The Overlord of Puluo

Li Banfeng opened the crate and let the kids out. After hiring a nearby coal cart, he loaded them all aboard.

Pulling his hat low over his face, he drove the cart away. Luo Zhengnan tugged the brim of his Gatsby cap down and followed behind on foot.

Luo Zhengnan was in an excellent mood. At long last, he had avenged himself.

Working under Li Qi felt wonderfully satisfying. If it had been anyone else, this revenge might have dragged on for a year or two. It might even have dragged on for eight or ten years, until the whole thing simply faded away.

But wouldn't pulling a whole cartload of children through the streets be a little too eye-catching?

Luo Zhengnan lowered his voice. "Master Qi, shouldn't we be leaving?"

"No rush. Go and bring that old fellow at the street corner over here."

At the corner stood an old man, craning his neck anxiously in their direction.

His granddaughter was missing, so of course he was anxious. He had been searching for her all night. He suspected that she might be on that cart, but he didn't dare come closer.

In Blue Wispy City, the Jiangxiang Gang often snatched people right off the street. If the old man rushed up to them, he would only be sending himself to his death.

Luo Zhengnan asked the old man to come over.

Li Banfeng pointed at the children on the cart. "Which one is yours?"

The old man trembled for quite a while before he stepped forward and carried his granddaughter down. He thanked Li Banfeng and was about to turn around and leave when Li Banfeng frowned and asked, "Leaving just like that?"

The old man was terrified. He dug into his pockets and pulled out every coin he had, a little over eighty silver dollars, then offered it all to Li Banfeng.

Li Banfeng pushed the money back. "Who said anything about wanting your money? Can you drive a cart?"

"I can."

"Got a good loud voice?"

The old man stared blankly for a moment before nodding. "I'd say so."

"Then shout for me. Drive the cart and shout as you go. Tell them anyone who has lost a child should come here and look!"

The old man didn't understand.

Li Banfeng handed him two hundred-dollar notes. "Shout. Shout as loud as you can!"

The old man still had no idea what was going on, but he could only drive the cart forward and call out as he went. "Whose child is missing? Come here and look!"

Luo Zhengnan looked at Li Banfeng and lowered his voice. "Master Qi, are we..."

"No need to worry. Just follow along."

The two of them followed the carriage from a distance. Before long, people came rushing over to claim their children.

At first, they were afraid. But when they saw their own flesh and blood on the cart, nothing else mattered. They rushed forward, gathered the children into their arms, and hurried home, crying as they went.

More and more people came to claim their children.

Luo Zhengnan pointed at one of them. "That man looks like he is from the Jiangxiang Gang."

Luo Zhengnan couldn't recognize every follower in the Jiangxiang Gang, but the man's Gatsby cap and clothes looked very much like theirs.

The man scooped up two children and tried to leave. Li Banfeng stepped into his path. "Who are you?"

"I am their father," the man said.

The two children were crying hard and struggling in his arms. Luo Zhengnan looked him over and said, "Which branch are you from? Give the proper greeting."

The man glanced around before lowering his voice. "Third Branch of the Blue Wispy Hall. I don't know what happened tonight..."

Whoosh!

Li Banfeng slit his throat. You still dare come here looking for business? Good. Saves me the trouble of hunting you down one by one.

Before long, all the children had been claimed and taken home. Li Banfeng then turned to Luo Zhengnan. "Where is their hall?"

"On the next street over."

"You know where all their branches are located, right?"

Luo Zhengnan froze for a moment. "Not leaving a single one alive?"

Li Banfeng nodded. "Not a single one."

So Luo Zhengnan took him to the nearest branch. It was a squat little two-story building, and inside it, several Jiangxiang Gang members were stuffing two children into a crate.

The poor children had only just been kidnapped. The members of this branch didn't dare keep them there long, so they were bustling about, eager to send them off to the hall master as quickly as possible.

"Move faster!" the branch master shouted from the stairs. "The hall master is leaving at any moment now. If you keep dwiddle-daddling, you will miss the train."

Li Banfeng said, "If you miss this one, just catch the next one!"

"You know nothing. This is the last train tonight..." The branch master stopped and stared at Li Banfeng. He had no idea when another person had appeared beside him.

"It is not the last train tonight. It is the last train of your life, and I promise you will catch it," Li Banfeng said as he seized the branch master's head and smashed it against the stair railing.

If Li Banfeng had not been worried about hurting the children, he would have used Treading Through Ten Thousand Rivers and dealt with everyone in the building in one stomp.

Every branch member in the building froze.

Luo Zhengnan walked in, picked up the two kids, and carried them out. He knew exactly what needed to be done, and when.

Every Jiangxiang Gang member stared after him.

Luo Zhengnan even greeted them on his way out. "Carry on. Don't mind me."

He closed the door and had not gone far with the children when the little building collapsed behind him.

Li Banfeng dusted himself off and walked over to Luo Zhengnan. "Send these two children home. Then we visit the next branch."

There were really many branches located in Blue Wispy City.

Luo Zhengnan said, "Pei Yuzheng has done a great deal for Xiao Zhenggong, and Xiao Zhenggong values him highly. With Vilefolk Hillock backing him as well, his hall has grown larger and larger over the years. He now has ten branches under him."

Li Banfeng said, "A hall that big, and it still lives off human trafficking?"

Luo Zhengnan shook his head. "Human trafficking alone could not support that many people. Pei Yuzheng has plenty of business over by the mines. He abducts children for more than just money."

Li Banfeng understood the reason. "It is to please Vilefolk Hillock, isn't it? That's the logic, right?"

Luo Zhengnan was about to answer when Li Banfeng patted the Fourth Branch Master of the Blue Wispy Hall on the cheek. "I am asking you. Does what I just said make sense?"

The branch master nodded again and again.

Li Banfeng gave him a quick death and cut his throat.

By the time dawn was drawing near, Li Banfeng and Luo Zhengnan reached the hall. The people of Blue Wispy Hall already knew something had happened to their hall master.

They had heard about the warehouse floor covered in mangled corpses, and they had seen the abducted children being sent back. They just didn't know why this was happening.

They tried contacting the other branches, only to find nothing there but ruins and corpses. They wanted to contact Xiao Zhenggong, but everyone in the gang who knew how to use the hook was already dead.

The moment they saw Luo Zhengnan, a few of them seemed to put the pieces together.

Some men in the hall knew more than the others. Their faces changed at once, and they hurriedly said, "Hall Master Luo, this had nothing to do with us! This was between our hall master and Boss Xiao. Every debt has its debtor. You must not take it out on us!"

Luo Zhengnan smiled. "Brothers, listen to yourselves. Pei Yuzheng is already dead, so why would I make things hard for you guys? I did not come here for you. I only came to help you shut the front gate."

With that, Luo Zhengnan shut the front door. The men made a mad dash for the back.

Luo Zhengnan offered them a helpful little warning. "I would not use the back door."

Those who ran for the back door got their bodies outside, but their heads were left behind in the rear courtyard.

The few who still had enough sense to panic chose the stairs instead.

Luo Zhengnan offered another helpful little warning. "I would not go upstairs either."

The members who rushed upstairs left their bodies on the upper floor and their heads below.

The Jiangxiang Gang was only a second-rate gang. If even its hall master was only at level five, how impressive could his subordinates possibly be?

They didn't even get a proper look at Li Banfeng before he sent them on their way.

Blood came creeping out from under the door in thick red layers.

Luo Zhengnan sat in the courtyard of the hall with one hand over the child's eyes. He had found this child inside the hall. The poor little thing had probably only just been kidnapped and had not yet been sent off to the warehouse.

Li Banfeng stepped out of the room, wiping his hands with a handkerchief. He looked at the child. "Ask him where he lives."

"I already did," Luo Zhengnan said. "He is too young to explain it properly."

Li Banfeng suggested taking the child to the Border Controller but Luo Zhengnan shook his head and said, "Master Qi, the Border Control Office would never bother with this."

"Why not? They collect all that money every year for nothing? Take the child there first and try."

Luo Zhengnan disguised himself a little, then carried the child to the Border Control Office. He waited in the main hall for an hour and asked dozens of people for help, but no one paid him any mind.

At long last, someone asked him a few questions. Every word stabbed straight into his heart.

"Is this child yours?"

Luo Zhengnan shook his head. "No."

"Not yours? Then why are you carrying him around? Are you a human trafficker?"

"I saw the child wandering lost, so I brought him here."

"You saw him wandering? How do you know he was lost? How do you know he was not just out playing? You look like a human trafficker to me!"

"Sir, have you ever seen a child this young out playing in the middle of the night?"

"I have seen all sorts of things. Maybe he likes playing at night. What proof do you have that he was lost? If you have no proof, then I say you are a human trafficker!"

This must be a fucking Belligerence Cultivator, Luo Zhengnan thought.

Luo Zhengnan carried the child out of the Border Control Office. "Master Qi, I just..."

Li Banfeng waved him off. "No need. I heard everything."

Luo Zhengnan was not angry. He had seen far too much of this sort of thing.

Li Banfeng had pulled his hat very low, so Luo Zhengnan could not tell whether he was angry.

Li Banfeng took the child in his arms, found a rickshaw driver, and stuffed two hundred Huan bills into his hand. "My name is Benefactor. I found this lost child by the roadside. Can you think of a way to get him home?"

The rickshaw driver listened as the child mumbled a few words, guessed the general direction, and found the child's parents in less than an hour.

The child's parents thanked the rickshaw driver over and over.

The driver waved it off. "Don't thank me. If you want to thank someone, thank those two good sirs."

Which two good sirs? Li Banfeng and Luo Zhengnan had already disappeared.

The rickshaw driver said to the couple, "The gentleman said his name was Benefactor. No idea if that was his real name."

***

"Benefactor?" Xiao Zhenggong's cheek twitched. "Benefactor wiped out the Blue Wispy Hall?"

"This is what I have been able to find out. The man calls himself Benefactor," said Song Yuwei, the Hall Master of the Ridges of Bottomless Stomachs. He had gone to visit Pei Yuzheng, only to find a heap of rubble and corpses instead.

Xiao Zhenggong gritted his teeth. "Isn't this Benefactor just He Jiaqing?"

Back at Vilefolk Hillock, Li Banfeng had once called himself Benefactor, and the Sage had already determined that the real identity of the Benefactor was He Jiaqing.

After sending Song Yuwei away, the white robe hanging on the coat rack said to Xiao Zhenggong. "Senior Brother Xiao, this trouble has landed at your door now. Are you going to deal with it or not?"

Xiao Zhenggong clenched his cigarette between his teeth and thought for a moment. "Is He Jiaqing in the Outer Provinces, or is he in Puluo Province?"

The white robe sounded puzzled as well. "Perhaps he wasn't the one who killed the members at Blue Wispy Hall. Perhaps he ordered someone under him to do it."

Xiao Zhenggong took the white robe off the rack, tossed it onto the back seat of his car, and drove to the Third Hospital in Yuezhou.

***

He Jiaqing was dressed in a suit and disguised as He Haisheng. In the ward, he was putting a cigarette in He Haisheng's mouth. "Third Uncle, this is the last one. The doctor will be making his rounds soon, and we cannot smoke in front of him."

He Haisheng breathed out a mouthful of smoke. The smoke curled through the air, then slipped swiftly out of the ward and drifted toward the elevator.

He Jiaqing froze and rubbed at his scalp. His senses had been dull lately, which meant that he needed to have some self-control with borrowing human auras.

"Third Uncle, lie still," He Jiaqing said. He patted He Haisheng down, found the half-smoked cigarette, and bit it between his own teeth.

Author's Note:

PS: Can Xiao Zhenggong tell which one is He Jiaqing?