I counted up my nearly thirty years of life in the jianghu.
Handling people, getting handled, going on the run, coming back, doing time.
Always spinning in circles between these five things. The days of truly being a glorious Big Brother weren't all that long.
On the seventeenth day of the first lunar month in 1996, it had been about half a year since I started hustling in the underworld after fighting Chen Xiang last summer.
For the first half-year, I was always the one handling others, but I certainly wasn't the reincarnation of a lucky star. It couldn't be me handling people every single time.
So on this day, it was my turn to get handled.
Last night I pretended to be drunk, so when I woke up the next day, I didn't feel much discomfort.
I left the tea tower early, planning to get something to fill my stomach downstairs.
What was my advantage? It was my youth. So young that very few hustlers at seventeen or eighteen could be like me—having handled people and business, with a reputation of my own wherever I went, not some transparent nobody people looked down on or forgot.
So young that even Chen Qiang was afraid I'd rise too fast and step on him.
What was my disadvantage? It was also that I was too young. So young that after handling Big Kuizi yesterday, I walked out this morning without even a needle on me.
Big Kuizi was a Hunan native who had been hustling on the streets for over a decade; how could he be a gutless coward?
I never expected that yesterday he was just scared—scared that I would truly cripple him.
He had never submitted.
I walked out of the tea tower and found a nearby shop, ordering a Lincang specialty: Wangzi Rice Noodles.
Put simply, it's blood curd boiled with rice noodles. In my impression, Southerners rarely eat wheat noodles; they eat rice noodles.
And the rice noodles in each province have their own merits, with no one submitting to another. In my humble opinion, the rice noodles from Guixi, Xiangnan, and Ganxi are the most mouth-watering.
Diannan's rice noodles always felt like slightly thinner rice noodles to me, so there was no such thing as them not suiting my taste.
The bowl was served, bright red and appetizing.
Just as I slurped a mouthful, someone patted my shoulder from behind.
Thinking it was someone from the tea tower whom I'd met last night getting up this early, I didn't pay much mind. Before I even swallowed the noodles, I turned around to greet them.
But what greeted me was a bone chopper.
A thick-spined, broad-bladed chopper used by butchers to hack pig bones.
This blow was aimed right at my forehead, and the one holding the knife was just a half-grown kid, fourteen or fifteen years old.
My hair stood on end instantly. Almost by instinct, I jerked my neck back desperately.
Thanks to that jerk, the blade didn't land on my face but hacked into my chest.
Under the edge of that bone chopper, the cotton jacket on my body was like paper.
Sliced open in one stroke.
A deep gash was torn open on my chest, and blood sprayed onto the ground, dyeing my entire lower body red.
I wasn't a rookie just starting out. Although I hadn't been hustling long, I had handled quite a few things.
Being slashed, I didn't panic or scream.
The searing pain in my chest made me calmer than usual. I grabbed the bowl of rice noodles on the table and splashed it right into the kid's face.
The noodles were scalding, the soup spicy and hot.
Splashed by me, he immediately dropped the knife, covered his eyes, and started screaming.
Before I could catch my breath, another knife came hacking at me.
It was another half-grown kid. He probably had never hacked anyone before; this blow landed on the top of my head.
The skull is a bone as hard as knees and elbows, so this blow was far less damaging than the first.
Enduring the pain, I covered my chest with one hand, grabbed his knife-wielding hand with the other, and kicked him right in the crotch.
That kick sent him flying.
"Chu Shanhe, you didn't take my life yesterday, so I'm here to take yours today."
"Whoever hacks him to death, I'll cover your Tramadol and Dextromethorphan from now on."
Big Kuizi, his left hand wrapped like a club, walked unsteadily toward me, holding a homemade blunderbuss in his right hand.
He raised the blunderbuss and aimed it at me.
My pupils dilated. That thing fired iron sand; it only killed if pressed against the heart.
But precisely because it fired iron sand, if you got hit, the sand would be hard to dig out of your flesh, torturing you for a lifetime.
I mustered all my strength to flip the table, blocking it in front of me.
The moment the table fell, the gun went off.
The blunderbuss was terrifying; a huge ball of fire erupted from the muzzle, and the sound was deafening, making my ears ring.
After the gunshot, everyone at the noodle stall, including the owner, ran away.
Only Big Kuizi and those two kids slowly closed in on me.
Less than fifty meters away was Wentong Tea Tower. As long as I made it inside, my life would be saved today.
Big Kuizi wasn't here to cripple me; he was here to finish me off.
With his left hand ruined by me, Big Kuizi struggled to operate the gun with one hand. So after firing once, he didn't reload. He threw down the blunderbuss, pulled out a Type 56 military spike, and charged at me with the two kids.
I had no weapon in hand. Fighting back wasn't an option. I could only run.
With the wounds on my chest and head, in just this short time, the blood flow had turned me into a bloody gourd.
If I delayed any longer, Big Kuizi wouldn't even need to lift a finger; I'd bleed to death on my own.
I grabbed the broken bowls and chopsticks from the ground and hurled them at the three approaching attackers.
Without checking if I hit them, I turned and ran toward Wentong Tea Tower without looking back.
Although friends here won't need this advice, I still want to tell everyone: if you get hacked or stabbed and suffer a heavily bleeding wound, never run.
If you run, your heart beats faster. The heart is a pump moving blood through the body; if it beats too fast, your wound will bleed even more, and you might bleed out before they can save you.
I had no choice. Running gave me a sliver of a chance to live; not running meant being hacked to death by random blades.
The noodle stall was about fifty meters from Wentong Tea Tower. Those fifty meters were the longest road I ever walked in my life.
I just ran forward. Shoulders, back, thighs—I was hacked eleven times, front and back.
Adding the two previous cuts, by the time I rushed into Wentong Tea Tower and collapsed headfirst on the floor, I had been hacked a total of thirteen times.
I didn't know who hacked me those last eleven times because I didn't dare look back; I could only run for my life.
Maybe it wasn't my time to die. Just as I rushed into the tea tower, that kid Liang Chuang had just gotten up and was laughing and chatting with a few waiters.
Seeing me rush in like a bloodman, his face changed drastically. He shoved aside the waiter in front of him, vaulted over the counter, grabbed a shotgun, and charged out.
My consciousness was already fading. I only heard two blasts from the shotgun—didn't know if he hit anyone—before I passed out.
When I woke up, I was in the Lincang People's Hospital. My head had been shaved bald.
I had 112 stitches all over my body. With one foot in the King of Hell's palace, I was dragged back after being transfused with nearly the blood volume of two adults.
When I opened my eyes, five days had passed since I was hacked. Naturally, I had missed that important guest from outside the border.