Mastering the Sword Manual, sweeping across the globe

Someone squatted by the roadside, repeatedly dialing the same number on their phone. When the call didn't go through, they dialed again, still unable to get through. Finally, they threw their phone on the ground, stood up, and continued running.

The entire park was overflowing, like a pot that had been overturned, with water flowing in all directions.

When Tao Shun rushed out of the dormitory building, he was tightly clutching the motorcycle keys in his hand.

He manages two small offices in the park, over a dozen operators, and is also responsible for connecting newcomers from China who are preparing to cross the border.

Contrary to some propaganda, in this land, at least in the Wohushanzhuang area, very few newcomers who are actually "tricked" into coming here know what industry they are about to enter.

Of course, minor contractual disputes such as "your passport will be taken away after you arrive," "the profit-sharing ratio is different from what was agreed upon," and "it's not so easy to leave when you want to" are just trivial details.

The motorcycle, silver-white in color, was parked in the shed behind the dormitory building. It was bought last year using the dormitory deposits that had been embezzled from new students.

Tao Shun got into the car, turned the key, and the engine beeped three times but didn't start. He looked down at the fuel gauge, which was full. He loosened the fuel cap to release some air, then turned it again, and this time it started.

In the rearview mirror, shadowy figures were still spraying out from the stairwell of the dormitory building.

Someone was calling, "**, wait for me." Tao Shun turned around and glanced at the person. The person didn't look familiar. Besides, Tao Shun hadn't used that name much in the past two months.

With a twist of the throttle in his right hand, the motorcycle shot out of the shed, its front wheel running over a metal cabinet door that had fallen to the ground and was deformed from being stepped on. The motorcycle bounced and then sped onto the main road.

The park gates were wide open.

The iron gate, which is usually ten meters high, is now pressed against the inside of the walls at its maximum angle. The guard post is empty, but the walkie-talkie on the table is still ringing, with a few intermittent calls coming through without anyone responding.

The dog cage next to the flower bed was wide open, with half a bowl of dog food still in it. The chain dragged on the ground, and a few tufts of black dog hair were stuck to the collar at the end of the chain.

Tao Shun stepped on the gas, and the motorcycle sped through the middle of the gate.

The dirt road outside the gate was extremely bumpy, and when the motorcycle's front wheel rolled over it, it kicked up a cloud of dry dust.

I had ridden for less than 300 meters when I saw something blocking the road at the intersection ahead.

Two pickup trucks, their front ends facing outwards and their rear ends facing the intersection, with militiamen standing on the truck beds.

Some people were carrying rifles, while others had set up roadblocks in front of the pickup trucks. The yellow and black plastic barricades were arranged in two rows, with only a narrow gap in the middle that could barely allow a tricycle to pass through.

Tao Shun slowed down and stopped less than 20 meters from the roadblock.

He propped up his motorcycle, took out a betel nut from his pocket, chewed it a few times, spat the juice into the roadside grass, and slowly walked over.

The militiamen standing at the front of the barricade wore dark green field pants, common in the area, with their gun straps tightly fastened on their shoulders and a small metal badge pinned to their collars.

Beside him, several other militiamen sat on the sideboard of the pickup truck bed, guns across their legs, talking rapidly in the local language, all with serious expressions.

Tao Shun leaned over, took out a cigarette from his pocket, and offered one to the leader.

The other party took it, and Tao Shun said that he was from a certain company and was out running some business, asking if he could do them a favor.

The leader glanced at Tao Shun briefly, less than two seconds, before his gaze moved past Tao Shun's shoulder and back to the distance on the road: "No one is allowed to pass."

Tao Shun took out a wad of banknotes from his pocket, folded them in half, and stuffed them into the other person's hand.

"Brother, my wife is from the village up ahead. There's an emergency at home, it's really urgent, could you please make an exception?"

The other person looked down at the banknotes, took them, ran his thumb along the edge of the banknotes, counted their thickness, and put them into his breast pocket.

Then, he pushed Tao Shun's hand away again: "No one can pass by."

Tao Shun opened his mouth, wanting to say something more, but before he could speak, a muffled thud came from the other side of the street—the sound of metal hitting bones, followed by the sound of a body slamming to the ground, and then curses.

He was cursing in Chinese, but he stopped halfway through, and it turned into coughing, with a sticky sound of something being vomited out of his throat.

Tao Shun turned his head and looked over. Across the street, at the intersection in another direction, a man about his age was getting up from the ground, with blood and foam at the corner of his mouth and a large clump of mud on his cheek.

Several militiamen pointed guns at him, and he kept cursing as he backed away. The militiamen then raised their guns, this time to the muzzle.

Tao Shun turned and left.

The roar of the motorcycle engine resumed, and Tao Shun turned the motorcycle around and drove back the way he came.

After driving a few hundred meters, we turned onto a side road. Soon, several dark figures appeared ahead. We continued riding for a while, and the figures became clearer: the same pickup truck and barricades.

This path is also blocked.

Tao Shun parked his motorcycle on the side of the road, straddled the seat, and took out his phone.

Tao Shun's fingers stopped when he scrolled to a certain name in his contacts, which contained hundreds of numbers.

This guy is called Brother Xu. He's a real big shot in the park. He doesn't usually get involved in the day-to-day business, but many things that require dealing with local power brokers end up going through him.

Some say he has close ties with the military, others say he can make direct phone calls to Yangon. No one knows the truth, but everyone knows that Brother Xu never takes on anything he's not sure about.

The phone rang four times, then I answered it.

"Brother Xu, this is Xiao Tao. I'm here..."

"Blocked?" Brother Xu said.

"Could you help me get this out?"

"Thirty thousand U."

Tao Shun tightened his grip on his phone.

30,000 U is roughly equivalent to 200,000 RMB.

Tao Shun has worked in the industrial park for nearly two years, and the money he can use in his account is just enough.

"Brother Xu, I..."

"Think it over carefully, I have a lot of calls to answer."

The phone hangs up.

Staring at the call-end notification on his phone screen, the screen's light shone on Tao Shun's sweaty face.

The vibrations from the motorcycle idling traveled from the handlebars to my shoulder, and then from my shoulder to the back of my head. The image of that man with a gun pointed at his head flashed back and forth in my mind, the most striking of which was undoubtedly the pool of blood foam vomited on the muddy road.

Tao Shun flipped his phone over and over again.

Several more cars sped past on the main road beside him, their headlights flashing past Tao Shun's back, casting a long, thin shadow on the ground before disappearing into the direction of the barricades.

Tao Shun made up his mind and dialed Brother Xu's number again.

The number you dialed is currently busy.

After waiting for three seconds, Tao Shun dialed again.

"Currently in a busy call."

Finally, on the fourth call, the call status switched to a waiting tone and rang for a long time before Brother Xu answered.

"Brother Xu, send me the account."

"Wait."

The other party hung up.

When the message was sent, Tao Shun replied almost instantly.

He opened the U-coin operation tool and typed the amount several times before finally getting the number right.

Confirmed, confirmed, confirmed.

After sending a screenshot of the transfer receipt, Tao Shun dialed Xu Ge's number again.

The number you dialed is currently switched off.

--------

1,100 kilometers away, Yangon.

"Idiot." A middle-aged man in his thirties, with one hand on the steering wheel and the other on the phone, pushed out the SIM card slot and replaced it with a new one.

The old card was carelessly thrown out of the car window, bounced onto the asphalt road, and was crushed into pieces by a taxi behind it.

In the passenger seat, a woman holding a bulging LV travel bag turned her head and asked, "What's wrong?"

"It's nothing," the phone screen lit up, and the signal bar for the new SIM card jumped up one bar at a time.

The man put his phone back on the stand, casually opened the transfer record of the number that had just been turned off, glanced at the string of numbers, and smirked, "Some idiot, even at a time like this, still has the nerve to send us travel money."

The man's name was Lou Zhipeng. He wasn't well-known in the circle, but he was definitely one of the fastest runners.

More than half a month ago, on the very night the Global List of Unethical Acts was launched, Lou Zhipeng disposed of all his personal belongings in the park: the operators' salaries were settled in advance, the GOIP equipment was transferred to a buyer in the neighboring park, and the desktop computer in his office containing all the scripts was smashed by him with a hammer, the fragments were divided into three bags and thrown into trash cans in three different towns.

The next morning, Lou Zhipeng drove an inconspicuous silver Toyota Corolla, carrying only the woman, two passports, and all the cash he had taken from the safe. He set off from the park and headed south, checking into a guesthouse in the suburbs of Yangon.

There are two papaya trees planted in front of the guesthouse, and next door is a workshop that welds sheet metal. There isn't a single security camera on the entire street.

For the past two weeks, Lou Zhipeng has not turned off his phone; instead, he has kept all his numbers on.

People from the industrial park kept calling to ask him where he was, and he replied to everyone with the same answer: I had something to do at home, so I went back to my hometown and will be back in two weeks.

After hanging up the phone, I checked the update log of the global list of immoral people, the Interpol's assistance notices, the news of joint operations by police forces from various countries, and the movement trajectory of that blue dot on the satellite cloud image... Only someone with a brain problem would still be holed up in the park at this point, only thinking of running when they saw the airport in the sky.

The roads were all blocked. Lou Zhipeng was very skilled at buying a phone's shutdown notification tone for 200,000 yuan. He had been doing this since the afternoon, answering no fewer than 20 similar calls and receiving no fewer than 10 similar transfers.

"We've arrived at the airport." The woman pointed to the outline of the terminal building that appeared in the distance.

Before the car had even come to a complete stop, Lou Zhipeng saw the crowd at the entrance of the terminal building.

The automatic door was open, but a cordon was set up behind the door frame, and several uniformed people were standing behind the cordon, sticking a notice on the glass.

Lou Zhipeng parked his car on the side of the road and went over to take a look.

The notice, written in both Burmese and English, stated the same sentence: Effective immediately, all civil aircraft takeoffs and landings throughout Myanmar are suspended. The resumption date will be announced later.

Lou Zhipeng turned around and got back into the car.

"What should I do?" The woman's fingers pressed tightly against the LV zipper pull.

"Let's go to the beach."

The Corolla got back on the highway.

Driving south from the airport, through downtown Yangon, the roadside trees flashed by the car window.

The woman looked down at the map for a long time, then suddenly looked up at the road signs flashing past the window: "This isn't the direction of the port."

"Are you stupid?" Lou Zhipeng didn't turn around. "Isn't going to the port now a waste of time? Airports can suspend flights, but docks can't suspend operations?"

Lou Zhipeng was on the phone the whole way.

The first call was to an acquaintance who runs a cold chain business in Thailand. He said that Mae Sot was completely sealed off, and that a whole row of pickup trucks with their lights on could be seen across the border river.

The second call was to someone who supposedly had connections at the immigration office. The person on the other end said that starting this afternoon, all border crossings in Yangon would not allow anyone with a Da Yang passport to pass through, and the system did not even have an option to allow passage.

The third phone call...

The fourth phone call...

The air gradually carried the fishy smell of the sea breeze. Lou Zhipeng turned the car onto a dirt road and bumped along for nearly forty minutes.

The buildings on both sides became fewer and fewer, and the road surface changed from asphalt to gravel, and then from gravel to sand.

After another ten minutes of driving, the beach finally appeared.

The beach was narrow, with several abandoned fishing boats lying on the sand, their bottoms facing upwards, the wood cracked from the sun.

Further ahead, a small fishing boat approached cautiously from a distance, getting closer to the land.

The two carried their luggage onto the ship.

The woman's high heels wobbled on the gunwale, and Lou Zhipeng reached out, grabbed her arm, and pushed her into the cabin.

The cabin reeked of a mixture of diesel fuel and fishy odors. The seats were made of hardwood planks covered with old newspapers.

Lou Zhipeng sat down in the cabin, took a book out of his pocket, and tossed it to the woman: "Read this carefully and try to memorize it within three days."

The woman picked it up, glanced down at the cover, then looked at Lou Zhipeng: "Are you serious?"

“Nonsense,” Lou Zhipeng said, pulling out another book from his pocket while mentally reviewing his plan: first go to Singapore, then find an opportunity to go to Northern Europe, and from then on, live under an assumed name, rarely showing his face or causing trouble. That should keep him out of sight, right…

That scoundrel is really something. If this were in China, there would be almost no chance of him running away, but here, well, there are plenty of people who run away. If he's so capable, he can come to international waters and catch his father...

Of course, the premise of all this is that you must diligently practice this manual to avoid accidentally causing trouble and having your past misdeeds brought up again...

Lou Zhipeng reverently opened the book. The upright cover, bearing faded red lettering, revealed a few words printed on the old book:

Moral Education

172 Merit Banners

At 2 p.m., a thin black line appeared on the horizon.

The black line grew longer and larger, casting a huge shadow as it slowly spread out from the horizon.