The Tale Never Ends

“But why!?” Everyone blurted as one. I snickered. “Zhang Zhigui is hardly the smartest person we know. Someone else must have goaded him or induced him to lie to us.”

“Huh?!” Lin Feng scratched his head. “What’s going on?! Who’s lying to whom actually?! I’m getting confused!” Zheng Shuang slapped his thigh in dawning comprehension. “I see! So that’s what’s going on!” That made every head turned to him. “You understand what’s going on?” A voice asked and he nodded. “Yes. After listening to Shiyan’s deduction. Zhang Zhigui is indeed in trouble, and that is why Shiyan insists that we should go to his aid! Zhang Zhigui is trying to lure you to Yishui. For what and why, I cannot say. But I don’t think it’s for anything pleasant. But he is doing this only due to coercion or persuasion by someone else. Someone whom he trusts very much. Someone close to him. That makes it very dangerous for him. An unknown person with insidious intents whispering into his ears, poisoning his thoughts. I remember you once told me about another cult that Zhang Zhigui is fighting against? A cult that sounds like the Creed of the Eight Trigrams that we’d defeated. So, there’s a possibility that this unknown person is a member of this cult!”

I snapped my finger and pointed at him. “Exactly.” Lin Feng stared at me and swung his head back at Zheng Shuang which he remained transfixed for almost a second before he uttered suddenly, “What are you two?! Sherlock and Watson?!” Zheng Shuang got up at once and adjusted his uniform, brushing out any wrinkles and folds and exclaimed proudly, “Come on now, let’s be clear: I’m the Sherlock Holmes here!” “And I’m the Conan Doyle of the mystic domain!” I quipped. Zheng Shuang choked, turned around and muttered sheepishly, “Wow, Shiyan, since when you’re so good with jokes!”

With that, we made plans for our departure to Yishui Town with a better keynote of what was going on with Zhang Zhigui. The entire evening had been spent discussing and my stomach was growling when I checked my watch to see that it was already six. “So, what shall we be having for dinner?” I asked everyone, “Let me buy you guys dinner as an apology for the furor I’ve caused with my disappearance.” The mention of “dinner” was like a shot of adrenaline to Big Sister. Even before anyone could answer, she leaped up from the sofa like an overexcited ferret, screaming, “HOT POT!”

With no objections from anyone else, we adjourned to a hot pot restaurant with conveyor belts ferrying dishes around us like little toy trains. All-you-can-eat dinners like this suited Big Sister best with her voracious appetite which could easily dwarf all seven of us. Yuanyuan and Xiao Yu were hardly big eaters while Chongxi and Edelweiss would at least allow us to get our price’s worth. Lin Feng, Zheng Shuang, and I could not even match Edelweiss when it came to eating, hence it was Big Sister’s penchant for food that we could rely on getting our money’s worth.

Big Sister was staring at the vast array of food that scurried by her like mice on the conveyor belts with misty eyes. Beef, mutton, or chicken; they made no difference to Big Sister. Her reclusive life in the mountains had left her with as much understanding of the modern society as a three-year-old child and just as gullible as one too that I began to dread if anyone might be able to kidnap her with just a hamburger.

Just then, I caught notice of a man from the table next to us rising up from his chair. He began walking towards our table, his height fully drawn up with his shoulders spread out like how a thug would. From his seat at the table, he could have easily seen Big Sister clearly. I could already guess his reason for coming over, dressed in a sleeveless shirt despite the cold weather and walking over in a gait which flaunted the mantis shrimp tattoo he was obviously so proud of.

The thug came to our table and stopped beside Big Sister. He bent down and accosted her with a broad grin. “I have not seen you here before, lady. Would you mind leaving me your Wechat ID?” Big Sister stared at him incredulously and asked, “What’s a Wechat ID?” Mistaking it as an innocuous form of rebuff by Big Sister, the thug straightened up and looked at us. None of us paid him any heed, preferring to withhold our attention on our food with only Zheng Shuang looking up at him. Thinking that all of us except for Zheng Shuang were afraid of him, he flexed his biceps again, trying once more to show off his tattoo in a menacing manner.

Us continuing to ignore him and focus on eating somehow made him even more pleased. He bent down again and wrapped his arm around Big Sister’s shoulder, “It’s fine, lady. Look.” He pointed at the building opposite the restaurant. “I’m a VIP member at the hotel opposite. How bout we go there for a quiet little chat?”

Little did the buffoon realize that Big Sister hardly understood a word he said. She looked at the thug still grinning sleazily at her and looked at the hand grabbing at her shoulder before she blinked twice and barked at me, “Who is this, Little Brother?” I looked at her and smiled benignly. “I don’t know him.” She nodded thoughtfully and asked again, “What was he telling me just now?” With an expressive smile, I said, “He’s trying to start a conversation with you, Sister. Or more precisely, he’s trying to accost and tease you.”

The thug slammed a fist into the table when he heard me, flustered and angered. “You have guts, boy! Do you know on whose toes you are stepping on!?” A bunch of stifled gasps and chortles could be heard from all around the restaurant. Big Sister was still wearing an oblivious look, clearly failing to comprehend what was happening; animals do not react to human jokes. But the thug was seething with rage at being made a fool of by what I said. He reached for a half-empty beer bottle and smashed its bottom at the edge of our table. Splinters of glass and beer rained down the floor. The thug pointed the broken beer bottle at me threateningly and bellowed, “VERY GOOD, BOY! LET’S SETTLE THIS WITH…”

He did not even finish. There was first a loud bang and we saw the thug flying like a cannon ball before he crashed into his table, bringing his friends and mates down with him together. It was Big Sister! She had kicked the thug so hard that he flew!

Big Sister stood over the men lying on the ground amidst the damage and debris, speaking loudly with ice in her voice, “I do not understand what you were saying just now, nor do I have any interest to understand you. But threaten my brother again and you’ll pay!” Out of nowhere, the Qinglan’s Edge had materialized in her hand even before I noticed it.

The ruffians crawled to their feet with the leading thug who accosted Big Sister boiling with rage. The dumb brute did not even realize how a sword appear in Big Sister’s hand. With an angry roar, he cried, “I’ll have your hides tonight! Come on, guys! Hit them!” Big Sister tensed; she was hardly a person of many words. Instead, she made the Seal of the Sword, readying herself to attack. I immediately grabbed her hand and stopped her. Then I shot a quick look at Edelweiss. “Can you handle them for me, dear?”

Everyone else in the restaurant stopped eating as the entire commotion managed to draw a small crowd of people whipping out phones to take pictures and record videos of the fight. With a girlish and adorable smile at me, Edelweiss turned to face the ruffians alone, her face turning swiftly into the snarl of a tigress…

In just a matter of seconds, the rowdy hoots and heckles by the gangsters turned into an endless peal of agonizing screams and groans of pain. All of the ruffians were left writhing on the ground when the fight ended and Edelweiss quickly turned back into the demure and dutiful wife sitting beside me. The leading thug dug through his pockets for his phone and quickly made a call. Much to our surprise and amusement, what I thought was a call to more gang members for reinforcements turned out into a phone call to the police station, “Hello! Is this the police station! I’m at the buffet hot pot joint just opposite the hospital! We’re being walloped badly…”

A hand appeared out of nowhere to snatch at his phone before he could finish and the person listened and replied, “It’s fine. It’s Zheng Shuang here. This bunch of fools picked a fight they never thought they would lose and now they’re licking their wounds for it.” Immediately, Zheng Shuang ended the call and tossed the phone to the ground. The iPhone landed with a loud smack and everything broke into smithereens. He fished from his pocket his police identification card and waved it in front of the bewildered faces of the ruffians and announced himself, “Captain of the Wu Zhong Police Department.” The entire gang of ruffians shook with fright when they finally saw who Zheng Shuang was and he guffawed proudly, “That’s what you get for stepping on the toes of a tigress! Serves you right!”

“Are you all police officers!?” The leading thug asked in a wavering voice with tears streaming down his face. Chongxi came and looked at him deeply into his eyes, his feet crushing what was left of the broken phone with ominous crunching coming from under his feet. “You do not watch much local news, do you?” Anyone who watched the local news regularly would have recognized us, for our exploits with the local police have frequently become the talk of the town.

But we could never continue our dinner in peace at the hot pot restaurant after all the mess we had caused. In fact, I doubt the proprietor would ever want to see us ever again. We got up and began to walk towards the exit after settling our bill. I pushed the doors open and walked out, only to collide facefirst into a stranger!