Chapter 159: The Righteous Second Master

"We can't possibly accept this. Since you've already kowtowed, never mind 500, we wouldn't even take 50. Take these two little red envelopes whether you want them or not." Although Second Master didn't say anything pleasant and deliberately kept a straight face, a smile was already peeking through his skin. Both he and Madame Liu were elderly and alone—what Beijingers call "barren branches" with no children or family. Having a younger generation kowtow to them during the Spring Festival was a great comfort.

"Second Master, it's a major holiday, and I really don't want to bring you down, but I do want to ask you about something. You're definitely more experienced in this area than I am." After chatting merrily for a while, Hong Tao and Second Master went to the window to drink tea, while Madame Liu and Lu Yunpeng stayed outside to continue watching the gala.

"What is it? So mysterious. What kind of trouble have you stirred up again!" Seeing Hong Tao acting all shifty, Second Master lowered his voice as well.

"I want to ask you, suppose a nationwide campaign suddenly erupts again to crack down on criminal elements, and it's a sweeping, indiscriminate dragnet. If at that time I wanted to protect two people who have minor past records but very trivial offenses, and might get caught in the crossfire, where would be a suitable place to hide them?"

Ever since returning from Beidaihe, Hong Tao had been pondering this question, but after thinking about it for months, he still couldn't come up with a foolproof countermeasure. With the Spring Festival of 1983 already upon them, he truly couldn't say precisely when that severe crackdown campaign would arrive. In his memory, there were only giant white notices plastered all over the streets, with individual names marked in red ink—those were the criminals awaiting execution.

According to rough statistics from later generations, fewer than 30,000 people were sentenced to death during this campaign, and even more were sent off to the deserts to reform through labor, with their household registrations even cancelled. The slogan at the time was "strike heavily and swiftly." The power to approve death sentences was delegated by the Supreme People's Court to the higher people's courts of provinces, autonomous regions, and municipalities directly under the central government, precisely so that the second-instance trial could be omitted.

"Arrest resolutely those who may or may not be arrested; sentence resolutely those who may or may not be sentenced; execute resolutely those who may or may not be executed"—this became the guiding ideology for handling cases at the time.

Under these circumstances, no matter how many times Hong Tao time-traveled, he couldn't guarantee whether Han Xue and Lu Yunpeng might be implicated and betrayed by their former associates. As long as that possibility existed, the absolute lightest sentence for the two of them would be labor re-education in the Great Northwest, effectively ruining their lives for good. Therefore, feeling he couldn't come up with a good solution himself, he decided to ask Second Master, who possessed much more life experience from that era. Hadn't this old man almost been branded as a counter-revolutionary secret agent and yet survived just fine?

"What do you mean by this? What sweeping dragnet? Who are you trying to protect? Make yourself clear to me!" Second Master hadn't expected Hong Tao to bring up such a topic. He put down the teapot he had just brought to his lips and stared fixedly at Hong Tao across the table.

"I'm just speaking hypothetically, it's a hypothesis, not necessarily real..." Hong Tao couldn't explain it to him and could only try to gloss it over with vague words.

"Do you have nothing better to do on New Year's and are stuffed with food? Playing at hypothetical scenarios with me? Are you intentionally trying to anger me to death early so you can take back my shares?" Second Master possessed considerable composure. Since Hong Tao wouldn't talk, he stopped asking, adopting a stance of outlasting Hong Tao to the bitter end.

"I'm just afraid that what if it's real! Last night I had a dream. I dreamt that both Han Xue and Uncle Lu were arrested! My dreams are generally very accurate, so I think it's better to be a little careful. What do you say?" Hong Tao knew Second Master would never believe the excuse of a dream, but he had no other choice. Believe it or not, I'm just talking nonsense with my eyes wide open, what can you do to me?

"The two of them!" Second Master almost dropped the teapot to the floor and instinctively glanced at Lu Yunpeng, who was still sitting in the outer room staring blankly and smiling at the television.

"Haven't they both registered with the neighborhood committee and the police station? They stay right under our noses every day and rarely even go out. What could possibly happen?"

"When your house was just liberated, nobody said it was going to be nationalized either; when my dad first became a teacher, nobody said he was considered a stinking Old Intellectual, right? Who can guarantee things like that for you? When the time comes, neighborhood committees and police stations flip their faces faster than turning the pages of a book. You should understand that better than I do, shouldn't you? Why ask me?" To drive the point home for Second Master, Hong Tao poked straight at his old scars.

"......Are you serious? This isn't something to joke about!" Second Master was almost choked breathless by Hong Tao's words. He took several deep breaths to keep himself from cursing out loud, then squeezed a few words out through his teeth.

"One hundred percent. The old immortal in my dream told me, he just didn't specify the exact time, but it won't pass this year..." Hong Tao intended to fully claim the title of divine mystic for himself; aside from that, he couldn't produce any other reasonable explanation.

"......Forget this dream from now on, and forget what you said today too. After the holiday, when the weather gets a bit warmer, you go talk to the two of them... No, forget it, I'll go talk to them and let them go out and hide somewhere. Don't you get mixed up in this matter. Don't ask where they're going, don't tell anyone else, and never bring it up again. As for Han Xue's younger sister, let Han Xue tell her herself." Second Master closed his eyes, fell silent for a brief moment, and then stated his final decision in a very slow tone.

"......Am I causing you a bit too much trouble? Actually, I can't be one hundred percent sure something will happen to them, I'm just a little worried." Hong Tao understood now; Second Master was essentially taking all the blame upon himself. Even if things were exposed later, no one could implicate Hong Tao, and given Second Master's current age, bearing a accusation or two wouldn't cause any major harm.

"I've been through a lot. With this kind of stuff, I'd rather believe it exists than believe it doesn't. By the time you can be sure, it's already too late. They have no blood relation to you, and yet you can plan so far ahead for them—it shows you're a good boss, and it's their good fortune. I'm just a worthless wretch; if I die tomorrow, besides Grandma Liu, nobody will shed a tear for me. You're different from me; your good days are still ahead. You're smart, you know the gravity of matters, and that old immortal of yours drops by in dreams whenever he pleases—your future is boundless! Helping people and having a kind heart is a good thing, but when you can keep yourself out of danger, don't rush into it. The fact that we met in the first place was fate. No matter what purpose you had in pulling me in here, your intentions weren't entirely pure either. Now it works out well: you let me live a couple of years of good days, and I'll take a bullet for you—it's not a loss. Besides, Sixth Brother is my friend, and I was the one who introduced him here, so helping him is only right and proper, and helping Han Xue is just tagging along. So, kid, being a good person isn't so easy; you have to pay a price. Today you played the good person, and as a result, you tossed me out as the shield..." Second Master rambled on at great length, leaving it completely unclear whether he was telling Hong Tao that being a good person was good, or advising him to play the good guy less often when he had nothing better to do.

"Fine! How am I a good person? Haven't I just ended up caught in the middle, failing to please either side? You took all the credit, and yet you left me carrying a huge personal favor. Is this what you call a self-sacrifice scheme?" Hong Tao had a peculiar trait: the more grateful he felt toward someone, the more sarcastic his words became.

"Hehehe, that's why the two of us ended up together—neither of us is any good! Let's not point fingers at each other!" In some ways, Second Master's personality was very similar to Hong Tao's; he could always turn a deeply depressing piece of worry into a joke—both of them shared Ah Q's method of self-consolation and self-delusion!

"Bang... hiss... clatter... rumble..." At that moment, a loud explosion suddenly sounded outside the window, and immediately the whole city plunged once again into its annual revelry. Flash thunder, ground-spinners, water chains, sky-rockets, double-bang firecrackers, sparklers, and loud mortars—all kinds of fireworks were being set off simultaneously in the streets and alleys. Looking down from the second-floor window, everywhere was filled with smoke, flashes, figures, and laughter.

"How time flies, another year has passed! Tomorrow, why don't you ask your old immortal friend and see how many years I can live? That way I can prepare myself." Second Master looked at the lively scene outside, wondering what he was remembering.

"Alright, after the Lantern Festival. Even immortals take a holiday during the festivals... Actually, I asked last year, and he said your birth chart lacks a gourd, and your Five Elements are starving for a beating. Once I take you through drinking, gambling, whoring, and smoking, you'll be just about done. So just bear with it patiently and stop wasting your energy on useless worries. Instead of spending time on that, you might as well get a bit closer to Auntie Liu; after all, the poor woman has waited for you half her life." Hong Tao looked at Madame Liu, who was still in the outer room covering her ears and staring fixedly at the television, feeling that encountering such a woman in this lifetime could truly be considered a blessing.

"......" As usual, whenever Hong Tao brought up the issue between Madame Liu and himself, Second Master shut his mouth and didn't utter a word.

Before the Lantern Festival had even passed, newspapers and news broadcasts frequently aired a piece of news—or more accurately, a wanted notice. The wanted suspects were a pair of biological brothers; the younger brother was Wang Zongwei, and the older brother was Wang Zongfang, both natives of Shenyang.

"Damn! The Two Wangs!" Upon seeing this news, Hong Tao couldn't help blurting out the name.

He had a very deep impression of these two brothers in his memory. They had shot and killed or injured several people at noon on Chinese New Year's Eve, and then began a 7-month-long fleeing career, leaving footprints across provinces like Hubei, Hunan, Jiangxi, Anhui, and Henan. Along the way, they fled while robbing and killing, until they were finally shot and killed in the mountainous areas of Guangchang, Jiangxi, in September. It was said that when they died, both brothers weighed only seventy or eighty pounds, and their stomachs were completely empty.

To hunt down these two brothers, more than a dozen police officers and Liberation Army soldiers successively sacrificed their lives, and over a dozen civilians were also gunned down. For this reason, the Ministry of Public Security issued a nationwide wanted notice for the very first time, and ordinary people at the time universally referred to these two brothers as the Northeast "Two Wangs." (To be continued...)