Chapter Nine: Sin Amidst Incense
I. The Chessboard's Layout
Morning light lay over the cold windowsill of Pang Sinan's office like a thin layer of frost. He stared at an anonymous post on his phone screen—the content was like a poison slowly seeping out, hinting that someone inside Xiangci was embezzling donations, and the person it insinuated was none other than Pang Sinan himself. The screen's cold glow washed his face in an ashen pallor. He felt no anger, only a heavy foreboding pressing against his chest: Shao Wanyi had already placed a chess piece; the move was subtle but aimed straight at his jugular.
Pang Sinan snapped the phone shut, his fingertips still a little numb with cold. He surveyed the office. The walls were lined with photographs of Xiangci's past chairmen, and in the corner a perpetual lamp burned with a flame no larger than a bean, as if it might go out at any moment. Standing amid the rows of filing cabinets, he felt as though he were at the center of a gigantic chessboard. Everyone in Xiangci was a chess piece, moving along a predetermined trajectory. Yet now the board had been upended, and even the once-docile pieces were harboring schemes of their own.
Shao Wanyi was adept at laying traps with a smile. This time, using public opinion as a smokescreen, she intended to force him into a snare and then, with sudden violence, remove him from the game. What she wanted was not only that black ledger hidden full of incriminating evidence, but to use his blood to wash away the suspicions surrounding her.
He closed his eyes. Scene after scene from last night flashed in his mind: hurried, evasive glances in the hallway; his colleagues' inscrutable silence during a midnight meeting; and a single incense stick in the Xiangci lobby that someone had snuffed out. He could smell the danger in the air, like catching the damp, feral reek on a hunter's boots. When he opened his eyes again, he had resolved to strike back. He gently pressed a button on the old desk phone, instructing a subordinate to arrange a "ledger transfer" operation, then reached into his desk and gripped the pistol hidden at the back of a drawer. The chessboard had changed, and he was determined to seize the next move.
II. Dusk on the Hunting Ground
After sundown, the abandoned warehouse was plunged into a murky twilight. Half of a rusted iron door hung open, and the wind coursed through like a beast's breath, whipping up dust and scraps of paper that swirled in the empty corners. Pang Sinan stood in that draft. The black ledger lay quietly in a box at his feet, like bait luring a wild beast into a snare. He gazed down at the box, his heartbeat preternaturally steady—as if the clockwork inside him had become perfectly calibrated, each second ticking exactly in place, not a fraction more or less.
Only the faint ticking of an old wall clock disturbed the silence. Pang Sinan watched the pendulum sway back and forth, silently counting down to the appointed time. He knew Shao Wanyi's people would arrive soon—tonight, this warehouse would become a hunting ground, and he himself would be both the prey and the trap-setting hunter. The pendulum's slow swing mirrored the calm rhythm of his breathing. His fingers lightly brushed the cold grip of the gun at his waist – an old-fashioned revolver, its lacquered finish dull in the dim light like an ancient ritual tool.
Suddenly, a few faint cracking sounds came from beyond the iron door, like dry twigs snapping underfoot. Pang Sinan's senses went taut; his eyes shot toward the entrance. In the next instant, several dark figures slipped silently into the warehouse, moving with swift, practiced steps. Blades glinted in their hands—bright machetes curved like new moons in the dusk. At their head was one of Shao Wanyi's trusted enforcers, nicknamed "Jackal." Jackal let out a raspy chuckle, his gaze roaming over Pang Sinan as if sizing up a deer awaiting slaughter.
Pang Sinan did not move. He stood like a statue beside the box, even inclining his head slightly in a gesture of feigned surrender, allowing the men to come closing in around him.
From the shadows came Jackal's coarse, grating laugh. "Mr. Pang, the madam asked me to pass along a message—she says a smart man knows when to yield. So be a good boy and hand it over, and maybe you'll get to keep your corpse intact."
All at once, a sharp whistle pierced the gloom from the far side of the warehouse, slicing through the heavy air like a signal horn. Jackal's face changed. "An ambush—!" he barked.
Almost simultaneously, Pang Sinan dropped into a low crouch. In one fluid motion, he heaved the heavy box up and hurled it backward with one hand, while his other hand flew to his pistol. The box crashed to the cement floor with a dull thud, kicking up a cloud of dust that billowed like fog—at that exact moment, gunshots erupted. The first bullet struck Jackal's knife-wielding wrist with perfect precision; his machete clattered to the ground, sparking as it hit concrete. In the same breath, two figures burst from the shadows of a corner — Pang Sinan's own men, whom he had planted there in advance. They emerged from the darkness, each armed with a hunting rifle, and opened fire on the intruders like hunters springing a trap.
Muzzle flashes spat tongues of flame, thunderous blasts booming through the warehouse as if a giant bell were being struck over and over. Flashes of light and darkness alternated, and the stench of blood quickly thickened in the air. One assailant let out a strangled grunt and crumpled to the ground, the blood from his chest soaking through his shirt and pooling into a small dark-red puddle on the floor. Another tried to flee but took a bullet to the leg, collapsing to his knees with a scream that echoed through the cavernous space like the agonized wail of a sacrifice at the altar.
Jackal, biting back pain, reached with his left hand for the pistol inside his jacket—but Pang Sinan gave him no chance. Another shot tore through Jackal's shoulder. Jackal howled as he was slammed back against the wall, then slowly slid down to the floor. He lifted his head and stared at Pang Sinan in disbelief, struggling to say something, but only a gout of blood spilled from his lips.
Gun smoke swirled upward in the dim air, like wisps of sacrificial incense. After a brief silence, the only sound was the steady tick of the clock, as if nothing at all had happened.
Pang Sinan stepped forward slowly toward Jackal, each footfall in the deathly stillness echoing like the toll of a heavy bell. He looked into Jackal's eyes—now brimming with fear and malice—and suddenly felt that this thug was nothing more than another offering on the altar.
Without another word, he stooped to retrieve the fallen black ledger and its box, making sure they were intact, then turned and headed for the door. Behind him, Jackal let out a low, rattling groan—the kind of final, feeble rasp a beast makes in its death throes—and he never rose again.
III. Clockwork Stilled, Incense Extinguished
Outside the warehouse, the night was deep and bitterly cold, the starlight faint and drained of color. As Pang Sinan stepped out the door, he heard the rusted iron gate behind him begin to swing shut in the wind, releasing a long, keening creak, as if drawing a final curtain on the carnage. He halted and glanced back into the pitch-black interior of the warehouse. In the murk, the old wall clock inside had been shattered by a stray bullet; its pendulum now hung crooked and still, its hands forever frozen at midnight. The clock's mechanical heart had finally stilled—like a long-corroded gear in Xiangci's great body that had abruptly snapped apart.
A bizarre thought flickered through his mind: from this night onward, perhaps the great temple of Xiangci would no longer keep its eternal incense burning. The people who had just fallen in pools of blood—whether enemy or ally—seemed like ritual offerings sacrificed in some ceremony. And he himself was like the priest who had, with his own hands, smashed the altar's false idol.
Wind gusted in from all sides of the emptiness, carrying with it the metallic tang of blood and the acrid smell of gunpowder, mingling them with the night's chill as it swept over him. Pang Sinan couldn't help but shiver, not entirely from the cold, but from a sorrow he could not name.
He lowered his eyes to the black ledger clenched in his hand; its cover glimmered dully under the moonlight. He understood that this ledger had once been the single most crucial gear in Xiangci's machine—if it fell into someone else's hands, the entire apparatus would, as if on cue, grind him to pieces. Tonight, he had guarded it by meeting violence with violence, yet in doing so he also saw clearly that the machine's inner workings were already riddled with holes.
Now that the long battle in darkness was over, a profound fatigue descended on him, and only at this moment did he notice his left arm was wet with blood—a stray bullet had grazed him during the firefight. Frowning, he tore a strip from his shirt and hastily wrapped it around the wound. Blood quickly seeped through the cloth, blooming like a dark flower against his skin.
In the distance, the faint wail of police sirens began to echo, cold and forlorn under the night sky. Pang Sinan drew a deep breath, wedged the ledger firmly under his arm, and slipped away into the shadows of a back alley. His heart at that moment was as still as water—no relief, no triumphant joy, only a deathly calm. He knew this vicious struggle of darkness against darkness was not over yet, and that what awaited him might be an even deeper abyss.
Yet at the end of even the longest night, a dawn will always rise. Pang Sinan set his jaw and stepped over the shattered patches of moonlight on the ground, striding forward with unwavering resolve. Behind him, the silhouette of the warehouse sank into the darkness, as silent as a tomb, with not a single glimmer of incense flame remaining.