When Wu Xingchen returned to the Shanghai General Headquarters of the Triad Society (*Tiandihui*) with Chai Qingguo, no one paid much attention to him. In recent years, Wu Xingchen, as an "outsider," had always been unsuccessful. When he went north this time, many people thought Wu Xingchen probably wouldn't come back. Unexpectedly, they saw Wu Xingchen again after only more than two months, which made many people think that Wu Xingchen couldn't get along in the north and returned to Shanghai dejectedly. Many people felt a very special pleasure in their hearts.

"Big Brother Wu, why do these people look like this?" Seeing no one around, Chai Qingguo asked secretly. Chai Qingguo had been in the *Jianghu* for a long time and was very sensitive to the attitude of these *Jianghu* people. On the contrary, he always didn't quite understand the style of Chen Ke's group.

"Cut the crap," Wu Xingchen said in a low voice. This wasn't a Party meeting of the People's Party where you could say anything. Walls have ears; words and deeds here must be very careful.

Having been with Chen Ke and the others for so long, although they had been drawing blueprints and engaging in "air-to-air" (theoretical) discussions, that atmosphere of discussion was something Wu Xingchen had never encountered. Wu Xingchen was a practical person. The reason he joined the People's Party first was to sell medicine and make money, and secondly because he was interested in the People's Party's program. Even for such personal reasons, in Wu Xingchen's heart, the Triad Society, where he gained neither economic benefits nor political identity, nor the feeling of being an equal member of an organization, had made Wu Xingchen more and more alienated.

However, no matter what he thought in his heart, he couldn't show it on his face. After an old man in his fifties came in, Wu Xingchen immediately stood up respectfully and saluted according to the rules of the Triad Society.

The old man waved his hand. "Sit."

After sitting down respectfully, Wu Xingchen said, "Uncle Liu, I have a few friends trapped in the concession prison. Uncle Liu, you have wide connections; I want to ask you to pass some news inside."

The old man's name was Liu Chengxu, one of the prominent figures of the Triad Society in Shanghai. He was usually the easiest to talk to. If it were other heads of the Triad Society in Shanghai, Wu Xingchen wouldn't dare to ask them for help at all.

"It's those people from the Whampoa Book Club arrested a few days ago, right?" Liu Chengxu said with a sinister smile. Wu Xingchen looked up at Liu Chengxu and saw him looking at him with a fake smile. Wu Xingchen was also experienced in the *Jianghu*; just seeing this smile, he knew Liu Chengxu was unreliable.

"It is those few people." Since the other party had already named them, Wu Xingchen couldn't deny it flatly.

"Xingchen, how come I heard that you are also a leader of some sort in the Whampoa Book Club?"

"Doing business with them, having an identity is more convenient," Wu Xingchen said frankly.

"That's true too; having some status over there isn't a bad thing." Liu Chengxu nodded. "By the way, Xingchen, last time I talked to you about performing the apprenticeship ceremony here, what do you think?"

Hearing this understated sentence, Wu Xingchen couldn't help pursing his lips. The rules of the Triad Society were strict, especially regarding apprenticeship. Deceiving masters and destroying ancestors was a great taboo of the Triad Society. Once the apprenticeship ceremony was performed, the relationship between superior and subordinate was determined. Wu Xingchen was from a Triad Society aristocratic family in the north. The Triad Society was relatively weak in the north, so several big aristocratic families were the backbone of the Triad Society. Therefore, strictly speaking, Wu Xingchen had not bowed to any teacher. He was just accepted as a member of the Triad Society. After Wu Xingchen's father died, that tacit relationship had been "automatically dissolved." Now Wu Xingchen could take a master.

But this was precisely what Wu Xingchen couldn't accept. Wu Xingchen came from a gang aristocratic family, so he precisely disliked the absolute control of masters over disciples in gangs. If it was his own father giving orders, there was nothing to say. If it was someone else giving orders, especially the Shanghai Triad Society where he was lodging, Wu Xingchen couldn't accept it much. Since coming to Shanghai, Wu Xingchen had existed with the detached status of having no master. Although he didn't make much money, at least he still had enough freedom. If he performed the apprenticeship ceremony, this little bit of freedom would be greatly deprived. Moreover, Liu Chengxu saying this now, the purpose was obvious: it was aimed at the medicine selling channel currently controlled by Wu Xingchen.

Seeing Wu Xingchen's expression, Liu Chengxu knew Wu Xingchen's attitude. He smiled and said, "Xingchen, you say that group of people from the Whampoa Book Club are usually arrogant one by one, but now that something happened, they think of asking us for help. Since you mentioned this matter, for your sake, I actually want to help. But they neither kowtow to pay respects to the mountain nor bring gifts to meet. Just letting you come to talk with empty mouth and white teeth. If I handle the matter for you, how can I explain to other brothers? And you also have to think about what other brothers say about you. Now someone has already said a lot behind your back. Saying all kinds of things. I think you should think about it carefully."

Listening to this dialogue, Chai Qingguo already knew that Wu Xingchen couldn't achieve his goal this time. Although brothers in the *Jianghu* claimed to value loyalty (*yiqi*), this was only for their own group. For other groups, if they weren't one's own people, not stabbing them in the back was already very good. Meeting Wu Xingchen again in the north this time, learning that Wu Xingchen was in the Shanghai Triad Society, Chai Qingguo felt something was wrong. But out of consideration for face, it wasn't appropriate for him to say much to Wu Xingchen. Before coming this time, he thought Wu Xingchen had a certain status in Shanghai. Hearing these words, he understood that Wu Xingchen was just trying with the attitude of treating a dead horse as a living horse.

Having figured these out, Chai Qingguo worried about Wu Xingchen instead. *Is Big Brother Wu really prepared to follow Chen Ke and those people wholeheartedly?* When in Beijing, Chai Qingguo knew there was such a People's Party. After being made difficult by the Beijing Party Group, he was full of distrust for such things as party organizations. Arriving in Shanghai, he found that the people in the Party Group just changed from officials to students and merchants; there wasn't a single *Jianghu* hero. He didn't understand why Big Brother Wu would rather stay in this organization, why not simply set up his own portal after learning things?

Chai Qingguo thought while listening to Wu Xingchen and Liu Chengxu talk. Since the positions of both sides originally had no intersection of interests, the remaining matters had been completely set in tone. After some meaningless words, Wu Xingchen got up to leave.

After walking far away from the Triad Society, Chai Qingguo asked, "Big Brother Wu, looking at your meaning, you are determined to follow Chen Ke and the others."

"Yes," Wu Xingchen responded in a muffled voice.

"Why? I see Chen Ke and we are not on the same path at all."

"That's right. Over there is for conquering the world; someone like you at most wants to be a local big shot. Who do you think I should follow?" Wu Xingchen answered grumpily. After being decisively rejected by the Triad Society, Wu Xingchen knew his days in the Triad Society were basically ending. Although he didn't have much nostalgia, leaving the environment where he had existed since birth made him feel not so good in his heart.

"But they just look like that; they always talk about going to the countryside, but there is no movement at all," Chai Qingguo argued a few sentences.

"Go to the countryside to be roving bandits?" Wu Xingchen asked back.

"Being roving bandits is much better than just muddling along in this city," Chai Qingguo retorted bracingly. But this was just talk. Following Chen Ke in Beijing for so long, running a factory and attending Party meetings, broadened Chai Qingguo's horizons. Without this step, in this bustling and crowded city of Shanghai, Chai Qingguo would probably have been confused long ago.

Words to refute Chai Qingguo came to his lips, but Wu Xingchen swallowed them back into his stomach. Both were in Beijing, but Chai Qingguo failed to see what kind of layout Chen Ke had made. But the Party had confidentiality regulations; the detailed discussions at formal Party member meetings couldn't be told to Chai Qingguo. Thinking of this, Wu Xingchen just snorted, "Qingguo, this time we are going to participate in killing foreigners. If you are unwilling to do it, then forget it."

"Don't, don't. Big Brother Wu, you are teasing (*huajiao*) brother." Hearing Wu Xingchen say this, Chai Qingguo said quickly. Killing foreign devils in a big way was Chai Qingguo's long-standing wish. When encircling and suppressing the Boxers back then, Yuan Shikai also borrowed eight or nine thousand foreign soldiers. Thinking of the events back then, the hatred in Chai Qingguo's heart would rise. Too many brothers died at the hands of foreign devils. Chai Qingguo wouldn't let go of any opportunity for revenge.

The two returned to the school and saw a meeting was already underway in the conference room. Several people gathered around the table, with Wang Bin in the middle. He was drawing something on a piece of paper. After greeting everyone, Wu Xingchen also leaned over. On the paper was a map. Wang Bin explained while adding and subtracting on it.

"I have seen the map of the Municipal Council; this is the blueprint of the police station prison. The men's prison is here," Wang Bin said, pointing to a black box on it.

"Huishen, you've been inside. See if there is any difference from the specific situation?" Chen Ke laughed.

Qi Huishen studied the blueprint carefully. "There are guards here, and guards here too." While looking, he marked it with a red pencil according to his memory. "The guards' duty room is here." Key points everywhere were marked one by one.

"I last saw them here," Shi Juexing said, pointing to a black box.

Wu Xingchen hadn't seen this kind of blueprint and couldn't see the trick for a while. He watched everyone discuss without saying a word from the side. Chai Qingguo also couldn't see the trick, but he didn't have as good cultivation as Wu Xingchen. Listening confusingly for a while, he couldn't help muttering, "What's the use of just looking at this map?"

"Of course it's useful," Chen Ke replied. "Comrade Chai Qingguo, how long does it take for you to rush in from the main gate and run to the prison door?"

"I haven't been there; how would I know?"

"So after having the blueprint, I will draw the model lines of the prison on the playground based on the blueprint. Everyone rehearse the steps of saving people, training completely according to these frameworks. After many tests, everyone will know how much time the whole operation needs."

"This works too?" Chai Qingguo heard of this method for the first time.

Chen Ke didn't answer Chai Qingguo's doubt and continued with a composed expression, "In addition, this rescue will also involve killing people. We also have to practice methods of killing people."

Everyone was bluffed by Chen Ke's calm attitude and didn't figure out the meaning of these words for a moment. When they understood, everyone's eyes widened. Many people, for example, Shi Juexing, couldn't help swallowing saliva.

"Killing people also needs methods?" Chai Qingguo had killed people, so the impact was far less great. He didn't care much about Chen Ke making a mystery like this.

"How to open the door is a big deal. Moreover, killing a pig by the head or by the butt, each has its own way of killing. We want to go in quietly now, so the method of killing people must be very exquisite. I know some of these killing methods. But I only know them; I haven't been able to kill some people personally to try. So we must prepare fully and practice proficiently," Chen Ke's tone was like describing how to mix juice. Because thinking of his lack of experience, his brows frowned slightly involuntarily. He looked extremely innocent.

Most of the participants were dumbfounded. Although everyone knew there would definitely be casualties if they rushed in to save people, they never expected Chen Ke's attitude to be like this.

"Is there really no other way?" Qi Huishen asked. His voice sounded like it was difficult to articulate words. It seemed Chen Ke's words had deeply shocked this young man who hadn't even killed a chicken.

"I have already gone to find Mr. Yan Fu. The news he gave me is that the concession insists on sentencing those few comrades severely. Mr. Yan Fu has already made efforts, but foreign devils compromised with the government elsewhere; only on this matter, foreign devils won't give up. They insist on using this comrade to kill the chicken to scare the monkey," Chen Ke visited Yan Fu with his new wife. Yan Fu met He Ying and learned that the granddaughter of his old friend Old Master He married Chen Ke; Yan Fu also thought it was not bad. Chen Ke tentatively asked how to rescue the few comrades in prison. Yan Fu had already made efforts, but the Shanghai Consular Body refused to relent on this matter. Shanghai Daotai Yuan Shufan also gave up the plan to continue asking for people. This matter was actually settled.

However, because some probationary Party members were present, it wasn't convenient for Chen Ke to say some things. He had already talked to Yan Fu about the plan of armed rescue. Yan Fu's attitude towards this was merely some worry about the failure of the operation. Two of these four comrades were students of Fudan Public School, so Yan Fu agreed to arrange for Chen Ke to visit the prison in the police station.

"The police station's guards are not strict. If they are sent to the foreign devils' formal prison, saving people will be even harder. Let's all hurry up and prepare," Chen Ke said.

Chen Ke originally wanted to send Hua Xiongmao to Anhui. After visiting Yan Fu and learning that saving people must be done quickly, he kept Hua Xiongmao. Hua Xiongmao also looked bad when listening to Chen Ke talk about these things. Hearing Chen Ke explain these clearly, he also spoke, "Since this is the case, let's hurry up. As the saying goes, long nights bring many dreams; the sooner the better."

No sooner said than done. In the afternoon, according to the blueprint and with the help of several comrades just released from the police station, Chen Ke drew the route of the police station with lime lines on the big playground. The school had just been repaired, and there were still quite a few bricks. Bricks were used to represent walls on both sides of the route. Then the personnel of the selected rescue team conducted a simulated prison break.

Everyone hadn't participated in this kind of training and originally thought it was child's play. Chen Ke first measured the distance from the gate to the prison cell, and then asked everyone to run back and forth ten times on the cinder track according to this distance. Everyone thought it was very simple; running was just exerting effort. After Chen Ke calculated the longest time, he asked everyone to return to the drawn terrain and required everyone to complete ten round-trip sprint runs from the gate to the cell and then from the cell to the gate within this time. Touching down bricks outside the line was not allowed in each sprint. Knocking down any piece meant starting over immediately. This thing looked simple but was actually not the case at all. Running in a straight line and running in a curve were completely different. Controlling force at turns was even harder.

Chai Qingguo felt his body was the best at the beginning and competed with Chen Ke. As a result, he couldn't outrun Chen Ke in straight lines, nor in curved round-trip runs. Chen Ke could complete the round trip within the time. Chai Qingguo didn't believe Chen Ke could do these, so he personally learned to watch the watch for timing. Then he timed it himself. The result was still losing to Chen Ke. The round-trip run was only a hundred meters or so, but Chen Ke's time was more than five seconds faster than his. Chai Qingguo's performance couldn't compare to Chen Ke, and was also slightly slower than Hua Xiongmao. Hua Xiongmao listened to Chen Ke very much. Regarding Chai Qingguo's unkind gaze, he turned a blind eye to it completely, just concentrating on completing Chen Ke's arrangement.

In just two hours, Chen Ke trained everyone hard. This was what he learned in school PE class. The first time of such training must be compression training. Let muscles bear sufficient intensity with a huge amount of training. After doing this once, muscle soreness was inevitable. When the soreness passed a few days later, the body function could reach sufficient activity. Can bear sufficient sports needs. So regardless of whether everyone completed it within the time, after Chen Ke calculated that everyone completed twenty curved round-trip runs, he asked everyone to do five rabbit jump round trips on the actual map.

The last person finally jumped back to the finish line, almost collapsing on the line. Watching Chen Ke's relaxed and agile movement, everyone thought it was easy at first, but actually, it wasn't the case at all.

After instructing the cafeteria to cook more food and add more meat these days, Chen Ke took the messy tired comrades back to the conference room. He didn't let these people have any time to rest at all. Immediately following was the course on human body structure. Since everyone had practiced so much according to the exercise mode prescribed by Chen Ke, Chen Ke explained muscles and related physiological knowledge.

Sure enough, as Chen Ke thought, the next day when this group of people woke up, their legs couldn't hold up. Muscles were sore, and tendons were also very uncomfortable. Watching this group of people, Chen Ke drove them to the playground without mercy for "recovery" training. That is to say, yesterday's training again. Except that rabbit jumps changed from five trips to one trip, everything else was exactly the same as yesterday.

To prevent these people from slacking off, Chen Ke specially called You Gou and He Ying, asking these two ladies to run back and forth with everyone. Although everyone indeed had the thought of taking it easy, seeing the participation of two ladies, everyone felt they couldn't save face. In these times, there was no concept of gender equality. It was a matter of course that men exceeded girls in physical strength. Although the men's feet were empty bursts of weakness due to muscle and tendon weakness, everyone still exerted their full strength.

After exercise, the course continued. Chen Ke asked everyone if they wanted to find a corpse to dissect and show everyone the internal organs and blood vessels. This proposal really scared almost everyone. Although death was common in these times, cutting open a corpse was a big deal; this was great disrespect to the deceased. Chen Ke's proposal was denied.

So Chen Ke had to buy some chickens and rabbits, kill them, and explain to everyone what arteries were, what veins were. What nerves were. Besides the knee-jerk reaction, in this winter, Chen Ke also spent money and worked hard to find frogs that had started hibernation, and forcibly explained nerve reactions to everyone. Seeing a headless frog having a bamboo stick inserted into its spine, and then its limbs stretching straight like being electrocuted, a cold feeling rose straight up everyone's spine.

"See, this is nerve reaction. I think comrades also felt this kind of bioelectricity," Chen Ke said with a smile. This smile made everyone overturn the concept of "scholar" formed about Chen Ke before. *How could Chen Ke think of such means to prove so many things?* No one believed anymore that Chen Ke hadn't killed people before. *How could a guy who can do such cruel acts not have killed people before? Without killing people and dissecting living people, how could Chen Ke understand the human body so well?*

Even if Chen Ke explained the development of Western anatomy and physiology in detail, telling everyone this was learned in class before, some people still firmly believed Chen Ke had killed people. Moreover, the comrades were also full of extreme distrust towards Western science that researched these results. *How many corpses had to be dismembered, and how many people had to be experimented on to get this knowledge? It seems foreign devils are really not good things.* Some people associated this with foreign devils collecting corpses in Shanghai; those corpses must have been dissected. Comrades who were originally not firm enough in their attitude towards killing people, associating here, suddenly felt that killing foreign devils wasn't something unacceptable either.

A few days later, everyone's body returned to normal. Waists weren't sore, legs didn't hurt. Appetite was good, body was great. The courses on combat skills and rapid killing techniques also changed from paper to actual combat. Backstabbing, cutting the trachea and blood vessels with one knife. And many trainings under emergency situations made everyone bruised all over. Of course, running had changed from running ten trips with eyes open to ten trips during the day and ten trips at night. And training for emergency stops at various doorways.

In the training where this group of comrades gradually turned into "professional killers," other steps were also unfolding methodically. Chen Ke went to visit the prison.