Chapter Five: The Casino in Myanmar (2)
The uproar around them grew louder and louder. No one knew who had thrown down a little girl, but everyone knew about Southeast Asia’s once most popular form of gambling, “seeing red.” The mere thought that someone could openly do such a thing today, on this ship, in this casino, was enough to make everyone in the room’s blood run hot with excitement.
Nan Bei frowned.
She reached out and lifted the beaded curtain, simply wanting to see who on this ship could have the nerve to do such a thing.
Soon, a pair of feet appeared on the stairs at the entrance, followed slowly by the rest of the person, coming into everyone’s line of sight. Someone recognized him and began whispering among themselves.
Nan Bei also let out a soft breath and murmured something under her breath.
“What?” Cheng Muyang asked her quietly.
“When the Wu family was made to surrender the casino, this person was the most unwilling to cooperate,” Nan Bei said with a smile. “He left a deep impression on me.”
“I’ve heard a little about it. In the end, the Chinese and Myanmar governments seized all of the Wu family’s assets on the mainland and in Myitkyina under the charge of gambling, and ordered the Wu family to stop its casino business in Myanmar. Quite an unexpected way of handling things.” Cheng Muyang looked at her. “But it was handled in a rather interesting way.”
“Interesting?” Nan Bei looked at him with a smile.
Cheng Muyang nodded. “Your brother and those anti-government armed groups call each other brothers, yet the ones who shut down the casino for your sake were the Myanmar government.”
She gave a quiet hum of acknowledgment. “The government and the anti-government forces aren’t completely opposed to each other. It’s like...” she told him softly, “like the Russian government and the criminal underworld. Bone connected to flesh, impossible to separate.”
While the two of them spoke in low voices, the young master of the Wu family had already stepped in front of the girl and had the people behind him pick her up. Her tiny body was held by the armpits like that, so thin and frail that she looked almost like a rag doll.
He pinched the deathly pale little face between two fingers. “Don’t run. You’ll get to enjoy yourself in a little while.” As he spoke, he beckoned over an older casino attendant. “Are there any private rooms here?”
The woman had not expected anyone to make such a request. “Yes, there are, but this place doesn’t allow...”
“Doesn’t allow what?”
The woman smiled faintly and said gently, “Mr. Zhousheng specifically instructed us this time that, because there is an honored guest on this cruise with certain taboos, no one is permitted to engage in any form of bloodshed to bring good luck. We have our own rules. If someone cannot accept them, then we can only ask him to leave the ship.”
“Use bloodshed to bring good luck?” Wu Chengpin was smiling too. With his right hand, he pulled off the little girl’s tattered cloth skirt. “She’s my girlfriend, my little girlfriend.” Then came the top.
Because the cloth was too stiff, it took him two or three tries before, amid the sound of the fabric tearing, he finally threw away the pieces of cloth he had ripped apart.
He did it so openly, and his excuse was too clever.
The casino attendant was actually left speechless, not knowing what to say.
By then, all the beaded curtains had already been lifted. The girls who had been walking around carrying drinks and incense had also stopped and stepped aside, making way for the center of the conflict.
Behind the last beaded curtain to be lifted, it was Nan Bei who emerged.
Her boarding the ship had been an accident, and her involvement in this affair had been an accident as well. Everyone had assumed that Nan of Wanting would not appear. So when she and Cheng Muyang appeared at the pier, everyone except those who knew the truth assumed that she was merely Cheng Muyang’s woman, one of the women belonging to that Lords of War from Moscow.
She passed through one beaded-curtain partition after another, the ambiguous light falling over her. Only when she drew near did the people around Wu Chengpin all step aside. In Wu Chengpin’s hand was already a clothing knife, its dark-silver blade cutting inch by inch through the last scraps of fabric on the girl’s body.
Faint Burmese words came murmuring from the little girl’s lips.
She did not know whether there was anyone here who could understand. The little girl was merely reciting scriptures. She was almost completely naked, exposed to everyone’s gaze, yet she continued reciting the scriptures.
“Long time no see, Miss Nan.”
Wu Chengpin caught sight of her from the corner of his eye, and the movement of his hand finally stopped. He was not surprised in the slightest.
What an exceedingly deferential form of address, yet his actions clearly told her: Nan Bei, I came here for you.
“How many years has it been?” Nan Bei shifted her gaze to him. “Two years? Two years ago, we met in Myitkyina.”
“Miss still remembers?”
Wu Chengpin’s wrist paused for a moment, the silver light reflecting off the blade in his hand.
The tip of his knife was pointed directly at her heart, close enough that he could thrust his arm forward and plunge it into her.
Cheng Muyang and Shen Jiaming straightened simultaneously. Shen Jiaming waved to the people beside him, while Cheng Muyang had already drawn a silver pistol from inside his clothes, raised it in his hand, and aimed at the center of Wu Chengpin’s brow.
At the same time, the sound of guns being cocked rang out. More than twenty of Cheng Muyang’s men, positioned a dozen or so paces away from him on all sides, raised their guns at the same time.
No one knew how these people had appeared or how they had approached.
Every one of them raised their guns without a sound. Aside from cocking and aiming, there was not a single unnecessary movement.
Nan Bei, however, did not even glance at the knife. She simply raised her hand and delivered a crisp slap. “In Myitkyina, you should have known what kind of person I am, and what I consider taboo.”
“Good, haha, good! Please, Miss, continue.”
Wu Chengpin licked his lips. His wrist had already turned downward, the blade pointing toward the floor.
Her pitch-black eyes were unnaturally calm. “Back then, there were more than a dozen families along the border. Why are there only four now?” She stepped closer and pinched the blade of his knife between two fingers. “Because Chinese people have always been superstitious about certain numbers, like four and nine. So we eliminated ourselves. The victor became king, while the defeated had their entire families wiped out. In the end, only four surnames remained. It’s that simple.”
Before she could finish speaking, Wu Chengpin received another hard slap across his right cheek. “So don’t think you can provoke us.”
The first time had been completely unexpected. Even Wu Chengpin, the one who had been struck, had not anticipated it.
But the second time made a casino nearly a hundred square meters in size fall utterly silent.
Cheng Muyang seemed to smile, his finger already curled around the trigger.
“Beibei.” Shen Jiaming pinched the cigarette that was almost burned to the end, then flicked it into the ashtray with a bent finger. “There can’t be a death on this ship.” If it was possible, they should avoid having anyone die aboard Mr. Zhousheng’s cruise ship. It was a matter of courtesy to the host.
Besides, he knew what Nan Bei was capable of.
She turned around. Although she was answering Shen Jiaming’s question, she was looking into Cheng Muyang’s eyes. “Don’t shoot.”
Shen Jiaming had originally been smiling, but the moment she turned around, his expression suddenly changed.
Her body, together with the two men holding the little girl, happened to block all of Wu Chengpin’s vital points. But just as Shen Jiaming rushed forward, Wu Chengpin had already made his move.
The blade was cold and sinister, heading straight for the small of Nan Bei’s back.
At the instant he thrust it forward, someone seized him by the throat. Nan Bei bent her body backward in an eerie posture, her two slender fingers clamped tightly around his throat, her pink fingernails digging into his bronze-colored skin.
The dagger hung suspended over her abdomen. One more inch would have been enough to kill her.
Large swaths of white light flashed before Wu Chengpin’s eyes. With his throat firmly in someone’s grasp, the slightest exertion of force would bring suffocation.
Compared with the suppression he had experienced two years ago, only now did he understand that death was not mysterious at all.
She wanted to bring him to the brink of suffocation, to make him see despair with his own eyes. Her fingers had just tightened with force when she suddenly felt all the muscles in Wu Chengpin’s body stiffen. His throat began involuntarily moving up and down, struggling for survival between her two fingers.
Nan Bei’s brows drew together slightly, then quickly relaxed.
It was Cheng Muyang.
When she released her hand, Wu Chengpin simultaneously collapsed onto the floor.
The bullet struck him squarely between the brows, without the slightest deviation.
And because it was between the brows, not a single drop of blood had stained her.
The moment Cheng Muyang fired, everyone holding a gun fired at the same time the following second. They had silencers, yet the sound of more than twenty bullets tearing through flesh was still horrifyingly visceral. Aside from Wu Chengpin, none of the Wu family members had been shot in vital areas. They fell to the floor, writhing and moaning in pain.
In the distance, Cheng Muyang lowered his gun. His face was very calm beneath the orange-yellow lamplight, only his eyes fixed on her. He patted Shen Jiaming on the shoulder and walked over to Nan Bei.
She was bent over, feeling along the little girl’s bones in various places.
Fortunately, there were no fractures.
She spoke softly in Burmese. “Don’t be afraid. I’m Nan Bei.”
The little girl’s eyes suddenly brightened. She reached out, trembling slightly, but still placed her hand in Nan Bei’s. She murmured something. No one could understand it except her. It was another blessing that Burmese people liked to say.
That country, so desperately impoverished and torn by internal conflict, was nevertheless optimistic and joyful.
They believed that the Buddha could protect them. Even at this very moment, after all that brutality and death, she still believed with such devotion.
The bodies and wounded were quickly removed. Several girls in qipaos sat sideways on the floor, expertly wiping away the bloodstains. The small disturbance had only made everyone even more eager to gamble.
It had to be admitted that, for gamblers, seeing blood could make everyone forget their humanity, immersing themselves in the gambling table where a single thought could mean heaven or hell, in the dice tumbling over and over inside the blue-and-white porcelain dish.
Several hundred million dollars was not a particularly large sum, but she had heard a little about how many layers of skin the Wu family had lost between the two countries because of that gambling charge. Wu Chengpin’s resentment toward her was understandable. Their grudge was still simple enough.
But in the end, it was Cheng Muyang who had taken the entire grudge upon himself.
He had personally shot and killed the young master of the Wu family, and then, in front of everyone, given the Zhousheng family a resounding “slap in the face.” Chinese people valued face above all else, especially a family that placed such importance on ceremony and appearances. Just thinking about it, she felt that this time might be a little troublesome.
She and Cheng Muyang opened a separate table. The two of them sat behind the beaded curtains, looking at each other.
In the end, both of them had smiles in their eyes.
He gestured for the dealer to begin the dice game and said casually, “I always thought I knew you very well.”
Nan Bei took a chip from his hand and placed it down as her bet. “Only to find out in the end that you don’t know me at all? Remember how I told you that, when I was little, I often went hunting for pig-tailed macaques? Anyone who can catch a monkey has to have a sufficiently flexible waist. Actually, there really isn’t much I can do. Really, not much at all.”
She pursed her lips, then tilted her head and smiled. “My brother is the impressive one. All he has to do is punch you across the bridge of the nose, and he can drive the fragments of your bones straight into your skull. His technique is completely like that of an artist.”
Cheng Muyang smiled and lightly tapped his fingers against the edge of the gambling table. “What did that little girl say to you?”
“She thanked me. She said the Buddha would protect me.”
“Why?”
“Burma.” She watched intently as the dealer gently shook the blue-and-white porcelain dish, judging whether she would win or lose. “They are a deeply Buddhist country. If you’ve been there, you’ll understand. That is their most sincere blessing.”
Cheng Muyang recalled it for a moment, then repeated what the little girl had said.
As expected of a language genius. He remembered it after hearing it only once.
Yet words spoken with such devotion, when they came from his voice, became sinuous and lingering, carrying a seductive sensuality that seemed almost hypnotic.
The porcelain dish was opened. He had won.
She had intended to take some of his stake and win a little back for herself, but unexpectedly, he won again.
Cheng Muyang reached out and pressed down on the hand she had placed on the gambling table. He smiled inscrutably. “You owe me more and more. What are we going to do?”
“Pay the gambling debt with my body,” Nan Bei said deliberately in a flirtatious tone. She waved at the dealer. “Let us rest for a while.”
The dealer tactfully withdrew behind the beaded curtains.
“You shouldn’t have fired a gun in the casino, especially not with your own hands. It wasn’t worth it. You could have left it to anyone else to handle, but you shouldn’t have been the one to pull the trigger.”
He smiled. “Were you worried about me?”
“I’m afraid you’ll get yourself into trouble.” Nan Bei’s voice was soft. She gently touched his brow with her fingertip. “What are you thinking? Cheng Muyang, tell me. What exactly are you thinking in here?”
He took her finger and moved it away from his brow, then told her quietly, “I rarely fire a gun. Just now, I was afraid you were in danger.”
Only when the two of them were alone would he be like this, would he say things like this.
Nan Bei suddenly remembered that night in Belgium, when she had crouched on the ground lighting a pile of fireworks to celebrate receiving news of Nan Huai. At the time, he did not know why she was so happy. He simply stayed by her side, afraid that she would burn her hands.
What he knew even less was that a week later, she would leave him and return to Wanding.
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