Xu Delong said, "Okay, I understand."
I asked him, "Did the scouts not come back?"
Xu Delong shook his head: "He probably realized we've increased our vigilance, so he hasn't come again for the time being. I've already arranged for sentries to be hidden."
"Perhaps you're just too tense. I can't imagine how you could have enemies in modern times—where are your sentries?"
"I don't know either, it's fluid."
I'm sweating bullets! I hope no one with a penny-pinching eye tries to take advantage of my school. Aside from Zhongnanhai, I can't think of a place with tighter security than this.
Leaving the 300th barracks, I took Li Bai to the dormitory building. Many rooms on the first and second floors were brightly lit, and occasionally, the hearty laughter of the bandits could be heard. It seemed these bandits were quite happy in their new environment.
I helped Li Bai into the building, intending to find him a room at random. I pushed open one door and saw Tang Long, the Golden Leopard, shirtless, gambling with Li Kui and a few other heroes; I opened the second door and saw Dong Ping and Lin Chong chatting; I opened the third door and Jin Dajian was already asleep; in the fourth door, An Daoquan was calculating Duan Jingzhu's fortune, predicting that he would have bad luck and die at the end of the year; the fifth door was empty, except for the toilet…
I pushed open the sixth room door and plunged headfirst into those two round, large breasts. I don't know what Hu Sanniang was doing, hanging herself so high up. Before I could even sniffle, she jumped down, grabbed me under her armpits, and started pinching my scalp with her fists. I glanced up, seeing those towering breasts, and also noticed the TV stand above them. Turns out, Hu Sanniang was doing pull-ups.
I rolled my head in her arms, yelling, "Let go of me! Do you know who I'm helping?"
"Let's beat up the Heavenly King first." Hu Sanniang continued to pinch my scalp. Li Bai, without anyone to support him, staggered and fell onto the bed. He wasn't stupid; he knew to choose a soft place to lie down.
Hu Sanniang immediately abandoned me and grabbed Li Bai like an eagle snatching a chick, cursing, "How dare a drunkard lie on my bed!"
"That man is Li Bai!" I shouted.
Hu Sanniang suddenly stopped what she was doing, looked at me and said, "Li Bai? The Li Bai who wrote poetry?" Her voice was actually trembling a little.
I was overjoyed. It seems that even bandits have to give way to Li Bai because of his great fame. And there's even a story about a female bandit and a poet!
Female bandits are usually forced into this situation. In reality, they are already tired of their ethereal, white-clad lives. What they yearn for most is often a learned and elegant gentleman...
Although Old Master Li is a bit old and a third or fourth-hand woman, this only shows that he has experienced a lot in life. Women are naturally less immune to men like this. In addition, Old Master Li is exceptionally talented. Judging from Hu Sanniang's trembling voice, which sounds like she's in heat, could it be that Old Master Li is blessed and can have a second chance at love, like an old horse still eager to run...?
Wait, why does Hu Sanniang's voice sound more like indignation than excitement? Why is her gaze filled with murderous intent instead of tender affection? Why is her delicate hand, honed from Iron Palm training, raised high towards Li Bai's face...?
I quickly grabbed her from behind and dragged her away with all my might. Hu Sanniang was off the ground, pointing at Li Bai and cursing: "Damn it, when I was a child, I was beaten on the palm by my old man because I couldn't recite 'The Road to Shu is Hard,' which forced me, a little girl, to end up having to practice martial arts. Why do you write such lousy poems?"
As I pulled her along, I said, "Don't hit me, don't hit me. You had it better when you were a child than I did. There were fewer poets back then, and we had to memorize Song Dynasty poems and Yuan Dynasty songs later on."
Hu Sanniang stopped and said, "Forget it, I won't hit the old man. You should get him out of here; he's disgusting to look at."
I lifted Li Bai up again and asked her, "Where does Military Advisor Wu live?"
Hu Sanniang waved her hand dismissively and said, "How would I know? Go find out for yourself."
I had no choice but to carry Brother Taibai around the stairwell again. I made a mistake; I should have left Li Bai with Xu Delong. The heroes weren't interested in this great poet at all. When they heard that this was the Poet Immortal, some came over for a few glances, while others ignored him. The best performer was Moyun Jinchi Oupeng, who pointed at Li Bai and said, "Isn't this the one who wrote 'Goose, goose, goose'?" I glared at him and said no.
"Oh, is that the one that wrote 'Hoeing the fields at noon'?"
It seems that Ou Peng and I have a lot in common...
Finally, they arrived at Song Qing's room. The gentle young man said, "I don't know which room Wu Junshi is in, so just leave him here. I'll look after him."
Li Bai fell asleep as soon as he lay down on the bed, and Song Qing wrung out a damp towel to wipe his face. I chatted with him for a while and learned that the heroes had occupied most of the rooms on the first and second floors of the four-story dormitory building in a haphazard manner. Some lived alone, while others who got along well lived together in groups. Currently, only a very few rooms on these two floors are empty, making it impossible to coordinate their living arrangements.
It's quite remarkable that these guys, so undisciplined and carefree, were able to win every battle in the early stages. However, they later suffered greatly when they encountered the disciplined Fang La, whose eight Heavenly Kings, numbering over a hundred, managed to wipe out seventy or eighty percent of their forces. Although powerful figures like Lu Zhishen and Gongsun Sheng didn't participate in the campaign, causing significant losses to Liangshan's strength, it still illustrates serious internal problems within Liangshan. Nearly 1000 years later, they still haven't learned their lesson.
After I finished my business, I rode my bike back. Along the way, I heard rustling sounds in the bushes a few times. It could be wild rabbits, or maybe it was one of the young soldiers Xu Delong had arranged to lie in wait, playing a prank on me. I called out in that direction, "Comrades, you've worked hard!" Sure enough, there was no more movement.
I got on the highway and quickly entered the city. At an intersection, I encountered a red light. There was a small movie theater on the side of the road. Bored, I leaned on the handlebars and looked at the huge poster on the ceiling of the theater—it was for the movie "Confession of Pain," starring Tony Leung and Xu Jinglei. Seeing that the light still had 45 seconds left, I squinted at the synopsis on the poster. The theater had a spotlight on its ceiling, like two upward-pointing buds from a 20th-century FOX movie theater, constantly rotating. When the light reached the inner part of the ceiling, I was startled to see a thin, dark figure completely bathed in the beam of light. He was dressed in black, half-crouching on the roof, motionless.
I excitedly stood up and shouted, "Brother Qian!"
The lights came on, and the shadowy figure disappeared. I waited for Shi Qian to come down and talk to me. Since that night at the bar, Shi Qian hadn't shown up again, probably too embarrassed to come back because he couldn't find Liu Xuan. After that incident, he went back to school a few times, but most of the time he wandered the city like Spider-Man, especially at night.
I waited for ages and he still didn't come down; the roof of the movie theater was empty too. As I looked around, the taxi driver behind me leaned out and yelled, "You son of a bitch, are you coming or not? Is Xu Jinglei your lover?" The light had turned green. Seeing someone in his car, I knew I'd delayed his earnings, so I spat at him as an apology and drove off. Shi Qian was probably wearing black clothes and didn't want to come down to meet me. The police in our area have a good tradition of hiding themselves; taxi drivers don't dare honk their horns for this reason. You can shout in your car, even exceeding 10,000 decibels, it's fine, but if you accidentally honk in a no-honking zone, you won't feel at ease unless you get a 200 yuan fine.
Perhaps it was just my imagination, but I always suspected Shi Qian was still following me. He might not have heard my shout, but I always felt a shadowy figure lurking in the darkness. Sometimes I deliberately slowed down, but everything around me was perfectly calm. When I drove into the alley leading to the pawnshop, Old Master Zhao's son, Zhao Bailian, was wandering the streets again, not sleeping. The residents of our area were used to it; sometimes Old Master Zhao would wake up and take him home, and sometimes Zhao Bailian would oversleep and wander the streets all night.
Zhao Bailian had his back to me, but when my high beams shone on him, he suddenly turned around, slammed the mop he was holding onto the ground, and his pale face, with its serious expression, surprisingly possessed a commanding presence. He pointed behind me and shouted sharply, "Who goes there, you scoundrel?" I turned around as well, and seemed to see a shadow on the roof. I asked, "Is that Brother Qian?"
As Zhao Bailian questioned us, a black cat was so frightened that it fell off the roof, gave us a resentful look, and quickly ran away.
I admired the pale-faced man's gaze, and said to him with a smile, "Why aren't you shouting 'You're menacing' anymore?"
Zhao Bai slowly shook his head: "It's not murderous intent."
"What's that? Shall I take you home?"
Zhao Bai smiled mysteriously, then casually arranged the mop in his hand in a dragon-like motion before saying to me, "I'm hungry..."
The next morning I had to get busy again. The school was opening tomorrow, and I didn't know how many people would come. I couldn't do without someone to receive them. I pulled out the Yellow Pages and called various wedding planning companies. Some were small, newly opened companies with offices in residential buildings, probably with no more than three people in the whole company. They could only make jokes at ordinary people's weddings, using their powerful lung capacity to shout "One bow, one bow, one bow..." to torture the newlyweds' backs. They didn't dare to take on the job when they heard that I had a school opening covering 800 hectares. One company had initially accepted the job but backed out when they heard that someone from the tax bureau was also going.
Several large companies, being big businesses, bullied their customers, insisting that if you wanted their services, you had to use their entire package, including a float, a ceremonial guard, video surveillance, a group of "bird-like angels" with fake wings, eight third-level municipal actors, and two company employees who could play the harmonica for backup singing. What angered me most was that the cannon salute cost 500 yuan per shot! 500 yuan a shot! I'd rather go to the Golden Queen Casino...
When people are in a hurry, their minds become particularly sharp. I suddenly thought: why not use such a clever kid like Sun Sixin? I made a phone call, explained the general situation, and Sun Sixin asked, "Brother Qiang, how much are you planning to spend to get this done?"
The wedding planning company quoted me 300,000 yuan, but I told Sun Sixin, "30,000!"
Sun Sixin: "I understand, I promise it will be a great success. Just give me a list of guests tomorrow."
That's how this important matter was settled.
I remembered that Lao Zhang told me to invite some friends to support us, which makes things much simpler. First, I'll inform Tiger, then tell Master Gu, and also let him know that we've finally worked together on Chen Kejiao. These people are all quite influential. I'll have Du Xing invite his apprentices, and that should be enough to make things lively.
To my surprise, Bai Lianhua called and asked me to pick up the keys. I told her I was busy these past few days, and when she asked what was wrong, she immediately said she would come to the school tomorrow to give them to me in person and see if she could help me in any way.
When the day arrived, I put on the suit that had been locked in the closet for many years, straddled the motorcycle, and set off with high spirits.