Finally Arrived at Xiyue Gang Headquarters
A black Mercedes glided silently through the night toward the towering Xiyue Gang headquarters building.
The moment the car rolled to a stop, the already thick, oppressive atmosphere grew heavier still.
Yunho huddled in the far corner of the backseat, his fingers white-knuckled around a wool coat worth two million South Korean won, his heart hammering faster and faster with every beat.
Dim, frigid lamplight spilled over the pavement outside. A line of men clad all in black stood rigid as spear shafts before the building, their aura so menacing no one dared draw a full breath.
Zheng got out first, circled to the rear door, and pulled it open.
“Vice Chairman.”
His voice was steady, steeped in deference.
Jun slowly lifted one leg and stepped out of the vehicle.
That single movement triggered an instantaneous reaction from every black-clad underling posted at the entrance.
They split neatly into two parallel rows, dropped to one knee in unison, and roared as one, a wave of overwhelming authority crashing forth:
“Vice Chairman!!!”
Yunho froze beside the car door.
He had never witnessed a scene so staggering in all his eleven years of life.
One man stepping out of a car, and every vicious, hardened enforcer knelt before him without hesitation.
This was the weight of the Vice Chairman’s station—
the second-most powerful figure in the entire criminal syndicate.
“Get out.”
Zheng twisted his head toward him, his tone cold and unyielding, an unvarnished command.
Yunho bit his lower lip, hunched his thin, frail frame, and crept cautiously out onto the pavement.
The second the boy stepped into the glow of the streetlamp, every pair of eyes snapped sharply onto him.
He was gaunt enough that a gust of wind might carry him away, his complexion ashen, lips tinged a sickly blue. Beneath his tattered, shabby clothes hung a coat wildly ill-fitting for his small frame, yet crafted from fabric of staggeringly luxurious quality.
Dead silence crashed over the assembly.
The unified thunder of their greeting cut off mid-echo.
The air itself seemed to freeze solid; even the sound of shallow breathing rang loud and jarring.
Some men’s eyes blew wide with shock.
Others furrowed their brows hard.
A few nudged the men beside them with their elbows, their gazes swimming with outright disbelief.
“Th—that kid… did the Vice Chairman bring him back?”
“He’s out of his mind, isn’t he? Bringing a brat into the gang compound?”
“Skin and bones like that—he’d collapse in a breeze. What use could he possibly be?”
“Keep your voice down! If the Vice Chairman overhears, you’ll die without knowing what hit you!”
Hushed murmurs rippled through the ranks, each word muffled to a whisper yet thick with stunned confusion.
What left them utterly dumbfounded, though, was the coat slung over the boy’s shoulders.
“Wait a second… that coat…”
“Doesn’t it look familiar?”
“Ah! It’s the one someone sent the Vice President when the temperature dropped sharply last month—”
The comment clicked everything into place for the crowd.
Shock deepened across every face.
It was a fully bespoke, hand-woven pure wool piece, valued at nearly two million South Korean won.
When it had first been delivered, the Vice Chairman hadn’t spared it so much as a glance and flatly rejected the gift. The sender had pressed Zheng repeatedly to take it regardless, and the coat had languished unused in the back of the car ever since, gathering dust.
Now it draped over an eleven-year-old street urchin.
Everyone in the gang knew Jun’s temperament well:
His heart was cold as ice, his resolve harder than a sledgehammer.
He had always lived alone. Only men who’d fought beside him through countless life-or-death crises earned the right to stand at his side.
The Vice Chairman never let anyone grow close to him—let alone a useless waif who could barely stand steady on his own two feet.
No power, no influence, no fighting skill, no family connections.
For the syndicate, the boy was nothing more than an extra mouth to feed, a drain on resources, a constant nuisance.
The underlings who’d served Jun for years fell deathly quiet, overcome with shock.
In the five years they’d followed him, they had never once seen Jun bend his rules for anyone.
And this? A favor that yielded zero profit, zero strategic gain.
“Where on earth did this kid come from?”
“Could he be a relative’s child?”
“Or some hidden pawn the Vice Chairman's been keeping secret?”
“Wait—could he be his illegitimate son?”
The last speculation made every man’s face twist, and they shot it down at once.
“Enough of that nonsense—it’s impossible!”
“Ever since he rose to Vice Chairman, I’ve never seen a single woman near him.”
31Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡuN8n7YUCCY
“That top-tier hostess at the nightclub couldn’t even touch his arm before he slapped her clear across the face—illegitimate son? Ridiculous.”
The group clamped their mouths shut instantly.
That incident remained seared into every member’s memory of Xiyue Gang.
A few months prior, Jun had visited one of the gang’s owned nightclubs to inspect operations.
The venue’s star hostess, barely twenty, had features sharp and stunning as a celebrity, a cool, haughty grace that made wealthy men throw around fortunes just for a chance to speak with her—yet she’d set her sights on Jun the moment she laid eyes on him. She glided over, all soft seduction, reaching out to brush his forearm.
Jun hadn’t hesitated for a heartbeat. He struck her hard across the cheek.
No trace of mercy for her beauty.
He turned and left without a single backward glance.
The girl stood frozen, too stunned to even cry.
Zheng hurried forward to help her up, his expression tight with quiet reprimand—but there was nothing he could do. After all, she was the club’s biggest moneymaker; a bruised face meant lost revenue and endless trouble.
If even a woman of such breathtaking allure meant nothing to the Vice Chairman, why bring a scrawny eleven-year-old street kid back to gang headquarters?
Every man’s mind churned with chaotic questions, yet none dared voice them aloud.
For the first few days, the entire Xiyue Gang watched and waited with bated breath.
No one dared lay a hand on the boy, no one dared hurl insults.
Even those who detested him deep down would slip him a meat bun when no one was looking, and none of the grueling labor was assigned to him.
After all—
This boy had been brought back personally by Jun, the Vice President. No one walking this underworld wanted to incur his wrath for no reason. Crossing Jun carried catastrophic consequences.
But as days slipped by, a terrifying pattern revealed itself to everyone.
Jun’s demeanor never shifted, not once, not even slightly.
When Yunho was shoved hard down a flight of stairs, tumbling two steps and scraping his knees raw and bleeding, Jun stood a short distance away, hands tucked in his pockets, his cold gaze fixed on the boy as if watching a complete stranger.
When a pack of underlings surrounded Yunho, jeering and calling him a beggar, a worthless waste of space who took up room in the gang, Jun walked past without so much as a furrowed brow.
When the half loaf of bread Yunho had struggled to earn was snatched away, tossed to the ground and trampled under boots, he stood rooted, fingers clenched tight, eyes stinging with unshed tears yet too afraid to cry.
Jun still pretended to see nothing, as if he hadn’t been the one to drag the boy out of a shadowed alley and bring him here.
No defense.
No warning to the assailants.
Not a single utterance of “He’s under my protection.”
Not even a subtle glance to signal the men to stop.
Eventually, one man could not contain his curiosity any longer and ventured a quiet question in a shadowed corner.
“Vice Chairman… does he truly not care about that brat?”
“He acts as if the boy means nothing at all.”
“They beat him half to death, and he doesn’t react?”
A veteran underling standing nearby let out a cold, bitter laugh, his eyes dark.
“I told you from the start—the Vice Chairman could never truly keep some useless stray around.”
“He brought him back on nothing but a fleeting whim.”
“It’s plain as day he doesn’t care if the kid lives or dies.”
His words cut straight to the truth.
All hesitation drained from the gang members in an instant. The initial wariness they’d felt faded little by little, until it vanished entirely.
Their taunts and jeers escalated first.
Then all the filthiest, most backbreaking labor that no one else would touch fell solely to Yunho.
Before long, shoves, open slaps, punches and kicks followed.
Each test of Jun’s indifference yielded no retaliation. Each bold act of cruelty met no rebuke.
They finally reached a brutal conclusion:
There were no consequences for mistreating this child.
They all still remembered clearly that Jun himself had escorted Yunho through the doors of Xiyue Gang’s headquarters. Yet that memory only spurred their cruelty further.
They sought constantly to probe Jun’s unspoken limits, to test the invisible line of his authority. Worse still, they took every ounce of frustration, every slight and grievance they endured within the gang, and vented it all on the weakest, unprotected boy among them.
Beatings and verbal abuse became daily routine. Every grueling chore fell to him. Endless scoldings and blows were treated as his unavoidable fate.
Even the lowest-ranking errand boys could snarl and sneer at him without restraint.
No one recalled anymore that he had been the Vice President’s charge. All they clung to was one merciless truth:
Jun would not shield him.
Therefore, hurting him came with no price to pay.
And Jun saw every last bit of it.
He lingered in the shadows, hidden in blind spots where no one could spot him.
Still silent. Still frigidly detached. Still completely motionless.
As if every wound, every brutal torment had unfolded exactly as he’d foreseen.
As if this cruel, scarring trial had been sealed as the boy’s fate the moment he’d simply said, “Let’s go.”
ns216.73.217.176da2
and then Add to home screen.