11
For the next few days, Lục Phong treated me like I didn’t exist.
When we crossed paths at the fight club, he wouldn’t even glance my way. He just walked right past me like I was a stranger.
He still joked around with everyone else, chatting away as if nothing had happened.
But the moment I showed up, his face turned to ice—cold enough to chip off.
One of the younger guys came over and asked in a cautious whisper:
“Brother Niên… are you and Brother Phong mad at each other?”
I flicked ash from my cigarette and said nothing.
Another guy cut in:
“No way. You know how Brother Phong is… If he were really mad, he’d have thrown a punch by now.”
That was true.
Lục Phong was the kind of guy who lashed out when he got fired up and punched when he got angry. He never knew how to hold back.
Being completely ignored like this was even more irritating than getting punched.
Even Tam gia started to sense something was off and called me in for a private talk.
“A Niên, that kid Lục Phong… have you put him in his place yet?”
I nodded.
Tam gia narrowed his eyes, turning a pair of walnut worry beads in his hand:
“Good. That kid’s a wild horse, but if you know how to handle him, he can be a sharp blade. Don’t let him turn on us and hurt our own people.”
“Yes, I understand.”
I understood.
But Lục Phong clearly had no intention of behaving himself.
The following afternoon, trouble hit.
One of Tam gia’s important shipments was hijacked on the road from the southern docks.
The job was clean. They hadn’t left a single trace.
But one of the younger guys said he’d seen Lục Phong hanging around near the docks that morning.
When the news reached me, Lục Phong was stretched out asleep beneath a tree in the yard.
I walked over and gave the leg of his chair a light kick.
He opened his eyes lazily. The moment he saw it was me, his face went cold, and he rolled over to turn his back on me.
“What is it?”
“I’m asking you—did you have anything to do with the shipment at the docks?”
Lục Phong sprang up, his eyes sharp as knives, his lips curling into a mocking smile:
“Hạng Niên, did your brain get eaten by sperm or something? I’d sabotage Tam gia’s shipment? What would I get out of that?!”
“You know damn well what you’d get.”
He stood up, a little taller than me, his shadow looming over me.
“I know damn well? All I know is you’re a gutless coward, Hạng Niên!”
“Eight years, and now that you’ve seen me again, you can’t even bring yourself to say a word!”
“Now Tam gia throws you a bone, and you wag your tail and go after me?!”
Before he could finish, my fist smashed into his face.
He was quick. He jerked his head aside to dodge, then punched me in the stomach.
We crashed into each other, grappling in the yard and knocking over tables and chairs as we fought.
The people around us scattered in fear. No one dared step in.
In the end, I pinned him against the wall, my arm clamped around his throat.
He gasped for breath and glared at me, eyes bloodshot:
“You… you gonna hit me again or what?!”
“You gutless bastard! You fucking coward!”
He spat the words through gritted teeth.
“If you’ve got the guts, then kill me!”
I stared at his face, so close I could almost touch it, fury burning in my chest until I thought I’d explode.
But in the end, I slowly let go.
He slid down the wall and slumped to the ground, coughing and laughing, his neck still flushed red.
“Ha… I knew it… you fucking… don’t have the guts…”
12
I turned my back and walked away without looking at him again.
Lục Phong hadn’t touched that shipment.
He wasn’t stupid, and he had no reason to do it.
It was just that after days of being given the cold shoulder, I was so irritated I wanted an excuse to get into a fight.
The real culprit was Hắc Ngư—an old man who’d followed Tam gia for over ten years and had been making a little too much noise lately.
He was probably trying to flex on a newcomer like Lục Phong while taking me down a peg at the same time.
I took the evidence I’d found and laid it right on Tam gia’s desk.
Tam gia didn’t bother looking at it. He only glanced at me:
“Hắc Ngư’s been with me for more than ten years.”
I nodded:
“I know what I have to do.”
Tam gia waved me away.
Dealing with Hắc Ngư didn’t take much effort.
He knew perfectly well that after messing with Tam gia’s goods, he had no place left in the gang.
They cut off one of his hands and drove him straight out of the province.
It was already dark when I left Hắc Ngư’s place.
I drove back to the fight club. As I turned the corner, I saw Lục Phong.
He leaned against a closed roll-up door, smoking, his tall, slender figure stretching beneath the streetlight.
Someone lay at his feet.
Hắc Ngư’s right-hand man.
I stopped beside him and rolled down the window.
Lục Phong raised his head and blew out a mouthful of smoke, his face expressionless.
The man at his feet was bruised all over and could barely groan.
“I questioned him. Hắc Ngư told him to spread the rumor that I’d messed with the shipment.”
Lục Phong planted his foot on the man’s face:
“He was stubborn. Took a little work.”
I looked at him:
“Mind your own business.”
Lục Phong snorted:
“If I see a mess, I clean it up. What’s wrong with that?”
He ignored me, stubbed out his cigarette, then kicked the man at his feet again:
“Get lost. If I see your face again, I won’t go so easy on you.”
The man crawled away as fast as he could.
Lục Phong shoved his hands in his pockets, walked over to my car, and looked in through the window:
“Hạng Niên, thanks.”
I was a little surprised. I hadn’t expected him to say that.
“For what?”
“For not really believing I did it.”
He hesitated, looking away:
“And thanks… for not actually killing me that day.”
I didn’t answer.
The air felt a little… sticky. Weird.
Suddenly he leaned over, resting an arm on the car door as he moved closer. Then he flashed a teasing, roguish grin:
“But Brother Niên, if you’re worried about me, just say so. You don’t have to throw punches. I might get the wrong idea.”
What a fucking actor.
What the hell would he misunderstand?
I hit the button to roll up the window, nearly catching his nose.
He laughed and hopped backward, then whistled to tease me.
Even after I’d driven far away, I could still see him in the rearview mirror, standing right where he was as his tall shadow grew smaller.
The irritation in my chest had somehow faded by half.
13
After that messy fight, things between Lục Phong and me eased up a little.
At least he stopped treating me like I didn’t exist.
But that was all.
He stopped teasing me so openly, but there was something else in the way he looked at me.
Something heavy. It made me deeply uncomfortable.
Tam gia seemed very pleased with this “delicate balance.”
A few days later, an old underling was caught skimming from the books.
As they dragged him away, he sobbed and begged for mercy, his cries echoing throughout the fight club.
Tam gia slowly wiped his hands as he smiled at Lục Phong and me:
“See? Even an old dog that bites its master has to be thrown in the hot pot.”
His gaze swept over Lục Phong and me.
“A Niên, we just opened a new club on the west side. Have Lục Phong go oversee it. Take him with you.”
Nightclubs are complicated places. Trouble crops up everywhere.
Lục Phong was ruthless enough to deal with trash, but he was also quick to go too far.
One day, a few drunk patrons started causing trouble, smashing things and harassing the staff.
Lục Phong handled it neatly—breaking arms and legs, then tossing them straight behind the dumpster.
When I arrived, he was wiping his hands with a wet towel, looking disgusted:
“Fuck, they’re making enough noise to burst my eardrums.”
I glanced at the men groaning and rolling around on the ground.
They weren’t locals, and they were dressed flashily—not like ordinary people.
“Did you look into their background?”
“Do I have to ask?” Lục Phong raised an eyebrow. “You start trouble, you get hit.”
I told one of my men to look into it.
Sure enough, one of them had connections—not powerful ones, but enough to be a nuisance.
When Tam gia heard about it, he summoned Lục Phong, chewed him out, and docked three months of his bonus.
Lục Phong walked out of Tam gia’s office without a trace of remorse.
When he saw me, he curled his lip:
“Got me in trouble again, Brother Niên?”
I looked at him.
“Next time you want to hit someone, think first.”
“I’ve got a brain, but it’s not as fast as my fists.”
He moved in close, his voice dropping:
“Like you, for instance—you turn things over in your head eight hundred times. Wouldn’t it feel better to just have a fight?”
His words were loaded with meaning, and his eyes burned with it.
I turned my face away.
“Get lost. Get to work.”
14
The trouble caused by Lục Phong’s beating those men turned out to be bigger than I’d expected.
Their family wouldn’t let it go. They didn’t dare openly oppose Tam gia, but they pulled all sorts of dirty tricks behind the scenes.
The nightclub was inspected several times over one petty pretext or another, and business took a clear hit.
Tam gia was starting to get unhappy.
Lục Phong, meanwhile, was furious. Several times he wanted to go “take care of” the other side himself, and each time I held him back.
He glared at me.
“What the fuck are you stopping me for?”
“I’ll smash that doghouse to pieces and see who dares open their mouth!”
I stared at him coldly.
“And then what? You want to do another stretch in prison?”
“Eight years wasn’t enough?”
Lục Phong fell silent. His eyes were full of anger, his chest heaving. At last, he kicked the wall hard:
“Fuck…”
I knew he felt helpless.
Some things can’t be settled just by throwing a punch.
Some grievances have to be swallowed.
It had taken me a long time to learn that. He clearly still hadn’t.
That night, I went alone to meet the person behind the trouble.
I didn’t tell Lục Phong.
What I said didn’t matter. What mattered was making Tam gia’s position clear while also throwing the other side a little “sugar.”
As I stepped outside, my phone rang—a message from Lục Phong.
Just three words:
【Where are you?】
I didn’t reply.
A little while later, he sent another message:
【Coward.】
I stared at the screen, picturing him gritting his teeth as he cursed me out.
On my way back to the nightclub, I was passing a dark alley when I heard a fight breaking out.
I glanced in without thinking, and my feet stopped dead.
It was Lục Phong.
He was alone, surrounded by five or six men.
They were armed with all kinds of things—metal pipes, clubs—and they weren’t holding back.
Lục Phong was clearly at a disadvantage.
Blood covered his forehead, but his eyes were still blazing red. Every punch landed with the heavy thud of flesh and bone colliding.
Two men were already sprawled on the ground.
Without thinking, I loosened my tie, picked up half a brick by my foot, and stepped in.
I smashed it into the back of the man behind him, knocking him out with one blow.
Lục Phong saw me and froze, then bared his teeth in a grin.
In the dim light, his blood-smeared teeth looked eerily white.
“Well, look who showed up—the coward!”
I knocked aside a metal pipe swinging at me and answered with a brick to my opponent’s face.
“Shut up.”