Chapter 1850 - The Arrest (Part 2)
A minute passed. From inside came occasional sneezing and coughing. Cui Hantang sneered, "Still hanging on? Let's see how long you can last!" But after five minutes, as the smoke began to thin, there was still no movement from within.
"This—this doesn't make any scientific sense!" Cui Hantang scratched his head. "He couldn't have just died in there, could he?"
Since the man wouldn't come out, they would have to go in. After the encounters with venomous snakes and hornets, Cui Hantang had finally abandoned any notion of leading the charge personally. Best leave professional work to the professionals.
Two National Army riot squad soldiers, wearing steel helmets and clad in protective armor, raised their steel shields and crept toward the door. Behind them, riot troops with shotguns and mountain infantry with crossbows provided alternating cover.
Cui Hantang watched intently as the assault team kicked open the door and rushed inside. There were no cries, no gunfire. Within three to five minutes, a riot soldier emerged from the doorway and signaled "clear."
"He really couldn't have died, could he?!" Now Cui Hantang was truly anxious. This sorcerer was the key to the case; if he was dead, not only would the leads dry up, but the propaganda value of a public execution would be greatly diminished. Since he had stepped forward to volunteer for the vanguard, all responsibility now rested on his head.
He took the steps three at a time and hurried inside.
The interior was dark and damp, thoroughly decrepit. Though nominally divided into three rooms, the partition walls had long since crumbled away, so that standing in the front doorway one could survey the entire space at a glance. The walls were moldy and the plaster peeling; the brick floor had mostly disintegrated, leaving only scattered fragments. There was no furniture—only a few ragged rush mats tossed in a corner, presumably used by beggars for sleeping.
The only fixture that remained was a spirit shrine on the main wall. The ritual vessels had long since vanished. There was no Buddha statue, no deity figure, no ancestral tablet—only a hanging scroll of a Water-Land Dharma painting, clearly hung recently judging by its state of preservation. Out of professional interest, Cui Hantang studied the image. But the longer he looked, the stranger it seemed: although this was now a mortuary, and a Water-Land scroll for delivering the souls of the deceased was not entirely out of place, such scrolls were normally displayed only during ritual assemblies. Who would hang one in a shrine for no reason?
Acting on a hunch, Cui Hantang reached up and took down the painting. Behind it was a small door.
Not daring to be rash, he retreated several paces and motioned for the riot soldiers to ram the door.
It gave way easily. Inside there was dead silence—no response at all.
Cui Hantang's agitation mounted. Trusting in his chainmail, he threw caution to the wind, whipped out his tactical flashlight, and plunged through in a single bound. Inside was a neat, well-appointed chamber of some ten square meters. The only furnishings were a table, a bed, and a stool—all exquisite pieces. On the table sat a candle stand holding an "Australian candle."
The table was covered with orderly wooden compartments containing various colored powders; beside them lay several small china vials, knocked over. The bedding was in disarray, as though whoever lived here had left in haste. Against the wall stood a haphazard pile of broken earthenware jars, jarringly out of place.
Other than that, the room was empty.
Cui Hantang's brow furrowed. After deploying the tear gas, he and the soldiers had clearly heard coughing and sneezing—someone was definitely inside. He examined the window: this secret chamber had a tiny aperture set high near the eaves, extremely well concealed. As long as the sorcerer hid in here with the door shut, the gas would not affect him.
But where had he gone now?
The bed was a low-legged divan, barely higher than the floor—no room to hide beneath it. Everything else was in plain sight; there was simply nowhere a person could conceal himself.
Cui Hantang frowned. "Someone help me move this bed!"
Before the words left his mouth, a metallic whir sliced through the air overhead. Cursing inwardly, he threw his arms over his head and dropped into a crouch. Something rattled against his body—a rapid pattering—accompanied by the sound of cloth tearing. His heart pounded; he thought: I should have worn a helmet.
Before that thought finished forming, a shrill, distorted challenge rang out from beyond the door: "Who's there?!" This was followed by a string of screams and the thud of heavy objects hitting the ground.
This was bad. Cui Hantang sprang to his feet. The soldiers who had accompanied him inside already lay crumpled on the floor, their fate unknown. He had no time to check on them. Out of the corner of his eye, he glimpsed a dark figure bolt through the doorway and leap toward the left-hand wall.
"Damn it!" Cui Hantang swore. Lian Nishang, rushing in behind him, had no time to aim; she raised her gun and fired. Bullets sparked against the brick wall. Cui Hantang shouted, "Don't shoot! Take him alive!"
In that split second, the dark figure had already reached the wall. Using the corner as a springboard, he bounded up, lightly touched the top with one arm, twisted sideways—and floated over to the other side.
"After him!" Cui Hantang stamped his foot in frustration. He watched Lian Nishang toss aside her pistol, dart forward, and with the same three-step wall-run, vault over in pursuit.
Cui Hantang was too heavy; he bounced up and down at the base of the wall like a pile driver, unable even to graze the coping. Just as he was growing frantic, gunfire and barking erupted from beyond the compound. Then he remembered: men were stationed outside as well. His heart steadied. He spat and muttered, "Show off all you like! Have a taste of the big German shepherd!" With that, he led his men out the main gate and around to reinforce.
Lian Nishang leaped down from the wall and saw that the fugitive was a scrawny old man in a gray robe—old, but astonishingly nimble. He hit the ground with a roll and had already straightened to flee. Knowing this was the key suspect, she threw herself at him with a shout of "Stop right there!" and tackled him. They tumbled together.
To her surprise, the old man was extraordinarily limber, as though he knew bone-shrinking techniques. Her grappling holds repeatedly failed to lock his joints, and he wriggled half-free.
Lian Nishang had trained in martial arts before entering the police force and had since studied Krav Maga; her ground-fighting skills far surpassed the average person's. After a few more exchanges, she pinned him again.
While they grappled, heavy footsteps approached—Cui Hantang, armor clanking, had arrived. In one hand he held a pistol; in the other, inexplicably, a large hammer. Seeing reinforcements, the sorcerer knew that the longer he struggled, the harder escape would become. In desperation, he mustered all his strength, twisted violently, and kicked Lian Nishang away. He rolled clear.
But men from other directions had converged on the sound. Seven or eight soldiers and one dog had the old man ringed. With three firearms aimed at him and a fierce hound glaring hungrily, the sorcerer's mind raced. Pistols he did not greatly fear—they were slow to reload and inaccurate—but he knew spirit hounds excelled at tracking. In his current state, he could never outrun the beast.
If only my spirit-demon were with me, the old man thought, regretting having dispatched the creature. Yet he was not one to await his fate passively. No matter how bleak the situation, he would fight; at the very least, he would drag a few down with him. Steadying his nerves, he raised a hand, pointed at the obvious leader—Cui Hantang—and shouted, "We are both of the Way! Do you not follow the rules of the pugilistic world? If you have the nerve, set the terms—I'll accept!"
"Fine by me!" Cui Hantang flashed a wicked grin. "Single combat or group brawl—your pick."
"And what is the difference?" The old man clearly didn't understand modern slang.
"What do I mean?" Cui Hantang sneered, gesturing at the assembled men. "Simple. Single combat is you against the five of us—plus that dog. Group brawl is all of us against you!"
The old man's beard quivered with rage. Seeing Cui Hantang's self-satisfied expression, he raised a trembling finger and stammered, "I—Wu have roamed the jianghu for forty years, striding across north and south, commanding the hundred-thousand peaks! I fancy myself a master of the dark arts and have seen my share of scoundrels—but never one as shameless as you! You—you—" His chest heaved violently. He broke into a fit of coughing, and a trickle of blood appeared at the corner of his mouth.
Cui Hantang showed not a trace of remorse. He laughed heartily. "That's only because you haven't seen much. A few centuries from now, there'll be plenty more shameless than me—I'm practically a paragon of honesty by comparison..." Watching the old man's stunned expression, he couldn't help throwing back his head and roaring with laughter.
The old sorcerer gritted his teeth. "Shameless wretch! This old master will fight you to the death!"
His hand flicked upward and several streaks of black light shot toward Cui Hantang's face, as if to smash that hateful, pudgy visage. Cui Hantang started and instinctively flung up his sleeve to block. The black lights struck the fabric with a clatter and fell to the ground—a handful of needle-like spikes, wickedly sharp, their surfaces jet-black: clearly poisoned.
Cui Hantang broke out in a cold sweat. Fortunately, he had designed his Daoist robe's wide sleeves with precautions in mind. Obsessed with ancient mechanisms and hidden weapons, he had recalled seeing in a television adaptation of Water Margin how the Daoist on Spider Ridge had sewn dozens of copper coins into his sleeve cuffs, enabling him to trade twenty rounds with Wu Song without losing. So he had lined his own sleeves with dozens of overlapping scales of tinplate—useless against bullets, but more than adequate to deflect hand-thrown projectiles.
The projectiles were only a feint. In the instant Cui Hantang was distracted, the sorcerer launched himself like an ape, closing the gap in a flash. Both claws struck together: one swept before Cui Hantang's eyes; the other dove for his groin—the classic "monkey steals peach" technique. And those fingers were tipped with iron talons! The onlookers gasped before anyone could intervene.
(End of Chapter)