Master Six surely deserved his reputation as an immortal. Chen Yixuan thought that Master Six had left him behind, but he had not yet fully formed the thought before he found out that the bandits were stilled and couldn’t move. In the distance, the voice of Master Six came through, “The acupuncture points of these people will unravel in half an hour, take a horse and meet me at Mount Bie!” Then he had to go down the mountain alone. When he went past all the bandits standing guard on the way, he found them all stilled. Some of them were leaning on trees, and others were lying on the ground. It was really quite amusing! Chen Yixuan got on a horse and started to catch up from behind…

When he reached Mount Bie, he was tired and hungry. He saw a restaurant by the roadside and then drew rein at the door. The waiter came out to bow and asked, “Hello, Mister. Are you Officer Chen?” Chen Yixuan asked, “How do you know?” The waiter said promptly, “Your colleague is waiting for you in room No. 2. He told me to wait here at the door for an officer riding a horse over with the surname Chen. If you are this officer, please go to room No. 2.”

Chen Yixuan jumped off the horse and handed the reins to the waiter. While the waiter led the horse to the backyard, he went straight to room No. 2. Master Six had already ordered the dishes, waiting inside. Seeing Chen Yixuan come in, he filled a glass of wine and handed it to him. “Thanks for your hard work.” Chen Yixuan drunk the wine off, picked up a piece of beef with sauce, chewed it in his mouth, and said vaguely, “Why didn’t you wait for me for a while!” Master Six smiled and said, “I predicted that this Xiao Mazi would head out for Tianjin Wei today. I was worried that it would be too late before I found him, which would require more work from us. Fortunately, this guy went out of the mountain and did not leave right away. Instead, he went to the house of his mistress. And I just went there and forced him to tell me the truth. For our next move, we are going into the mountains.”

Chen Yixuan also smiled and said, “Ever since I started to work with you, you have been secretive in your movements and traces. Every movement was inexplicable and always beyond my expectations, which is very different from my previous way of solving cases!” Master Six smiled and said, “That is nothing. It’s just from God’s help.”

Master Six took a sip of wine and said, “Take it easy. I will tell you slowly. When I took over the case, I needed to think about who did it. The bandits from other places couldn’t have crossed the border to do such a big thing. Xiao Mazi was the only one who dared to do that. Once the informant of the local bandits got the information, there was no reason for them to sit and watch. Therefore it must be the local bandits who committed this crime. However, how would they know about the dragon-slaying sword? Logically speaking, it must have started with someone in Beijing, who was informed by the Bian Family. But that person was definitely not a bandit. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have a relationship with the Bian Family. However, he must have business transactions with curio dealers. After hearing the news, the curio dealers had the intention to purchase and made contact with the bandits to make an offer to buy. Then the bandits agreed to take up the business. Moreover, they must be a large pack if they were able to provide the goods, because a small pack of bandits is not capable of robbing a tomb. And their location is not close to Beijing because they cannot survive around the southeast of Beijing. Therefore, we can come to the conclusion that they about 100 kilometers away from Beijing. There are around 50 people in this pack of bandits here. And they are enemies with the bandits in Wu Zhong County. So if you want to form a buyer-seller relationship between these two packs of bandits, you need a middleman. In this case, the middleman was Xiao Mazi. He needed to pay a deposit to the bandits of Wu Zhong County in advance and also keep the whereabouts of the stolen goods as a secret.”

Chen Yixuan asked while he was picking up the food with his chopsticks, “What is this Xiao Mazi’s background, how could he be so capable?” Master Six put down the chopsticks and lit a cigarette, introducing Xiao Mazi.

It turned out that Xiao Mazi’s father was Xiao Laonian. Xiao Laonian was a nickname that meant ‘simple and honest’. However, he wasn’t simple afterward. He changed his nickname into Evil Long-worm. You could tell from his name that he was an evil man.

In those days, Xiao Laonian had a cousin who was around his age. His aunt died due to a difficult labor when giving birth to this cousin of his. A baby without a mother couldn’t survive, therefore his cousin was sent to his home and taken care of by his mother. Xiao Laonian grew up with his cousin. When they were older, his cousin returned to his own home. Because he was the second son, he didn’t get much attention. As the old saying went, “The first kid is the most precious, and the last kid is the most spoiled, but the kid in the middle is invisible.” This cousin of his didn’t get along well with his brothers but had a good relationship with Xiao Laonian.

Later, his cousin graduated from school and became a policeman in Tianjin. He had many part-time jobs, and he gave the money to Xiao Laonian. After Xiao Laonian got the money, he always wanted to use it to make more money. Suffering from the lack of business opportunities, he opened a mountain products shop in a county a hundred kilometers away in the east and also moved his home there, buying and reselling mountain products. It was just that he didn’t move to the town center because the house there were expensive. Then, there was once that he heard bombarding gunshots coming from the town center at home. It was during the Hebei-Liaoning war, and the town center turned into a battlefield. Xiao Laonian was just a small-minded peasant businessman, and was afraid of being robbed by the soldiers in his shop! He kept scratching his head and couldn’t calm himself down. However, he gathered his courage in the end, carried a wastebasket, pretended to be an old scavenger, and walked to the town center!

When he arrived at the town, he found that there were dead bodies everywhere and there was no one alive. His shop was locked in the same way. No one broke in. Then he got so bold that he wrapped up all the big guns of the soldiers on the street and moved them into his shop. Then he locked the door and left.

This time Xiao Laonian had made a fortune. After he closed down his shop, he went back to his hometown with the guns. He sold some guns but kept the rest with him, and he became rich and famous buying houses and land. After that, he started to do banditry. Instead of being a part of the bandit pack, the bandits here are referred as clubbing together. What was ‘clubbing together’? For example, if there were four people who wanted to commit a crime, Xiao Laonian would provide guns for them which could be counted as a share. When they got the money, they divided it into five. And Xiao Laonian collected the money with the guns. In this way, he spent many years in the underworld. Xiao Mazi was also grown up by then, so he worked with his father. However, Xiao Laonian got killed by his partners in a dog-eat-dog way during an operation, which left Xiao Mazi alone in this. Because he had been doing business in the underworld for a long time, he had contacts with many bandits and also became popular among them. Although he didn’t have any bandits working for him, he always managed to accomplish tasks with ease among packs of bandits. This time, he was entrusted by that pack of bandits to make a purchase with the bandits in Wu Zhong County. And that was why the bandits in Wu Zhong started to rob the goods after they received the deposit!

After lunch, Chen Yixuan asked Master Six, “Where is the next stop?” Master Six replied, “Xujiatai (Xujiatai town in China, literally, the Xu Family Plateau)!” They finished their meal and headed to Xujiatai. Xujiatai was in the mountains, but it was not very far away. They traveled very lightly. After that, they found an inn to stay in. Because they both got tired from a long day of traveling on horse, they went to bed early after dinner. It might be something sour he ate, but Chen Yixuan got up in the middle of the night. It was an inn much inferior to those in the town. Therefore there was no light in the toilet. There was no electricity back in those days either. He didn’t dare to enter the toilet because he couldn’t see anything inside. Then he looked outside and found that there was a hillside under the inn with a protruding rock on it. Then he thought that it was a fine spot to do his business and went around there. After hearing a buzz, he passed out.

When he woke up, he found himself lying on a bed in the hospital. Master SIx and a policeman were beside him. It turned out that when he went out to do his business last night, two silly hunter brothers mistook him for a wild boar. Fortunately, they missed their shot. And the injury was not serious. However, he fell from the hillside. Apart from the gun powder on his buttocks, there were also some bruises. The brothers were totally frightened. Master Six said, “I didn’t make things difficult for them. After all, they didn’t do it on purpose. You take a good rest and recover well. They have sent another officer to assist me. I assume that there is just one pack of bandits left for me to handle. I would do whatever I need to take them down!” After that, Chen Yixuan was escorted by the police to Tianjin and recuperated in a hospital there. A few days later, one of his colleagues visited him. The first moment they met, his colleague held up his thumb and said, “How did you find a partner like Master Six? He is mighty!”

Chen Yixuan couldn’t wait to ask him to tell more about the operation.

He told Chen Yixuan about the progress of the case after he left, “After you were injured, they sent me to fill in for you and solve the case with Master Six. At that time, Master Six took me with him, riding your horse. We went to Xujiatai and went into the mountains there. When we reached the fortress, according to the rules, the other party sent people to take over our horses. After that, they covered our eyes with a piece of cloth, held our arms and took us there. After meeting the head of the bandits, the two parties greeted each other. Master Six came straight to the point and mentioned what he came for. They denied him right away, saying that it was the rule of the underworld and they wouldn’t tell anything about their buyer even if they had to die.”

Master Six smiled subtly and said, “In that case, I will set you straight!” The head of the bandits was called Gold Teeth. He got more enraged, pulled out two guns with a whooshing sound, and threatened, “What now? How are you gonna set me straight? You are in my territory…” Before he could even finish, Master Six waved his hand to interrupt him and said, “You can try and shoot me!” Then the head of the bandits pulled the trigger without a shred of hesitation. With two faint clicks, none of the two guns fired! Then he yelled, “Guys!” However, no one replied to him even though he yelled for a few more times. At this moment, he looked at the other bandits in the room. They were all stilled like wooden statues or plaster idols as if they were spellbound!

Master Six waved and pushed forward. Then the wall in front of them fell outward with a crash, and the broken bricks and gravel all rolled downhill. It turned out this house was built on flat land which adjoined the hillside. The other side of the wall was the hillside, which was very steep. Then, the bandits queued up and walked up to Master Six one by one, as if they were bewitched. The first one put down his gun, walked up to the gap in the wall, and came around at once. Master Six took up his gun, and asked, “Who was the buyer?” This bandit seemed to be still dreaming and muttered with his head shaking, “I don’t know.” Before his voice had died away, Master Six pulled the trigger. With a few clicks of gunfire, the bandit fell off the hill as if he were pushed by the gunshots. And it repeated.

To make a long story short, Master Six killed all 50-plus bandits with their own guns. What amazed me most was, no matter if it was a rifle or a handgun, Master Six could hold them in the same way with only one hand. He was both very unrestrained and free. In the end, Master Six walked up to the head of the bandits, reached out and took away his gun, popped out the misfired bullets and reloaded the gun. Then he kicked the head of the bandits to the gap in the wall with one move. However, the head of the bandits was still playing tricks in the end. He laughed and said, “Haha, you don’t want to kill me. I am the only one who knows the whereabouts of the goods, haha…” But before he could laugh more, with one click, Master Six fired a shot in his mouth and his gold teeth were blown into pieces. And then in a row of shots, his head was blown off.”