There’d be too much to do!”
Ning Zhuo said, “I can’t do any of that.” In fact, he wasn’t even very good at daydreaming.
Shan Feibai looked at him seriously. “If you can’t do it, I’ll teach you.”
That sounded strangely familiar.
Ning Zhuo thought carefully and remembered that Shan Feibai had said the same thing when teaching him to play games in Atber First Prison.
Ning Zhuo asked, “In Silver Hammer City, can we do those things?”
Shan Feibai’s answer was completely beyond Ning Zhuo’s expectations.
“Not in Silver Hammer City.”
Ning Zhuo joked tiredly, “Sailing out to sea? Like the Columbus?”
“No.” Shan Feibai crouched on the floor and said earnestly, “I’m going to give you a bridge.”
He raised his hand and covered Ning Zhuo’s cold hand from below. “In this world, you have to walk out before you can see the light.”
Just then, Yu Shifei had just walked out of Jin Xueshen’s room.
He had been slowly adjusting his breathing after the support-breathing help from earlier.
Only after his lips and Jin Xueshen’s lips separated did Jin Xueshen, blushing, say he needed to calm down, and drive him out.
When he came out, he happened to hear Shan Feibai and Ning Zhuo talking.
Yu Shifei looked off toward them, leaning quietly against the wall, and recalled his original reason for joining Panqiao.
……
“I want to build a bridge.” Back then, Shan Feibai, younger and more radiant than he was now, had a hint of pride as he asked Yu Shifei, who had just been picked up by him, “Do you want to join us?”
Phoenix and Kuang Hexuan were already there.
Yu Shifei thought that the Panqiao organization, as its name suggested, was founded for the purpose of building a bridge.
He tried to understand that almost crazy idea with his own computing power. “A bridge?”
Shan Feibai answered with an “mm,” making a dramatic span gesture. “Starting from Pier No. 3 in the Chaoge District, all the way to Settlement No. 184! That coordinate is pretty old, but I still remember it.”
Yu Shifei said objectively, “According to official announcements, no life signals have ever been received from Settlement No. 184. It’s very likely that Settlement No. 184 has already sunk. That was also one of the core reasons why the Columbus did not choose Settlement No. 184 as an exploration target.”
Shan Feibai waved a hand. “I don’t believe that. I’m going there anyway.”
Yu Shifei suggested, “If you want to go out to sea, you could hire a ship. It would be more cost-effective.”
Shan Feibai lowered his head, a lock of hair falling over his lips.
Then he smiled brightly at Yu Shifei. “He might get seasick.”
Yu Shifei understood what Shan Feibai meant: this imagined bridge was meant for someone “he” wanted to walk across.
So he said pragmatically, “Don’t be so wasteful. A ship, plus him, plus seasickness medicine, would be enough.”
“He hates me now, so he won’t get on my ship either.”
Shan Feibai looked into the distance and clenched his fist seriously. “I want to build a bridge everyone can walk across. I can walk it, and he can too.”
Yu Shifei had always been practical, so for him Shan Feibai’s words were almost pure fantasy.
Settlement No. 185 had already sunk because of an earthquake.
No one knew whether Settlement No. 184 had followed the same fate.
Besides, even if Shan Feibai’s idea came true, it would be a very long bridge, requiring a huge amount of money and materials.
Maybe it would take a hundred years, or two hundred.
But Shan Feibai only needed five years.
By going head-to-head with Ning Zhuo, he rapidly accumulated considerable wealth.
He also stockpiled vast amounts of liquid metal and new materials.
His grandmother had helped with that.
Before she died, she gave Shan Feibai a liquid metal mine, along with a full set of legal certification for liquid metal mining—after all, “Tangdi” was also a prosthetics manufacturing company, and it needed a stable source of raw materials.
But that was a private mine she had obtained through her own connections and resources. It had nothing to do with “Tangdi.”
His father didn’t even know that the mine existed.
To his grandmother, this was a gift for her beloved Feibai, his capital for getting by in the world.
As long as Shan Feibai didn’t suddenly lose his head and blow up the mine, he could live freely and do as he pleased for ten lifetimes on that one liquid metal mine alone.
But Shan Feibai had no intention of living ten lifetimes.
Not a single gram of liquid metal left his hands.
He kept all of it.
Because since the age of thirteen, Shan Feibai had had a wildly fanciful dream—a super cool dream.
And during that time, Silver Hammer City also developed fully automated construction technology, which could hand construction work over to intelligent robots.
They could easily complete the entire construction of a skyscraper in six days, greatly reducing both time and cost.
If they could be used to build houses, then building a cross-sea bridge should be completely fine too.
A few months before his spine was broken, Shan Feibai even took stock of all their current resources: “Our materials are still pretty enough, but the money we’ve saved, even with Tangdi now, still isn’t enough. But once construction officially starts, we can keep raising public funds. Still, we have to learn from the Columbus’s lesson—we absolutely can’t let them bring my bridge down.”
Back then, Shan Feibai rested his chin in his hand, holding a pen between his nose and mouth, and complained in a humming voice, “Why hasn’t my dad kicked me out of the house yet? If he kicked me out, I’d have money.”
Everyone in Panqiao knew that they were going to build a bridge—to walk out, to walk into a new world—but they didn’t know that this somewhat dreamy ambition had begun beside a cliff, under a wash of moonlight.
Back then, there had been a child tilting his head up, gesturing innocently at another boy: “Ning-ge, I’ll build a bridge for you.”
I have a small theory that someone on the island cut contact with the rest of the world on purpose, or at least cut it for most of the people… Maybe they’re pretending that this settlement has already fallen and are deceiving both their people and the rest of the world 🤔
I mean, it’s a pretty convenient paradise for people with money and power… wouldn’t want anyone intervening, would we?