Chapter 49 — Boss Guo's Revenge

"Hey, Boss Guo—you're calling to apologize, aren't you?" Hou Lin picked up the phone and started talking as though it were the most natural thing in the world.

"What?" Guo Jinbiao was taken aback.

"Your son came over to our turf causing trouble. Let's just call it even on that one, shall we? We grown-ups don't hold grudges against kids—we only gave him a little lesson," Hou Lin said, full of righteous indignation. "We've given you plenty of face this time, Boss Guo. If it had been anyone else, we'd have had him killed long ago."

Guo Jinbiao choked on his fury, stammering, "You—you—"

"All right, if there's nothing else, I'm hanging up. I'm busy here," Hou Lin said, and without waiting to see whether Guo Jinbiao had anything more to say, he hung up.

"Motherfucker!" Guo Jinbiao slammed his phone down onto the desk with a crack. "This is too much! Too much! A few reckless little whelps think that just because they've got a bit of power they can do whatever they please. Damn it, I'll show you that the old dog still knows a trick or two!"

"Biao, don't get so worked up," said Yu Xiaohu, Guo Jinbiao's strategist, coming over with a fawning smile. "Biao, I'd say that Bao Lin and Hou Lin really don't know what's good for them."

"Huzi, what do you think we should do?" Guo Jinbiao had a bit of a headache. He'd assumed a little intimidation would be enough to deal with Bao Lin, but now the man wouldn't give him any face at all. If he just swallowed this, he'd never be able to hold his head up in the underworld again. But if he brought a large force to Songjiang for a full-scale fight, not only would it be time-consuming and exhausting, there was one more crucial factor—war was really all about burning money.

Once he went to war with Bao Lin, his own side would suffer no small losses. If they could take Songjiang's turf in one sweep, then fine—but the worst-case scenario was mutual destruction, with neither side coming out ahead.

When the snipe and the clam grapple, the fisherman profits. If some dark horse came charging out of nowhere in the middle of it all, that truly would be a case of losing more than he gained.

But the way things stood, Guo Jinbiao was like an arrow already nocked on the string—he had no choice but to let fly. So he sat there, his expression shifting from dark to light, unable to decide what exactly to do.

"Biao, I know you're furious right now, but the way things stand, it's not the time to march a large force into Songjiang," Yu Xiaohu said after a moment's hesitation. "There are two reasons for that. First, it's the end of the year, and the crackdown on crime is severe. If we take a big crowd into Songjiang for a gang brawl, we'd easily run into trouble—the last thing we want is to be eating New Year's Eve dinner in a jail cell. Second, even if we really did go to war with Bao Lin, we might not come out ahead. Wipe them out, and we'd be badly battered ourselves. The biggest winner then would be the Sun family of Donghai."

Don't let the "Hu" in Yu Xiaohu's name—the character for tiger—fool you. In the way he dealt with people and the world, he was not the least bit tigerish; on the contrary, he was shrewd.

Hearing Yu Xiaohu's analysis, Guo Jinbiao couldn't help but nod. These were precisely his own concerns. So he sighed and said, "Huzi, you're right. But if we don't strike back, won't Bao Lin think we're afraid of him? How are we supposed to survive in this business after that?"

"Of course we have to do something—but we can do it a different way," Yu Xiaohu said after a moment's thought. "I say, why don't we play this quiet? Find some people to make trouble for Hou Lin and Bao Lin, give them a scare, let them know we're not to be trifled with."

"You mean send out assassins?" Guo Jinbiao's interest was immediately piqued.

"No need to kill anyone. We're in this life to make a living, not to lay down our lives. A little deterrence is enough—though breaking a leg or two would be fine as well," Yu Xiaohu said, his voice turning sinister. "That way we won't even be breaking the rules. He injured our young master; we send someone to cripple him—he can't very well complain about that."

"Good idea!" Guo Jinbiao nodded, and clapped Yu Xiaohu cheerfully on the shoulder. "Huzi, so who do you think we should put on this job?"

"Now that is a problem." Yu Xiaohu frowned. "Bao Lin's bound to have people protecting him, and word is that Hou Lin is a formidable fighter in his own right—last time he beat even the enforcers the Four Snakes Gang brought up from the south."

"Now that you mention it, it does come back to me. But in our organization, aside from Gangzi and Luzi, nobody else is a match for him one-on-one," Guo Jinbiao said, his tone a little worried.

"One-on-one is definitely out of the question," Yu Xiaohu said, shaking his head. "We're not going there to fight him fair and square—we send people to bushwhack them. Even if Gangzi and Luzi were great at single combat, what difference does it make? Would he fight them one-on-one? If Bao Lin's men spotted them, they'd be on them in a swarm, wouldn't they?"

Guo Jinbiao was moved by this. True enough—who in their right mind would fight you one-on-one? If they caught someone, wouldn't a whole bunch of them jump him together?

"So that way won't work either," Guo Jinbiao said, shaking his head.

"Why not? Who says we have to send our own brothers from the organization?" Yu Xiaohu smiled.

"Not our own brothers? Then who?" Guo Jinbiao didn't understand.

"Heh—Biao, have you forgotten that there's an old, established assassin organization in our province? Three years ago, when you had the former boss of Jidun City, big brother Daxing, killed, didn't you do business with them?" Yu Xiaohu prompted.

"You mean the Black Widow assassination ring?" Guo Jinbiao's face twitched. Clearly he didn't much want to get mixed up with an organization like that. Last time he'd had no choice; but this time, dragging assassins out of retirement over such a small matter—he really was somewhat reluctant.

As a rule, underworld organizations aren't too keen on associating with assassin syndicates, and that stands to reason. After all, the underworld deals in tactics and turf, not in making a living off murder and plunder. Assassin organizations are different—those outfits are pure killing machines. If you really crossed them, you might not even know how you'd die tomorrow. So after that last job was done, Guo Jinbiao had paid the fee in full and never contacted the organization again.

"That's right. They're the only ones who can get this done well," Yu Xiaohu nodded.

Guo Jinbiao nodded, then shook his head, sinking into thought. He needed to weigh the pros and cons. But whenever he thought of the humiliations he had suffered before and just now, Guo Jinbiao gritted his teeth and nodded hard. "All right, then that's settled. Go get me a prepaid phone card registered under a fake name."

"Right away." Yu Xiaohu nodded and turned to leave. Meanwhile, Guo Jinbiao opened the fingerprint safe in his office and took out an address book.

By the time Yu Xiaohu returned, Guo Jinbiao had already locked the safe, leaving only the address book on the desk.

With trembling hands, Guo Jinbiao took the phone card, inserted it into a mobile phone, powered it on, and waited for it to finish searching for a network. Then, following what was written in the address book, he dialed a number.

"The Heavenly King covers the earth like a tiger."

Once the call connected, the person on the other end directly spoke the first half of the coded greeting.

"The lonely widow is dead," Guo Jinbiao said cautiously. He wasn't even sure whether the organization, after all these years, still used the same code.

"Who are you looking for?" the other side asked.

"Black Widow," Guo Jinbiao said. Seeing that the other party hadn't challenged him, he relaxed slightly, and this answer came much more smoothly.