Daomu Biji: Restart

I crossed over Jin Xingsan and looked at the people behind him, only to find that all of these guys had very strange expressions. They were looking at me expectantly but didn’t dare cross the invisible boundary Jin Xingsan had set up.

It felt so strange. I was considered a master when it came to reading people, so I could easily tell by their postures that they were very afraid of Jin Xingsan even though they were depending on him. Moreover, they seemed to be expecting me to do something.

"I want to do an experiment," I said to Jin Xingsan as I turned off the walkie-talkie and tried not to look him in the eye. I was worried that my eyes looked very cold right now and might startle him. "Now that Master Hua isn’t in the team, his insurance measures have expired and something strange might happen at any time."

Jin Xingsan continued maintaining his very humble attitude and nodded. “Master Hua’s measures were to prevent a stranger from suddenly appearing in this team like what happened in Urmei's team,” I said. “Urmei called this person a bee man and thought that it was a monster born on this cliff. Master Hua’s plan was probably to ignore this strange phenomenon and quickly climb out of that skylight above, but I do things quite differently."

As I spoke, I made a gesture to Fatty. This was a secret code which indicated that I thought there was something wrong with the environment and people around me and that I needed a deterrence.

Fatty pulled out the detonator belt, hung it around his neck, climbed directly over my head, placed himself above the team, and then tied the fuses to the safety anchor. As long as he fell down, they would explode immediately. "Little Master Three's style is more dangerous, but you guys have been trapped here for so long that you’re probably going crazy. You should believe in Little Master Three’s luck. Fat Master can attest to it."

Fatty's behavior was so illogical. I always asked him to have a little conviction when he was acting, but he never listened to me. Fortunately, his deterrence would be very effective (even I felt deterred when I looked at the detonators).

Jin Xingsan clicked his tongue. I noticed that his eyes seemed to darken, but he quickly returned to normal. This seemed to confirm my previous theory a bit and I immediately narrowed my eyes and looked him up and down. "I want to catch the bee man," I said to him.

"Masters, you really shouldn’t,” Jin Xingsan immediately replied. “None of the people here are desperadoes in the industry. They are experts hired by Master Hua. They have children and elderly people in their families that they have to take care of. They aren’t willing to take such risks. Moreover, they don't have your experience and can't cooperate properly."

When he said this, he moved to go up and drag Fatty down, but Fatty just pointed at him at said, "Don't mess around. If you drag me down, something bad will happen. Why don’t you shut up first and listen to Little Master Three’s words? We’ve indulged you guys enough."

I saw everyone's faces change and knew right away that they definitely knew about the bee man! The people here had just been playing dumb the whole time.

Jin Xingsan smiled and said, "Little Master Three, stop joking. As a matter of fact, this isn’t your Wu family’s Pankou Faction where everyone has a tacit understanding. You’re playing around with everyone's lives!"

I looked at him, "Do you disagree with my method?"

"No one will agree. We won’t cooperate with you."

I looked at Jin Xingsan. No one else said anything and Jin Xingsan was the only one doing the talking. He obviously wasn’t worried about anyone in the team disagreeing with him.

This team was completely under his control.

What's going on? With Xiao Hua's charisma, he’d never make a mistake when it came to something like dominance. How did this guy come to power?

"You’re just going to let Jin Xingsan speak for all of you? Nobody disagrees?" I looked at the man behind him.

Jin Xingsan looked back at his own team. At this time, I saw that everyone was shaking all over and their bodies appeared to be covered in goose bumps.

That was fear.

No one dared to speak. Jin Xingsan turned to look at me—still with a very polite expression on his face—and said, "Everyone’s scared to death, Little Master Three. You know, they’re still willing to call you Little Master Three because they think there’s a chance you can take us out of here. But now you’re acting recklessly and talking about something called a bee man. Don't you think it’s a bit ridiculous?"

I looked at everyone in bewilderment. At this time, the sense of confrontation could no longer be concealed and Jin Xingsan had clearly expressed his stance: if it doesn’t conform to my way of thinking, then these people won’t listen to you.

I turned on the walkie-talkie again, only to hear those strange sounds of teeth clicking together again.

"How do you explain this?"

"I think it's too dark here and she's a schizophrenic."

I looked at Jin Xingsan's expression and then assessed his muscles. I knew for a fact that half the people in this team were stronger than him, and they were all men. In fact, being strong gave men more confidence than the average person could ever know. So what was it about this guy that made other people so afraid of him?

This was too abnormal.

At this time, I had a flash of inspiration, which was similar to the strange flash of inspiration I had before.

I pulled out a cigarette and lit it before looking at Jin Xingsan and saying, "If you have the courage, say what you just said again."

"Little Master Three, it's not that I’m disobeying you, it’s just that none of us agree with you taking risks." He spoke this sentence without an ounce of hesitation.

While he was talking, I put the cigarette in front of his mouth and saw that the stream of smoke hit by his breath was very regular. But the strange thing was, the fluctuation of this stream of smoke was completely even.

His sentences had a cadence and rhythm to them, so there should have been irregular fluctuations in the stream of smoke as he breathed out.

But I saw that the smoke fluctuated very evenly, as if the frequency between each word he spoke was the same and the speed was very fast.

I watched the fluctuating stream of smoke and the shape of his mouth and realized that the two didn’t match up at all.

I immediately broke out in a cold sweat.

He wasn’t talking.

In fact, the sound Jin Xingsan was making wasn’t a complete sentence but an extremely strange noise: papapapapapa.

He was the bee man.

****

I knew it was coming but it's been a hot minute since I've whipped this bad boy out so…