Yang Ce went on talking, and Jing Yu listened closely.

"So it was that Right Elder who felt your being with Lan Ling would cause him trouble, and that's why he stole the jade and framed Lan Ling—his aim being to make you think Lan Ling did it, so you'd grow distant from her?" Even as Jing Yu said it, she felt the odds were slim. She smacked her own head. "No, that doesn't add up. Back then you hadn't shown how formidable you were. Why would that Right Elder be on guard against you? Unless he had some special power, some foresight—could he have predicted you'd wreck his future plans?"

"Special power?" Yang Ce was speechless. This world was not exactly crawling with people who had special powers. "If he had a special power and could foresee me wrecking his plans, he could have simply taken precautions and waited for me to make my move."

"Fair point..." Jing Yu stuck out her tongue. She had only been talking off the top of her head. That Right Elder might be formidable, but he could never be so formidable as to possess special powers; Lan Ling merely had a slightly sharper sixth sense than most.

"Of course, that one is an enemy in the open..." Yang Yanzhou said. "The enemies you know about aren't the frightening ones. What you fear most is the kind you can't see or touch, the kind that comes at you from every direction. Right Elder may be cunning, and he may practice all those crooked, unorthodox arts, but so long as you keep your guard up, he's manageable."

"Oh? Are you saying there's another enemy out there—one you can't see or touch?" Jing Yu had assumed Right Elder was frightening enough. She had never imagined that to deal with Yang Juehuan there was yet another enemy, invisible and intangible!

Yang Ce was about to say something when his phone rang—though in the theater, with its booming sound effects, it was quite inaudible. If he hadn't set the phone to vibrate and ring at once, he would never have noticed.

"Hello?" Yang Ce gestured to Jing Yu and answered the call.

"Mr. Yang, this is Victoria." Victoria could tell it was noisy on Yang Ce's end, so she raised her voice. It hardly mattered—she was in her hotel room, and the soundproofing had been done over so thoroughly that no one outside could hear a thing.

"Yes. How did it go?" Yang Ce asked after turning the call volume all the way up.

"Alice met with two strange men. I've already photographed their faces," Victoria said. "Afterward I took a cab and followed the two men, but they were sly—partway along they ducked into a grocery store and slipped out its back door."

"You weren't spotted, were you?" Yang Ce was not especially surprised. It was the simplest anti-surveillance maneuver there was. If the people Alice met lacked even that much caution, they posed no real threat to him.

"No," Victoria said with certainty. "Alice has already returned to the hotel."

"Good. Hide the camera well. I'll come find you first thing in the morning," Yang Yanzhou said.

Victoria murmured an assent and hung up.

Jing Yu had been listening in a fog. Once Yang Ce ended the call, she asked, "What was that about?"

"Didn't I tell you before that there's someone else behind the scenes working against me?" Yang Ce said. "I've picked up a lead and had someone tail them, but the harvest was thin."

"Oh, I see..." Jing Yu nodded. "Do you have something urgent to deal with? We could skip the movie if you like."

"It's nothing," Yang Ce said with a smile. "No rush. Besides, leaving now or leaving a little later won't change anything."

"Then keep telling me about that boss behind the scenes?" Jing Yu was quietly delighted to see that Yang Ce was not leaving.

Yang Ce gathered his thoughts and continued. "I was just about to tell you about that boss behind the scenes... actually, the first time I ever heard the term 'boss behind the scenes' was in Macau..."

Thereupon Yang Yanzhou recounted to Jing Yu how he had encountered Wang Yanqiu in Macau. Of course, Yang Ce did not give Wang Yanqiu's real name, substituting instead the phrase "a female assassin."

"What? So that's how you made an enemy of the boss behind the scenes? In other words, you got in the way of his plans, and that's why he came after you?" Jing Yu's eyes went wide, as though blaming Yang Juehuan for sticking his nose where it didn't belong. "You didn't do it just because you thought she was pretty, did you?"

"Pretty she certainly is—but so are you," Yang Ce said, shooting Jing Yu a look. "I helped her mainly because I already knew her! That was the real reason."

Jing Yu giggled at Yang Juehuan's words, secretly pleased that he had called her "pretty." "So that's how it was. But you only saved that female assassin—and the boss behind the scenes took it personally? Doesn't he have better things to do?"

Yang Xu broke into a sweat at Jing Yu's words. "Of course it's not because of that. I think this boss behind the scenes is aiming at me more than anyone else!"

"How do you figure that?" Jing Yu asked, puzzled.

"That time in Macau, I only crossed paths with the boss behind the scenes by sheer accident. But everything that happened afterward points to one thing: the person the boss behind the scenes is really targeting should be me!" Yang Yanzhou then told Jing Yu about the attack at Wang Yanqiu's home and the man who had stolen the jewels at the jewelry exhibition.

Naturally, Yang Ce made no mention of the suicide soldier at Wang Yanqiu's house; he said only that the man had later escaped.

"The thief caught at the jewelry exhibition was actually going to Macau to throw in with that Zheng Shaopeng?" Jing Yu sank into thought. "So they really were taking orders from the same boss! But how strange—he came after you again?"

"That's what puzzles me too." Yang Yuting nodded. "I've never understood what I did to offend these people, why they keep coming after me."

"You must have gotten in the way of their interests somehow—and not just by stopping them from killing that female assassin in Macau." Jing Yu mulled over Yang Juehuan's words for a long while, then analyzed, "Maybe somewhere along the line, without meaning to, you blocked someone's interests or their money-making path. To you it might have been nothing—just the natural course of things—but to them you became a thorn in their side. That's the most likely explanation. Apart from that, I really can't think of any other reason offhand..."

"I unwittingly blocked someone's interests?" Yang Wenru furrowed his brow, as if trying to recall whether he had ever stood in anyone's way. But if it had been unintentional, then of course he would have no clear memory of it. Jing Yu was right—perhaps something that seemed ordinary, even inevitable, to him had blocked someone else's road to profit.

And that sort of thing was the hardest to notice. He had paid it no mind to begin with, offending someone without realizing it; even if he wanted to trace the cause, he would have no idea where to start.

"For now, that's all we can do—speculate." Jing Yu nodded. "Is that jewel thief they caught still alive? Since he was an expert thief, it occurs to me—could he have had something to do with your jade vanishing and then reappearing that time? From what you told me, the jade disappeared and reappeared and disappeared again without anyone knowing how. That means whoever pulled it off had to be a master thief. So, could there be a connection?"

At Jing Yu's analysis, Yang Juehuan's eyes lit up. Indeed—he had only ever assumed that the jade theft in Yunnan must have been the work of Right Elder's faction, aimed at framing Lan Ling and driving a wedge between them. He had never considered the deeper layer! The person who stole the jade had to be an expert. And being an expert, could he be the same man as this jewel thief?