Mo Du (默读) - Silent Reading

Julien III

Beside this scene, a handful of middle-aged and elderly people with nothing else to do were eating wontons at the food stand's illegally set out tables. This crowd's mouths were quite skilled; eating and drinking didn't hold up their pompous declarations. They voluntarily began explaining in the direction of the camera.

“You know, that little brat was buying a sesame bun? That lady told him to put the money there and take some change out of the change basket himself. Shouldn't he have some sense of responsibility? He gave her ten and tried to take fifteen out of the change box. I just saw it all.”

“Eat five yuan's worth, and take five yuan into the bargain—that's great, not far from founding a family fortune.”

“He should be beaten—when a young person steals trifles, won't he grow up to deal drugs and kill people? What about our law and order here? As soon as it gets dark, even the strapping young men don't dare to wander around outside. The way I see it, it's all the fault of these dregs of society coming in from out of town.”

“How many times has this happened? And no one's taken any notice. All right, won't it be murder next time? What did I say?”

When a middle-aged and elderly cheerleading squad takes it into their heads to stir up trouble, the results won't be insignificant. The conflict quickly intensified.

The food stand owner's rage mounted to its height. She attacked. The teenage thief covered his head with both hands, curling into a ball. His neck and ears, red enough to drip blood, stuck out. He didn't make a sound; he only dodged.

Just then, some onlookers who couldn't stand to see any more of this attempted to separate the grappling stand owner from the teenager. Unexpectedly they also got pulled into the battle.

In an instant, the fight escalated, becoming an ideological battle between the West District's original inhabitants and the out of town renters, both sides indiscriminately attacking each other's character.

It was a complete mess. The camera was knocked askew three or four times. Fei Du finished stirring his coffee. He thought this battle of “three rats with four eyes” was extremely senseless; there was absolutely no entertainment value in watching it. He was just about to close the video.

Suddenly, someone in the video yelled, “The cops are coming!”

There was confusion, and a few uniformed people forced their way in to hurriedly part the crowd. They were immediately drowned in the ocean of citizenry. One young policeman even got his glasses knocked off.

Fei Du saw a familiar figure among them. His hand, poised to close the window, paused.

After noon, at the Flower Market District Sub-Bureau, Wang Hongliang slipped away under the guise of “having a meeting”.

With his hands behind his back, Luo Wenzhou bent to get a close look at Tao Ran. “Last time when we went over to help the drug squad catch those drug traffickers, we had a twenty-minute shootout, and I don't think anyone suffered such a 'serious injury'. I just knew it. The moment you guys are out of my sight, something is sure to go wrong. When we leave, don't forget to stop by the hospital to get a rabies shot.”

Some unknown hero's magic claws had left a scratch on Officer Tao's chin.

The sub-bureau was in total chaos. The crowd that had taken part in the brawl had had its battle spirits raised; even after arriving at a Public Security Bureau they refused to lay down their arms. Mixed in among the cacophonous cursing and struggling, a handful of civil policemen whose vocabularies were clearly pitifully deficient kept saying “get down” and “behave” on repeat. Some extra pairs of hands brought in from the local police stations stood at a loss, lined up to one side, not knowing what to do.