Michael watched the last of them vanish around a bend in the mountain road, a sorry procession of men pushing motorcycles with flat, sagging tires and limping alongside cars rolling on ruined rims. The morning sun was fully up now, painting the scene in a harsh, unforgiving light that seemed to highlight every scrape, every bruise, every ounce of their humiliation. He bent down, brushing a speck of dust from the toe of his sneaker—the very instrument of their recent education—before tying the laces with deliberate care.
"Alright then," he said to the empty clearing, his voice conversational. "Off you go." He was, as ever, a reasonable man. The extended, physically persuasive seminar on conflict de-escalation and the perils of poor life choices had, he was sure, been a transformative experience for all involved. Hadn'tt he seen the glimmer of genuine, repentant tears in the eyes of the one called Knife? True enlightenment often manifested as a moist eye. And the man had shown remarkable civic spirit, miraculously producing a thick wad of cash—several ten-thousand yuan—as a "voluntary contribution to regional development." The fact that Knife had no idea what or where "Cinder Town" was only made the gesture more philosophically pure.
Satisfied with his morning's work as an unofficial social reformer, Michael turned his back on the mountain. The ancients had it right: reading ten thousand books is not as good as walking ten thousand miles.A long, contemplative walk on deflated tires would doubtless grant these wayward souls further profound insights. Of course, in the modern, law-bound world, a stern lesson and a donation were the limits of permissible correction. Making people disappear, however tempting, tended to attract the wrong kind of bureaucratic attention. He noted with approval that not a single one had dared mutter a threat on departure. The lesson, it seemed, had stuck.
As the sound of their struggling faded, a colder, more pragmatic thought crystallized in his mind. Shizhu Mountain was compromised. It wasn't fear of their return—that would be a mixed blessing, a combination of entertainment and involuntary fundraising. It was the risk of exposure. The green miracle in his mind was a secret that could not tolerate witnesses. One stray glance at the wrong moment, and his entire, precarious double life would unravel.
The decision, once formed, felt inevitable. He needed a new airlock. A private, lockable one. He pulled out his phone, ignoring the pathetic sight of his own windshield-less Wuling baking in the sun. He wouldn't be repairing it. The money from Knife's "donation" and the soon-to-be-sold gold would fund an upgrade—a proper panel van, perhaps. Something with real cargo space. The logistical fantasy—a van stuffed with medicine, tools, machinery—was glorious. The accompanying mental calculation of its cost was a swift bucket of cold water. The financial runway, even with a windfall, remained dismayingly short.
He began walking down the access road, the gravel crunching under his feet, and summoned a ride-sharing car on his phone. When it arrived—a silent, electric vehicle that felt like a spaceship compared to his Wuling—he slid into the cool, conditioned interior and gave the address for Dong-ge's "consultancy." First, the gold. Then, the shopping. His mind was already cataloguing needs, prioritizing wants, a general preparing for a campaign.
So preoccupied was he with his plans that he failed to notice a minor drama unfolding in a scrubby pull-off a mile down the road. This was where Knife, his florid shirt now sweat-darkened and dusty, finally reached his breaking point. The humiliation of the morning—the kneeling, the paying, the long, grinding walk on ruined tires—boiled over into a cold, focused fury. He turned on Tiger, the architect of this disaster.
"You useless, style-over-substance little punk," Knife hissed, his voice dangerously low. The subsequent beating was not a brawl, but an execution of blame, swift and brutal. His own men watched, stone-faced. When Tiger and his riders were reduced to groaning heaps on the gravel, Knife straightened his collar. He scanned the faces of his crew, his eyes like chips of flint.
"Listen," he said, the word slicing the air. "What happened on that mountain stays on that mountain. It never happened. You breathe a word—to your girl, your mum, the bloke at the pub—and we will have a conversation. Understood?" The threat hung in the air, more real than any posturing with a shotgun. He then led his men away, heading for the nearest tire shop, the clunk-clunk-clunkof their steel rims on asphalt a mortifying soundtrack to their retreat.
Left alone in the dusty clearing, the Ghost Riders slowly picked themselves up. The image of Knife—the legendary, unflappable Knife—so terrified of a story getting out that he'd turn on his own, was a devastating blow. The glamorous sheen of their "rebellion" was gone, stripped away to reveal something petty, silly, and painfully vulnerable. They sat on their silent, wounded bikes, a monument to dead dreams.
After a long silence, one of the younger boys spoke, his voice small. "Tiger… my uncle's been on at me. About this culinary school in Shunde. Always said it was for losers. But… a chef. You always eat good, right?"
Before Tiger could muster a response, another voice chimed in. "My dad's mate runs a courier franchise in Shenzhen. Says they're crying out for riders. Good money. Like, reallygood money."
"My old man wants me on the boat with him. Says the sea doesn't care about your haircut, just your haul. Could clear a hundred K a year…"
The dam broke. Excuses, long resisted, now poured out—vocational courses, family businesses, apprenticeships. The tribe was disintegrating, not with a bang, but with a whimper of practicalities. Tiger felt the leadership, such as it was, slip from his grasp. And a part of him, a part that was sore and tired and had just had a shoe applied repeatedly to his face, was relieved.
He fumbled for a packet of cigarettes, lit one, and immediately winced as the smoke aggravated his split lip. He threw the cigarette down, grinding it under his heel with more force than necessary. "Yeah. Okay. Fine." He took a deep breath, the air tasting of dust and defeat. "You know what? The big earthmover school. Lanxiang. Up in Shandong. Heard it's the best. Good diesel mechanics, too. Might… check that out." He said it almost to himself. Shandong was far. It was cold. It was miles away from mountains, and vans, and men with hard foreheads and harder shoes. It sounded, in that moment, like paradise.
And so, without ever knowing it, Harry Potter Michael became the unlikely savior of a flock of lost lambs. Had the long-suffering traffic police of Yangcheng known that the notorious "Ghost Rider" nuisance had been dissolved not by a task force, but by a combination of humiliation, vocational advice, and sheer terror, they might have been moved to commission a small, discreet plaque in his honor.
The number on the counting machine flickered to a halt: 262,300 yuan. Michael watched as Dong-ge, his expression one of carefully curated nonchalance, stacked the bills into neat bricks. The gold, it turned out, wasn't pure. The elven queen's profile came with a less-than-royal karat value. But the soaring global price and Dong-ge's "friend rate" of 305 per gram had yielded a more than respectable sum. Dong-ge, undoubtedly pocketing a hefty spread, was all avuncular charm.
"Tight spot, A-Biao? You know my door's always open. For a friend like you, terms are flexible. Just say the word." His smile didn't reach his eyes.
Michael felt a cold ripple of memory—the crushing weight of debt, the predatory calls. He had sworn an oath, standing in this very office months ago, that he would never borrow again. "I'm good, Dong-ge. Thanks." He took the money, the weight of it solid and real in his hands, and left without a backward glance.
Outside, in the bleached midday heat of the city, he pulled out his phone again. He transferred ten thousand yuan home first, a warm, uncomplicated transaction. The call earlier had confirmed his mother was out of the hospital, recovering. That news was a sunbreak in the gloom of his chaotic life, a touchstone of pure, unadulterated good.
The rest of the money felt different. It was potential. It was diesel and dried goods, tools and timber, security and a future. He stood on the bustling sidewalk, a man between worlds, with a fortune in his pocket and a sprawling, dusty, problematic kingdom waiting for him on the other side of a thought. The money would flow away quickly, he knew, siphoned into the hungry earth of Cinder Town. But for the first time, that didn't feel like a loss. It felt like an investment. In walls, in wells, in loyalty. In a home.
He hailed another car, a new purpose squaring his shoulders. The list was long, and the day was young.