Saigon River (5)
After Luo Zhanpeng’s death, Luo Jingming, who had long been laying his plans, moved with lightning speed to purge the forces under him, and secured the support of Fei Qi and a group of uncles. Chinatown had always claimed to put loyalty first, but in the end, only strength spoke. No one dared to raise any objection to the police’s conclusion of “home invasion robbery.”
At the time, Li Zhengkai asked him what to do with Luo Zhanpeng’s family.
Luo Zhanpeng’s wife was no pushover either. On the very night her husband met with disaster, she gathered the entire family and prepared to flee abroad, but she still did not escape Luo Jingming’s control. This uncle’s family of nine, along with Luo Qingyang, were seized by his men at once, awaiting their fate.
Luo Jingming remained silent for a long time. In the end, he still could not bring himself to be ruthless. He only ordered that they be confined under house arrest in an uninhabited seaside villa in Monterey.
He said that back then his uncle had killed his parents, yet spared his life. A favor repaid, a grievance answered. From then on, he would no longer concern himself with the life or death of his cousin.
Unexpectedly, a few months later, something happened at the villa. A gas explosion. Inside and out, including the cook, the security guards, the gardener, eighteen people in total were blown to death. The bodies were torn apart, too horrific to look at.
The autopsy showed that all eighteen had first been poisoned and rendered unconscious before being killed in the explosion. DNA confirmed that among them there was one additional unknown male, and one person missing, his cousin.
Luo Qingyang had blown his way out to escape, at such a brutal cost.
At that time, however, Luo Jingming could barely take care of himself. Betrayal from those close to him, a police dragnet closing in, prison looming in the blink of an eye. He simply had no energy to deal with Luo Qingyang.
Fortunately, at the last moment, Old Master Liang intervened. Luo Jingming finally withdrew unscathed, but he also completely left Chinatown, left San Francisco, cutting cleanly from everything in his past.
From then on, he stepped out of the darkness and walked under the light. He was no longer Mr. Lone of Chinatown.
But Li Zhengkai knew that whether Luo Qingyang lived or died had always been a weight on Luo Jingming’s mind.
To find a single person in such a vast world was no different from searching for a needle in the sea. It was not until this June, when Luo Jingming and Tan Guhong were aboard the Queen Anne and made a stop in Sicily, that by chance he learned of Luo Qingyang’s whereabouts from Old Dante.
So A-Kun took men to Vietnam. After a long period of lying low, they finally traced Luo Qingyang’s movements. Back then, he had been rescued by former subordinates of Nguyen Thieu Hung from the Vietnamese gang in San Francisco, and after several turns of escape, ended up by the Saigon River in Vietnam. Now he was being sheltered by Nguyen Thieu Hung’s daughter, Nguyen Thi Thuy.
Between Luo Jingming and Luo Qingyang, the blood feud was already beyond reckoning. There was no path left but life or death. But for Luo Jingming, the past was like drifting clouds before the eyes. He had already crawled out of hell. He would never dirty his hands again for the sake of one Luo Qingyang. If he were to seek revenge, it had to be done in the open. So he chose to cooperate with the Vietnamese police.
In the past, Chinatown in San Francisco had enforced a drug ban when Luo Zhanfei was alive, and lifted it again under Luo Zhanpeng’s control. Luo Jingming also had some old acquaintances in the Golden Triangle. With all three sides working together, they set up a joint operation to capture Nguyen Thi Thuy and Luo Qingyang.
Unfortunately, Nguyen Thi Thuy was no ordinary opponent after so many years of wielding power along the Saigon River. She had long planted her own pieces within the police. Before the operation even began, the other side was fully prepared. Gunfire broke out on the spot, casualties were heavy. A-Kun, intent on taking the chance to eliminate Luo Qingyang, fell into an ambush. Though he fought his way out alive, he was gravely wounded, the tendons in both hands severed. From then on, he could never hold a gun again.
When Luo Jingming left Singapore back then, it was precisely to deal with this matter.
At this point, both sides had already drawn blood and exposed their hands. Naturally, Luo Jingming would not choose to sit and wait for death. Even if Tan Guhong’s kidnapping had not occurred, within a few days the police would have launched a second operation against Nguyen Thi Thuy and her people. That nightclub was one of Nguyen’s key strongholds, and the police had already mapped it out. Otherwise, they would not have struck straight at the heart the moment something happened on Tan Guhong’s side.
But Tan Guhong’s kidnapping was indeed an accident. He had thought that once she returned to Beijing, she would be safe. Nguyen’s sphere of influence extended only within Vietnam. Otherwise, Luo Qingyang would not have endured all these years without coming to seek revenge on Luo Jingming. Yet he had not anticipated that Liang Jiaxing would stab him in the back, stirring up such chaos and nearly disrupting his entire plan.
Liang Jiaxing had long been closely watching Luo Jingming’s every move, and had investigated his past thoroughly. Perhaps he had grown suspicious of his sudden departure from Singapore before Old Master Liang’s eightieth birthday. Following the trail, he uncovered what had happened in Vietnam, and attempted to use it to join forces with Luo Qingyang to eliminate him.
But man proposes, heaven disposes.
After reading through this long story, understanding the causes and consequences, Tan Guhong remained silent for a long time, then raised her head and asked Li Zhengkai:
“Where is Luo Jingming? Why didn’t he explain all this to me himself?”
None of this was complicated. Why had he not made everything clear to her from the very beginning, letting misunderstandings multiply, twists and turns pile up, until it came to this point?
Li Zhengkai shook his head. On the whiteboard, he continued writing:
“Miss Tan, you don’t need to wait. The young master won’t be coming.”
“Why?”
“At the beginning of the year, he was diagnosed with a tumor in his brain. I don’t understand the medical terminology, but the doctor said the nature and location of the tumor are extremely dangerous. High incidence, high recurrence rate, high mortality rate, and a very low chance of cure.”
“From the start, he refused conservative treatment. He did not want to live in a half-human, half-ghost state, clinging to life. But surgery carries enormous risk. The chances of success are very low, and even if successful, there is a high probability of paralysis afterward.”
“After the diagnosis, he should have undergone surgery immediately to prevent rupture, but he kept delaying. I tried to persuade him, but he only said there were still things unfinished, and he feared that once the surgery was over, he might not have the life left to complete them.”
“Impossible.”
Tan Guhong’s expression was steady, her face cold.
“Since you have always been entrusted by Grandpa Liang to stay by Luo Jingming’s side, why didn’t you inform Grandpa Liang of this? And people with brain tumors will show clinical symptoms. That cannot be concealed. Over the past few months, I have been with Luo Jingming almost day and night. I never noticed anything wrong with him.”
“In the past, I was indeed employed by Old Master Liang, but ever since leaving Chinatown, I have been loyal only to the young master. He did not wish for me to inform Old Master Liang of this matter. In fact, he did not want anyone to know. If Miss Tan understands him even a little, you would know he refuses to show weakness, refuses to sit and wait for death.”
Does she understand him?
Yes. She understands him.
Tan Guhong slowly let out a breath of stale air and pressed her fingers against her temples.
She suddenly realized that along the way, Luo Jingming had not been without flaws. That night when the cruise ship passed through the Gulf of Aden, he must have been seeing double. To keep her from noticing, he had left her behind and gone off alone. And that night on Paradise Island in the Maldives, and the day he returned to Xingzhou City after dealing with A-Kun’s matter, each time he appeared, he had been markedly exhausted, weakened.
It was only during this period that he had begun using mint candies to quit smoking. He had said that at the beginning of the year, a doctor advised him to take a long leave and rest. He had said that he used to not believe in gods or Buddhas, but recently had begun to hope that people truly had past and present lives.
The trivial details she had once overlooked now surged out of her memory all at once, clamoring to the surface.
If it was false, then why would he go to such lengths to deceive her?
If it was true, if it was true…
Li Zhengkai, expressionless, continued writing on the whiteboard:
“If Miss Tan does not believe it, then you may take a look at these.”
Setting down the pen, he took out a thick stack of documents from the briefcase he carried with him and handed them to her.
After taking them, Tan Guhong read through everything from beginning to end with meticulous care, not missing even a single punctuation mark.
They were all of Luo Jingming’s medical records from a hospital in California, USA. Cranial MRI scans, brain tumor screenings, CT angiography, MRA, DSA, the formal diagnosis notice, the conclusions from neurosurgical expert consultations, the surgical plan…
Every test she had heard of and those she had not, all the technical terminology, all the symbols whose meanings she did not understand, images of the brain from every angle, flooded her mind at once. She could no longer comprehend the materials in her hands, nor could she distinguish whether they were real or false.
She slowly lifted her head and asked Li Zhengkai in a low voice:
“So where is he now? Has he already had the surgery? And the result… what is it?”
Li Zhengkai shook his head and continued to write coldly in black marker on the whiteboard:
“I don’t know. The final deadline the doctors once gave the young master was August. His original plan was to undergo surgery immediately after Old Master Liang’s birthday banquet. All the specialists, doctors, and preoperative arrangements had already been put in place, ready at any moment. But your accident in Vietnam, Miss Tan, together with the changes on the U.S. company side, caused him to delay the plan once again. He should undergo the surgery soon, but I do not know the specific time or location.”
As soon as the last word was written, Tan Guhong immediately asked, “You don’t know? Why wouldn’t you know?”
Aren’t you his confidant, his most trusted aide?
Li Zhengkai looked at her deeply and wrote:
“Because the young master does not wish for you to know the result of his surgery.”
“He has already arranged everything in advance. He will not completely disappear from public view. Old Master Liang and the others know nothing of this. The company will continue to operate as usual, all projects and plans will proceed as normal, and from time to time there will still be scattered news about him in the media, everything the same as before. If the surgery succeeds, he will reappear without a sound. And if the surgery fails, or if he can no longer continue to live in a dignified way, then no one will know.”
“As for subsequent matters such as company shares and assets, he has entrusted them to Lawyer Andy Yang in San Francisco. At the appropriate time, Lawyer Yang will begin to execute his will.”
“So, Miss Tan, you need not trouble yourself over whether he is safe, nor try to search for his whereabouts. Just focus on recovering from your injuries. After you are discharged, return to Beijing, go back to your original path, continue your previous life, follow your original plans. Just as you once agreed, you need not make any changes for his sake.”
“In fact, if the accident of your being kidnapped by Luo Qingyang had not occurred, in the young master’s plan, your life would already have returned to its proper track by now, and you would not have known any of what I have said today.”
“But he said, what he promised you, he would tell you.”
After Li Zhengkai left, Tan Guhong sat alone by the hospital window for a long, long time.
Outside the window, blue sky, white clouds, bright sunlight.
From her ward she could see the beautiful garden behind the hospital. In the afternoon many people were walking below. An old man pushed an old woman in a wheelchair. The two stood beneath a lush tree, seemingly talking about something. A little girl in a pink dress ran past, hopping, clutching a Mickey Mouse helium balloon. Not far away, on the artificial lake, flocks of wild ducks drifted leisurely. A bee landed on a purple hydrangea in the nearby flowerbed.
All of it, the bustle of human life, vibrant, full of motion.
Yet in her world, there was still no sound, a stillness like death.
Tan Guhong stared at the calendar on the windowsill for a long while, and in a daze remembered that today should have been the day the Queen Anne returned to New York Harbor, completing its ninety-nine-day voyage around the world.
“There’s no need. You really don’t have to do this.”
She spoke silently in her heart,
“I wasn’t planning on clinging to you anyway…”
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