Old Master, Don't Get Excited!

Guan Zhengzhang, Zou Maoqing, and Cao Dayong. The three men were kept in three separate rooms, interrogated respectively by Li Banfeng, the gramophone, and Hong Ying. In the main room, Li Banfeng asked, "What is your rank in the Ferry Gang?" Guan Zhengzhang answered, "I'm the head tracker of the towline team. Trackers usually don't have to go into the water—which means we don't handle business operations—but if something goes wrong, we have to find a way to haul the boat out." Head tracker. Guan Zhengzhang held a position of no small status. "Who holds a higher rank, you or Du Wenming?" In truth, the answer was obvious. The fact that Guan Zhengzhang dared not utter Du Wenming's name was proof enough that Du Wenming outranked him. Li Banfeng asked this to test the extent of Du Wenming's hold over Ferry Gang members. Someone at Guan Zhengzhang's level ought to be able to divulge some insider details. To his surprise, Guan Zhengzhang did not dare mention anything associated with Du Wenming whatsoever. In every sentence he spoke, terms like "Director Du," "Boss Du," "Brother Du," or "that man surnamed Du" were forbidden; Guan Zhengzhang didn't even dare utter words like "put an end to" lightly. Li Banfeng asked, "If you mention those things, will you explode on the spot?" Guan Zhengzhang nodded, not daring to say more. Li Banfeng brought out the dossier Shen Jingye had given him. "You just said trackers don't participate in business. But as far as I know, a batch of ghost servants was delivered from Puluo Province a while ago, and they were sold through your hands." Guan Zhengzhang lowered his head. "It was his order. I had no choice." "Whose order? Du Wenming's?" Guan Zhengzhang nodded repeatedly. "The gang has been strapped for cash lately, and business in the black market has been tough. Quality ghost servants aren't fetching good prices, so for many deals, I had to step forward and broker them personally." "When did the Ferry Gang start running short of money?" "Back before there was a Ferry Gang, things were fine. It was precisely because times got tough that the Ferry Gang was created." "What do you mean by that? Did you know Du Wenming before the Ferry Gang existed?" Guan Zhengzhang hung his head. "I still belong to Xuehuapu. It was because Xuehuapu lacked money that they partnered with those foreigners to establish the Ferry Gang." "Have you been to Puluo Province?" "I have. We went together." He trailed off halfway through his sentence because there was a name he couldn't speak. What he meant in full was that he had gone with Du Wenming. "The person who went with you—how many residences does he have in Yuezhou?" Guan Zhengzhang kept his head down and remained silent. Li Banfeng pressed, "You only need to name the most critical one. Find a way to tell me." Guan Zhengzhang pondered for a long time. For safety's sake, he chose to remain silent. Li Banfeng brought out the Hanxue pendulum. "If you won't listen to reason, we'll have to communicate by other means." In the second room, the gramophone asked, "Did you take a pill back then, or were you hit with a technique? What method did Du Wenming use to place a curse on you? Tell me the truth, and perhaps I can help you unravel the curse." "There's no curse on us," Zou Maoqing said, looking at the gramophone, his tongue practically tying itself in knots as he spoke. The gramophone blasted a patch of scalded blisters onto Zou Maoqing with steam. "I only asked you about the curse; I didn't ask you to mention Du Wenming. Wouldn't you rather leave yourself a way out?" Enduring the excruciating pain, Zou Maoqing shook his head repeatedly. "There really isn't a curse... We don't..." In the third room, Hong Ying ran her sword through Cao Dayong's left shoulder. "You're dead either way. Wouldn't you rather make it quick? Just tell me the truth: Does Du Wenming have other hideouts in Yuezhou? If he does, spit out the addresses. The more you say, the faster you'll explode, and the quicker your death will be." Cao Dayong didn't want to die. Gritting his teeth, he refused to speak. Hong Ying chuckled. "I truly admire your backbone. Let me carve those bones out and see just how much grit is inside." The three interrogations lasted two hours, yielding a total of nine hideouts. The gramophone elicited five, while Li Banfeng and Hong Ying got two each. It wasn't that the three men were stubbornly heroic and refused to talk; it was that if they voluntarily disclosed the location of a hideout, they would explode. The gramophone possessed interrogative finesse. Circling around the subject dozens of times, she tricked Zou Maoqing into revealing three extra addresses. Li Banfeng compared the nine addresses together: four of them were duplicates, but the remaining five were completely distinct. Capturing three men had been intended to cross-check their statements against one another to avoid being misled, yet it had produced this outcome. As to which of the five hideouts held real value, the gramophone wasn't sure, and Hong Ying couldn't say either. Ever since Lühuazi was sent to Daogui Ridge, Du Wenming had proven to be the most troublesome opponent Li Banfeng had encountered. With no alternative, Li Banfeng decided to visit them all. The first hideout was inside a residential apartment building, closest to the city center—an apartment of just over fifty square meters. This size clearly wasn't suitable for large equipment; Li Banfeng deduced it was probably used to store key documents. It was a one-bedroom, one-living-room layout, very compact. The moment they entered, the glove discovered several hidden compartments. There were some in the wardrobe, under the floorboards, and inside the walls. The compartments weren't large, and they were completely empty. Li Banfeng was too late. Du Wenming had likely already visited this hideout and moved everything out. The second hideout was a warehouse in Baiyuan District. Du Wenming had leased one of the storage units here on a long-term basis. Entering the unit, Li Banfeng found several crates of radio equipment. Most of them were still unopened, likely newly procured by Du Wenming. Having a scientific hobby was no crime, and the equipment had been acquired through legal channels. The glove found nothing of value inside them, which meant the equipment hadn't been modified and contained no fine materials like Heavenly Heart Stone. Du Wenming hadn't gotten around to moving the contents of the warehouse yet—or perhaps there was truly nothing here worth moving. The third hideout was a basement. Located in an urban village, it had previously been rented out to tenants before Du Wenming leased the entire space. Entering the basement, Li Banfeng found no useful materials, but he could tell what the place was used for. It was a conference room. A long table, leather chairs, white porcelain mugs, and thermos flasks—just seeing them made Li Banfeng drowsy. The Ferry Gang had likely held regular meetings here, but Du Wenming certainly wouldn't be in the mood for meetings anytime soon, rendering this conference room essentially useless. None of the first three hideouts held much value. Li Banfeng dusted off his trouser legs and continued on his way. Fortunately, he was a travel cultivator. If he had been a sloth cultivator, let alone visiting them all in person, just contemplating the locations of five hideouts would have left him mentally and physically exhausted. The fourth hideout was a fishpond. Du Wenming had leased a fishpond and hired a laborer to raise fish there. By regulation, Du Wenming's official post strictly forbade commercial activities. Did raising fish count as a violation? Not quite. From speaking with the laborer, Li Banfeng learned that Du Wenming never sold the fish he raised; he did it purely for recreation. Even if it were a violation, Li Banfeng couldn't be bothered to care. His interest in this fishpond stemmed from the fact that the glove had sensed something good. When night fell and the laborer clocked off, Li Banfeng slipped into the fishpond. Guided by the glove's judgment, he dug up something extraordinarily valuable from the mud at the pond's bottom. That valuable thing was money. A full eight million in cash, sealed in waterproof bags and buried beneath the muck. This emergency fund was something Du Wenming hadn't managed to retrieve in time either. "Glovey, we ran around for an entire day just for this little bit of cash?" "Keep it, it's better than nothing. Besides, isn't there still one place left?" The final hideout was a factory in the distant suburbs. The factory manufactured cement slabs. By the time Li Banfeng arrived, the workers had long since gone home. After circling the plant, he found nothing and couldn't even fathom what purpose this factory served. Then an item reacted: the alms bowl. There was a dark-dimension space here. Behind the workshop, Li Banfeng located the entrance to the dark-dimension space. Rotating the spoon inside the bowl, he opened the way inside. This belonged to the most tightly sealed type of dark-dimension space: the outside couldn't see in, the inside couldn't see out, completely cut off from one another. Stepping into the space, Li Banfeng used the light of the projector's flame to take in the surroundings. Spectrometers, resonance instruments, interferometers... For a fleeting moment, he suspected he had come to the wrong place, feeling as though he had returned to Yu Yaoming's laboratory. The layout of the equipment here was nearly identical to that lab. He had finally found the core hideout—this was Du Wenming's personal laboratory! Yet where did this laboratory get its power? As far as Li Banfeng knew, several machines in this kind of lab consumed a staggering amount of electricity. "Glovey, is there anything valuable here?" "Yes, and it seems very valuable!" Glovey was tallying the value, unable to give an exact figure right away. "Are the good things inside these machines?" Li Banfeng thought the situation would be identical to the previous lab. The glove wagged its index finger. "Not in the machines. These machines are similar to the ones in that lab, but there's nothing good inside them." The critical components might have been taken—or perhaps they had never been installed in the first place. If they hadn't been installed, that was actually good news, proving Du Wenming hadn't returned yet. If they had already been taken, this trip would be another waste. Passing between the laboratory equipment, Li Banfeng first encountered a wall, followed by a door. A wall and a door? Du Wenming had renovated this dark-dimension space. There was hardly any dust on the concrete wall, proving he had been here recently and cleaned diligently. What lay on the other side of the door? The glove spent ten minutes picking the lock. Pushing open the heavy iron door, Li Banfeng saw a deep corridor lined on both sides with identical iron doors. The glove opened the first iron door. Behind it stood two rows of iron cabinets, each roughly the size of a trash can beside an elevator, fitted with display screens showing various parameters. A layman might have mistaken them for advanced experimental equipment, but Li Banfeng had seen such things back in his college days—these were DC battery banks, the lab's power source. Judging from the parameters, the battery banks had been completely drained of charge, most likely depleted by Du Wenming before he left. Leaving the battery room, the glove unlocked the next room, which turned out to be an electrical distribution room. Moving on to the next room, Li Banfeng stepped into a bedroom. Inside was a bed, with bedding still resting upon it. This was presumably Du Wenming's living quarters. The projector suddenly spoke up: "A friend of mine is here." Li Banfeng followed the glow of the flame and looked up. Mounted on the bedroom ceiling was a flush ceiling light, and beside it was a surveillance camera. The projector gazed at the camera for a moment, then said to Li Banfeng, "My friend says a middle-aged man used to stay here. Last night, he was taken away." "Taken by whom?" "He says it was the master of this place." The master of this place was Du Wenming, so who was the person staying here? "Can you let me see what that middle-aged man looks like?" The projector communicated with the camera for a moment. "Director Qi, the camera has lost power. It can't display footage." In truth, there was no need for footage; Li Banfeng could deduce the gist of it. Yu Yaoming had been kept here; Du Wenming had imprisoned him in this place. After the battle at the lab, Du Wenming realized things were heading south and whisked Yu Yaoming away. Aside from Yu Yaoming, reasonable deduction suggested Du Wenming would take anything of value with him. If he had taken everything, why did the glove still claim there was something valuable? Li Banfeng returned to the hallway and checked each room one by one. He found a storage room, a restroom, a server room, and a shower room. There was also a spacious dance studio, its walls lined with mirrors, fitted with specialized dance flooring, and various colored light fixtures hanging from the ceiling. Under conditions almost completely isolated from the outside world, Li Banfeng found it hard to imagine how Du Wenming had completed such an immense construction project. It definitely wasn't done alone; a craft cultivator must have helped him—and a very high-level craft cultivator at that, quite possibly a member of Xuehuapu. It was also thanks to this craft cultivator that Du Wenming could be made up to look identical to a marionette. Inside the dance studio stood an unlocked cabinet containing numerous dance training manuals. Judging purely by monetary value, these manuals certainly weren't precious, but to a dance cultivator, they were the equivalent of martial arts secret manuals. Li Banfeng actually noticed one set of manuals among them, which happened to explain the String-Puppet Marionette Dance. Such a dance really did exist. Li Banfeng collected the dance manuals; perhaps they held a way to counter Du Wenming. Next to the dance studio was an archive room, entirely bare with nothing left behind. Li Banfeng no longer harbored any hope for this hideout. When he reached the end of the corridor, he saw the final iron door. The glove examined the lock. "Master, this lock won't be easy to crack. You'll have to wait on me a bit." An unremarkable lock on the surface with no obvious features, yet after toiling for half an hour, the glove still hadn't opened it. It claimed there was something valuable behind the iron door, but what could it be? Why would Du Wenming leave it here? "Brother, forget picking the lock. I'll just walk through the wall." "Master, don't be rash. You don't know what's on the other side." "Then I'll blaze a trail first." "Master, this is someone else's territory, and an unnameable place to boot! We'd better be cautious. If you blaze a trail and cause the whole place to collapse, we'll take a huge loss!" Click— After waiting another ten minutes, the lock finally opened. Li Banfeng carefully pushed the door open, maximizing his omen-divining technique to sense any danger on the other side. The space beyond the door seemed far larger than what lay inside. There was indeed danger on the other side, but within manageable bounds. When Li Banfeng opened the door all the way, he saw the two treasures and understood why Du Wenming hadn't taken them. These two treasures were simply too massive. Two spheres, each over ten meters in diameter, floated in the space beyond the door, rotating slowly. They spun on their own axes while orbiting one another, like two planets drifting in the cosmos. Li Banfeng couldn't tell what material the spheres were made of. They looked like stone, yet gave off a faint metallic sheen. It wasn't reflected light; the spheres themselves radiated a dim glow, gossamer threads of light gliding across their surfaces like layers of veins. "These are the treasures you were talking about?" "Yes, Master!" "Come on, let's bring them into the companion dwelling." "We can't squeeze them in! Look how small our house is!" No sooner had the glove said this than Li Banfeng heard an urgent steam whistle. Woo, woo-oo! The Old Master had awakened? He'd only just woken up, yet he sounded so frantic. The glove gave a reminder. "Master, no need for us to do the heavy lifting for good stuff. The Old Master's hands are quick, and they're huge! Step a bit closer; I reckon the Old Master can stow them away all on his own." Li Banfeng took two steps toward the spheres. Like magnets, the spheres exerted an attractive pull, drawing Li Banfeng closer. Where was this force coming from? Even if these two spheres were magnets, Li Banfeng wasn't made of iron. Why was he being pulled toward them? Resisting the spheres' force with his own strength, he carefully took two steps closer. When he was about three meters away, Li Banfeng halted. He couldn't get any closer; go any further, and he might not be able to pull back. If this were a ground-level cultivator, they would already be plastered flat against the spheres. The glove noticed something stuck to one of the spheres—something of considerable worth, likely fashioned from solid gold. It flew toward the sphere as well, its form teetering on the verge of losing control. Li Banfeng grabbed the glove and hauled it back with all his might. "What do you think you're doing?" "Master, I grabbed a goodie! Take a look first—" Before the glove could display the prize, the two spheres suddenly shrank and vanished. The space became empty and pitch-black, and Li Banfeng heard a long, drawn-out steam whistle. Woo— Mingled with the whistle was a burst of laughter. Hahaha! The glove wagged its index finger and said to Li Banfeng, "The Old Master's got them! We can't go back empty-handed either. Here's what I just snatched. Master, feast your eyes—it's pure gold." Li Banfeng took a piece of gold from the glove. Judging by its shape and size, it resembled a leaf. A golden leaf? No, it wasn't a leaf. There was an emblem on it—a tree. On the trunk was another design, resembling a pair of eyes. What kind of tree has eyes? A birch tree! This was a badge—likely an insignia of the Birch Hermitage. Why had this badge ended up stuck to the sphere? Li Banfeng exited the dark-dimension space, left the factory, found a patch of grass nearby to conceal the key, and stepped into the companion dwelling. "Old Master, you're awake?" "Mm, awake!" the companion dwelling responded cheerfully. Li Banfeng asked, "What treasure did you come across just now to make you this happy?" "Heavenly Heart Stones! Two whole pieces!" "Those things just now were Heavenly Heart Stones?" They were completely different from what Li Banfeng had imagined Heavenly Heart Stones to be. "Indeed! Those were two intact Heavenly Heart Stones—intact!" "Didn't those components I brought back before have Heavenly Heart Stone too?" "Those were mere fragments, nowhere near the same! Back then, when Chu Shaoqiang moved Daogui Ridge to Sage Peak, he used intact Heavenly Heart Stones like these!" Li Banfeng recalled the appearance of the two spheres. "Those things were massive." The Old Master sighed. "Good thing there were two of them. If there had only been one, you'd have been in deep trouble." The glove chuckled. "Old Master, you're getting greedy. Even if there were only one, wouldn't that still be a massive gain?" "It's not a matter of how much you gain. With two Heavenly Heart Stones, their attractions cancel each other out, which is why you could still stand near them. If there had been only one, you would definitely have been pulled flat against the stone, and saving you wouldn't have been easy." "Pulled flat against the stone?" Li Banfeng listened, bewildered. The gramophone understood a bit better. "The attraction the Old Master refers to is likely what the Outer Province calls gravity." "The gravity of two spheres could be that enormous?" According to the law of gravitation, gravity depended on mass and distance. For two spheres to generate such tremendous gravity, just how dense were they? There was too much information; Li Banfeng needed to sort out his thoughts. After thinking for over half an hour, he pieced together the sequence of events. After abducting Yu Yaoming, Du Wenming had housed him in this hideout and reconfigured the laboratory according to Yu Yaoming's requirements. The key components were missing from the lab because they were alloyed with Heavenly Heart Stone. Because the material was difficult to obtain, Du Wenming chose to steal them from Yu Yaoming's original laboratory. No, wait. He had two intact Heavenly Heart Stones right here. Why hadn't he sourced material locally and fabricated the components himself? Fabricating components likely took a long time, but stealing them from the laboratory carried immense risks. In fact, Du Wenming's operation had already failed: he hadn't managed to steal the parts from the lab, had ended up wounded, and was now in a very precarious position where his identity could be exposed at any moment. The only reasonable explanation for why he hadn't used the Heavenly Heart Stones in the dark-dimension space to craft components was that these two intact stones were far too precious. Moreover, these two Heavenly Heart Stones had another purpose: if they could move Daogui Ridge, they could certainly move this dark-dimension space as well. The clues connected. Du Wenming had wanted to use the Heavenly Heart Stones to relocate this hideout, but he hadn't succeeded, and the birch badge on him had even been pulled away by the stones. Why had he failed? "Only craft cultivators can use Heavenly Heart Stones to move a territory, right?" The Old Master thought about it. "Cultivators of other pathways can give it a try, but unless their cultivation is absurdly high, they could try thousands of times and still never succeed." Du Wenming had tried, and clearly failed. So what was he doing now? He belonged to Xuehuapu, and also to the Birch Hermitage. At this moment, he would be looking for help— A helper who could relocate the laboratory. Inside an unfinished office building, Du Wenming stood at the 28th-floor stairwell, looking at a man higher up the stairs. The man held calipers in his hand and dangled a half-smoked cigarette from his lips. Keeping half a flight of stairs between them, he asked, "What do you want?" Du Wenming said, "I need your help with something. It's about my research base. I want to—" Before he could finish, the man waved a hand. "I don't recall you having any research base. Whatever it is, let's talk about it some other time." Du Wenming stepped up two steps. "My situation is extremely dangerous right now. I don't have time—" The man signaled him to halt immediately and advance no further. "I know you're in danger, which is why it's best you don't come looking for me right now." Du Wenming shifted on his toes on the step. "Is it appropriate to speak to me like that?" The man stroked the calipers in his hands. "I'm not with the Ferry Gang, nor am I with Xuehuapu. However I speak to you feels entirely appropriate to me." Du Wenming gave a faint smile. "I only wish to trade our friendship for trust and assistance." The man shook his head. "I don't trust you. Word has already reached me that you're silencing people everywhere. Three people have already vanished. If I go to your lab, I'm afraid I won't come back alive." "I don't know where you heard such rumors. I haven't silenced anyone, and I haven't killed a soul these past two days." Du Wenming took two more steps upward. Bang! Two floor tiles on the stair jutted upward, locking Du Wenming's right foot in place. The man issued another warning: "Don't come any higher. Didn't I already say so? I don't trust you. I can promise I won't report you, so get out of here now." Du Wenming's expression darkened. "And if I don't leave?" The man snapped the two jaws of the calipers together. "You really want to fight here?" Du Wenming fell silent for a moment, then abandoned the idea of resorting to force. He wasn't afraid of this craft cultivator, but this office building was right in the city center. If they caused a commotion, getting away wouldn't be easy. Du Wenming left with Yu Yaoming. The man let out a long breath and meticulously inspected the mechanisms throughout the building, dreading that Du Wenming might double back. When he checked down to the eighth floor, he suddenly heard footsteps. He whipped around, spinning the calipers rapidly in his hand. The footsteps drew closer. The newcomer wasn't Du Wenming, but a middle-aged man—lean in build, with a square face, thick eyebrows, and large eyes. His chin was clean-shaven, while a small mustache adorned his upper lip. Relieved that it was a false alarm, the man wiped the sweat from his forehead and asked, "Boss Lu, what brings you here?" Boss Lu held up a bag of books. "The books you ordered from my shop arrived, so I brought them over to you." Walking along the street, Yu Yaoming's stomach rumbled incessantly. "You could have at least asked your friend for some money! We don't even have enough to buy food!" Du Wenming scoffed. "Didn't you see his attitude just now? Asking him for spending money under these circumstances—don't you have any dignity?" Yu Yaoming shook his head. "Not a single coin to our names, unable to even afford a bowl of noodles, and you're talking about dignity?" "I have plenty of money. I just didn't want to risk retrieving it. I'll take you there now; take as much as you can carry." Du Wenming brought Yu Yaoming to the fishpond. "Can you swim?" Yu Yaoming shook his head. "Then wait on the bank, and whatever you do, don't wander off." Du Wenming plunged into the water himself. Before long, he emerged caked in mud. "Where's the money?" Du Wenming held up two fish he had grabbed from the pond. "The money's gone, but we still have fish to eat." Back at his residence, Li Banfeng lay on the sofa, quietly staring at the calendar. By tomorrow night, the staining agent would fade, and Du Wenming could return straight to work. He would have plenty of explaining to do, but he was bound to smooth it over. Having lost two Heavenly Heart Stones, he would surely be aching with grief—and after that grief, he would continue fighting Li Banfeng to the bitter end. Having clashed so many times, Li Banfeng didn't mind a few more bouts, but after cornering Du Wenming to such an extent, the thought of the man escaping scot-free left Li Banfeng deeply dissatisfied. At the very least, he couldn't let Du Wenming reclaim his official position or use that status to target him again. There was still one day left. What else could he do? The phone rang; it was Tang Changfa. "Shopkeeper, that bunch of foreigners is back. They're acting all secretive—doesn't look like they're here to do business. Seems like they're looking for trouble again." Looking for trouble in the black market? Were they setting another trap? Li Banfeng looked at the gold badge and pondered for a moment. They had set traps so many times. Perhaps he ought to play along and walk right into one?