Bro | Chapter 24

But unfortunately, let alone becoming a demon, even if Wei Zhiyuan became a god, there was still no escaping this beating.

With a dark face, Wei Qian slapped Wei Zhiyuan awake, grabbed him by the back of the neck, and crossed over the people sprawled all over the floor through a trail of carnage, hauled Wei Zhiyuan into the carriage like he was carrying a sack, threw him onto his own seat with the motion of planting someone headfirst like a scallion, then stood beside him and said, with the air of a storm about to break, “What is wrong with you?”

Wei Zhiyuan realized he had committed a capital crime, one ten thousand deaths could not be redeemed, and that there was no way he could avoid a brutal beating. Following the general principle of “confession earns leniency,” he confessed his whole chain of reasoning, his practical experience, and every single step of how he had evaded the fare.

After hearing his adventure story, Wei Qian felt that San Pang had been right. This little beast might really be a weasel in disguise, he was even clever about courting death.

Just as he was about to ignore all public morality and break into a loud stream of curses, he suddenly heard the sound of an empty stomach from Wei Zhiyuan’s belly. The boy pressed a hand to his stomach, lifted his head pitifully, and looked at Wei Qian with a pale little face tilted up at him.

Wei Qian looked at him, and in that instant, his expression was almost melancholy.

Big brother had been ground down by Wei Zhiyuan until he had no temper left. In the end, he could only helplessly buy the little brat a loaf of bread, a sausage, and a bottle of mineral water from that legendary little cart, then stand to one side and watch him stuff it all down like a starving little wolf.

Once Wei Zhiyuan had eaten and drunk his fill, he had a premonition that this was not going to end peacefully. Uneasily, he got down from the seat. “Ge, you sit.”

Wei Qian did not say a single word, only gave him a look. Wei Zhiyuan immediately felt a gust of sinister wind around his little neck, and at once did not even dare breathe too loudly. He silently sat back down.

For the remaining nearly twenty hours, Wei Qian stood the entire way, leaning against the back of the seat.

They got off the train in some city in Guangdong, found a place to recover first, checked into a small hotel with a decent price, and slept in utter oblivion.

After waking up, Wei Qian took a shower and bought some boxed meals to eat. Once the two brothers had rested well and eaten well, Wei Zhiyuan got the brutal beating he had been wishing for.

After a wonderfully spectacular one-on-one men’s match, Wei Qian used the hotel front desk phone to contact Zhao Laojiu. Then he took twenty-yuan out of his pocket and gave it to Wei Zhiyuan, warning sternly, “If you’re hungry, go out and buy something to eat yourself. You’re not allowed to leave this place for more than a hundred meters. If you dare run around again, I’ll break your legs.”

Wei Zhiyuan said, “Oh.”

Wei Qian smacked his thigh hard. “Did you hear me or not!”

Wei Zhiyuan immediately straightened his chest and raised his head, middle finger pressed against the seam of his trousers, and reported in the tone of a Nazi shouting “Long live the Führer,” “I heard!”

Not long after, someone on a motorcycle came downstairs and took Wei Qian away.

Wei Zhiyuan stuck his head out the window and watched big brother leave all the way.

Summer here was so hot it seemed endless, and the air was damp, like one huge steamer. Judging by big brother’s intentions, he was planning to stay here for more than a month.

Wei Zhiyuan did not want to cause him trouble, so he lay on the bed with all his concentration, airing out the butt that had nearly been beaten swollen, while thinking about how he could avoid becoming a burden.

Zhao Laojiu had already come back before Wei Qian. Overflowing with enthusiasm, he treated him to a meal. Only after several rounds of drinks did he take out a contract for him to read.

Wei Qian’s alcohol tolerance was only average, nowhere near that of people who could really drink a lot, but the string in his heart was wound too tight, and he forcibly maintained perfect clarity.

He knew this contract was a joke. Fighting in illegal rings was itself against the law. Signing it did not mean he would be legally bound and unable to break it. It meant declaring that he was handing over his life, voluntarily. Life and death settled cleanly, money paid and received in full, neither side owing the other anything.

The price list was marked on it, ranked by level. At the lowest level, a win got one thousand-yuan. The higher the level, the more money one could earn. If he challenged the top boxing king and won, he could get an astronomical sky-high price that, in Wei Qian’s view, was hard to even imagine. Of course, he only glanced at it and did not entertain any thoughts he should not have. He had heard of these top boxing kings. These people had all gone through extremely brutal training. One sweep of a leg could strike with a ton of force. If he really got hit solidly by one kick, he could be sent flying straight off the stage on the spot with ruptured organs. This was not child’s play.

Zhao Laojiu watched coldly as he carefully examined the contract and discovered that this kid seemed warm on the surface and cold at heart. He handled exchanging cups and following the flow of conversation with practiced ease, and knew very well how to give people face, but once it came to anything real, he was not so easy to fool.

Zhao Laojiu lit a cigarette and looked sidelong at Wei Qian. “The rules in every place are more or less the same, so there’s no need for you to keep reading. I’ll tell you the part that’s different here. First, you can’t just come when you want and leave when you want. Even if you want to leave, you have to finish three fights for me first. Siyecovers food and lodging, but you have to give the old man face. You understand that logic, right?”

Wei Qian did not reveal anything on his face. “What else?”

“Once the bow is drawn, there’s no turning back,” Zhao Laojiu continued. “Once you get on the stage, you can only go forward, not back. You can only move up in level, not down. When you go onstage, and what kind of fight it is, you have to listen to me, which is to say, follow Siye’s arrangements.”

That was to say, even if someone broke his leg in the morning, if Hu Laoban gave the order in the afternoon, he would still have to crawl onto the ring, and still have to fight someone even stronger than before.

Wei Qian lowered his eyes and thought for a moment. “Jiu-ge, other places really don’t have this rule.”

“Of course Jiu-ge knows that,” Zhao Laojiu said. “That’s why we have extra benefits. The money you win in matches is counted separately. This…” Zhao Laojiu held the cigarette in his mouth, took out his wallet, casually pulled out a stack of RMB, and pushed it toward Wei Qian. “A deposit. You just got here, you’re probably not used to the food and climate, right? Eat something good. Consider it a little token of Jiu-ge’s goodwill.”

Wei Qian swept his eyes over it. One thousand-yuan.

He did not reach out to take it. He only smiled, looking as constrained as possible. “Jiu-ge isn’t afraid I’ll take the money and run?”

Zhao Laojiu stretched out a greasy hand and smacked him hard on the shoulder, then laughed loudly. “This little bit of spending money, your Jiu-ge doesn’t even put it in his eyes. You’re young, so I won’t hypocritically call you Wei-ge. Xiao Wei, you’re young, you’ve got a future ahead of you. Young people can’t be greedy for money, but they also can’t not be greedy for money. People who are too shallow-sighted will never amount to much in their whole lives. Don’t you think that makes sense?”

Wei Qian looked at him, then slowly picked up that small stack of RMB and stuffed it into his pocket. The thin paper bills pressed against his chest with the weight of a shot put. Zhao Laojiu smiled in satisfaction and continued, “Besides the deposit, Siyealso gives you a cut. Win one match, and outside the prize money, he’ll give you a reward doubled over. When the time comes, you’ll know. A thousand or eight hundred-yuan? Heh heh, that’s just pocket money.”

Zhao Laojiu opened a new room for Wei Qian at a hotel near the boxing ring and instructed the motorcycle boy to bring him food every day, whatever he asked for. Wei Qian greeted the motorcycle boy, went first to the guesthouse to check out, picked up Wei Zhiyuan, and after settling down this burdensome little brat, went alone to the boxing ring.

The boxing ring really was new. In the corners, workers were still installing light tubes.

It was very dim around the platform, and the non-glaring lights only shone onto the stage itself, so the fighters’ attention would not be distracted. And the so-called “stage” was just an area marked out in the middle with yellow lines. People walked back and forth at the side, and as long as they were not afraid of getting accidentally hurt, they could stand as close as they wanted.

Higher up and farther away were the guest seats. There were quite a few guests, though the seats were not full. One by one, they were all dressed to look quite impressive.

Most of the people in the boxing ring were men, but there were women too. Some were female fighters, basically all broad-shouldered, thick-armed, and ferocious-looking. If no one said anything, you could not tell at all that they were women. The others were dressed suggestively, lovely as spring flowers, and were for the most part attendants weaving among the guest seats.

Wei Qian slipped in along the edge, found a place with no light in a very low-key way, and waited to watch the opening.

When the lights over several fighting platforms came on at the same time, deafening whistles and loud shouted obscenities erupted from the crowd. Wei Qian narrowed his eyes and looked toward the platform nearest him.

There stood two men in the middle of the stage, both bare-chested. One of them was a giant of a man, a full one meter ninety tall, all corded muscle. He slowly moved his neck and limbs, as if deliberately trying to put pressure on his opponent.

His opponent happened to be facing in Wei Qian’s direction. This man could not be called small either, but compared to the thickset giant across from him, he looked somewhat undernourished. There was a long scar on his chest, like an ugly centipede sprawled over him. Under the lights, his eyes were full of blood vessels.

Wei Qian had good eyesight, and since he was not far away, he could see that the corners of this man’s eyes were twitching nervously without stopping.

Wei Qian’s muscles instinctively tightened. He felt there was something a little wrong with this man.

The bookmaker set up a table behind the fighting platform, and the pretty women began encouraging everyone to place bets. The odds on the giant and the scarred man were one to two. A lot of people crowded over to place bets. Wei Qian gave up the space and stepped back one stair.

At that moment, a young boy wearing nothing but a tank top rushed up holding a big bell and shook it around wildly with loud clangs to signal the start.

There were no professional referees here. Everyone was a referee. Once you got on the platform, there were no rules. Life and death did not matter. It went on until one side was standing and the other was lying down.

Wei Qian’s attention had not yet fully pulled away from that boy in the big shorts and tank top when the giant smashed a left hook straight toward his opponent’s face. He was wearing boxing gloves, making his fists look as big as basketballs. The scarred man was caught off guard and got hit so hard his face snapped to one side. Blood immediately poured from his nose. Wei Qian suspected that even his nasal bridge had been knocked crooked.

The noise behind him was deafening enough to make his ears hurt.

A sudden blow to the head could easily cause a concussion. Anyone who had ever been hit by a beer bottle knew that feeling. If the blow was heavy enough, you could be dazed on the spot. Yet the scarred man’s skull seemed to be made of sheet iron. He did not care at all. He did not even wipe the blood from his nose. Instead, he suddenly lunged forward, grabbed the giant’s two arms, each as thick as an ordinary person’s thigh, with his bare hands, and shot into the giant’s forced-open embrace like a cannonball. He drove his elbow sideways, solidly jamming it into the giant’s solar plexus.

The giant’s internal organs all seemed to have suffered a heavy blow. He staggered backward three or four steps in a row, and his footing immediately turned unsteady. Before he could recover, the scarred man let out a strange howl, flew up with one kick to follow up, and directly sent the giant crashing flat onto his back.

Along with everyone else, Wei Qian craned his neck to look. By rights, once one side went down, a referee should count the seconds. But there was no referee at the scene, and no one stopped anything. The scarred man pressed his advantage and lunged on top of him, punching and kicking at the giant in a chaotic frenzy like a mad mole, all the while letting out wild “ao ao” cries as if he were having some kind of fit.

The spectators all became excited as if they had taken drugs. Some were shouting, some cheering. Somewhere not far away, someone smashed a glass, and the smell of beer drifted over, mixed with sweat stink and blood. Unconsciously, Wei Qian leaned a little against the stair rail, and sticky cold sweat seeped out in his palms.

Only then did the giant being beaten cry out in pain and beg for mercy, raising both hands over his head. Only then did three or four men who looked like bodyguards dart onto the platform, haul up the scarred man, who looked half-crazed, and pull the two apart.

The boy who had rung the bell earlier rushed up and raised one of the scarred man’s hands. The crowd cheered loudly, and the people who had won their bets surged forward together to collect their money from the bookmaker.

Wei Qian did not care who had won and who had lost. He stared fixedly at the scarred man who had won the match. He saw that his face was smeared with blood, the red veins in his eyes were even more obvious, his eyeballs were rotating at an unnatural speed, his chest was heaving violently, and his expression was blank and dazed.

He seemed not to have come back to his senses yet before the boy led him away.

The exit from the platform was right beside Wei Qian. Wei Qian watched the scarred man the whole way as he walked toward him with a numb expression. Then, just as he was about to brush past Wei Qian, the man suddenly stopped. His eyes flew wide open, his pupils shrank violently, and he fell to the ground. At first he convulsed, then foam came out of his mouth, and in the end, after a few violent struggles, he stopped moving.

Wei Qian stepped back another step and stood on the second stair, looking down from above as he stared wide-eyed at this man lying flat on his back for a moment. Borrowing the weak light, he judged that this man was dead.

A chill crawled up from the base of his spine all the way up his backbone.