Chapter 10: Yielding to Old Age, Old Scores
Lu Yun looked at the respectful adopted son before him, his tone softening slightly. "Jingsheng, you’re not so young anymore. You should find some time to spend with the little ones, Ming Shu and Mingcheng."
"The warehouse is a vital area, and the work is complex. If you feel it’s becoming too much, don’t force yourself. I’ll have Ah Fu keep an eye out and find a few more reliable young men with clean backgrounds to help you with the workload."
"You should also make more time for your wife and children. Go enjoy your family."
’This was Lu Jingsheng, the nameless, abandoned infant he had found amidst the ruins of a war-torn world. He had watched him grow up, teaching him every step of the way.’
’Over the past thirty-five years, he had watched Lu Jingsheng get married, have children, and become a husband and a father.’
’During that time, Lu Yun had given him the Lu surname and a stake in the family’s enterprise. It wasn’t just out of affection for the boy he’d raised; it was because the lad was level-headed, could withstand any trial, and was worthy of trust.’
However, every time he saw Lu Jingsheng’s loyalty, a memory would stir deep within him.
It was a memory of two other people: his adopted son, Chen Baitong, and his adopted daughter, Chen Yuyu.
When Lu Yun was forty, he had just established himself in Yun Port City when he happened upon a brother and sister on the street, dressed in rags and trembling uncontrollably.
They were barely teenagers, their young eyes filled with terror and a desperate will to live.
Moved by a moment of compassion, Lu Yun brought them back to the Lu Family residence. He gave them food and clothes, taught them Martial Arts, and raised them as his own for a full fifteen years.
He gave the brother and sister the skills to make their own way in the world and even planned out their futures for them.
Lu Yun thought he had gained two bonds of kinship and loyalty, the kind that meant he could always trust them to have his back.
In the end, those two ungrateful curs he had raised for fifteen years chose to defect to Fu Jinqian five years ago—a man with whom Lu Yun had a long-standing grudge.
Fu Jinqian’s background was anything but simple. He was the legitimate son of a Third-Grade Salt Transport Commissioner from the previous dynasty, from a family that had once been incredibly prominent.
His ancestors had not only controlled the lucrative salt trade but had also spent a fortune sponsoring a group of desperate, wandering Martial Artists.
His family possessed profound Martial Arts techniques. From a young age, Fu Jinqian received their true teachings, mastering a vicious, yielding style of combat that specialized in joint locks and grappling.
After the previous dynasty fell, the great tree that was the Fu Family naturally collapsed. But Fu Jinqian, relying on his formidable martial skills and his lingering connections to officials from the old regime, quickly found a new "path to wealth" in the chaotic mire of Yun Port City.
Human trafficking.
He operated with extreme secrecy and cruelty. He kept a stable of local thugs, scoundrels, and desperados who specialized in tricking and abducting refugees and orphans. They were even audacious enough to kidnap women from good families by force.
Then, using secret sea routes, he shipped these people to the Southern Ocean like cargo. Men were sold as slave labor to be worked like beasts of burden, while women were forced into prostitution, their lives completely destroyed.
The man was so black-hearted and his methods so vile that he had no moral floor. Even among the other underworld powers of Yun Port City, he was an entity to be regarded with alarm.
One night ten years ago, a "cargo" ship under Fu Jinqian’s command—it’s unknown whether by navigational error or deliberate provocation—secretly entered the pier area controlled by the Lu Family, attempting to use it to resupply.
Lu Yun had eyes and ears everywhere. How could he tolerate such an utterly depraved business happening right under his nose?
He immediately led his men to intercept the vessel. Unfortunately, Fu Jinqian himself wasn’t on board; the ones who came out to handle the situation were just some low-level ringleaders and enforcers.
Lu Yun had no intention of sparing these dregs of humanity, who were directly involved in the trafficking and had their hands stained with the blood and tears of innocents.
Throughout history, there has only ever been one way to deal with human traffickers, summed up in a single word: Kill!
That night, fists howled on the pier and blood stained the river. Lu Yun took action himself, killing every last one of the Fu Family’s minions who put up a futile resistance on the ship. Not one was left alive.
He knew full well that showing mercy to such inhuman traffickers was a cruelty to their victims.
According to Lu Yun’s principles, there were certain lines of work that, once crossed, forfeited your right to live. He wouldn’t make an exception even if the Emperor himself came asking.
What surprised Lu Yun at the time, however, was that after suffering such a massive loss, Fu Jinqian—a man known for his vindictive nature—actually managed to stomach it. He didn’t come looking for trouble right away.
He waited for five years.
During those five years, Fu Jinqian set his sights on the siblings, Chen Baitong and Chen Yuyu.
Five years ago, two of the Lu Family’s merchant ships, laden with valuable cargo and escorted by Chen Baitong and Chen Yuyu respectively, vanished without a trace after leaving the waters of Yun Port.
The ships, the cargo, and the people—all gone without a trace.
At first, Lu Yun suspected they had run into a freak storm or been attacked by pirates.
But he soon discovered that they and their families had quietly vanished from the Lu Family’s sphere of influence altogether.
Instantly on alert, Lu Yun mobilized the entire network of contacts and informants he had built over decades in Yun Port City, launching investigations both openly and in secret.
Eventually, reports from several different sources converged, all pointing to the same conclusion: someone had seen Chen Baitong and Chen Yuyu near the Fu Family’s private estate.
Fu Jinqian had spent five years meticulously turning the very people Lu Yun would have never suspected.
He hadn’t just lost an immense fortune; he had been stabbed in the back by the very people he had raised with his own hands.
The problem was, five years ago, Lu Yun had just turned fifty-five. For a Martial Artist, this was a critical watershed age.
He could clearly feel the once-surging qi and blood in his body beginning to rapidly decline. His muscles and bones were no longer as resilient or vibrant as they had been in his prime.
The Peak of Anjin strength that had once allowed him to dominate—both in the martial examinations of the former dynasty and in the bloody battles on the piers of Yun Port City—was now completely a thing of the past.
’When a man grows old, sometimes he has to admit defeat. If this had happened when I was fifty, I would have stormed the Fu residence without a second thought. But there are no ’what-ifs’ in this world.’
After years of building their enterprise, the Fu Family’s power was no less than the Lu Family’s.
Not only had they recruited a group of skilled practitioners to serve as guards and enforcers, but they had also spent a fortune on Western firearms, establishing their own private armed force.
Furthermore, Fu Jinqian had, by some unknown means, managed to get in with the consul of the Wa Country Concession in Yun Port City, gaining a significant degree of protection.
Within the concession, a veritable "state within a state," both the laws of the Daxia New Country and Lu Yun’s own underworld methods were severely restricted.
Unable to make a move in the open, Lu Yun turned to the shadows. Using channels in the underground "ghost market," he contacted the most notorious assassins’ guild in Yun Port City and the surrounding region—a group that cared only for coin, not for people.
He put out a massive bounty of one thousand silver dollars for the lives of the two traitors, Chen Baitong and Chen Yuyu.
However, shortly after Lu Yun’s bounty began to circulate in the ghost market, the Chen siblings vanished completely from Yun Port City under the Fu Family’s careful arrangements, their whereabouts a total mystery.
Even the underworld’s most sharp-nosed assassins lost their trail.
The bounty ultimately went unclaimed, and the whole affair became a thorn in Lu Yun’s side.
Now, feeling the power of Huajin surging through his body once more, Lu Yun tightened his grip on his cane.
He pulled his thoughts back to the present, his gaze returning to the heavy wooden door of the warehouse.