In the eyes of both big and small drug traffickers, the King of Spades was a man of few words but had an extremely strong presence. As soon as he said this, the atmosphere was like pouring cold water into a frying pan, and the entire pan was about to explode in an instant.
The expressions of all the old men on the left suddenly changed: "What did you say?"
The forces on the right side of the King of Spades stood up one after another: "What truth?" "Boss, what's going on?!"
"On October 9, last year, we traded 200 kilograms of bulk goods in Gongzhou City, but the location was urgently changed from the plastic factory to the Ecological Park cultivation base ten minutes before the transaction. At the same time, the police, who had originally agreed to just make an 'appearance' at the plastic factory, took more than a dozen cars, along with the special police and public security. Half an hour later, a series of explosions occurred in the plastic factory."
The King of Spades' voice was not loud, but when he spoke, everyone fell silent, and only his steady voice resounded throughout the room:
"The Queen of Hearts betrayed me and wanted to kill me. But honestly speaking, it's not surprising that he wanted to do that. There's only one thing I want to know."
"——Who instigated him?"
The last few words were obviously emphasized more. On the left side of the long table, a man in his fifties who was wearing a bright yellow Burmese sarong frowned and said, "Instigate? What do you mean?"
The Burmese woman in the cheongsam lowered her eyes and served the tea. The King of Spades lowered his head and rubbed the lid of the teacup before saying, amid the slight heat:
"Wu Tun wants to murder me."
The explosiveness of those six short words were simply innumerable. The whole room froze and then exploded immediately. Denials, angry rebukes, roaring, and the sharp friction of tables and chairs moving on the ground… they were all mixed together, making people's eardrums buzz.
"How is it possible; don't talk nonsense!" The Burmese man who spoke just now was dissatisfied: "Wu Tun's health has been getting worse and worse in the past two years. How could he have the energy to plan these things? You're slandering! Where's the evidence? Where's the evidence?!"
The King of Spades took a deep breath.
Bang!
A pistol was slammed on the table, and the loud noise made the surrounding area quiet. A-Jie's cold eyes scanned everyone's faces one by one, until everyone shrank and fell silent.
"Jiang Ting," The King of Spades called back: "What you told me before, tell them again word for word."
It might be due to the fact that he rarely expresses his emotions; Jiang Ting's skin was smooth, and his demeanor was alienated. At first glance, he looked like he was still in his twenties. Wearing thick clothes in winter, his neck, shoulders, and hands resting on his thighs were extremely thin, his skin icy white. He sat there alone in the midst of everyone's attention.
Seeing that the situation was not right, the Burmese man was the first to scold: "What makes his words credible? Isn't he a traitor? How do we know that he isn't taking the opportunity to stir up trouble to drag Wu Tun into muddy water, putting the blame on us! I don't think there's any need to interrogate him, just drag him out—"
"Jiang Ting," The King of Spades' tone was unexpectedly gentle but slightly aggravated.
"…I disclosed the transaction to the police in October last year."
Jiang Ting's voice was very hoarse and unsteady, which might be because he was too weak to maintain his calm breathing.
Then, amid dozens of urgent, tense, or covetous gazes around him, his pale red lips opened again, saying, "It was my idea alone, and Wu Tun didn't know about it."
After a brief silence, the boiling emotions on the left and right sides of the table suddenly reversed. All kinds of noise and discussion suddenly broke out, and this time it was A-Jie whose expression suddenly changed, and even the King of Spades was slightly taken aback.
"What… What's going on? What else do you have to say now?" The Burmese man quickly regained his confidence: "King of Spades, you heard it, right? What do you have to say now?!"
An old man stood up tremblingly and asked Jiang Ting: "Did the King of Spades force you?"
"He forced you to put the blame on Wu Tun, didn't he?"
...…
A-Jie stared at the left side of the long table with a ruthless look on his face, asking in a low voice, "Brother?"
The King of Spades raised his hand, stopping his next words.
"Revealing the news to the police was just to organize the 1009 operation so as to accumulate merits and climb higher. In Myanmar, I have been marginalized for a long time, and I hardly know anything going on inside, so if I want to grab more power, I can only increase my leverage within the police. This was my motivation."
Jiang Ting's narration came out sentence by sentence amidst the noise, as if he had rehearsed it many times in his heart. It was smooth, calm, and unambiguous; every word and pause was natural.
"I planned all of this on my own. I didn't ask Wu Tun for instructions beforehand, and there was no evidence to prove that he knew about it. As for the idea of murdering the young master, I never thought of it. I didn't know that he would appear in the plastic factory or even that he would personally participate in this operation…"
Someone on the right side of the long table questioned in a loud voice: "How could you not know that the young master is at the transaction site?!"
"I thought it was Jin Jie who was making the deal." Jiang Ting said without hesitation. A-Jie's cheeks twitched immediately, only to hear him calmly say: "I don't think killing him is a big deal."
Judging from A-Jie's expression, he was really restraining himself from cursing on the spot.
But no one noticed this at this time. The Burmese man jumped up and pointed straight at the King of Spades: "I told you, why would Wu Tun want to kill you? It really is you who poured dirty water on Wu Tun's head first!"
Many people couldn't bear the roller-coaster-like thrill; they stood up to blame each other, defended, yelled, and even cursed. For a moment, the crowd in the room was so angry that several waitresses became so frightened that they leaned against the wall and trembled.
The oldest old man on the left got up with his walking stick and seemed to want to persuade the Burmese man in his fifties to calm down, but the latter was eager to get back at the King of Spades for scolding him to his face just now. He took advantage of the situation and pointed at everyone around the table one by one: "Did everyone hear that? What was the King of Spades planning? Is there any convincing evidence now? He just wanted to attack us first. Today was just a lack of an excuse; maybe tomorrow he won't even need an excuse!"
The King of Spades was originally leaning back in the armchair, with his hands in his trouser pockets, in a relaxed posture, but at this moment he took a breath and stood up.
"How can we be sorry for you? It's obvious that everyone here is risking their life to seek wealth. You are good; since you came back from the United States, you have been making trouble non-stop, and you don't pay attention to us seniors at all..."
The King of Spades walked behind the emotional Burmese man, but the man was still talking loudly without feeling the slightest bit of danger. The expression of the King of Spades was so flat, even a little careless, so much so that no matter who saw it, they would think that he was just walking casually to say a few words.
"If you go on like this, our two groups won't get along, and we can't cooperate at all. You like to stab people in the back, and you don't respect the loyalty of the older generation, you—"
The Burmese man reprimanded him.
Everyone around was stunned.
——They saw the King of Spades standing behind the man. He reached out to pick up the knife on the table in front of him and stabbed it deeply into his windpipe with his backhand!
Puff——Blood gushed out wildly, as if the reservoir had opened, and the pressure made it splash on half of the table in an instant. After just two seconds of silence, the group of people staggered to their feet amidst the sharp friction of tables and chairs, and the waiter screamed in horror!
"Hu-huh…" The Burmese man let out a gasping sound in his throat, and his eyes opened wide. As soon as the King of Spades pulled out the knife, he fell head first onto the table with a plop.
"If you have something to say, just say it; don't yell." The King of Spades said calmly. He threw away the bloody table knife with a loud clang and took out a tissue to wipe his bloody hands.
There was no sound in the room, except for the blood dripping down from the edge of the table and the suppressed gasping of people in all directions.
The King of Spades turned around and walked in front of Jiang Ting. He stared at him for a long time, and then asked, "You know what you did just now is called treason, right?"
Jiang Ting was silent. He was blindfolded, but there was no sign of fear.
The King of Spades thought for a while, then suddenly asked: "Sometimes I feel like you are too sure that you won't be killed by me; is it because…"
Jiang Ting interrupted him before he finished speaking, and the corner of his lips unexpectedly curled slightly: "If you silence me now, won't it confirm that you forced me to frame Wu Tun?"
These words were almost invincible, and the King of Spades was stunned for a moment.
"…You are really…" After a long time, the King of Spades laughed, shook his head, and sighed: "If you sincerely stand on my side, then it would be really…"
Jiang Ting said, "Then you really must be dreaming."
Everyone in the room gradually recovered from the shock and panic, and once again there was an extremely subtle and suppressed sound of discussion. The old man who had just tried to dissuade the Burmese man sighed helplessly, knocked on the ground with his walking stick: Bang! Bang!
After attracting everyone's attention, he turned to the King of Spades, pointed at Jiang Ting, and said in a deep voice: "He has indeed been far away from the core of the group in the past few years, so it's not surprising that he would have such thoughts. It's not easy to bury this nail in Gongzhou. Wu Tun's matter should be just a misunderstanding, so don't worry about it any more."
A-Jie frowned fiercely, as if he wanted to say something, but the King of Spades made a "huh?" sound.
"I think since what happened in October last year didn't cause any damage, why not put the Queen of Hearts back. The position inside the police is very important, and it's especially…"
"Important to your people, isn't it?" The King of Spades turned around and smiled.
Feeling helpless, the old man pointed at the corpse lying on the table with his walking stick and pointedly said: "The cooperation between our two groups is also very important; it's better not to tear this facade apart."
The King of Spades seemed to be in deep thought.
Since October last year, the two groups of people have argued about this matter no less than five or six times, but none of them have been able to figure out the treacherous attitude of the King of Spades. Everyone signaled to each other anxiously and peeked at him until even A-Jie became a little impatient, only to see the King of Spades suddenly say, "Okay."
The old man's wrinkled face loosened.
"I can put him back, as you have always wanted, and even send him back to Gongzhou myself. But I can't be sure whether he has turned against the police or whether he has completely betrayed our entire group in order to join the police. So in order to prove this, I have to ask him to do one thing."
"What?" the old man subconsciously asked.
The King of Spades smiled at him but didn't say anything. He turned around and leaned into Jiang Ting's ear for a while.
"It's not that easy," he said softly, "You can't go back."
Jiang Ting's face under the black cloth moved, and in the next second, the King of Spades asked with a smile:
"Do you still remember 'Rivet'?"
Jiang Ting suddenly raised his head, and his whole person froze as if he had heard some spell—
But the King of Spades didn't say anything more and stood up straight with a smile. He made a gesture to A-Jie, who turned around and left the room.
...…
It was January 9th; three full months had passed since the shocking explosion at the 1009 plastic factory, and no one knew what kind of life-and-death confrontation took place in this small town on the border.
A few hours later, Jiang Ting was blindfolded and brought into the car. When he got out of the car the next day, he finally opened his eyes. In front of him was the gray sky at the junction of Gongzhou and Jianning, and a dilapidated house stood in the wilderness not far away—
"Rivet" was waiting for his arrival in the dark place.
All the betrayals, conspiracies, blood, fires that raged all over the sky, car accidents that turn around, ups and downs, treacherous murders… It all started with the bullet shot from Jiang Ting's muzzle. Afterward, without warning, he quickly fell into a long, deep sleep.
For more than a thousand days and nights, no one thought that he could still wake up.
Until one morning, in a ward in Jianning City, Jiang Ting opened his eyes without warning.
"Yan Xie, from the Criminal Investigation Division of the Municipal Public Security Bureau. Get out of the way, don't block the scene, and give us two shoe covers—what's your name?"
"Lu Chengjiang."
"You have an unusual degree of attention and participation in this case, why? "
...….
Late at night, when he returned to Jianning from Jiangyang County, Jiang Ting drank the last sip of beer in the dark and lively night market stalls under Yan Xie's gaze.
"You can doubt anything else, but this is the only thing that is beyond doubt… Yan Xie, the name of the new drug is 'Blue Gold', and the person who wants to eliminate it the most in this world is me."