Chapter 23: Making a Phone Call

"Brother?" Wang Chuyi interrupted my thoughts.

I snapped back to reality and waved a hand at him. "Go back for now. Remember, don't get too close to me, and keep your mouth shut. Don't let outsiders know about our conversation tonight, not even my cousin."

Wang Chuyi immediately put on an expression of knowing complicity. He was full of excitement as he bid me farewell. I understood his mindset; he felt he had just been handed an opportunity—a chance to participate in Uncle Yong's plot to seize the Awang Restaurant.

This illusion was one I had deliberately cultivated to leverage his position.

After he left, I touched my own face and gave a bitter, inward laugh. "Brother? Is my face really that weathered? Wang Chuyi, who looks twenty-five or twenty-six, calling a young guy like me 'brother'?"

I chose to interpret it as a term of respect. After all, if he had called me 'little brother,' it would have made him seem lacking in social awareness. I didn't give it much more thought and headed upstairs.

My cousin, Chen Jianjun, was fast asleep, still clutching his prized book—the one with a cover featuring a sexy woman. I took the book from him and flipped to the section on the Thousand Sect.

In truth, this notebook didn't categorize the various trades of the underworld in such meticulous detail. It wasn't like the stories told by street performers, who divide the underworld into the "Upper Nine" and "Lower Nine" classes, or the "Eight Bright Sects" (Gold, Leather, Rags, Colors, Flat, Group, Tune, Willow) and the "Eight Dark Sects" (Bee, Hemp, Swallow, Sparrow, Horizontal, Orchid, Ge, Glory), nor did it mention the "Five Elements, Eight Trades, Five Flowers, Eight Doors, and Seventy-two Oligarchs."

Liu Jianshan had an explanation for this. He said that most people walking the path of the Lower Nine trades back then were illiterate. Since they were considered the lowest of the low, their methods boiled down to nothing more than swindling, begging, stealing, and prostitution. Regardless of which sect they belonged to, their tactics inevitably touched upon these four pillars.

Take fortune-tellers, for example. They belong to the Gold Sect, but don't they cheat people when they tell fortunes? Of course they do. If they are cheating, don't they also fall under the Thousand Sect?

Or consider the "Immortal Jump"—using a beautiful woman to lure a man home, catching them in the act, and then blackmailing him. Luring the man is a mix of the Thousand and Prostitution arts, while the blackmail belongs to the Horizontal Sect. Which one would you classify them under?

Regarding this chaos, there is a saying in the underworld: "The underworld road is like a flower; Gold, Ge, Orchid, and Glory are all one family."

In fact, many who walked the underworld couldn't read a single word; how could they possibly distinguish which sect they belonged to? It was only because their actions were strange and cautious that street performers and scholars embellished the truth to highlight their mystery. By summarizing their behavioral patterns and underworld slang, they eventually categorized them into this sect or that, coming up with fancy-sounding rhymes.

When these underworld figures heard them, they’d think, "Damn, there’s a name for the shady stuff I do? Selling snake oil makes me a Leather or Ge sect member? Running a fraud ring makes me a Thousand Sect general? A prostitute currying favor with men is part of the Orchid Sect? These scholars are good at reading; the names sound so badass! I’ll use these titles to walk the underworld from now on."

Then, through the compilation of scholars, underworld figures began to form sects and develop rules. "First came the underworld, then the sects; the scholar was the one who gave them names." That is another common saying in the underworld.

Casinos, according to this refined terminology, belong to the Thousand Sect’s Blue Path.

The art of cheating at the casino actually originated from the Color Sect. What did the Color Sect do? They performed tricks and magic. All their skill was in their hands. Applying the sleight-of-hand techniques of the Color Sect to cheat in a casino is what people traditionally understand as a "card shark."

I was eager to read Liu Jianshan’s introduction to gambling scams, but I was deeply disappointed. The next page contained only one line:

"Gambling is like opium. A man who gets hooked on gambling is like one who has taken to the pipe; eventually, all his ambition will be extinguished, until he is reduced to a useless wreck."

Beneath this line was a cell phone number.

I could sense Liu Jianshan’s hatred for gambling. I couldn't help but be curious. If we are talking about dirty tricks, none of the Lower Nine sects are clean. Liu Jianshan wrote in great detail about all the other sects; why leave out the Thousand Sect’s Blue Path? Had Liu Jianshan once suffered because of gambling?

Impossible! Even though nine out of ten bets are rigged, I absolutely did not believe that Liu Jianshan, who understood the underworld so thoroughly, would fall for it. In my heart, he was a god of the underworld—an omnipotent god.

Whose phone number was this? Was it Senior Liu Jianshan's? Or did it imply something else?

This discovery kept me tossing and turning, unable to sleep. Eventually, I drifted off, only to wake up automatically at six o'clock. I didn't have the habit of staying in bed.

When I was little, my father would be busy carrying stones at a quarry over ten miles away and had to leave before seven. My mother would leave at about the same time to cut grass for the livestock. I would always wake up after six to help them with whatever I could—getting wash water for my father, stoking the fire for my mother—until it became a biological clock.

After I washed up, my cousin Chen Jianjun was still snoring away. I didn't wake him and tiptoed downstairs.

The streets already had a few scattered groups of people—some heading to work, others just finishing the night shift. I ran to a street-side convenience store, bought a phone card, and went to a public phone booth to call that number.

My heart was pounding. How I longed to hear the voice of Senior Liu Jianshan, whom I had met once on the train. I wanted to thank him; without him, I would still be buzzing around like a headless fly.

The phone rang for more than twenty seconds without an answer. I thought Senior Liu hadn't woken up yet—it was indeed a bit early, and disturbing someone's sleep was very impolite, so I prepared to hang up.

But just as I was about to hang up, I heard an impatient, weary voice on the other end: "Hello?"

I tremblingly held the phone to my ear and said softly, "Hello, is this Senior Liu Jianshan?"

After I asked, the other end went silent.

After twenty seconds of silence, I thought the signal had dropped, so I said "hello" again and asked, "Can you hear me?"

A sigh came from the other side, then: "I am not Liu Jianshan. Liu Jianshan is... half a master to me."

I froze. Half a master? In my own mind, I had also come to regard Liu Jianshan as my half-master. At that moment, I felt something absurd—had I called my future self?

Now it was my turn to be silent. After another twenty seconds, the person on the other end asked, "Who are you? Why do you know Liu Jianshan, and why do you have my number?"

The feeling of talking to "my future self" was both strange and exhilarating.

I took a deep breath. "I met Senior Liu Jianshan on a train. He thought highly of me and gave me a book, a handwritten copy about the various anecdotes of the old underworld. I found this number in the section on the Thousand Sect’s Blue Path, and I thought it was Senior Liu Jianshan’s number."

After I finished speaking, the other side went silent again.

He was silent, then I was silent. After I was silent, he was silent. It seemed like we were both taking long, deep breaths.

If you asked how I felt at that moment, I could only say: I was pained by the cost of the phone bill.