Conversation

It was raining heavily. Zhang Qishan had never seen such heavy rain in Changsha before. The raindrops made a lot of noise as they hit the roof tiles. If it hadn’t been going on for a while now, Zhang Qishan would’ve thought that it was the sound of gunfire.

A young man was sitting at the desk in the room, reading all of the letters there one by one. He wasn’t sure if the lamp kept going on and off because of the rainstorm, but it made him very uncomfortable. He would stop reading the letters every once in a while, but no one could tell what he was feeling at the moment.

Zhang Qishan didn’t speak, but simply looked at the heavy rain outside of the window that covered all of Changsha like a veil.

After a long time, the young man put down the last letter. But instead of sighing like ordinary people would do, he took a sip of his cold tea and pinched his brows.

Upon hearing his movements, Zhang Qishan turned around and asked, “Are you finished reading them?”

The young man nodded, poured the tea dregs into an exquisite porcelain bottle sitting off to the side, and said, “I finished reading the letters and sorted them out for you.”

Zhang Qishan took a look at the letters. Sure enough, the thick stack had now been separated into two piles. Zhang Qishan had originally piled them up in a sloppy manner, but now they had been meticulously sorted out thanks to this young man.

He knew that the young man hadn’t sorted them out after reading them, but had done it while he was reading through them. He had folded them up so neatly that almost every letter looked the same. It was because this person was used to meticulous and rigorous living standards.

“I’m sorry,” Zhang Qishan said. “You shouldn’t have gotten involved in the first place, but I still wanted to ask for your opinion. I think if it’s you, you might know how to deal with this.”

Xie Jiu (1) looked at the letters on the desk and said, “Fo Ye, no offense, but I think you should have the others come over here and discuss this matter together.”

Zhang Qishan shook his head. “I already feel bad enough about letting you know about it.”

Xie Jiu remained silent for a moment and then nodded, obviously agreeing with Zhang Qishan’s logic. He paused and said, “Even so, they won’t understand that they all owe you.”

Zhang Qishan waved his hand—it was obvious that he didn’t want to think about this problem anymore—and said, “You’ve read the letters. Tell me what you think.”

Xie Jiu stood up and came to stand next to Zhang Qishan. “Let’s talk about the basics first. The question of whether to do it or not… I believe that Fo Ye must already know the answer.” He looked at his pocket watch. “If you won’t do it, someone else will. It’s not a matter of whether you’re willing to do it or not.”

Zhang Qishan didn’t speak, so Xie Jiu continued, “To be honest, Fo Ye, you’re not important. This is basically like a hot pot. The fish in this pot is bound to be cooked. Someone wants you to cook it because you’re a good employee. If you don’t want to cook it, they can just make someone else do it.”

“I’m not important? Isn’t this incident targeting the place where I come from?”

Xie Jiu smiled, “Fo Ye, you overestimate yourself.”

Zhang Qishan smiled as well, but it was so bitter that Xie Jiu froze for a moment. He never thought that Zhang Da Fo Ye would express such emotions for others to see in his entire life.

Zhang Qishan smiled and turned his head to look out the window, “You’re so smart. You really can’t figure out a way?”

“Strategies are something you use when dealing with opponents that have considerable strength. Kongming (2) was good at using strategies, but he wouldn’t use them on his own people.”

Zhang Qishan closed his eyes and paused before saying, “Then, I’ll ask you this: What should I do?”

Xie Jiu didn’t speak, but looked at his pocket watch and remained silent for a while.

Zhang Qishan didn’t push him to answer and merely waited. Finally, Xie Jiu said, “If the son of the executioner commits a capital offense and is about to be executed, would the executioner let others execute his son or do it himself?”

Zhang Qishan smiled at him. Xie Jiu looked at him and realized that he had to say a few more words in order to end this conversation.

Even he hesitated a few minutes before he could say them. “Fo Ye, people like us deserve this kind of retribution.” Xie Jiu took his coat off the coat rack in the corner by the window and slowly put it on. “Do we still think we’re innocent?”

Zhang Qishan remained silent. Xie Jiu looked at his pocket watch one last time before turning and moving to leave Zhang Qishan’s office. When he passed by the desk, he grabbed Zhang Qishan’s gun that was lying there and put it on one of the letter piles.

It was a very thick stack of letters that was much thicker than the one next to it.

In Changsha, everyone had killed a few people. No one wanted to die in vain, but everyone knew that it was disrespectful to this business if they cared about their lives too much.

In this business, taking the lives of others was like pulling up weeds. They all knew that their lives weren’t valuable at all.

It was raining heavily outside. Xie Jiu looked at the umbrella stand by the door, but didn’t take his umbrella. Instead, he walked straight into the rain.

<Emergency><Table of Contents><In The Rain>

****

TN Notes:

(1) This is Xie Jiuye. “Jiu” means “nine”. “Ye” means “master” in Chinese. The author just called him “Xie Jiu” here since he never really gave him a real name.

(2) Zhuge Liang, courtesy name Kongming, served as the chancellor and regent of the state of Shu Han during the Three Kingdoms period. He is recognized as the most accomplished strategist of his era. Wiki link here.

****

Tiffany’s Notes: This should be one of the snippets on how the Mystic Nine dealt with the Wangs or how they were forced to do something because of the Wangs. The next few Mystic Nine extras are somewhat about it as well, and I have put them in some sort of order, hoping it would make more sense 🙂

****

Translated by: Tiffany X
Edited by: merebear226