Typically, the way kidnappers treated their hostages was comparable to the cruel and harsh winter, and the way they treated hostages that had escaped from under their noses was even more like freezing current from Siberia. Were it not for the food delivery boy stopping them, the kidnappers that had caught up with them would nearly have beaten Jiang Ling to death right there by the road.

As for the two passerbys, Gan Qing and Yu Lanchuan, even though it was none of their business, they were at the wrong place at the wrong time.

Hence, the car was confiscated while the humans were tied up and taken away.

His face impassive, Yu Lanchuan said, "I want to change the interior. All the seat cushions need to be changed."

"Then you might as well buy a new car." Gan Qing leaned lazily against the rail of the pick-up truck. Perhaps because she was thin or perhaps because the kidnappers had gone easy on her, even though both her hands were twisted behind her back, she looked very relaxed and comfortable. "When we get back, I'll look for a car wash for you. We just need to disinfect it and it'll be fine. Be good, we have to live according to our means."

Yu Lanchuan shot her a look.

"Fine." Gan Qing sighed and said resolutely. "Change them."

Yu Lanchuan was finally satisfied. His eyes skipped past the terrified Jiang Ling and landed on the boy. One side of the boy's face was so swollen that the skin was almost transparent. There were a few shocking handprints on it and his eyes were squeezed until they were mere slits. He had taken the beating for Jiang Ling just now.

"Hey, are you all right?" Yu Lanchuan asked.

The boy looked at him and slowly nodded.

Jiang Ling said tearfully, "It's all because of me…"

"The one who beat me was my third maternal uncle." The boy's voice was rather unclear. "He won't beat me to death. Stop crying."

Jiang Ling was stunned. Yu Lanchuan and Gan Qing exchanged a veiled look. In actual fact, when the kidnappers made their move, Yu Lanchuan nearly couldn't hold himself back and had been stopped by Gan Qing. Any jianghu veteran could tell what kind of beating could really take a life and what kind only looked vicious.

Gan Qing asked, "Why, your family works as bandits?"

"No. They believe in that Paradise thing, you see. My grandpa, my grandma, my third uncle… Everyone who stays in the mountains are relatives. One person spreads it to ten, ten people spread it to a hundred—lots of people follow suit and believe in it." The boy explained briefly and glanced at Jiang Ling. "The one watching you guys last night was my father's cousin's husband."

Jiang Ling opened her eyes wide. "You… When you took me to escape yesterday night, you told me that you couldn't call the police, that your phone had no signal…"

"Mm, I lied," the boy said calmly. "I don't want to call the police. I just want to run away by myself. I've long gotten sick of staying here. Since I'm not going to school anymore, I plan to go out into the world and try my luck. I'll first go to the county town and take the train to look for my parents. Scooping you out was just because it was convenient. I don't plan to do anything about the others at all."

"But they're all evil cultists!" Jiang Ling said.

The boy gave her an indifferent look. "Yeah, so?"

Jiang Ling, "..."

"If they didn't believe in this, they would believe in something else. Humans are like that. They have to worship a god in their homes, regardless of whether it's a true god or a false god. If they don't believe in something, what do you expect them to do?" The boy turned his head away and looked out at the distant sky. "You cityfolk have exciting lives but we're not the same. We only have this here. There's no choice."

A boy fifteen or sixteen years of age was like a camelthorn shrub growing in the desert. He was used to the wind blowing sand into his eyes and his head being covered in grime, and had practically cultivated a state of divinity where there was nothing about him that would shock others.

Gan Qing put on an expression of astonishment and asked him, "Could it be that these kidnappers are all your relatives?"

"No." Despite his state of divinity, the teenager was after all still inexperienced in the ways of the world and was very easily baited into revealing more. "Quite a lot of people I don't know arrived in the last two days. There are a lot of 'Advisors' from other places."

Gan Qing turned towards Yu Lanchuan and blinked—it seemed like Paradise was so besieged that they had nowhere to go and those who escaped the net had all ran here and joined forces.

Just like that, the pick-up truck carried a hostage that failed to escape, a traitor who betrayed his own people for others, and a pair of unlucky "passerbys," and wound its way through increasingly narrow and twisted mountain trails to arrive at an abandoned cement factory.

The cement factory had been the main industry in this area in the past. Later on, due to environmental issues, it was closed down. The people scattered, the young and vigorous ones all fleeing to other provinces to seek their living while those who did not manage to run off could only stay back and watch over what was left behind, with nothing to do but to count the passing days, waiting for a saviour to explode into their world and bring a spark of hope into their dreary lives.

A few soot-covered smokestacks stood in a row. The perimeter wall was nearly all dismantled and carried away by the villagers. The mountain trail used by the trucks in the early years were overgrown with weeds that depended on the faeces from cows and goats to grow lushly.

This was a location with extremely good fengshui—the terrain was very elevated, the slope behind it was covered in dense forest and there was only one public road in front of it winding around the mountain. Even if the police knew that they were there, the police cars could only arrive via that single public road. Before they were halfway up the mountain, they would be noticed and there was ample time for the bandits to kill all their hostages before slipping into the forest to retreat.

Yu Lanchuan and the others were pushed into a room in the factory where the hostages were kept together under lock and key. The guards that had originally been rather relaxed were now tense. Seven or eight men surrounded them and if the men thought any of the hostages didn't look right, they would hit them. They were locked up for a day. When the sky darkened, the food delivery boy's third maternal uncle came in once and grumbled something to the boy, then slapped him out of disappointment. He took away the key that the boy had stolen.

Nestled in a corner, Gan Qing remained quiet and docile, watching them without a single sound.

"What are you looking at?" The swelling on one side of the boy's face had just gone down and the other side was now looking like he had mumps. "Only the younger ones are like that. Those like my grandpa and my grandma don't give a shit about me at all. They'll soon reach that 'Paradise' anyway. Their relatives over here are just like stones at the roadside."

Gan Qing asked in a voice that was almost inaudibly soft, "Around how many of them are there?"

The boy looked up and glanced at her. "Why, you still want to escape?"

Gan Qing pressed her lips into a smile, neither admitting nor denying.

"Stop dreaming." The boy's eyes swept past the dispirited hostages. He lowered his voice, "It's impossible. Putting aside the believers, the main thing is that there are five or six Advisors here. Those people are all very powerful, seven or eight ordinary people together aren't a match for them. If they didn't have some kind of capability, how would they make so many people believe them?"

Yu Lanchuan asked, "Where are the advisors?"

"Over there. It was originally the activity center in the cement factory. The newest building, you can see it immediately." The boy pouted very slightly. "You can't be serious about looking for-"

Before he could finish speaking, he stared in shock as Gan Qing put a finger to her lips that were beaming widely. "Shh—"

How did this woman get a hand free?

The guards had been glaring at them for a day and were now tired too. Four of them played cards at the door while out of the remaining three, one sat napping in a corner, one flipped through a Paradise brochure in boredom and one more walked around the hostages every now and then.

Right when the man who was patrolling walked over, he heard someone cough. He subconsciously looked in the direction of the sound and met Yu Lanchuan's gaze directly. Yu Lanchuan gave him a textbook example of an eye-roll. The patrolling kidnapper was initially stunned, not expecting there to be a hostage who was so bold. Rage started welling inside him and he wanted to immediately go over and show him who was the boss there. His leg lashed out at Yu Lanchuan but unexpectedly, before he could hit his target, something caught his ankle. His face was full of shock; before he could cry out, a shadow flashed behind him like a monster and a palm struck down.

The kidnapper collapsed in response.

Yu Lanchuan loosened his grip. Gan Qing skillfully held the kidnapper's body up from behind, hiding herself from view. The kidnapper looking at the brochure faintly heard some noise and lifted his head to glance in their direction. With the aid of the dim light from the lamp, he only saw his accomplice standing there and swaying. He did not take much notice of it and once again immersed himself in Paradise's rallying call.

Gan Qing signalled to Yu Lanchuan with her eyes: The four at the door are mine, you handle the two inside the factory.

Yu Lanchuan frowned and shook his head. No. Four for me, two for you.

Gan Qing flicked her gaze to where the two kidnappers in the factory were. The distance is too far. Your legs are longer.

Yu Lanchuan, "..."

He had no way to refute.

The looks the two of them exchanged all happened in an instant. Right after that, they acted in unison and shattered the two lightbulbs hanging in the factory. The already dim place instantly plunged into darkness.

At the card table, the kidnapper who was facing the factory said, "Hey, did the electricity get cut?"

"Maybe it's a short circuit. After this round, I'll go take a look…" The one with his back to the room didn't even turn around. "I'm throwing out a flush, three to queen."

"Asshole! Why don't you get two more and throw them all out together."

"Fuck!"

The other three people's attention was immediately drawn. One of them poked his head forward to check the pile of cards he had thrown out while the other two flipped their own cards over. The one who had thrown out his cards just now had a relaxed and delighted expression, like his entire body was lightened after detoxification. He took a long stretch of the body but before his waist could fully stretch out, he froze—there was a noose around his neck.

Before he could let out a warning, a cloud of cement dust fell from above. The night wind sent the dust flying and all three men at the card table closed their eyes in unison amidst the whirlwind of dust. There were a few dull thumps. The one furthest from the factory finally rubbed his eyes enough to open them and realised in shock that his accomplices were all lying down. A razor blade pressed on the pulsing artery on his neck.

Someone said in his ear, "Shhh—"

At the same time, Yu Lanchuan had already silently taken care of the two men in the factory building. He stood in the moonlight shining through the window and signaled Gan Qing with his hand.

Before Gan Qing could respond, someone suddenly shouted from afar, "What are you doing!"

"Ai, this is bad. I've been a witch for too long, my luck isn't good," Gan Qing said.

The cement factory was instantly in an uproar. In the darkness of the night, the activity room that the boy had pointed out was indeed exceptionally eye-catching. The few Xu clan people hidden there heard the noise and immediately came out to check. "What's-"

A razor blade flew towards them from far, brushing past one of their faces and stabbing into the wall.

"Wan Mu Chun!"

The moment they heard those three words, the few people who were rolling their sleeves up and preparing to get into action immediately turned pale with fright. The one in the lead shouted "Fuck!" and turned around to flee. The believers under them didn't understand why but hastily followed suit and ran. The group that had reacted the fastest had already gotten into the cars but before they could drive out of the courtyard, two terrified believers came running in from the opposite direction. "There are lots of police cars at the bottom of the mountain! They're driving up!"

When the remaining people heard them, they turned and fled for the forest through the back gate.

Who would have known that the moment they entered the forest, they seemed to startle a chain of sound-activated lights and the forest lit up here and there with flashlights. The ones who had laid in waiting there at some point scooped up Paradise and brought them back.

Both escape routes and the "easy to defend, hard to attack" cement factory were wrapped up like a dumpling. In less than half an hour, not a single one managed to escape. From the advisors to the believers, they squatted in a row.

Gan Qing found their jeep and dug out a radio transmitter from under the driver seat. "It wasn't enough that they took the humans away, they even wanted the car. Nothing good awaits those who are greedy for the little spoils."

Yu Lanchuan came over and said faintly, "We'll change the interior when we get down from the mountain."

There was nothing Gan Qing could say to that. She took out a packet of antibacterial wet wipes from the trunk and gave the inside a complete wipedown. Only then did the big boss Master Yu get into the car unwillingly, and slowly drove away.

He opened the car windows. The fragrance from the antibacterial wet wipes evaporated along with the relaxing breeze. Every now and then, someone would come over to greet them.

"Little Master Yu."

"Alliance Leader Yu."

The ones who had laid in wait on the mountain were their jianghu friends who lived in that province most of the time. Yu Lanchuan had spent four years entertaining visitors from up north all the way down to the south, and had made quite a lot of connections.

Yu Lanchuan nodded and thanked each one of them for their hard work. Someone joked, "Little Master Yu, why are you in such a hurry to leave? There's a reward for assisting with the case, aren't you going to claim it?"

"No, I won't. Just take it as after-sales service." Yu Lanchuan smiled then left, as lightly and freely as the passing breeze.

Before going down the mountain and changing the car interior, the two of them still had to go to the scenic area to take photos.

"If we rush there from here, the timing is just right. We can take photos of the sunrise." Gan Qing fiddled with the photography equipment in the backseat with familiar ease. She still owed a tourism magazine the draft for an article.

Yu Lanchuan said coolly, "Are they going to pay you extra if you can photograph the sunrise?"

Before he could finish speaking, he heard the shutter go off. Gan Qing had taken a picture of his side profile.

Yu Lanchuan, "...If I'm in the photo, the fee will have to be increased."

Gan Qing lowered her head to look at the photo she had just taken. The weak lights on the mountain trail drew a hazy outline around Yu Lanchuan. The person drifted along with the flow of time but the snapshot of his silhouette remained frozen in the picture.

Gan Qing suddenly blinked. "Hey, let me ask you, would there be a day when you no longer want to live this kind of drifting and uncertain life?"

Yu Lanchuan thought for a while, then answered very candidly, "Right now, no. In the future, maybe."

Gan Qing didn't say anything. She raised her eyes to look at him.

"When the day comes, I'll just stop drifting." Yu Lanchuan said, indifferent. "The Xu clan had their victories and will have their losses. Aren't they almost all cleared out now? When the time comes, I can go back and find a job or start my own business. I didn't cut off all ties with my former social circle anyway. If these evil cults really can't be eliminated, the two of us can still go abroad and settle down somewhere. Isn't that a way to live too? Would we be unable to find something to do? If you want to settle down now, I'll come up with a three-year household expenses plan for you."

"I'm not asking you to plan…" Gan Qing tucked her hair back, laughing then sighing. "Director Yu, what we are discussing right now is the high-level strategy on tackling life, don't drag your pretentious ways down to operative level."

Yu Lanchuan turned his head to give her a look of astonishment. "I find this very surprising. To think that the word 'strategy' would one day have something to do with you… All right, what strategic issue would you like to discuss?"

Gan Qing asked, "On what do you build your life?"

When Yu Lanchuan heard this question, he stared blankly for a few seconds, then laughed.

The moment Gan Qing saw this familiar smile, she knew that a round of taunting was coming and quickly stopped it in advance. "Speak properly."

"At your level where you snap photos for a third-rate magazine, this is indeed the quality of the questions you can come up with." As she expected, Yu Lanchuan not only taunted her but also gave her employer the same treatment. "Why would I want to build my life on something? I'm not a rice plant that can't move once I'm put into the ground."

"Then how will you live? Go wherever the waves take you?"

"Who isn't being carried away by the waves? Who can go against the times? Could Wang Jiusheng do it? Could Old Sect Leader Yang? Pursuing a sense of surety in life is a pointless thing in the first place, like notching a boat to mark where you dropped your sword into the water. It's a false premise." Yu Lanchuan shrugged and added his comment. "So, I'm the operative level, you're the hired thug level. At our levels, let's not force ourselves to explore this kind of high-level question."

Gan Qing, "..."

"If you're sleepy, go sleep for a while at the back. Why all the worries and sorrows?" Yu Lanchuan said. "When you're tired of drifting, I'll be your harbour. How many square meters do you want?"

"I want one as big as a castle."

"Sure," Yu Lanchuan agreed without even blinking. "Order one from the Lego shop. When it comes, I'll build it for you."

"Who build what for whom? I built the last one all by myself. You were only shooting your mouth off and making trouble!"

"The last one was for six to twelve year olds, it's suitable for you. You can't handle the ones for ages sixteen years and above."

"...Yu Lanchuan, aren't you being a little over-confident lately?"