activa-t Chapter 2: Is Ip Man the Killer?
Chapter 2: Is Ip Man the Killer?
Sun Youfu came in, laboriously dragging the two men, whose legs were trembling, to their feet, and asked in a loud voice:
"Old Zhou, where are you going in the middle of the night?"
"Go to the French Concession, to the 'Gentlemen's Club' next to Gordon Church!"
Zhou Xing walked out without looking back, "We caught a big fish tonight!"
The two men carried Hongshao and Qingzi downstairs. The manager of Baihualou was already cowering in a corner with a gun pointed at him by Sun Youfu.
Zhou Xing flagged down two rickshaws at the door, shoved the man inside, and said, "Hurry up!" The drivers then took off running.
The sun had already set, and fewer pedestrians were on the street. The streetlights cast a dim, yellowish glow on the stone pavement.
The car wheels made a clattering sound as they rolled over the road.
As we approached Gordon Church, a large crowd of people gathered in front of us, blocking half the street.
The room was filled with a hum of voices, occasionally punctuated by shouts in foreign languages.
Zhou Xing's heart sank. He told the driver to stop and threw him several tens of dollars.
He squeezed into the crowd and grabbed someone who was craning their neck to watch the commotion:
"Excuse me, what happened inside?"
Someone's dead!
The man lowered his voice, but couldn't hide his excitement.
"A foreign gentleman, it's said, was killed by a boxer named Ip Man. The foreign police are here, and they're surrounding him!"
Ip Man!
Zhou Xing's eyelids twitched.
He winked at Sun Youfu, who understood, pulled Hongshao forward, and whispered:
"Look around, is that 'old fox' you mentioned among these people?"
Hong Shao's face was deathly pale, and she trembled as she scanned the crowd.
Zhou Xing didn't delay any longer. He took out his identification, pushed through the crowd, and shouted, "The French Concession Police are handling a case! Make way!"
The group squeezed into the inner circle, which was more spacious, where they saw more than a dozen guns gleaming and pointed at the center.
Seven or eight foreign police officers and five or six Chinese police officers, all of them looked tense.
Surrounded in the middle was a middle-aged man wearing a slightly worn gray cloth long gown, standing there with his hands hanging down, exuding a calm demeanor.
At first glance, it looked as if he had surrounded the police officers.
He was surrounded by two or three young men, all dressed in shorts, their eyes filled with resentment, yet they dared not make a move.
There were also some middle-aged people arguing with the police officers.
Zhou Xing saw his Annamese superior, Nguyen Van Trung, bowing and scraping as he spoke to a tall foreign police officer.
He sidled up to Old Chen, a familiar constable, and asked, "Brother Chen, what happened?"
Old Chen pulled him back half a step and whispered quickly:
"This is bizarre! Robert, the manager of Jardine Matheson, was talking to this Master Ye inside and shook his hand."
Within two minutes, Robert collapsed and died before the doctor arrived.
The foreigners said that Master Ye used some insidious methods... Now they want to take him back, but Master Ye denies it, so this is a stalemate.
"Which Master Ip?"
"I heard he uses Wing Chun, which I've never heard of before, but his style is impressive."
It really is that Ip Man!
He had seen it on the screen countless times in his past life, and the line "Kung Fu, two words, one horizontal and one vertical" often came to mind for him.
The killing of Liu Shanren was for money, but this foreigner Robert... I'm afraid he's gotten in someone's way.
As fate would have it, Ip Man was there.
This must be an attempt to kill two birds with one stone.
He straightened his collar, walked over to Ruan Wenzhong, and lowered his voice:
"Detective Ruan, there seems to be something fishy about this foreigner's death. I have a lead..."
"Zhou Xing?"
Ruan Wenzhong suddenly turned his head, his face contorted with rage.
"Who let you come here? What right do you, a Chinese police officer, have to speak in a foreigner's case?"
Zhou Xing frowned and continued, "Detective..."
Seeing that Zhou Xing still dared to talk back, Ruan Wenzhong spat almost in his face:
"Get out of my way! Ip Man resisted arrest, which is blatant disregard for the law! If you disrupt the investigation again, I'll skin you alive!"
Old Chen, standing nearby, secretly tugged at his sleeve and whispered:
"Are you crazy? Going against him now!"
Annamese people in China uphold the law; are you also a remnant of the Qing Dynasty?
Zhou Xing muttered something to himself, then shut his mouth and stopped arguing.
These days, Chinese police officers have no right to interrupt in front of foreign dignitaries.
On the street, a dozen guns gleamed coldly under the beams of gas lamps and flashlights, and the tense situation on the scene was about to erupt.
"If I were the murderer,"
Zhou Xing mentally rehearsed, "I need excellent visibility, the ability to escape at any time, the capacity to influence the situation on the field, I need..."
His gaze swept quickly across the entire venue, passing over the club's main entrance, the second-floor windows, the side doors, and the shadowy corners on the periphery of the crowd.
Suddenly, we stopped in the shade of a holly bush.
A middle-aged man stood with his hands in his sleeves, watching the standoff in the middle of the field with a blank expression. He was wearing a dark blue long gown and had a dry, gray-white braid hanging down the back of his head.
It was not far away, on higher ground, next to a narrow path half-hidden by potted plants that led to a side alley behind the club.
Zhou Xing's heart skipped a beat.
He pulled Hongshao in front of him, lowered his voice, and subtly tilted his head in that direction:
"Look there. Do you recognize it?"
Following his direction, Hong Shao looked up, and as soon as her gaze fell on the man's profile, she trembled as if burned, and her pupils contracted.
Almost simultaneously, the person seemed to sense something and turned his face without warning, his lifeless eyes meeting Zhou Xing's gaze precisely.
Their eyes met, and they parted in an instant.
The middle-aged man's face remained expressionless. He withdrew his gaze, turned around naturally, and prepared to leave along the narrow path.
Oh no, this guy's trying to escape!
The trail must not be lost!
Zhou Xing's mind raced, and he shoved Hong Shao towards Sun Youfu, speaking rapidly:
"Old Sun! Make her explain to the officers that the real culprit is someone else!"
Before he finished speaking, he had already taken off charging, shoving past two officers who hadn't even reacted yet, and was running wildly toward the narrow passage, shouting at the same time:
"The killer is here! Don't let him get away!!!"
That shout was earth-shattering, instantly shattering the tense standoff in the arena.
Countless eyes were suddenly drawn to them.
"Bang! Bang! Bang!"
Three gunshots rang out.
The middle-aged man with the braid stepped back and stopped at the entrance of the narrow passage, turning half of his face to the side with a sinister look in his eyes.
Zhou Xing fired a few shots, rushed over, and plunged into the narrow passage, about to raise his gun to aim.
"puff!"
A soft sound.
A thick cloud of gray smoke suddenly erupted from the narrow passage, engulfing him instantly!
The fog carried a pungent, fishy-sweet smell, mixed with the acrid odor of burning incense and candles, which not only obscured vision but also caused a stinging sensation in the mucous membranes of the mouth and nose.
Zhou Xing's heart tightened, he raised his hand to cover his mouth and nose, and abruptly stopped, trying to back away.
Just then, the hair on his left side stood on end.
Danger!
Hearing the pulse, he sensed a chilling gust of wind, silently hurtling towards him!
Zhou Xing twisted his waist and lowered his hips, then swung his left arm back like the tip of a whip, without directly blocking the attack. Instead, he followed the momentum of the thrust and pulled it away.
"Sizzle!"
His sleeve was torn, and a chilling force grazed his arm, raising goosebumps.
When the opponent missed their first attack, they changed tactics with incredible speed, as if a thousand hands and feet had sprung up from the darkness, attacking from different directions.
Zhou Xing cannot see; he relies entirely on listening to his surroundings to detect airflow and killing intent, allowing him to maneuver and dodge within a small space.
It's not about listening with your ears, but about using your skin, your pores, and even the gaps in your bones to "listen" to the origin, magnitude, and strength of the force!
"Snapped!"
Zhou Xing raised his arm to block the punch, and his forearm went numb and sore, as if he had hit an iron bar.
That sorcerer's skills are amazing!
Using this momentum, he twisted his waist, pushed off with his feet, and retreated rapidly.
"Splash!"
He smashed several potted plants and finally emerged from the black fog.
But in that moment of delay, a bone-chilling cold pierced the back of my hand, like an icy snake rapidly ascending along the meridians of my arm.
Wherever it passed, muscles stiffened slightly, and blood seemed to freeze.
In the middle of the move!
Zhou Xing's heart sank, and then his ears twitched. He turned his head sharply, and a cool breeze brushed against his cheek.
Several muffled "puff puff puff" sounds.
He turned around and looked.
In the arena, Hongshao, who was being held captive by Sun Youfu, and Qingzi, who was lying limp to the side, both simultaneously had a small flower of blood burst from their throats.
Each was nailed with a dark, dull triangular iron shuttle; they died on the spot without uttering a sound!
Sun Youfu screamed in fright and jumped away.
"Ah! Murder!"
The crowd finally erupted, screaming, shoving, and creating complete chaos.
The black mist dissipated, and the middle-aged man had calmly walked to the entrance of the narrow passage.
Just before he was about to disappear into the street, a gray-blue figure, as if it had always been standing there, silently blocked his way.
It was Ip Man!
He had somehow managed to escape the center of the gun barrel and appear here.
The middle-aged man stopped in his tracks, his dead fish eyes meeting Ip Man's calm gaze.
Seeing this, Zhou Xing suppressed the chill that ran through his veins and rushed forward, raising his gun.
"My friend,"
Ip Man spoke, his voice not loud, yet clearly drowning out the noise of the scene.
"Wing Chun, Ip Man".
Please advise.