Sir Niu told me that after he called and I agreed to come, he had been waiting for me in Mile since the fifth day of the lunar month.
He gave me four thousand yuan and told me to wait until two days after he returned to Lincang before taking a bus from Mile to join him there.
If I really managed to get close to the drug trafficker behind Jiang Qingbo, someone would definitely dig into my background. If Sir Niu and I entered Lincang together, that would be a vulnerability.
Choosing Mile and not letting me go directly to Lincang was all about being cautious, cautious, and cautious again. Jiang Qingbo was a Big Brother in Lincang too, with his own network of connections.
Sir Niu was new to Lincang, and Diannan wasn't Guizhou; his father's influence wasn't as potent here.
He was afraid that news of our meeting might be picked up by Jiang Qingbo.
From these points alone, it was clear Sir Niu was born to be a constable—meticulous to the bone.
Besides what was in the file, Sir Niu also told me a lot of things he had dug up himself.
Jiang Qingbo had a nickname: Old Scarface.
The origin of this nickname was from back in '79 in Liu Xiang Town, when a Big Brother split his collarbone open with an axe.
The collarbone was hacked right through. Later, my brother handled that underworld Big Brother, so naturally, Jiang Qingbo followed my brother after that.
Every summer, when he wore a tank top, that scar would be exposed, looking like a purplish-black maggot lying on his body.
This scar not only gave him the nickname Old Scarface but also brought him nearly twenty years of torture.
Whenever it was cloudy or rainy, the pain was excruciating, making him wish he were dead. Every few days, he had to take a specific medicinal bath.
The place I was to approach him was exactly the old Chinese medicine doctor's place where he often went for these baths.
This old doctor was currently looking for an apprentice. Calculating the days, the tenth of the lunar month was the day Old Scarface would go for his medicinal bath.
Sir Niu specifically instructed me that unless Jiang Qingbo spoke to me, I absolutely could not initiate conversation with him.
Because he went to prison in '83, when I was only five years old; it was impossible for us to know each other.
The only things I could use to make him speak to me first were my Liu Xiang Town accent and my face, which bore a sixty to seventy percent resemblance to my big brother's.
I had to make him ask me who I was without deliberately trying to get close to him.
Sir Niu's scheming made me feel a bit afraid; it was terrifyingly detailed.
I could only say, thank god the person he wanted to handle wasn't me.
After Sir Niu left, I stayed alone in Mile for two days. On the afternoon of the ninth day of the first lunar month, I boarded a bus to Lincang City.
Lincang City, Diannan, is located on the southwestern border, bordering Myanmar and adjacent to the Golden Triangle, the world's largest source of drugs. With nearly three hundred kilometers of border line and this unique geographical location, it has always been the frontline of the war on drugs.
When I arrived in Lincang, it was already 7:00 AM on the tenth. Ignoring food and sleep, I rushed nonstop to the location Sir Niu had mentioned.
It couldn't really be called a clinic; it was just a place with open doors where people came to see a doctor.
A barefoot doctor's home was a more accurate description than a clinic.
When I walked in, a hunched old man was using a guillotine cutter to chop a pile of dried herbs.
I didn't know what herbs they were, but they smelled both fragrant and stinky—truly bizarre.
"Young man, are you feeling unwell, or picking up medicine for someone at home?"
The old man chopping herbs had a ruddy complexion and spoke with a powerful voice; he felt more alive than an eighteen-year-old like me.
I coughed lightly twice. "It's like this, old sir. I just came from out of town and ran out of money. I heard people say you're taking on apprentices here, so I wanted to come and try."
"I definitely won't slack off. I'll help you out, and all you need to do is provide me with three meals a day."
Hearing this, the old man stood up, circled around me a few times, and even leaned in to take deep sniffs of the scent on my body.
His actions made my hair stand on end.
After doing all this, he smiled mysteriously. "Are you looking for a chance to get out?"
I froze, not understanding why he said that.
"I smell the scent of blood on you. Did you commit a crime and want to go out to hide, but haven't found a chance yet, so you came here to crash for a bit?"
My pupils contracted. He smelled the scent of blood on me?
Is it really that mystical?
I didn't have any lives on my hands, though I had done plenty of hacking people with knives.
How long ago was that? Could he still smell it?
I kept my composure and said, "Old sir, what are you thinking? I'm only seventeen or eighteen, what kind of crime could I commit?"
"If you don't believe me, I can go with you to the yamen to prove my innocence."
The old man stared into my eyes for a long while before shaking his head and laughing.
"Forget it, forget it. I don't care about your background. I never married, have no children, and I don't want this last bit of craft to die out."
"If you're willing, stay and learn. There's definitely no money, and as for food—you eat what I eat."
Reform and opening up had been going on for over a decade now. Guangdong and Shanghai were starting to look like metropolises. Most young people went out to work and earn money, and when they were sick, they preferred going to hospitals. Not many people came to places like this anymore.
(Lincang is a city, but in the rural areas of the nineties, barefoot doctors were still very popular and respected.)
"Here, put your things in that side room. You'll live there from now on."
Things progressing so smoothly made my tense nerves relax a tiny bit.
I just hoped everything else would go this smoothly too.
After putting my things away, I came back and walked up to him. "Master, what are you chopping?"
Having hustled in the underworld for half a year, the Chu Shanhe who only knew how to fantasize about martial arts novels was long dead.
Replacing him was this thick-skinned hooligan who called him "Master" right off the bat.
The old man didn't mind my familiarity. While chopping, he said to me, "These are loquat leaves, prepared for a guy who comes often for baths. It helps circulate blood and stop pain. I have to chop other things in a bit!"
Sure enough, today was the day Jiang Qingbo, that Old Scarface, came for his bath.
I rolled up my sleeves and took the guillotine cutter from the old man's hand. "Master, you go rest. Let me handle this heavy work. I'm young, I've got plenty of strength."
The old man seemed surprised that I could make myself at home to this extent. He stared blankly for a moment before saying a single word: "Good."
Over the next half a day, I chopped more than ten kinds of herbs, not finishing until lunchtime.
Just as I picked up my bowl, seven or eight people walked over from not far away. They carried the same air about them as I did.
They were all hooligans from the underworld.
My hand gripping the bowl tightened slightly. He's here. Jiang Qingbo is here.
I tried my best to relax and not look at their group.
Pretending to be starving, I shoveled food from my bowl into my mouth desperately.
"Old man, how are the preparations today?"
The man's voice was boisterous, greeting from a distance.
I stole a glance in the direction of the voice. A big, burly man was swaggering over, leading a group of hooligans.
At the collar of his cotton coat, a section of a scar as thick as a thumb was exposed.
The Big Brother who came from Liu Xiang Town to the Diannan border, Jiang Qingbo, nicknamed Old Scarface.
...
The old man's surname was Li. I went to visit him once after the millennium. I asked him if Chinese medicine doctors could really smell the scent of blood on people.
Old Man Li laughed and said he was just bluffing me back then. Lincang is close to the border, and many people who commit major crimes think about fleeing the country from there.
If a real murderer was hiding in his house, that would be big trouble.
By then, he was nearly eighty years old, but his eyes were still as bright as stars.
I stared into his eyes, unsure if he was lying to me.
It wasn't until I was leaving that Old Man Li's real apprentice, a brat in his teens, ran out from inside.
"Brother Chu, Brother Chu! Master says the scent of blood on you is much heavier than a few years ago, but thankfully you haven't taken any lives. He gave you this prescription and said to take care of yourself according to it from now on, or your life will be shortened."
My heart shook violently. In the years before I visited him, I had handled quite a few people. Several times I had even harbored the intent to kill and prepared for it, but due to strange twists of fate, I hadn't gone through with it.
I looked back. Old Man Li was sitting on a recliner on the second floor, his back to me.
I opened the prescription he gave me. There were only eight characters written on it.
"Do more good deeds to accumulate hidden virtue."