"What the devil is all this?" Brother Hei's man shook his head and stalked off in helpless resignation, muttering to himself: fine if the husband-and-wife thieves had tempers hard and foul as iron, but their underlings too? What was there to be so cocky about?

Old Mr. Yu quickly bound his arm and, under cover of night, slipped into a tent.

"Old Mr. Yu, you are back... Why, your hand -- what happened?" The man inside the tent had been gladdened by Old Mr. Yu's return, but the sight of gauze wound about his right hand and the great stains of blood across his clothes struck him like a blow, and he started in alarm.

"That young pup, the Male Thief, played me dirty -- and I underestimated him. The boy is a Profound-rank expert!" Old Mr. Yu gave a cold snort. "And did you not tell me he knew no martial arts at all?"

"That..." The man in the tent went visibly ashen. "Old Mr. Yu, I truly did not know the Male Thief was an expert, let alone a Profound-rank one. He never showed a scrap of his strength before us -- I honestly had no idea..."

"Hmph! The pup played me dirty, setting off explosives against me. Had I not been an Earth-rank expert, this hand would have been blown clean off!" Old Mr. Yu snorted on. "But when he lit the charge he was standing close enough to the blast -- he cannot have come off much better. Left untended, he will very likely croak!" He paused, then growled: "I said from the very start that we should slaughter the lot of them, take what we came for out of the ancient tomb, and be gone. You simply would not hear of it!"

"Spare me your anger, Old Mr. Yu -- I had no choice, and that is the plain truth of it. Consider: a master of the hidden Yu family, you could kill these people in the open and nobody would care -- no one would dare say a word to you. I am not so fortunate. When the time comes, the whole Thieves' Guild will point its finger at me, and I could not stand under it..." The speaker was the man they had earlier addressed as the boss.

"And then what? My Yu family will protect you when the time comes. Run yourself an honest trade and see who dares touch you!" Old Mr. Yu sniffed with contempt.

"That goes without saying. But as the old saying goes, there is no such thing as being too careful..." The boss thought to himself: fine words, but when all is said and done and you wash your hands of me, what then? You can shield me for a day -- not for a lifetime. Open spears are easy to dodge; hidden arrows are hard to guard against. The moment you have better things to occupy you, I am the one who pays the price.

"That is your affair. My patience has its limits -- if these people are not settled by tomorrow, I shall act in the open!" Old Mr. Yu said, his temper fraying.

"Very well. I will do my best." The boss sighed and nodded.

"Boss, shall we head over? I reckon most everyone has arrived already..." his man Lengzi reminded him.

The boss nodded and stepped out of the tent.

Inside Old Hei's main tent, everyone had by now assembled. Old Hei himself walked in from outside with a trusted man at his heels; he looked about the gathering, and only the husband-and-wife thieves had yet to appear.

"Old Hei, what the hell -- you summon all of us here, and then you turn up last yourself? Even Master Hao beat you here!" James said, none too pleased. He had been sleeping sweetly when he was woken, dragged from his bed and marched into Old Hei's tent for a meeting; naturally enough, he was in a foul mood.

"I had to send men round to notify every one of you, one by one -- that is what held me up," Old Hei said with a laugh.

"Enough, Old Hei. It is late, and you have dragged us all out here -- what is it about?" Master Hao waved a hand, signaling for silence.

"A short while ago there was a sudden, tremendous bang. According to my men, there seemed to be sounds of fighting somewhere not far off. I don't suppose anyone heard it?" Old Hei nodded and came straight to the point.

"We heard it. What was that -- did someone use explosives?" Master Hao asked, nodding.

"That was my impression as well. And not far from the husband-and-wife thieves' tent, my men turned up traces of blood..." Old Hei's face was grave. "The thieves themselves have failed to appear here. I suspect this business may have something to do with them."

"Your suspicion is not misplaced. Everyone has come -- only the husband-and-wife thieves are missing. I propose that we go together to their tent and see what sort of trick they are playing." Master Hao nodded his agreement. "I have had my doubts about those two for a long while now."

James naturally had no objection. There were only three parties in the tent; both the organizer of this tomb-raiding venture and the venerable Master Hao had agreed, so what was there for him to say? He nodded. "I have no objections."

"Old fossil -- so you are saying there is something wrong with me?" Suddenly a voice came from outside the tent. The husband-and-wife thieves pushed the flap aside and walked in, regarding Master Hao and the assembled company with cold eyes.

"Male Thief... you are not..." Master Hao caught sight of Wei Zhao, apparently without a scratch on him, and froze.

"What about me, Master Hao?" Wei Zhao regarded him with a half-smile. "Puzzled that I am neither dead nor hurt?"

"That... how should I know? What has it to do with me?" Master Hao's face darkened.

"Did that old fossil with the blown-off hand not tell you?" Wei Zhao asked evenly. "That I was caught in the blast too, and would very likely be done for?"

"You... what are you talking about? I don't understand..." Master Hao's expression grew uglier still.

"You don't understand? Then I shall say it for you. That old fossil told me, before he tried to kill me, that it was you who sent him to do the job. It was only his own arrogance that stopped him finishing me -- and let me learn the secret." Wei Zhao regarded Master Hao with mocking amusement, speaking slowly, weighing every word.

"You... bullshit! Old Hei, this boy is a spy -- today's whole mess is his doing. Let us finish him off together!" So saying, Master Hao reached for his gun. But Old Hei was a beat ahead, his pistol already out and pressed to Master Hao's temple: "It was you. So it was you all along! You had Mr. Qiu killed -- didn't you?"

"Old Hei, don't get the wrong idea... don't listen to the Male Thief's nonsense -- what could this possibly have to do with me?" Master Hao jumped, cold sweat breaking out across his brow. "Old Hei, why so rash? I am the man you brought in to keep order here -- do you think I would go about killing people?"

"Yesterday, when I insisted we take the right-hand road, you insisted on the left. And even after I had already proved one route the correct one, you still demanded we go back and take the left. What were you after?" Wei Zhao asked coldly.

"That... at the time there was no way of knowing yours was the right way. Was there not a fork back there? That is why I said we should go back and try the left." Master Hao defended himself.

"Very well. Then why did you insist on going back to take the left, rather than simply taking it then and there? Going back was a pointless detour, was it not?" Wei Zhao pressed on. "Or did you know that from that point onward the left and the right would lead you to the same place -- which is why you held out for the left only after we had turned back?"

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