Golden Scale [EN]: Chapter 99

The Great War (1)

“Where are you going!?” Shen Yi shouted, stopping Hou Longtao.

“Does Brother Yi know how much legitimate income I make in a year? Since you want to send me off like a beggar, I naturally have to be sensible.”

“Half a share.”

“One share.”

“You’re greedy enough! Now it’s my turn to ask you, do you know how much one share is?”

“One price. If you give it, we’ll cooperate. If you don’t, we’ll call it quits.”

“Alright, alright, come back and sit down.” Shen Yi was very satisfied with Hou Longtao’s greed. The greedier he was, the more relieved he felt. “You usually manage your subordinates very strictly, as if they never touch these things.”

“Greed prevents one from growing big. Why would I do something that would get me noticed for a little profit? It’s not worth it.”

“That makes sense. You’re indeed not an ordinary gangster.”

“Why are you doing this?” Hou Longtao looked at Shen Yi with a smile.

“Why? You know, Long Er is already with me.”

“Brother Yi, I won’t beat around the bush in front of you. People of our status and position don’t do anything just for money, right?”

“Then why are you doing this?”

“Me? Getting rid of Tyrannosaurus is the main goal, but as a businessman, I must strive for the maximum profit in every transaction; otherwise, it’s my failure.”

“You’re honest enough. I’ll tell you plainly, I want to prove my ability to Shen Ren.”

“He’s your own brother.”

“So what? He has never looked up to me, only treating me like his follower, ordering me around at every turn, always pointing out my worthlessness every time he lectures me. This time, I’ll let him see, let him see what kind of person his looked-down-upon younger brother really is.”

“Let’s talk details.”

“This is the retreat route…” Shen Yi took out a piece of paper and explained his plan to Hou Longtao.

“Everyone knows that I killed Tyrannosaurus. How could his friends let me go? How could they cooperate with their enemy?”

“Several old guys are of one mind with my brother. If I want to start new businesses, they’re also my obstacles. Once I’m in charge, they’ll listen to me. If they dare to resist, I’ll get rid of them one by one. Once a large sum of money comes in, who else will oppose me?”

“What about the remaining sons?”

“They’re all young people with flexible minds who won’t stick to old principles. If they do, I’ll get rid of them too.”

“You really don’t care about family ties?”

“What family? Except for this Long Er, none of them has ever treated me like family.”

“What about Situ Qingying?” Hou Longtao wanted to hear how they planned to deal with his White Tiger.

“That bitch is yours. Whether you want to kill her on the spot or take her away to kill, it’s up to you. In short, you can’t let her live.”

“Hehe, Brother Yi, why do your eyes light up when you mention her?”

“My godfather dotes on that whore the most,” Long Er suddenly chimed in, probably feeling uncomfortable after being ignored for so long. “She’s the designated successor.”

“Long Er!” Shen Yi glared at him fiercely, apparently not wanting Hou Longtao to know about this.

“Hehehe, I think this is the fundamental reason why Brother Yi decided to do it himself, right?”

“With Prince’s brains, our cooperation won’t be a problem.”

“One last thing, what was the meaning of throwing me into the pit just now?”

“Hehe, sorry for the trouble. I couldn’t come to you directly. If I were discovered, I wouldn’t survive either, so I had you kidnapped. Besides, I’ve never trusted you completely. I had to test you first.”

“Test me on what?”

“Your relationship with my brother is too close, too unusual.”

“What? I’ve been hostile to that old fart since the first time we met.”

“In short, I’m not at ease. It’s best to be cautious with such important matters. You don’t blame your old brother, do you?”

“Of course, I blame you. I haven’t wet my pants since I was a kid, but oh well, we’ll have common interests from now on.”

Before leaving, Long Er pulled Hou Longtao aside. “Prince, I want to discuss something with you.”

“Speak.”

“Don’t kill Situ right away. Can you hand her over to me?”

“Hand her over to you? Oh, I understand. No, I’m afraid you’ll leave her alive.”

“I won’t, absolutely not. How about this, let’s do it together, torture her for three days and three nights, and then you can kill her.”

“You…”

“I’ve seen the video of you messing with women. I’ve been thinking about her for years. I can’t let her die like this. If you promise me, what happened to you tonight will never get out.”

“Are you threatening me again?”

“No, that bitch has played me several times. I can’t swallow this.”

“I’ll consider it.” Hou Longtao got into a Chery [Chinese automobile brand] and drove away. Shen Yi had already told him how to drive back to the city.

“You motherfucker,” Long Er muttered and got into the Lexus 300.

“You agreed to his terms?”

“Yes. Second Uncle, you promised me that you wouldn’t hurt Qingying after it’s done. You’ll hand her over to me.”

“You’re so indecisive. There are so many women in the world. Why do you have to have a lesbian? How can you achieve great things like this?”

“You promised me.”

“Alright, alright, she’s yours.” Shen Yi frowned impatiently…

This is why Hou Longtao went home alive that night.

After three gunshots, Da Pang and the others were still in place. The bloody scene that Shen Yi had expected didn’t happen.

“Brother Long, do you believe me now? You have all the proof you wanted.”

“Long Er, you’ve disappointed me too much.” The “dead” Tyrannosaurus had “come back to life.” He stood up, took out a gun from his suit, and aimed it at his own brother. “Yours is loaded with blanks. Mine is different.”

“Aren’t you going to put me down!?”

“Oh, oh.” Da Pang quickly let go. Situ Qingying got down and rubbed her neck. She punched Da Pang’s arm. “You were too rough.”

“Alright.” Hou Longtao pulled the beauty to his side, hugged her, and kissed her. “Brother Long, let’s get this over with. I want to take my White Tiger home.”

Shen Yi just stood there, neither moving nor speaking, just looking at the bespectacled guy with a strange look, as if he were a rare animal, one in a hundred years.

“Bang.”

The door of the bar was kicked open. “Nine Dragons” and a dozen bodyguards rushed in. They were all bewildered by the scene before them. Too many things didn’t make sense. Hou Longtao was hugging Situ Qingying, and Situ Qingying wasn’t resisting but seemed quite happy. “Tyrannosaurus” was covered in blood, but there wasn’t a trace of pain on his face. He was pointing a gun at the “Second Boss.” Shen Yi was also holding a gun, looking a little dazed.

“Hou Longtao, let her go!” Long Er suddenly jumped out, clutching a dagger in his hand.

“Bang.” Tyrannosaurus’s gun tilted and first rewarded his godson’s leg with a bullet. “Hold him down!”

“Yes.” “Long Da” and “Long San” immediately obeyed. Although they didn’t know why, they didn’t intend to ask. Godfather’s orders were sacred. They never dared to disobey.

“Hou Longtao, how much money do you have?” Shen Yi finally spoke.

“A lot.”

“How many women do you have?”

“A lot too.”

“Then why aren’t you afraid of death?”

“Who says I’m not afraid of death?”

“You and my brother have been in cahoots all along?”

“Yes.”

“If you were afraid of death, why didn’t you come out that night? Long Er buried you alive in my brother’s name. How could you not know that you were my brother’s man?”

“Let’s make a deal. You explain your suspicions about me first, and I’ll tell you my thoughts.” Hou Longtao was feeling great. “You know, I’m a businessman. I don’t do business without profit.”

“If those stupid Yunnan people hadn’t been so clever, my brother would never have suspected that there was a mole by his side,” Shen Yi said through gritted teeth. “Even though my brother didn’t say it, I could tell that he was being more cautious and wary of us. That’s when you appeared.”

“But I appeared as an enemy.”

“No one knows what you talked about in the Phoenix Mountain office, and you appeared when I needed outside help the most. In the Beijing underworld, no one has dared to oppose my brother for years. Many famous bosses have to nod and bow to him. What makes you, a greenhorn, so arrogant? So, from the beginning, I suspected your conflict, but I didn’t rule out the possibility that you were really just a fearless newbie. I took a wait-and-see attitude.”

“You should know about our smashing each other’s places, right? You were involved too.”

“So what? It was just property damage. In my opinion, your feud wasn’t deep enough to warrant a life-or-death struggle. Later, you cooperated, which made me very glad that I didn’t act rashly. You’re ruthless, Hou Longtao, to think of tampering with the accounts and releasing the news that Qingying was wearing a green hat [being cheated on] for you, regardless of your own reputation. You’re something else.”

“It was all a show.”

“Yes, compared to the act you put on in the KTV, it’s nothing. I watched the video in the private room. It was flawless. Now that I think about it, no wonder you used your body to block Qingying’s vital parts. I knew that my brother would definitely decide to get rid of you this time. But I was still uneasy. I wanted to catch the lead dancer and interrogate her, but I heard that Qingying had already sent her back to her hometown to recuperate. I couldn’t find out where her hometown was, so my instinct told me that it still wasn’t safe.”

“That girl never left Beijing. I hid her,” Hou Longtao said with a smug smile.

“You’re smart, but I’m not stupid either. Even after Qingying found someone to chop you, I decided to test you one more time, which was that night. If your performance still didn’t put me at ease, I would have really killed you. Anyway, my brother didn’t let us know about your relationship, so he couldn’t really do anything to me even if he was angry. I just don’t understand. Since you were afraid of death and were really in cahoots with him, how did you pass the test?”

“Hahaha,” Hou Longtao pointed to his head. “Innate logical thinking ability. My brain is my best weapon for self-defense.”

“You better understand!” Shen Yi knew that he was facing a slim chance of survival today, and he wanted to die knowing why. “Where exactly did I slip up!?”

“To be honest, you’re cunning and treacherous, and you didn’t slip up anywhere. Your only mistake was choosing the wrong opponent. From the beginning, your failure was already destined.”

“What do you mean?”

“Brother Long would never order anyone to really kill me, at least not before the mole was dug out. So, this guy…” Hou Longtao pointed to “Long Er” lying on the ground, “…must be acting on his own.”

“He might be doing it out of a desire to avenge his godfather.”

“Don’t worry. Brother Long dotes on Qingying the most. Even she doesn’t dare to really disobey Brother Long’s orders, let alone anyone else. Didn’t Brother Long say that Qingying’s revenge should be taken by Qingying herself? I thought at the time that there were probably only two forces that could drive ‘Long Er’ to disregard his godfather’s words. One is the power of love, and the other is the power of money.”

“Love?”

“Yes, if he loved Qingying, and I raped the woman he loved, then he would be doing what a man must do. But Qingying doesn’t love him, so if he did that, he would definitely bring Qingying along, first to please her, and second to vent his anger. But she wasn’t there, so I concluded that it definitely wasn’t for love.”

“You’re wrong! You surnamed Hou, you’re so arrogant, hahaha,” Long Er suddenly shouted loudly. “If it wasn’t for Qingying, how could I have betrayed my godfather?”

“I know. Later, when you insisted on handing her over to me, I knew I had miscalculated. But it was because I was wrong that I was able to survive. If I had judged correctly and told you that everything was fake, I would have died long ago.”

“Qingying,” Long Er completely ignored Hou Longtao, just staring at the beauty. “Do you know? I’ve been deeply in love with you since I was a child, but you don’t even look at me. Why!?”

“Second Brother, you…” Situ Qingying shook her head helplessly. “We’re like siblings. Why are you doing this?”

“Shut up, all of you!” Shen Yi was in no mood to care about other people’s love affairs. “Hou Longtao, continue.”

“What else is there to say? Since I guessed that he was the Yunnan people’s partner, I was sure that he wouldn’t really kill me but was just testing me to see if I had any connection with Brother Long. If I did, he would bury me. If I didn’t, he would probably want me to be his gun, so I naturally had to act the part.”

“In that situation, how could you think so calmly? Was your fear all an act?”

“I wasn’t as calm as you think at the time. Fear isn’t an emotion that you can just fake. When shovelfuls of dirt were being dumped on me, how could I not be afraid? Being afraid doesn’t mean being stupid, but not thinking means death. After I figured it out and decided to take the risk, I peed out the urine I had been holding in for a long time. It looked like I was so scared that I wet my pants, right? Hahaha.”

“You… you said that you don’t do business without profit. You’re working for my brother. What benefits are you getting? Would the profit be greater than cooperating with me?”

“Well…” Hou Longtao glanced at Situ Qingying. “The reward I received can’t be bought with money.”

“Are you satisfied?” Tyrannosaurus had already sat down and put away his gun.

“Not satisfied! Since I’ve already been exposed, why wait until today?”

“Brother Yi, your Brother Long always looks down on you, but that’s only because you’re his brother. He has higher expectations for you than for others. I told him that you were the mole, but he didn’t quite believe me. He wanted to hear you say it himself before he would believe it.”

“Long Er, how should I deal with you? I, Shen Ren, have been in the underworld for decades and have seen many cases of siblings killing each other. I didn’t expect it to happen to me today.”

“Brother, I’m your own brother. Those Yunnan people forced me to do it. I didn’t want to either.” Shen Yi suddenly knelt down. He wanted to save his life, and this was the only way.

“Longtao, you can leave,” Tyrannosaurus said expressionlessly. “I need to take care of some family matters.”

Situ Qingying gently pushed the man. “You go first. I’ll call you later.”

“Alright.” Hou Longtao flicked the beauty’s chin with his finger, turned around, and left with his two brothers.

Although he didn’t know how “Tyrannosaurus” ultimately handled it, he never saw Shen Yi and “Long Er” again after that. He didn’t ask Situ Qingying either. Since other people didn’t want him to know about their family affairs, there was no need to inquire, and it wasn’t a good thing anyway. Maybe it was better not to know.

Hou Longtao’s cooperative relationship with “Tyrannosaurus” was no longer a secret. He was valued by the big boss, and the Dragon Head’s beloved daughter was also with him. He had become the recognized next-generation leader of the Beijing underworld.

That same night, Hou Longtao received a call from the private detective he had hired in Tokyo. After a long investigation, Xiang Nai’s last appearance was in her hometown of Hokkaido, around a few days after the hurricane. No one had seen her since then. The only certainty was that her parents had died in the tsunami caused by the hurricane.

Hou Longtao was furious when he heard this report. What kind of private detective was this? He charged a lot of money but couldn’t find anyone. If he hadn’t been so busy with other things, he would have flown to Japan himself. It wasn’t because he had any particularly unbearable feelings for Xiang Nai, but because he had a belief that a man must fulfill his promises to a woman. Deceiving women was the act of a coward…

Saturday afternoon, Situ Qingying came to He Liping’s house. From today on, this was also her home. She moved in legitimately and didn’t have to be secretive anymore.

“Mom, I’m back, Mom?” She started calling as soon as she entered the door, but no one answered. “Nono?”

The girl changed into slippers and started walking towards the inner room. There were many clothes scattered along the way: a white T-shirt, a pair of blue jeans, a white women’s shirt, a black suit skirt. A smile appeared on her face. “Hmph, not waiting for me.”

Situ Qingying pushed open the bedroom door. There were men’s clothes and two bras and panties thrown under the bed, one set sexy and one set cute. Three people were lying under the wide, thin quilt, Hou Longtao in the middle, hugging He Liping and Xue Nuo on either side. The three of them were laughing softly, obviously having finished a round. No wonder she didn’t hear the women’s moans when she came in.

“Don’t be silly,” Hou Longtao beckoned to the woman at the door. “Still can’t figure out the situation?”

“Hmph,” Situ Qingying took two steps forward but didn’t start taking off her clothes. “You seem to be doing fine without me.”

“Haha,” Hou Longtao suddenly jumped up, grabbed the beauty’s arm, bent her over, and lifted her over He Liping and his body with his left hand, throwing her flat on his right side. Then he turned around and looked down at her. “If I don’t take care of them first, how can I concentrate on settling you?”

“Stinky sister,” Xue Nuo hugged her dry sister [sworn sister], who was pressing down on one of her arms, from the side and back. “Why are you jealous? This is me and Mom. Be careful we won’t give you food tonight.”

“Hmph.” Situ Qingying pushed the man off her, twisted her body slightly, turned her head, and kissed the girl’s cherry lips. Two tender tongues intertwined. She liked the beautiful new mother and also liked this cute new sister. This was the first time she had truly loved a doll-like girl.

“Hey!” Hou Longtao realized that he had been neglected. Although they were all his women, he still felt a little jealous. He turned around, pulled open the thin quilt on He Liping, who had been watching with a smile on the side, and pulled her into his arms again, grabbing a full breast with his right hand and kneading it. “If the two girls dare not give me face, the mother will naturally have to pay the debt.”

“Um… um…” He Liping’s body really twisted with the movement of the man’s palm. “You guy, ah… you always speak unclearly…” She raised her white lotus-like arms, wrapped them around her lover’s neck, and brought her lips up to kiss him.

Hou Longtao’s hands caressed the mature beauty’s body. Her hot body was curvy, smooth, and incomparable. Her breasts were soft, her nipples were high and erect, her abdomen was flat, her waist was slender, her buttocks were plump, her thighs were round, her pubic hair was sparse, her labia [vaginal lips] were greasy, her clitoris was hard, and her vagina was wet and hot, making her irresistible.

When the man’s hand was pulled out from between He Liping’s legs, his fingers were covered with a layer of glittering vaginal fluid. Although she had just cleaned herself, it still brought out a small amount of residual fluid. She pulled her lover’s firm and powerful palm in front of her, looked up at him, and put that finger in her mouth, gently sucking it.

Hou Longtao’s breathing became slightly heavier. He kissed his beloved wife heavily on the face. “Where’s the thing I brought?”

“It’s still in the hall.”

“Go get it for me, okay? Let’s finish the business quickly. I want to make you faint again.” Hou Longtao didn’t let her have another urgent urination because, after being with him, that woman’s problem had slowly disappeared. This was a sign that her kidney function had been strengthened. He didn’t know if his penis had any special effects, or maybe Zou Lao’s medicine had some special effects besides aphrodisiacs.

“What business? You’re so bad.” He Liping kissed the man, got out of bed, and because the curtains in the hall were not drawn, she put on a long robe and walked elegantly outside.

Hou Longtao watched his beloved wife’s big butt sway from side to side in the translucent gauze, feeling that she was becoming more and more charming. The fire of desire in the man’s chest burned even more fiercely. He turned his head and saw that Situ Qingying, with her clothes disheveled, had subdued Xue Nuo and was pressing her under her body, kissing her fair neck, and pinching her delicate and beautiful but not flat breasts with both hands.

“Bullying my wife! It looks like your skin is itching.” Hou Longtao shouted and pounced over…(The Gold Fish is not a thing in the pond) [idiom meaning something is not what it seems]