Su Qing was only frozen for a moment. Then he lowered his head. Seeming methodical, he locked the car, then leaned against the car door and put a cigarette in his mouth. He was spotted by Hu Bugui, who took the cigarette as he passed by him and quietly said, “How many have you smoked today? Aren’t you finished?” 

Su Qing smacked his lips, looked at him a little gloomily, and reached out to fish around in his pocket, but in the end he didn’t dare to take out a second cigarette. Ji Pengcheng laughed silently as he looked at him. Su Qing glanced at him expressionlessly, and the old swindler couldn’t keep laughing. He thought that there was hidden murderousness in the little fox demon’s eyes. 

Jiang Lan didn’t want to say anything else to them. She went right in after the man who had met them to find somewhere to rest. Hu Bugui and Lu Qingbai carried Zheng Wan’s body inside. Su Qing craned his neck and looked on. Seeing them go in, he immediately turned around and deftly lit a cigarette. Then he grabbed Ji Pengcheng by the collar and laughed nastily. “Come on, old man. The two of us are going to have a chat.” 

Ji Pengcheng struggled, fiercely hitting him over the head with the fan in his hand. “Respect the elderly! Respect the elderly, don’t you understand?!” 

Su Qing said, “Hmph.” 

He hauled Ji Pengcheng to a small pond in a corner. Two children were squatting there playing with rubber ducks. They simultaneously raised their heads and gave the two of them strange looks. Su Qing beamed and took some candy from his pocket. “Here, have some candy, kids. Uncle has some things to say to grandpa, you two go play somewhere else, all right?” 

A prickly-headed little sprout stood up and looked at him disdainfully. “What candy? Are you humoring minors?” 

The other one, a little girl with a long braid, rubbed two fingers together, putting on a vulgar expression inconsistent with her age. “Uncle, I can see that you’re loaded. Put it here.” 

These tones very familiar. These two were simply Tu Tutu Number 2 and Tu Tutu Number 3. At a glance, it was obvious which scourge had taught them. Su Qing glared at the jeering Ji Pengcheng and silently took twenty yuan out of his pocket, putting ten into each child’s hand. Only then did the two kids pick up their rubber ducks and bounce off happily. 

Ji Pengcheng fixed his collar, which Su Qing had wrinkled, then sat down by the pond, shaking his head. “Well, brat? You don’t seem especially surprised to see me.” 

Su Qing crossed his arms over his chest. With a cigarette in his mouth, he leaned back against a tree and looked at him coldly. 

Ji Pengcheng waved a hand. “Hey, don’t be like that. An old swindler can have something of a passionate youth, too—here, light shifu a cigarette.” 

Su Qing tossed a pack of cigarettes and a lighter at him. Ji Pengcheng clicked his tongue and slowly put a cigarette in his mouth, then rather pleasurably took a big drag. 

“I’ve gotten old.” He tilted his head up at a forty-five degree angle to look at the sky. Rather melancholically, he said, “When you ran away from the RZ Unit back then, Lao Xiong gave me a call and told me to find you.” 

Su Qing looked at him suspiciously. 

Ji Pengcheng laughed mockingly. “Lao Xiong and those others, they spend their lives hemmed in by rules and regulations. They couldn’t find you, but how could I not find you? They have people above. I have people below. There’s no comparison.” 

“In other words…in those three years, when I thought I’d run pretty far, I was actually right under General Xiong’s nose?” 

“No, no.” Feeling that there seemed to be shards of ice mixed into Su Qing’s voice, Ji Pengcheng quickly denied it. “How could that be? He only told me to find you, then look after you when I’d found you. Anyway, I don’t think you actually need anyone to look after you.” 

He blissfully breathed in a mouthful of smoke, then continued: “Lao Xiong knew me from way back. When I was young, I acted as his informer. I did quite a few things in defense of the nation that make my blood run hot up to this day. Then we both got old. I retreated to the jianghu, and he was basically ready to retire. Who knew that this would happen?” 

Su Qing didn’t believe half a word of it. He had studied under Ji Pengcheng. Of course he knew that if you could count on a professional swindler to speak the truth, all hoofed animals would climb trees. 

“You’ve been waiting for us?” He looked all around the orphanage’s surroundings. Behind it was a small wholesale market and a street. The place was something like quiet in the midst of noise. “This place is…” 

“This was a connection Lao Xiong and the others left behind.” Ji Pengcheng crushed the cigarette and stood up. When he narrowed his aged eyes and looked at Su Qing, Su Qing suddenly felt that some unspeakable light seemed to flash in those eyes. The old swindler quietly said, “Don’t blame him. He was only a man. This was all he could do. Of the people from back then who knew the circumstances…not many managed to survive.” 

Su Qing’s brow furrowed. Ji Pengcheng sighed. “Do you think it was so easy to build the RZ Unit? Look at the RZ Unit’s structure. Awkward, no? It’s nominally under the military, but to which military district does it concretely belong? Who’s responsible for it? Could you say?” 

Su Qing stared. 

The corners of the old swindler’s mouth turned down slightly. This pulled his whole wrinkled face taut, squeezing out some sharpness by force. Though Su Qing knew that any movement of this face’s facial muscles consisted to some extent of playacting, he still couldn’t resist becoming serious and letting his train of thought follow him. 

“You think that Utopia shouldn’t exist. You think that the blue seals are all bad, right?” Ji Pengcheng glanced at him. 

Su Qing frowned. “Bad?” 

He thought that this word was a little strange. Normally only children said it, calling things bad. Having gone through the experience of university entrance exams, no matter whether you were a top student or a failure, a liberal arts major or a science major, you still learned how to regard questions dialectically.  

After a long moment, Su Qing finally shook his head. “Actually…you couldn’t say that, could you? I’ve always thought that blue seals were a different kind of living creature from human beings. They’re like vampires, you know? They were originally human, but later, through some process, they reached the top of the food chain.” 

“Vampires.” Ji Pengcheng considered for a moment, then denied it: “No, no, no, you’re wrong. Vampires are a type of creature that could never occupy a large place on Earth. They’re solitary and think themselves great, living in their own era—the most important thing is that Earth’s environment is unsuitable for them to live in.” 

Su Qing couldn’t resist laughing quietly. 

Ji Pengcheng waved a hand. “Don’t laugh, what I’m saying is true. Vampires can only be monsters, a source of contagion, but they’re not a race. Do you understand? The blue seals are different. The blue seals are a tool. It’s Utopia that is the new race. They will develop a new civilization.” 

“Scientific terrorism?” Su Qing asked. 

“Only the minority calls it scientific terrorism.” Ji Pengcheng looked at him. “You’ve seen Utopia’s methods. You think that that base was very drab—you’re even one of their victims yourself. You think that they have no regard for the laws, that they don’t see people as people. They’re a pack of scum, barbarians wearing the skin of technology and civilization.” 

Su Qing thought about it, then nodded. 

“But if all the world’s governments were controlled by Utopia, then what do you think would happen?” 

Su Qing stared. 

Ji Pengcheng laughed quietly. “Then there wouldn’t be any more terrorism. Everything they’re doing now, they might still keep doing it, but everything will go underground. It won’t impact the lives of the vast majority of common people in the world. If the RZ Unit still exists then, what name do you think the masses and public opinion will give you? Violent terrorists? If you’re shot dead one day, many people who have nothing to do with it will observe online, and after observing, everyone will go back to their own business. Maybe a little girl or two will write a story called ‘Su Qing died and he wasn’t with Zheng Qinghua, I don’t believe in love anymore’!”

Su Qing’s expression simply couldn’t be described as constipated anymore. 

“I think that you’ve already seen what these two sides are striving for,” Ji Pengcheng said. 

Su Qing frowned. “When we left headquarters, there were people above making it easy for us. Captain Hu thought then that the authorities didn’t necessarily want to touch us, as though…” 

He hesitated. “I’ll make an unsuitable comparison. It’s like when the Eight-Nation Alliance entered China. At the start, wasn’t the Qing government’s attitude towards the Yihetuan Movement also ambivalent¹? But later I found that that wasn’t what we should be afraid of. The people who made it easy for us and the contact receiving us now must all have been organized by General Xiong. We’ve been moving from light to shadow only because we’re riding his wind.” 

Ji Pengcheng looked at him. “If you know that, then you’re better off than that big idiot.” 

Su Qing immediately answered, “Scram. Don’t talk about my man that way.” 

Ji Pengcheng was horrified. Even he hadn’t expected Su Qing’s face to be so thick. It completely shut him up so he couldn’t say a single word. 

Su Qing glanced at him and gave a very evil smile. He pinched out his cigarette and stood where the wind was blowing. When he felt that the smell of smoke on him had mostly dispersed, he turned to go inside. 

Enormous matters still had to be talked about after resting and regrouping, never mind that they had had a rather hair-raising day. 

As soon as Su Qing opened the door, a hand immediately pressed him against the wall. He just had time to laugh. “Hey, how come you’re so forward today…” 

He had hardly spoken before his lips were stopped. 

Getting exactly what he wanted, Su Qing put his arms around Hu Bugui’s shoulders and turned the tables. After clinging together inseparably for a long time, Hu Bugui finally let him go and inhaled deeply to calm his breathing. He looked at Su Qing, his expression grave. “You snuck off to smoke!” 

Su Qing: “…” 

“I can smell the smoke.” 

Su Qing: “…” 

Then, very practiced and boundlessly natural, Hu Bugui reached into his pocket and pulled out a half-crumpled pack of cigarettes. He glanced at it. “There are two missing. What happened?” 

Su Qing stared at him blankly. He really didn’t know what to say. 

Hu Bugui’s expression was stern, seeming prepared to make him account for himself in front of the “organization.” But Su Qing took a step back and began to laugh breathlessly. “You’ve actually been counting the cigarettes in my pack…you’ve actually…hahaha!” 

Hu Bugui looked at him, grim-faced, then suddenly put Su Qing over his shoulder and threw him on the bed, then raised a hand to slap his ass. 

Su Qing gave an “ow,” but considering how hardy he was, he didn’t actually feel it much. He only kept laughing until he was on the verge of tears. Hu Bugui was planning to give him another, but Su Qing hauled on his belt, suddenly throwing himself forward. The two of them rolled onto the bed together. 

Su Qing lowered his eyes and looked at him. He grabbed Hu Bugui’s collar and bent his head, but he covered his mouth with unusual gentleness. 

He was thinking, apart from his dad counting the candy in the candy box when he was little, no one else in his life had ever done such a thing for him… Well, really! He was feeling a mix of all kinds of emotions.