CH 39

The black market had always been a fringe area, backed by powerful capital, with a wide variety of forces. The network was complex and unique in terms of the top and bottom contacts, with only a small group of unnamed people working outside.

Once there was a problem with any link on the upper or lower line, they would not hesitate to invalidate the entire line directly, so that dozens of transactions had been investigated, but so far no big fish was caught.

At eight o’clock in the evening, at Qingbai Auction House, Qi Han was on time.

This was a place where dignitaries and VIPs gathered and thousands of antique paintings and calligraphy were auctioned every year. It was divided into two main sessions, spring and autumn auctions, and countless small sessions differentiated by season and source of goods.

Qi Han participated in the small session of the evening auction today, with a total of forty-seven lots, and he was waiting for the last one.

A small celadon glazed bowl with a cinnabar bottom and a fine crack on the body.

It was clearly an old and defective piece, yet it made an appearance in the finale, for it was just a cover.

What was really valuable was the box in the display case of the small bowl that contained the glands with the initial price of three million.

Glands couldn’t be traded openly. Every time they were offered for sale, a scrap piece was used as a prop at a regular auction house, and those who knew the secret would keep raising the price, while those who didn’t know wouldn’t end up buying it even if they raised the bids a few times.

“Next up is our grand finale of the evening, a celadon glazed bowl, with a starting bid of three million.”

As soon as the hammer fell, the bidding started, and within three rounds the price had reached five million.

Qi Han sat in the penultimate row, in the most inconspicuous corner.

His long legs were crossed, he wore a mask, the cuffs of his white shirt were decorated with cloud patterns and there was a heavy antique watch on his wrist. The light fragrance of pine ink (ink made from burning pine wood) overflowed when he raised his arm. With the folding fan in his left hand, he was the image of a noble young master who was addicted to antiques.

No one would have thought that this was the reigning president of the Chamber of Commerce.

Qi Han’s windbreaker had been taken off before entering the door and handed over to the auction house for safekeeping. This was the rule of the auction house. Guests were not allowed to show their faces and no electronic devices were allowed to be brought in, especially for the later stages of the auction.

“Are you not interested in this lot?” A stranger in the next seat looked at him with curiosity and said probingly, “I think you have already taken three antiques tonight.”

Qi Han didn’t turn his head, but looked ahead and took a sip of tea lazily, “Full enough.”

It meant that his share of this auction had been taken.

However, when the teacup landed on the table with a crisp sound, the bodyguard who was also wearing a mask, standing two metres behind Qi Han on the left, immediately raised his card: “Eight million!”

This degree of bluntness caused quite a stir, but it was immediately covered by another voice. The bodyguard on Qi Han’s right also raised a card: “Ten million!”

“Good guy, a lot of money, where are these two people from?”

“I don’t know, they are dressed as rich people but their vision is really bad.” The whispering man wondered: “Ten million for a scrap bowl?”

“Huh, the fun of the rich.”

The auction continued, and the price increase didn’t stop with ten million. Qi Han motioned to the people on the left and right not to raise their cards again.

This was a means of distinguishing between competitors for the same lot; if the shouted price had exceeded three times the initial value of the celadon bowl and yet it continued to climb, then the next group of people to raise their bids were either ignorants or hidden gland buyers.

After ten million, there were still three people who continued to bid, one of whom was the stranger who had just questioned Qi Han.

“Fifteen million!” He raised his card, causing an uproar in the audience, and with those words he suddenly leaned to Qi Han’s ear and called out, “President Qi.”

The bodyguard trembled and subconsciously wanted to turn his head. Qi Han’s knee pressed against his leg, forcing the bodyguard not to move.

And he himself didn’t give the slightest reaction from beginning to end, not even raising his eyelids.

The man didn’t look embarrassed either: “Am I mistaken?”

Only then did Qi Han take a sip of tea from his cup and glance at him in passing, “What did you say?”

“Nothing, you continue.”

For these glands to successfully leave the auction house, there couldn’t be any slip-ups during the auction. Concealing his identity, Qi Han had already bought several antiques to confuse the public and had his bodyguards take turns calling for bids left and right.

Just as the stranger was testing him, Qi Han had already determined the identity of the man.

Of the three gland buyers other than him, the first two were adhering to a range of half a million increase in bids at a time. But this one was increasing for a minimum of one million at a time, as if fearing to spend too little money. But the only valuable thing he had on him was a tie clip, which was also a fake.

If he could not afford the high bidding price but kept raising the price in an attempt to push the value of the glands to the highest level, apart from being an ignorant, Qi Han could only think of one possibility—

Gland hunter.

Nowadays, gland resources were extremely scarce, and the relevant laws were increasingly punitive, resulting in astonishingly high prices for gland transactions in the black market, which spawned another underground industry, namely gland hunting.

Gland hunters would mix into the auction, quietly wait for the glands to appear, follow the buyer all the way after the auction, do everything they could to snatch the glands, and then sell them at a higher price.

So there was a saying circulating in the black market: it is harder to keep glands than to buy glands.

Because these people were real outlaws, and they would kill the buyers to silence them after they snatched the glands.

“Seeing that you didn’t buy anything tonight but you are fond of this bowl, is it because you like the workmanship?” Qi Han turned his head to test the waters.

The man chuckled twice, rolled his eyes and said, “I like it. Something from the Han Dynasty has survived to this day, even if it has a few flaws, it’s not a problem. And look how charming the red lacquer on the bottom of the bowl is. It must be an extraordinary product.”

Qi Han said aloud, “You have a good eye.”

Qi Han said in his heart: extraordinary my ass, that’s a cinnabar mark. 

Once he was sure of the man’s identity, he instructed his bodyguards to fight a quick battle and eventually took the glands for seventeen million.

When it was over, the stranger and Qi Han got up at the same time, bumping their shoulders, “Sorry about that, are you alright?” The man touched Qi Han’s back.

“It’s okay.” Qi Han nodded slightly, turned his head and went into the bathroom where he removed an inconspicuous small disc from the back of his shirt. It should be something like a tracker the man had just stuck on him.

He exposed himself. Although the man was not sure of his identity, he knew that the two bodyguards who participated in the auction were instructed by him.

Qi Han frowned and pressed the headset: “Prepare to activate Plan B.”

Five minutes later, two Alphas who were dressed exactly the same as Qi Han walked out of the bathroom. They were wearing masks and carrying auction boxes in their hands. They went out from the main entrance and the side door of the auction house respectively, got in the cars and left. One of them still had the tracker on his shirt.

The boxes in their hands contained the two antiques bought by Qi Han, and bodyguard cars were sent behind their vehicles to accompany them, driving all the way to the city.

Qi Han ordered them to call the police as soon as they found that the gland hunters had followed their car or tried to rob them. They could make as much noise as they had to, and they didn’t need to be afraid of the things in their hands being checked.

At the same time, Qi Han, who had been disguised, got into an inconspicuous Santana and took a detour to the Linhai Highway.

The glands were in the car, and he had to ensure that the road was unimpeded and there would be no accidents. Even if he was to face the gland hunters, it had to be on the unsupervised section of the road from the Linhai Highway to the suburbs, and then he could change cars to go back to the hospital. This was the best route Qi Han had chosen.

It was already ten o’clock in the evening when he left the auction house, and dark clouds covered the sky.

On one side of the Linhai Highway there were the mountains and on the other side there was the sea. The visibility was very low at night. In addition, the tidal surge of the sea water could easily make the tires slip, so no drivers were willing to go there.

Qi Han’s car was halfway through the journey and he hadn’t seen half a dozen other cars.

“Turn to the suburbs at the next intersection.” Qi Han ordered the driver. There were also three bodyguards sitting in his car.

“Yes, President.”

A ringtone suddenly disturbed the quiet night breeze. Qi Han picked up the phone. It was one of the “fake Qi Han”.

“President, the gland hunters are coming towards us.”

Qi Han relaxed, “Okay, make more noise and expose them—”

Before he finished speaking, a strong light suddenly hit his face, and a heavy truck speeded towards them. The driver was about to swerve to the side to avoid it when Qi Han vaguely heard a faint sound of a motorcycle engine.

“Be careful!”

A gunshot burst in the night sky, and the bullet penetrated the glass and hit the driver’s seat. Qi Han pushed the driver down at the last second, while turning the steering wheel with all his strength and going backwards at full speed.

Santana withdrew from the attack on both sides like a fish from a two-pronged harpoon. The motorcyclist who shot and the heavy truck collided fiercely, and the motorcycle was thrown all the way down the cliff when it was hit by the heavy truck.

“These two are together!”

Qi Han pressed down the seat of the car and pushed the frightened driver directly to the passenger seat with one hand, squeezing himself to the driver’s seat. He clenched the steering wheel and made a violent circle, passing by the heavy truck before it turned around. 

But within three minutes of driving, there was a sudden roar of motorcycles in the fog-shrouded section of the road ahead.

Obviously, they had been set up.

The gland hunters followed the fake Qi Han first and deliberately exposed themselves, and then caught the real Qi Han after the other party notified him and he dropped his guard.

“President, stop the car and let us down!” The bodyguard in the back seat shouted, “From the sound of this, there are at least seven or eight motorcycles. If they have guns, we will be taken out by them!”

“Shut up! They are outlaws. If you go down, you will die.”

Qi Han frowned tightly, and his palms clutching the steering wheel were wet with cold sweat. Seeing the headlights in front of them emerging from the thick fog, he knew they would soon become targets. Qi Han suddenly turned around and drove back thirty metres, then turned around again.

“Get ready, I’ll dash through.”

He stepped on the gas to the maximum and headed towards the motorcycle group at full speed, while signalling to the bodyguards and the driver.

The four of them swallowed, pale and ready to get down to avoid the bullets.

But Qi Han said, “Not down, lean back.”

The four of them were stunned, “What?”

As soon as the words left their mouths, an ear-splitting sound exploded in their eardrums; the tires rubbing against the ground at high speed even caused sparks. A line of lights on the road was coming towards them through the fog.

Qi Han was driving Santana directly into the lights.

The fog suddenly cleared. Seven or eight motorcyclists raised their guns at the same time. The driver howled and slumped down. Qi Han pulled him up with one hand, ordering sharply: “All lean back!”

In the next second, the Santana that was advancing at full speed suddenly tilted up after passing over a dead tree.

Bang bang bang bang—

The chaotic gunfire was deafening, the bullets hitting the bottom of the car. The driver and bodyguards howled and leaned back desperately. Qi Han silently counted to five in his heart, stepped on the gas pedal fiercely, and ordered at the same time: “Get down!”

With a loud noise, the front of the car hit the ground just in the gap left by the motorcyclists’ chaotic escape. (Yeyeye, Bollywood!)

The five people were in a daze from the force of Santana’s fall. Qi Han was the first to react. He pushed away the driver who had fallen on him, quickly pulled out a gun and ordered the bodyguards: “Lao Er, shoot! Lao Si, hit the tires of the truck behind!”

“No one should die, don’t kill them, aim at their right arms!”

There was no surveillance on this section of road, and Qi Han had watched the weather forecast. There was going to be a heavy rainstorm tonight.

The rain would wash away all the blood and the smell of smoke. As long as there were no corpses, the first motorcyclist falling off the cliff would just be a simple accident. As for the rest, Qi Han believed that the gland hunters would clean it up.

The “flying car” just now was obviously beyond everyone’s expectation. The motorcycle group was in chaos. The bodyguards who took the lead quickly cleaned up a few people and returned to the car.

When the thick fog dissipated, Santana started up again.

Excluding the accident just now, this was a perfect operation.

Qi Han had set up three layers of protection for himself.

The first layer was using three fake identities to participate in the auction. Tonight the Chamber of Commerce even conducted an online meeting. Qi Han used a video recorded beforehand to be present at the meeting. No one knew that he had appeared at the auction tonight.

The second layer was that even if his identity was revealed, he only bought two antiques and had nothing to do with the celadon glazed bowl. The two bodyguards who helped him bid were brand new faces with backgrounds of foreign businessmen who would be leaving the country tonight.

And the last layer was that the heavy rain and the gland hunters with a criminal record would clean up all traces of tonight. No one would know where the glands ended up. He could take Fu Ge abroad for surgery and even give him a brand new Omega identity.

But the premise of all this was that Fu Ge still loved him.

Qi Han was eighty percent sure he wouldn’t get caught; but unfortunately, that wasn’t the ending his lover wanted.

“Stop the car.”

He spoke suddenly a second before they left the Linhai Highway.

The frightened driver stopped in a daze, “President?”

Qi Han didn’t respond. He took the box containing the glands, then pulled off the leather glove on his hand with his teeth and pressed his palm and fingers to the box.

The bodyguard reminded him: “Fingerprints will be left, President.”

Qi Han smiled, “I know.”

Opening the box and taking out the bowl and the well-sealed glands, Qi Han lowered the car window and threw the box and gun with his fingerprints out of the window.

“Let’s go.” He finally dropped the two words.

The three layers of protection were his last salvation for himself, as if he were a trapped beast that still struggled. Leaving the evidence at the crime scene was his promise to Fu Ge, his willingness to take his own life.

As soon as the early morning arrived, a heavy rainstorm suddenly started. The thick fog behind Qi Han had dissipated while the section of the road in front of him was completely shrouded in darkness.

Santana drove into the darkness in silence amidst the sound of the rain.

In the hospital illuminated by the lightning, under the sound of thunder, Fu Ge sat on the balcony in the pouring rain, waiting for Qi Han to come back.