The Mission

A heavy, stifling breath sat trapped in Lu Zhao's chest. He reached for his cigarette pack, only to find it empty. Zhang Like held out his pack. "Have one of my Huanghelous. Even a dog wouldn't smoke that Jiatianxia of yours." "My dad liked them. I got used to the smell growing up." Lu Zhao lit one, took a few deep drags, and exhaled clouds of smoke for a long while before speaking. "We barely knew each other. Even if they told them, the worst they'd face is a disciplinary reprimand. What was the point?" His brother, Lu Kang, had been the same. Since their father had already enlisted, Kang didn't have to go to the front lines, yet he had hidden it from the family, enlisted anyway, and ultimately died in a beast tide. His sister-in-law became a widow, and his niece grew up without a father. There were many single-parent families in Nanhai where a man had once crouched by the front door, finished a cigarette, called on a few brothers and friends, walked into the Armed Forces Department together, and never returned. "Because we're soldiers. They were border defense fighters," Zhang Like answered, as if stating the obvious, before teasing, "You can't expect yourself to be a hero while assuming everyone else is a coward." Lu Zhao didn't argue. Had it been him, he wouldn't have breathed half a word to the bandits either. Counterterrorism was their duty as border guards. Killing the Greenwood bandits, just like those officers dying on his account, was all in the line of duty—the mission they had once sworn to uphold. Zhang Like revealed, "Next, we'll be carrying out a second encirclement operation alongside the special investigation team." Lu Zhao gripped Zhang Like's arm, his tone firm. "I'm coming with you." "I came here to rope you in anyway," Zhang Like replied, naturally having no reason to refuse. "This is an opportunity. Helping dismantle a terrorist organization counts as major merit. Besides, I need your help—if the mission is carried out cleanly, the credit goes to me as well." Without Lu Zhao, Zhang Like would be out of his depth facing a case of this magnitude. These weren't ordinary criminals; two superhumans were involved. They couldn't shake the Federation, but as an individual, Zhang Like's personal safety was far from guaranteed. He disclosed further, "This isn't an isolated case. It's a nationwide investigation into stolen Fate Bones, overseen and coordinated by the Hall of Martial Virtue." "The Fate Bone vaults couldn't have been robbed, could they?" Lu Zhao's heart skipped a beat. A major case investigated nationwide couldn't just involve one or two bones. Not all Fate Bones had suitable inheritors. Those left uninherited were sealed away and reserved as rewards for meritorious service. They were typically kept in local repositories or the national treasury. If either of those were raided, it would be worse than an armory being looted. Zhang Like shook his head. "I'm not sure about that. But for you, this is a chance. If you earn merit on this mission and catch the attention of higher-ups, even the Chen family won't be able to keep you down." Up until now, all the suppression against Lu Zhao had followed official procedure. It defied common sense, but technically broke no rules. With their minds aligned, Zhang Like noticed the late hour and got up to leave. Lu Zhao suddenly spoke: "I went to the back mountain today. Found a smuggling trail up there. Judging by the tracks, people have been using it for the past six months." All at once, silence fell over the room. "The back mountain? A smuggling trail? Six months?" Zhang Like pressed for confirmation on each point, and Lu Zhao gave a slight nod. Zhang Like took a deep breath, sank back onto the sofa, and rubbed the space between his brows to quell the tempest churning inside him. "Leaving the back mountain unpatrolled is standard practice. That was the custom before I even got here..." "Standard practice won't save your skin," Lu Zhao interrupted, his voice possessing a chilly clarity. It also anchored Zhang Like's panicked mind. "If the higher-ups investigate and you cite 'custom' as your excuse for not checking the back mountain, that will become ironclad proof of your dereliction of duty." He knew Zhang Like had completely lost his nerve and might turn himself in next to plead for leniency. Zhang Like asked hurriedly, "Then what should I do?" "Pin it on Lü Jinshan." Lu Zhao had already thought through the countermeasure and laid it out methodically: "Gather duty rosters from previous years to prove that back mountain patrols were never part of the schedule. Then dig up Lü Jinshan's meeting records to show that multiple higher-level inspections never flagged the back mountain as a vulnerability. "When drafting the report, make bold speculations. Exaggerate a bit." "How bold?" Lu Zhao said coldly, "Bold enough to ruin him completely. Allege that the border defense station chief is colluding with smugglers." Before, he lacked the opportunity and means to deal with Lü Jinshan. Now that a flaw had shown itself, even if Lü Jinshan was truly oblivious, Lu Zhao intended to stomp him into the ground. Zhang Like felt an inexplicable chill run through him, but his head gradually cleared. Hesitantly, he said, "Even if that report gets submitted, I won't come out clean either. A disciplinary penalty will be unavoidable. "Without direct evidence showing Lü Jinshan intentionally arranged it, we won't be able to bring him down. He has connections up top—it'll be easy for him to wash his hands of it." If there were flaws in the patrol route planning, the person directly responsible was him. Zhang Like feared going for wool and coming home shorn. Lu Zhao frowned. Thinking it through, he too realized it would be hard to topple Lü Jinshan in one stroke. He asked, "So what do you plan to do? Reporting it will at least keep you out of prison." Zhang Like was caught in indecision. He pulled a cigarette from his pocket, smoking one after another until, under the influence of nicotine, his demeanor settled into absolute calm. Nicotine couldn't relieve stress; what actually worked was the ritual—lighting up, inhaling deep, and breathing out. Before entering society, Lu Zhao had never touched tobacco or alcohol. Less than a year at the border defense station, and cigarettes were rarely out of his hand. He needed the ritual too. After all, a person couldn't just keep crying. After a long time, Zhang Like stubbed out his cigarette butt. "Give me a few months. If I can't dig anything up, I'll report it up the chain. Worst-case scenario, I quit. Just remember to help me find a job when the time comes." Lu Zhao smiled. "I could even get you a position as a gym teacher at a top primary school in Jinling, the imperial capital." He had no connections in the armed police system, but in education, he still had some pull. For instance, Tang Fen, Lu Zhao's guardian back at the welfare home, had already been director of the Cangwu City Education Bureau when Lu Zhao was still in high school. If Tang Fen hadn't retired, Lu Zhao wouldn't have been backed into a corner like this. ----- Somewhere in the city's sewers. Two figures, one tall and one short, hid in the shadows. The tall, lean man held a hiltless iron blade, while the short one had sharp, monkey-like features. Both bore injuries, the tall one far worse off, his right arm scorched raw to the flesh. "Rotten luck. How did these cops react so damn fast? They tracked us down in under half a day. All that effort and we didn't figure out a thing, yet here we are getting hunted down by pigs. Talk about eight lifetimes of bad luck!" The short man cursed incessantly. His name was Shan Yong, a Grass-on-the-Wind—an intelligence scout—for Greenwood's lodge in the Nanhai West Circuit. The tall, lean man was Lao Gao, a Mountain-Guarding Banner—a combat operative—from the same lodge. The two had smuggled themselves in from the Miye Sanjiang region outside Nanhai, ordered to rendezvous with Pojiao Qi. Originally, they had no intention of penetrating deep into the Federation—first because breaking through on his own shouldn't have been hard for Pojiao Qi, and second because they feared walking into a trap. But they never expected Pojiao Qi would end up dead the moment he reached the border, before he could even send a signal. Where exactly he had died was unknown; who killed him was a mystery; and the goods were gone. Left with no choice, they had taken a desperate gamble and captured two police officers for questioning.