*"Does virtual glory nourish ambition?"*
*"Beyond these flickering screens—have you no purpose?"
*"Shall binary codes sate your hunger?"
*"Chen Liang—"* Her voice shattered like ice beneath tempered steel.* "This farce concludes tonight."
*"Are you truly blind to a looming catastrophe?"*
Amid gilded decadence, the hollow-cheeked man remained shackled to his luminous monitor. Once the prodigal prince of esports coliseums, now a pariah swathed in silken disgrace. Zhao Wan'er's words detonated like cluster munitions around him, yet his gaze clung to the pixelated warzone.
*"The Phoenix Invitational—triumph resurrects my legacy."
*"Delusions!"* Her manicured nails bit into the leather armrests. * "That arena interred your carcass years past. Must I daily unearth your festering hubris?"
His knuckles blanched around the ergonomic mouse. * "This match diverges."
*"Diverges?"* A mirthless chuckle escaped her carmine lips. * "When syndicate blades kissed your father's throat, my coffers stayed their hands. My name shields your back from beggar's rags!"
The oak door imploded before rebuttal took form. A crimson-eyed Fury materialised—the matriarch's lacquered talons descended. Three thunderous impacts reverberated—*crack! clang! crunch!*—as Chen Liang's skull piston-hammered the mechanical keyboard. Zhao Wan'er stood transfixed, ancestral loyalty and conjugal pity warring beneath her immaculate façade.
*"Vermin!"* The elder spat jasmine-scented venom. * "This mansion reeks of decay!"
When consciousness grudgingly returned, the digital battleground remained—yet reality had fissured. The jungle's shadowed groves lay exposed, enemy manoeuvres etching neon afterimages across his retinae.
*"Jungler: NW_RedBuff,"* he typed through swollen lips.
*«??? Hax?»*
Through crystalline omniscience, Chen Liang orchestrated annihilation. As victory banners unfurled, a glacial feminine timbre resonated through his marrow:
*«Hawk's gaze pierces veiled realms.»*
» X-ray permeation unlocked (50cm)
» Tactical sphere dominance (50m radius)
The triumphant tremor in his hands stilled abruptly—shattered by feral roars below. Loan sharks encircled their estate, his aunt's whimper permeating marble floors. The matriarch's wrath now paled against this gathering maelstrom.
Cease Thy Bluster! Fire If Thou Darest!
Madame Zhou skewered Chen Liang with a viperous glare, yet her silver-haired consort rasped with finality, "Fate knocks. Admit its envoy."
Zhao Wan'er's nod unleashed a cadre of thugs through the splintering threshold—rough-hewn brutes wearing violence like cologne. Their chieftain, a scarred pate gleaming beneath the oil lamp's halo, traced the cicatrix curving from temple to jawline with a calloused thumb.
The brute's gaze first slithered over Zhao Wan'er's silhouette, lingering where decency forbade. "Prime cut," he leered, igniting raucous guffaws from his jackals.
Though blanching, Zhao Wan'er maintained her silence—the Zhous understood the merciless arithmetic of survival.
"Where is my daughter?" The matriarch's demand surgically excised all mention of Chen's reprobate sire, that human detritus.
"Silver first, then your precious bullet." The gangster's grin revealed tobacco-stained incisors. "No coin? I'll break the filly myself ere consigning her to brothels."
"Thou darest not!" The mother's voice fractured like desiccated kindling.
"Spare me your histrionics." The bald man's jocularity evaporated. "Blood binds debts. Chen Liguo's markers are your inheritance now."
"Twenty million. Principal with vigourish."
"Ten!" The matriarch's talon jabbed the stagnant air. "For my blood's ransom. Not a fen more for that gambling cur!" Her accusing digit transfixed Chen Liang like a thrown dagger.
Chen's heart crystallised—in their gilded eyes, he ranked beneath stray hounds. These aristocrats could liquidate ancestral jade to meet the sum yet chose condemnation over clemency.
"I shall discharge my father's debt." Chen's declaration glaciated the chamber.
The gang leader pressed his pistol's muzzle to Chen's temple with lover's intimacy. "Tournament winnings? Do you take me for a mooncalf?"
"Mercy is frailty."
The frost-rimed mantra honed Chen's perception—suddenly he discerned empty chambers and cocked firing pins. A wintry smile curved his lips.
"Shoot." Chen leaned into the steel's glacial kiss. "Let this settle all accounts."
Zhao Wan'er materialised like a storm petrel. "Art thou possessed?"
"Breathing... grows tedious." The words pierced her—she tasted the bitter dregs of years spent disparaging this man.
"Twenty million! We shall—"
"Over my rigour mortis!" The matriarch's shriek could etch glass. "Let the wastrel's spawn pay in haemoglobin!"
"Installments?" The thugs' laughter curdled the air.
The gang leader's eyes devoured Zhao Wan'er. "A week in my bedchamber cleanses the ledger."
"Enough!" Chen's roar shielded his wife. "**Cease thy posturing! Pull thy trigger or begone!**"
Dearest, Witness the Spectacle Unfold
The bald enforcer tensed, his calloused fingers blanching against the pistol's grip. Never had he encountered such brazenness—this unseasoned youth, Chen Liang, remained composed, mortality's spectre waltzing at his temples.
"Discharge your firearm!" Chen Liang's voice reverberated through the dilapidated chamber, a maelstrom of rebellion. "Let these hollow theatrics reach their finale!"
"Impudent vermin!" The gangster's disfigured cheek convulsed. "Do you solicit Death's cold caress?"
"Apprehension persists," Chen Liang's lips curved like a Damascus crescent, "yet your cylinder's vacancy derides its authority."
This revelation petrified the assembly. How had this neophyte penetrated his artifice? Snarling like a shackled predator, the brute's steel-capped boot collided with Chen Liang's thoracic cavity, propelling him across the frayed and threadbare carpet. "Vermin merit no honourable dispatch!" he hissed. "Yet since you court ethereal gambits..."
Zhao Wan'er's jasmine-perfumed palms steadied her consort as he ascended, her tear-stricken visage refracting the amber streetlamp's glow. "Declare your terms," Chen Liang rasped, crimson droplets adorning his dentition.
"Dragon's Triumph!" The ruffian slammed a virgin deck upon the mahogany surface, its cellophane rustle severing the palpable tension. (*Traditional Chinese three-card poker harmonizes tactical acumen with ancestral superstition.)
Paternal inadequacies spanning decades coalesced into crystalline resolve. "My progenitor's obligations are nullified," Chen Liang proclaimed, digits caressing his grandmother's nephrite talisman. "My bloodline walks unfettered."
"When Fortune's wheel pulverises your aspirations?" The usurer's ornate incisor glimmered.
"Twofold recompense."
Zhao Wan'er's grasp intensified, her Chanel No. 5 essence commingling with cordite residue. "This lunacy terminates presently!" Her whisper conveyed aeons of matrilineal fortitude.
"Accorded!" The thug's gaze consumed the art deco vaulting. "Default, and this architectural relic becomes my opium emporium."
"My progeny's bridal portion shall not subsidise your degeneracy!" The matriarch's pearls clattered as she advanced. "Ten thousand argent notes shall expunge this ignominy!"
"Still your magpie tongue!" The gangster's palm fractured the teak surface, wooden shards ascending. "Twenty thousand, or your lingua becomes my Mercedes' mascot!"
Chen Liang stepped into the aurate illumination, his silhouette elongating like a battle standard. "My mortal coil constitutes the stake."
"Your... vitality?" The enforcer's guffaw expired mid-breath. This scholarly milksop had transmogrified before his ocular orbs.
Zhao Wan'er's Louboutins percussed like a horological device. "The estate's title bears my nomenclature." Her timbre quavered not with trepidation but with ancestral determination. "We pledge the manor."
As the cards pirouetted in the gangster's cicatrised grasp—a deadly choreography of pulp and prejudice—Chen Liang intercepted his wife's semblance in the Tiffany lamp's glow. Her tacit affirmation conveyed millennia of unarticulated fidelity.
"After you," he murmured, phantoms of Sun Tzu's stratagems waltzing behind his gaze. Certain conflicts are waged not with tempered steel but through the crucible of despair and destiny's caprice.
The Unloaded Revolver Gambit
"Terms accepted."
Scar's weathered palms darted with serpentine agility, extracting three cards from the fan-shaped array in movements honed through countless shadowed games.
The exposed triad shimmered faintly beneath the muted lamplight's amber glow:
**8♠ 8♦ 8♣**
"Triple celestial eights, boy." Scar's cicatrised lip twisted upward, nicotine-stained dentition exposed in lupine triumph. "Invoke whichever deity grants you solace."
Muffled snickers undulated through his retinue—a chorus of vindicated superiority. In *Zha Jin Hua*'s sacred geometry, triple eights heralded near-divine ascendancy.
Wan'er's trembling fingers clenched Chen Liang's sleeve as her progenitors' complexions drained to parchment hues. The matriarch's piercing ululation sundered the opium-thick atmosphere: "Spineless vermin! You've inked our mortal decrees!"
Scar's reverse-handed strike intercepted her charge mid-lunge, sending the crone sprawling across stained floorboards. "Still thy venomous tongue."
Chen Liang's irises dilated—*Falcon's Gaze* ignited with predatory exactitude. The deck's arcane truths unfurled before him:
*To vanquish celestial triples...
Either superior triune forces...
Or the proscribed 2-3-5 configuration.*
Initial revelation: **2♠**
"Ludicrous!" Scar's guffaw reverberated. "Three earthly deuces couldn't salvage this farce!"
Second unveiling: **3♥**
The chamber's collective respiration suspended.
Final manifestation: **5♠**
An heterodox sequence—*2-3-5*, the triune slayer.
"Deceiver!" Scar's fist shattered the table's edge in a spray of splinters.
A metallic cascade clattered across floorboards—marked cards cascading from his sleeves like betrayal-embodied doves fleeing a charlatan's grasp.
"Mountebank!" The matriarch hissed through crimson-streaked dentition.
Chen Liang reclined, mirroring Scar's erstwhile hubris. "Thus, the 'Invincible' epithet was forged through stacked artifice? How...plebeian."
Scar's complexion transmuted from brick vermilion to grave-earth grey.
"Consider," Chen Liang murmured, velvet menace lacing each syllable, "every marksman you've hoodwinked learning this delicious heresy."
The stalemate stretched until Scar's guttural concession: "Your bride returns at first light."
"Tarry." Chen Liang's glacial tone petrified the retreating figures. "Triune stakes demand doubled wager—four hundred thousand debt less two hundred thousand owed yields *two hundred thousand."
A subordinate's muffled protest emerged: "Cap'n, the codex—"
Crunch!
Scar's boot heel silenced the objection. "I. Comprehend. The. Lexicon."
Wan'er's fingernails carved lunar crescents into Chen Liang's forearm. "Release them!"
"Not", he enunciated with glacial precision, "a single *one* deficient."
As Scar breached the threshold, Chen Liang arced the revolver through smoke-laden air. It skidded to rest at the gangster's mud-caked boots. "Next theatrical endeavour?" A gelid smile. "Prime your props adequately."
Scar's departure quaked the walls, leaving lingering ghosts of disgrace and cordite.
The Metamorphosis of Matriarchal Disposition
After an interminable hiatus, Scar—visibly perturbed—retreated with a basilisk glare toward Chen Liang, his retinue slinking behind like whipped curs. The portal resonated with a thunderous report as his subordinate sealed their disgraceful withdrawal.
A full half-minute elapsed before Chen Liang permitted himself respiration. The memory of Scar's vermilion-veined eyes, drilling into his soul, still conjured visceral trepidation—that feral glare might well have heralded mortal jeopardy had the gang lord retained his primordial savagery. Yet fortune favoured the intrepid: opulence had blunted Scar's once-ravenous edge, transmuting the predator into a mere charlatan of menace.
Zhao Wan'er subjected her spouse to unblinking dissection, her gaze parsing his transmuted visage. Where once smouldered chronic vexation, now flickered dawning recognition. The man who had instinctually interposed himself as a human bulwark bore scant resemblance to the feckless consort she had endured—here stood one who had inexplicably manifested the vertebrae of a true protector.
"Beloved", Chen Liang ventured tentatively beneath her scalpel gaze, "unburden your thoughts without restraint."
Her silence lingered, gravid with unspoken epiphanies. This metamorphosis defied facile explication: perhaps it crystallised when he became her living rampart or when his habitual slouch straightened into vigilant readiness. The acrid resentment that habitually coiled about her heart had mysteriously evaporated.
Yet, recollection of his unilateral life gambit reignited her ire. "Since when did you cultivate such audacity?" she demanded, advancing with pantherine intensity. Her digits pounced upon his auricle with surgical precision. "Should you ever again stake your existence sans consultation, I shall personally expedite your demise and procure a consort of actual merit!"
"Dearest, exigency compelled—"
"Sophist!" Her grip tightened pedagogically. "Avow never to repeat this idiocy!"
Before Chen Liang could prostrate himself rhetorically, the Matriarch interjected with viperish cadence: "Fortune's caprice preserves your carcass today, but the next crucible will lay bare your inherent inadequacy!" Her envenomed gaze shifted to Wan'er. "Child, reconsider my exhortation—sever this millstone and accept Young Master Zhang's suit. This wretch cannot safeguard even his epidermis!"
Chen Liang's riposte came uncharacteristically celeritous: "Madam, while breath animates this frame, I shall countenance no spousal poaching!"
"What worth inheres in your respiring husk?" she hissed. "An indigent lout shackling my daughter to privation! Authentic affection would command you relinquish her to legitimate prosperity!"
"Mother, my covenant stands immutable," Wan'er declared, physically interposing herself between the antagonists.
The Matriarch's countenance contorted into tragic theatre. Addressing her cowed spouse, she keened, "Hear your filial ingrate! After decades of maternal martyrdom—struggling to spare her my wretched conjugal fate—this is my requital!" With a flounce of wounded majesty, she stormed chamberward, trailed by the hapless paterfamilias.
Solus with her spouse amidst the detritus of contention, Wan'er murmured wan consolation: "Her Weltanschauung ossified in indigence—wealth being her sole metric of human worth."
"Does Mammon hold such sovereignty o'er you?" Chen Liang probed.
"Who spurns prosperity?" she riposted bitterly. "Destitution toxifies the marital well—a verity you'd apprehend had you ever borne domestic onus." Her gesture encompassed the disordered arena. "Rectify this chaos. I must pacify the Gorgon."
As Wan'er withdrew, Chen Liang's mandible set with neoteric resolution. The childhood spectres—a gambling sire and maternal absconder—had tutored him in life's austere economies more acutely than his spouse fathomed. His gaming fixation veiled desperate calculus: only through esports could fiscal stability flow. Yet such nuances transcended domestic comprehension.
Post-ablation of conflict's traces, culinary duty summoned him kitchenward. At the prandial hour, Wan'er emerged brachia-in-brachio with a pacified matriarch, whose roving oculars betrayed nascent stratagems.
"Wherefore is Baobao?" The Matriarch demanded, stiletto-voiced.
As if conjured, the chime heralded salvation—a cicatrix-faced underling delivered both the junior Zhao scion and a valise pregnant with banknotes. "Your progenitor has been repatriated," the brigand growled before dissolving into crepuscular shadows.
"Viper's get!" Zhao Bao'er launched herself at Chen Liang, alabaster ivories perforating his deltoid with feral precision.
Wan'er interposed, revealing an epidermal palimpsest of lacerated tissue. "Sister! What frenzy possesses you?"
The adolescent spat rubicund retort: "His execrable lineage's debts near consigned me to lupanar servitude!" She collapsed theatrically into maternal embrace, narrating her famished captivity.
The supper unfolded as gustatory purgatory—each course accompanied by matriarchal excoriation and Bao'er's staccato imprecations. Nocturnal shadows found Chen Liang contemplating moonlit reconnaissance to assay his newfound "Celestial Raptor" capabilities (particularly its secondary perimeter-scanning faculty) when the Matriarch's uncharacteristic summons arrested him:
"Chen Liang… an audience."
Her unprecedented civility—eschewing the habitual "parasitical vermin" epithet—telegraphed an ominous portent. The subsequent courtship (malus-offering, tobacco-profferment, combustion-tolerance within domestic confines) confirmed his suspicion: a fiscal petition loomed.
"Your patruus tertius' enterprise encounters liquidity constraints…" she preambled with saccharine solicitude.
The Matriarch's Calculated Courtship
Chen Liang's mother-in-law scrutinised his taciturn demeanour, her meticulously crafted congeniality fracturing as glacial severity overtook her visage. Her vulpine eyes narrowed with predatory calculus. Resuming her theatrics, she retrieved the lighter from the lacquered table. A staccato *snick* of flint preceded the cerulean flame's emergence. "Allow me to illuminate your indulgence," she cooed, dulcet obsequiousness saturating each syllable.
Now cognisant of her subterfuge—this pecuniary solicitation masquerading as familial concern—Chen Liang shed his initial perplexity. Her sycophantic pantomime stood exposed. With calculated insouciance, he accepted the proffered fire, inhaling profundity before exhaling a sinuous vapour serpent that enshrouded her powdered countenance.
Observing her convulsive splutter, Chen Liang suppressed vindication's bitter nectar. For years, this harridan had derided him as a "spineless vermin", clamouring for her daughter to discard him like soiled linen in favour of gilded nuptials. Her vitriol found its equal only in Zhao Bao'er, his serpent-tongued sister-in-law, whose calumnious fabrications of his transgressions met maternal credulity. Thus had Chen Liang endured his gilded purgatory—the perpetual son-in-law, shackled by derision yet bound by obligation.
Yet here grovelled his tormentor, supplicant before necessity. The spectacle of her bridled fury proved ambrosia to his ravaged spirit.
"*Cough—hack—!*" She convulsed, rubescent humiliation flooding her cheeks. For one unguarded moment, primal wrath contorted her features. Then Scarface's looming ¥200,000 tribute reasserted its imperative. *Composure,* she adjured herself. *Let coffers precede comeuppance.*
"Are you indisposed, Mother?" Zhao Wan'er interjected, casting a monitory glance toward Chen Liang. Though spousal allegiance anchored her resolve, filial piety's undertow yet eroded her resolve.
Chen Liang relented. "Did Third Uncle's enterprise not founder during the fiscal winter of '21?"
"Preposterous!" she hissed. "His phoenix-like resurgence manifests through recent profit margins—" Abruptly, she arrested her tongue. Why justify to *this ingrate*? Her tone acquired flint-edged sharpness. "Consanguinity binds us, Chen Liang. When Third Uncle extended employment, you spurned it. Now, adversity strikes. Will you honour kinship's debt?"
"Even motherless souls comprehend gratitude's ledger." Chen Liang activated the speakerphone, summoning Third Uncle's corroborative testimony.
The uncle's narrative unfurled—a lucrative contract ensnared by supply chain ruptures, advance payments devoured by logistical leviathans. Chen Liang acquiesced, retrieving Scarface's satchel swollen with banknotes. "The sum awaits escorts. Convey it at dawn."
Clutching her plunder, the matriarch retreated to her sanctum. In privacy's embrace, Zhao Wan'er confronted her: "Third Uncle's plight is chimeric, is it not?"
"Shall we fund that wastrel's dissipation?" The matriarch spat, cradling the currency like a firstborn. "This hoard buttresses *our* dynasty. Betray this stratagem, and his probation concludes!"
Beyond the threshold, Chen Liang invoked "Falcon's Gaze"—a clairvoyant gift piercing fifty metres of spatial obfuscation. Scarface's enforcers materialised in his mind's ocular field, spectres haunting peripheral shadows. *The settling of accounts approaches,* he mused, pulse accelerating to a war-drum rhythm. Debt's shadow stretched long, talons unsheathed for sanguinary reconciliation.
The Captive Matriarch
"The effrontery of that whelp!"
"He courts catastrophe like kindling tinder in a powder keg!"
"To pilfer two hundred grand from Scarface and presume to savour its spoils?"
"A witless cretin through and through!"
Chen Liang's premonitions solidified as the henchmen's venomous whispers seeped through the gloaming. Their plotted retribution drained him as though he'd endured five consecutive death matches, every sinew thrumming with spectral exhaustion.
He burst through the threshold, his cries ricocheting off desolate walls—"Mother! My love! Beloved!"—only to be answered by cavernous silence. The mahogany hinges' mournful creak betrayed his mother-in-law's emergence, her envenomed rebuke slicing the air:
"You impudent mongrel! Must you howl like a gored beast?"
"Where's Wan'er?" He demanded, urgency honing his tone to a blade's edge.
The staccato rhythm of hastened footsteps heralded his wife's arrival. As Chen unravelled their peril, words cascaded from him—a desperate entreaty for sanctuary.
"Confined? As though cohabitating with you weren't hazardous enough!" The matriarch's eyes blazed, her sworn restraint evaporating. "Were it not for Baobao's safety this dawn, I'd—"
"Mother! Your oath!" Waner's interjection hung like a headsman's blade.
Chen's account of overheard threats drew caustic derision. "Eavesdropping at the corner store?" The matriarch's sneer could etch crystal. "More likely conspiring with your wastrel sire to fleece us anew!"
Though scepticism lingered like acrid smoke, Wan'er's persuasion prevailed—momentarily. Dawn unveiled the matriarch's vanished silhouette, her defiance outpacing prudence.
---
**Arcane Awakening:**
Chen's fingertips grazed the ephemeral interface, where the "Celestial Falcon's Descent" technique pulsed ominously (Rank I, 1/100 mastery). A resonant system edict thrummed: *100,000 monetary units are required for auric transmutation.* His threadbare wallet's mocking emptiness amplified the decree.
---
**Confrontation at Tingyun Zhai:**
The antique emporium's shadowed interior devoured daylight whole. Scarface's gravelly ultimatum reverberated: "The crone still draws breath—for now. Three hundred grand at Xijie's Tingyun Zhai by nightfall, or prepare her funerary pyre!"
When the battered matriarch emerged, twin percussions of violence echoed:
CRACK!
CRACK!
"Defiance persists?" Scarface's knuckles blanched as he drew back. The matriarch's shriek pierced the gloom: "Spineless leech! Would you watch them reduce my bones to pulp?"
Chen's fists constellated with tension, sinews writhing like serpents beneath his flesh. "Enough!"
Unbowed
Scar halted mid-stride, pivoting with military precision to fix Chen Liang beneath the glacial weight of his contempt. The gangster's jutting chin carved an invisible line of submission across the concrete floor where Chen Liang's mother-in-law lay prostrate, her inflamed cheek pressed against mildew-stained walls. Her venomous glare pierced through her son-in-law – this indignity might have been avoided had he surrendered sooner.
"*Move*," Scar's command rumbled like distant artillery, each syllable frostbitten steel scraping against stone. "This wellspring of mercy runs dry."
Chen Liang's mandible flexed like tensioned bowstrings beneath parchment skin. "Kneel now," his counterstroke emerged as silk-wrapped steel, "*and your vaults remain undisturbed*."
A sound like cracking ice escaped Scar's throat – laughter stripped of mirth. "Bargain?" He spat the word like phlegmatic poison. "You bring empty hands to this marketplace, fledgling." Before retort could take wing, a wounded-animal shriek rent the air.
"*Snake-hearted ingrate!*" The matriarch's lacerated lips trembled like storm-tossed leaves. "Would you have them salt my wounds with vinegar?"
*Crack! Crack!*
Scar's calloused palm struck with reptilian speed. "Silence, carrion bird!" Her whimpers dissolved into guttural imprecations against twenty generations of the Chen lineage.
Without telegraphing intent, Scar became sudden violence incarnate – his steel-toed boot arcing toward Chen Liang's solar plexus in a ballistic trajectory.
*Thump!*
The sickening percussion of leather meeting flesh reverberated through the chamber. Chen Liang folded like origami, knees scraping concrete, yet through sheer tectonic willpower, reconstituted himself – a bamboo shoot defiant against monsoon winds. The matriarch's eyes glinted with schadenfreude.
"Tenacious weed," Scar sneered, delivering another piston-driven kick that sent Chen Liang cartwheeling across the floor. Yet again, the younger man rose – his spine as straight as a calligrapher's brushstroke, eyes smouldering like banked forge coals.
When Scar's raised palm finally signalled cessation, the air hung thick with ozone anticipation. Resuming his throne of worm-eaten teak, the gangster flicked cigarette ash into a soot-patinated urn. "This Ming-Qing relic," he drawled, thrusting the vessel forward like the ceremonial offering, "*or thirty thousand silver leaves.*"
"*Profiteering from desperation's well?*" Chen Liang's voice dripped hoarfrost. "*Where lies your xia*?"
Scar's cigarette butt traced an incandescent arc past Chen Liang's ear. "Choose: coin...*or her organs pickled in brine.*" The matriarch's ashen nod sealed this Faustian compact.
Later, beneath the jaundiced halo of gaslight, Chen Liang cradled the discarded urn. His vision shimmered – Anvaratha's whisper pierced the veil of centuries*. The grime dissolved like morning mist, revealing vermilion lacquerwork untouched by time's ravages, its patterns whispering secret histories of fallen dynasties.
Dawn's first light found him at West Street Antique Emporium, Scar's jackals crowing derisively until Master Ma materialised – a snowy crane among sparrows. The collector's gnarled finger traced the urn's contours like a blind man reading Braille before pronouncing, "*One hundred thousand*," detonating pandemonium. Scar's henchmen scattered like cockroaches, their mocking laughter curdling into panicked whispers – the trash they'd discarded now gleamed with the patina of imperial legacy.
The Crucible of Patience
When Scarface glimpsed the incoming call notification downstairs, his brow furrowed momentarily before he answered with a thumb pressed like a guillotine blade against the screen.
"Scarface! Ascend immediately—that derided relic you dismissed radiates authenticity!" crackled the subordinate's voice through the receiver, trembling with electrified urgency.
The gang leader's cigarette froze mid-drag, ash trembling like suspended judgment. "An artefact? That soot-crusted trough?" His facial scar rippled like mercury disturbed by seismic waves. "If this proves to be some theatrical swindle, I'll have Chen Liang's tendons strung as lute strings."
"But Master Ma himself conducts the appraisal! His inaugural bid—100,000!"
Scarface's gloved fist crushed the cigarette into crimson embers. *Ma—the arbiter of antiquities?* "Contain them," he hissed, vaulting upstairs with predator grace, abandoning his shop's counterfeit treasures—jade simulacra and calligraphic forgeries frozen in silent mockery.
---
**Second Floor: The Chamber of Curios**
The assembly of dealers parted like Neolithic shadows before Master Ma's serene authority. Chen Liang stood coiled like a tensioned crossbow beside the lacquered table where the tarnished artefact now gleamed—its surface partially cleansed to reveal dendritic veins of imperial crimson bleeding through centuries of obscurity.
"Even my cataract-clouded eyes nearly overlooked this palimpsest of history," Master Ma confessed, his polishing cloth whispering across bronze like a scribe's reed over papyrus. A collective inhalation swept the room as dragon-scale patina emerged—the sacred cryptography of Ming Dynasty ritual vessels.
Scarface shouldered through the gawping crowd, his thugs carving passage with elbows sharpened by violence. "Seventy grand—final offer," he growled, spittle glistening on Chen's collar like venomous dew.
Chen's knuckles whitened against the table's edge. "Thirty thousand liquid. Thirty transferred. Then ownership transfers."
The gangster's laughter echoed like a death knell in a sepulchre. "Bold diction from a man who'll soon sup with pavement worms."
Master Ma's ivory-handled cane struck marble with cathedral resonance. "The curio code honours equitable parley. Coercion tarnishes more than bronze." Reluctantly, Scarface summoned his accountant—stacks of crimson bills materialising like blood blossoms in a nightmare origami.
As Chen methodically tallied the cursed currency beneath Scarface's basilisk glare, the gang leader leaned close—whisky breath carrying promises darker than ink. "These streets digest interlopers whole."
Unblinking, Chen secured the bulging satchel. Through pulsating *Eagle Vision*, he charted twelve hostile silhouettes flanking the stairwell—a living labyrinth. His revitalised knuckles hummed with *Fist of Penetration's* dormant fury—a symphony of retribution awaiting its baton drop.
Defiance Under the Willow's Shadow
The scarred man's laughter crystallised mid-air before fracturing into jagged peals that ricocheted through the cobblestone alleyways. His gaze raked across the encircling henchmen—steel-fanged jackals in human guise—before anchoring on Chen Liang with reptilian scrutiny. "Recklessness adorns youth," he hissed, tobacco-stained fingers twitching near the dagger at his waist, "but only fools conflate audacity with puissance."
His calloused palm descended toward Chen's face in a pantomime of mentorship, the gesture steeped in feudal-era hauteur.
"Enough!" The command cleaved the tension as Mr Ma's lieutenant materialised between them, his hand resting on the hilt of a Qing-style butterfly sword. Though Chen had initially dismissed the old merchant as a mere transactional ally, this unflinching guardianship kindled an unexpected reverence—like discovering jade beneath river-worn pebbles.
Scar's sneer unveiled gold-capped molars. "Your protégé has trespassed beyond West Street's dominion. Withdraw, or compose his elegy." The gang leader's prosthetic eye—a milky orb from some back-alley butcher—glinted as he extended his ultimatum: "Surrender the silver ingots, and we'll toast to this...miscalculation."
"Your camaraderie reeks of stagnant canals," Chen retorted, his voice colder than the frost-laden winters of Jiangnan. The insult lingered, keener than any blade's edge.
At Scar's signal, a dozen iron pipes screeched against the flagstones like infernal zithers. Mr Ma's guard barked cautions about factional vendettas, but Chen had already danced forward—a lone crane amidst snapping turtles. The first assailant's steel clashed against his fist in a metallic crescendo that reverberated through merchant stalls, trembling porcelain teacups on their shelves like startled sparrows.
Bones splintered like desiccated bamboo as the thug cartwheeled backward, embedding himself in a persimmon tree's trunk with force enough to rain orange orbs upon the marketplace. A gasp rippled through the crowd—fishmongers petrified mid-haggle, silk merchants clutching their ledgers like sacred texts.
"Feign fragility when cornered," Chen's martial master had drilled into him during those ink-black dawn trainings. Now, as the system's glacial voice intoned, *"Qi reserves depleted: 00:59:59 until meridians reset,"* he leaned against a steam-wreathed baozi cart, his laboured breaths ghosting through the morning mist.
Scar's laughter erupted, all veneer of civility abandoned. "The cubs' fangs retreat!" He spat betel nut juice that hissed against the cobblestones like venom. "End this pantomime!"
Yet Chen's smirk deepened as reinforcements' footfalls thrummed like war drums. When Mr Ma emerged—his sable coat billowing like a battle standard—the gang leader's bravado faltered. The ensuing parley reeked of imperial intrigue, a venomous ballet of honeyed threats and veiled allusions to territorial waters.
"Three hundred thousand for their shattered bones?" Chen's wine cup exploded against the lacquered table, shards mapping a constellation of rebellion. "Come claim it from my fists at first light."
Is 300,000 Sufficient?
Chen Liang's proclamation resonated with adamantine resolve, his words striking the air like tempered steel.
Elder Ma regarded the young man through veiled eyelids, paternal approval warming his gaze as he recognized the incandescent audacity mirroring his youthful rebellion. Had this fledgling groveled before Scarface's demands with obsequious compliance, the patriarch's esteem would have withered like autumn leaves - for complacency breeds mediocrity. Yet the youth's unyielding defiance kindled ancestral fire in the elder's marrow, while Scarface's countenance darkened like storm-laden clouds.
The jagged cicatrix adorning Scarface's orbital ridge throbbed crimson as he glowered - this insolent whelp dared cast aspersions upon his authority! Though constrained by Elder Ma's diplomatic intervention to maintain civil discourse, how could he command respect from his lieutenants after such public denigration?
With porcelain shattering against lacquered wood, Scarface hammered his wine vessel. "Pup," he hissed through bared dentition, "hubris demands sanguinary tribute. Prostrate yourself, and the path may yet... be paved with jade."
"Does my collateral not suffice?" Chen riposted, his lips twisting into a glacial sneer.
Scarface's visage deepened to an aubergine hue. Verily, the stripling held leverage - but could he evade the silent kiss of poisoned blades in shadowed thoroughfares?
Beneath Elder Ma's falcon-like scrutiny, both combatants drained their libations of feigned concord. Scarface restrained his bloodlust within the elder's sanctum; Chen conserved his stratagems like sheathed daggers.
The sumptuous banquet lay desolate as Scarface stormed into the moonlit courtyard, his parting glare etching itself into retinas like acid on bronze.
"You've flayed him of dignity," Elder Ma observed, amusement crinkling his timeworn eyes.
"Honor is seized, not bestowed," Chen countered.
"Magnificent!" The elder's laughter reverberated like temple gongs before subsiding into solemnity. "Yet mark this - vipers strike from blind angles when guardian shadows recede."
"Let him coil. This asp shall find its fangs meeting cold steel," Chen vowed, his eyes gleaming like drawn blades.
"Valor flowers brightest when rooted in sagacity," the sage counseled. Chen inclined his head like bamboo yielding to monsoon winds.
Their wine cups chimed celestial harmonies until sundered by a shrill ululation through Chen's cellular device: "Wallowing in some opium den? Would you have us perish from celestial neglect?"
Chen sprang upright like a drawn longbow. "Ten thousand pardons, Elder Ma. Domestic... obligations of urgent nature summon."
"Depart," the magnate decreed with an imperial wave, diplomatically ignoring the vulgar diatribe. "But recall - rare orchids command princely sums when presented at my gates."
As Chen turned toward the moonlit portal, the elder stayed him with a raised jade-ringed hand. "This obsidian token - let it signify my perpetual hospitality."
"Your munificence overflows, yet I rarely-"
"To refuse would sever our covenant!" The elder's mock wrath shimmered with unspoken affection. "That celadon urn's true worth eclipses seven figures. At six hundred thousand, I plundered your coffers. Accept this as recompense."
Securing the gilded plaque, Chen fled toward domestic tempests, his mother-in-law's vituperations pursuing him through the night like ravenous jackals.
The Transaction
A glacial hush descended upon the chamber.
Save the matriarch's viperous scrutiny, all ocular orbs converged upon Chen Liang—
Could this pariah truly conjure three hundred thousand? A hollow pantomime of pride, perchance?
Zhao Wan'er's jade-sculpted brow furrowed. Though her progenitrix dismissed him as dross, the adamantine resolve he'd manifested during that blade-scarred nocturne had engraved itself into her marrow—an anchor amidst tempests. Yet this brazen charade curdled her essence. *Vanity's masquerade?* Her antipathy toward mendacities clawed at her throat, whetted by betrayal's intimate sting.
The dowager's gaze slithered across the banknote, unworthy of her epidermal sanctum. "Presuming to brandish vacuous bravado now?" She hissed, mandarin sleeves crossed like armored carapace. "Gaze into your liminal reflection, sanguisuge! Wan'er's coffers have sustained your indolence—since when do vermin mint aurum?"
Wan'er's phalanges brushed his wrist—a lepidopteran tremor. "Retract this folly," she murmured, torn betwixt shielding his dignity and mourning trust's fracture.
Chen Liang's thumb grazed her metacarpal crests, a silent covenant. "Fear not—"
Zhang Minghao interposed with serpentine smoothness. "Heed your elder's sagacity. Pride's carcass serves no feast." His oleaginous lexicon pooled in the matriarch's approbation, a lotus blooming in cloacal waters.
"Behold Minghao's noblesse!" The dowager's glower could petrify stone. "You, who desecrate ancestral rites with your impertinence!"
"Mother!" Wan'er's timbre cleaved the miasma. She arose, a storm-petrel defying typhoons, and hauled Chen Liang toward the kitchen's asylum.
Vanquished, the matriarch relented—a throne materialized beside Wan'er, its presence a gilded oubliette. The banquet table congealed with tacit barbs.
Undeterred by the grotesque pantomime of suitor and spouse, Zhang Minghao maintained his pantherine composure. "Antiquities," he purred at the dowager's prodding, "a modest curatorship of familial legacy." The prevarication glinted like lacquered nephrite.
"Ah! A singular auction sustains triennial winters!" The matriarch's sigh curdled into a stiletto aimed at Chen Liang. "Not akin to these *hematophagic larvae* draining sustenance from conjugal bonds."
When queried regarding vocation, Zhang's feigned commiseration dripped arsenic. "A *junior academy* pedigree? How... quaint."
Wan'er surged upward—but Chen Liang's cellular apparatus chimed, a digital carillon.
The dowager's screen illuminated—a deposit of two hundred thousand yuan. Her pupils dilated; numerals recomputed thrice. "This... thaumaturgy?"
Chen Liang reclined, the specter of triumph haunting his labial contours. "The transaction... *did it clear?*"
Prostrate Thyself, Knave!
"Impossible..."
The matriarch's porcelain dentures clattered against her pallid gums, disbelief etching fissures across her powdered countenance. How could this familial parasite—mocked as a decade-long leech—manifest twenty thousand taels of silver? If such wealth coursed through Chen Liang's veins, why had he permitted loan syndicates to bind his father's wrists with hemp cords and drag Zhao Bao'er into their stygian underworld?
The clan's collective gaze congealed into blades of censure. They understood the arithmetic of his existence with visceral clarity—a man subsisting on sodium-laced noodles and pixelated reveries ought not to possess liquidity exceeding their combined annuities.
Zhao Wan'er's brow furrowed like rice paper creased by imperial scribes. "Account for this sum," she intoned, hoarfrost threading each syllable. Though repulsed by his indolence, she would sooner embrace starvation than witness his descent into the felonious enterprise.
"By the celestial ledger, 'tis lawful!" Chen Liang's knuckles blanched against the vermilion-lacquered table. "Recall Scarface's coerced 'tribute' yestereve—that ceramic monstrosity you discarded as peasant crockery?"
"Three hundred thousand?" The matriarch's jade bangles chimed a dissonant carillon as she recoiled. "Preposterous! This reeks of collusion with that serpentine racketeer!"
Zhang Minghao observed through gilded lashes, his Florentine oxfords tapping a staccato of impatience. Let the rabble rend themselves asunder. Depositing his gilt-framed fruit basket with sacerdotal precision, he exited stage left as the matriarch's ululation pierced the air.
"Genuflect, mongrel! Confess thy transgressions!"
Chen Liang stood petrified, ingratitude's frost permeating his marrow. He had crossed blades with Scarface's cleaver-wielding myrmidons for their sake, yet received less clemency than a gutter cur. As veracity teetered upon his tongue, Zhao Wan'er materialised like Pallas Athena shielding a mortal.
"Mother," her voice resonated with ancestral gravitas, "remember the blood debt."
The matriarch's wrath dissipated like incense smoke from extinguished joss sticks. Later, beneath moonlight sieved through bamboo blinds, Zhao Wan'er's profile resembled Song-dynasty celadon—flawless yet frangible. "Thy valour... merits recognition."
"Blood binds thicker than the Yangtze," he murmured, the adage's sweetness curdling upon his tongue.
As the night fell, twin tragedies unfurled: In a tenement reeking of mildew and despair, Chen Liguo clutched mahjong tiles stained with his sanguine fingerprints. Across the metropolis, Chen Liang's phone illuminated a venomous *waka:
*Minghao's jade hairpin*
*Gleams where thy corroded vows*
*Falter. Drown, mendicant.
Lakeheart Manor's coordinates pulsed balefully—the very establishment where Mr Ma had brokered his tenuous armistice. Crushing his apron's starch-stiffened folds, Chen Liang dissolved into the smog-choked night, oblivious to ivory dice tumbling in Scarface's den, each clack tolling the hour of familial cataclysm.
To be continuous…