Homo Sapiens

Dongzhi City District.

Hundreds of laborers toiled under the blazing sun, working hard to build a road.

Fang Xinwu, driving an SUV up from a side road with two local underlings, curiously watched the construction site in the distance.

Along the way, they had seen too many roads under construction. The entire Shan State seemed to have turned into one massive construction site.

Fang Xinwu felt a sense of temporal displacement, as if he had returned to the homeland that so often appeared in his dreams.

After the Mekong River incident, he hadn’t returned to his country, instead choosing to remain in the Golden Triangle.

Although Naukam and the bastard who killed his girlfriend had both been brought to justice, Fang Xinwu felt no sense of relief. Instead, he was left with a feeling of emptiness and confusion, so he chose to continue taking on missions in the Golden Triangle.

This time, he had set his sights on the Wolf Spider Gang, which had replaced the Leech Gang.

What puzzled him, however, was that while the Wolf Spider Gang smuggled goods, they never touched the "flour" business. Now, they were suddenly acting as a labor recruitment agency, organizing local farmers for work.

But Fang Xinwu didn’t trust this kind of gang. He didn’t believe for a second that they had gone straight; instead, he suspected they had just moved their "flour" business somewhere more clandestine.

Having found no leads in the Golden Triangle, Fang Xinwu shifted his focus to the Dongzhi Basin.

As the largest city on the Shan Plateau, it was actually in worse shape than a small county town in Huaguo. This was Fang Xinwu’s first impression upon entering the city.

But he soon ran into a situation.

A squad of armed personnel wearing bulletproof vests and helmets stopped his vehicle. He glanced at their uniforms and found them unfamiliar, unlike the Burma Army soldiers he had encountered before.

A middle-aged man who looked like a squad leader saluted him. "Hello, we are Dongzhi security officers. Please present your identification and cooperate with our inspection."

"Okay..." Fang Xinwu raised his hands to show he wasn’t going to try anything funny. After all, their assault rifles were aimed inside the car. If he made any sudden moves and was mistaken for resisting, he’d definitely get a bullet to the head.

The squad leader pulled open the car door and gestured with a hooked finger for the three of them to get out. They quickly exited the vehicle.

"Search it. See if there’s any contraband."

"Yes, Captain," a few of the security officers replied listlessly.

The squad leader rigidly berated his subordinates, "Haven’t you eaten? Don’t embarrass His Excellency, the General."

The reason these security officers were so listless was mainly because everything had become formalized now.

As men who had washed out of the regular army and transferred to a local security company, they had thought they could finally let loose. They were disappointed. The people in charge of them were a bunch of incorruptible hard-asses.

In reality, they didn’t know that a large portion of these incorruptible types were Soldiers. Of course, to prevent any Soldiers from being recognized by acquaintances, the Internal Affairs Division had uniformly given them all minor facial adjustments.

Faced with such superiors, these old hands naturally felt unmotivated, as there was no grease to skim off the top.

Fang Xinwu took his ID and passport from his pocket, along with 50,000 Myanmar Kyat, and handed them to the squad leader. The squad leader only glanced at the ID and passport; in an instant, he had confirmed Fang Xinwu’s identity through the database in his bio-chip.

The squad leader took out 1,500 Myanmar Kyat, three temporary passes, and a guarantee form. "Sign and give a thumbprint."

Fang Xinwu quickly signed and pressed his thumbprint.

After pocketing the file copy of the guarantee form, the squad leader stuffed the remaining money and documents back to Fang Xinwu. "Now that you’re in, keep your head down and don’t cause trouble. Keep your pistol stowed away. If you run into any problems, go to a nearby security post for help. Go on!"

"Uh..." This was the first time someone here had ever returned his money, leaving Fang Xinwu a bit stunned.

But he quickly came to his senses, got back in the SUV, and drove into the city with his two underlings.

If his first impression of this place was that it was old, rundown, and small...

...then his second impression was that it was orderly and neat.

Every now and then, he would see fully armed security officers on patrol. The shops on both sides of the street were all operating indoors, without the chaotic mess of vendors encroaching on the roads like in other cities.

After driving for a little over ten minutes, he finally saw a decent-looking hotel. The sign read "Jade Hotel" in both Chinese and Burmese script, indicating it was run by Chinese proprietors.

He had just stopped the car when an attendant ran over and knocked on his window. "Sir, are you checking in?"

"Yes," Fang Xinwu nodded.

The attendant quickly explained, "Then please park in the hotel’s lot. Long-term parking isn’t allowed on the street here. You’ll be fined if you’re here for more than half an hour."

In all his years in Hongsawaddy, this was the first time Fang Xinwu had ever encountered such a thing. ’Strange things happen every year, but this year’s especially full of them,’ he thought to himself.

He had no choice but to follow the attendant and drive the SUV to the parking lot behind the hotel. The existence of a parking lot actually made Fang Xinwu feel more at ease; theft was a serious problem in this region, after all.

He parked the car.

As he walked, Fang Xinwu jokingly asked the attendant, "Dongzhi has changed so much! I can barely recognize it."

The attendant’s face lit up with a smile. "Haha, it’s all thanks to General Mao Gu looking out for us. I heard the General went to Bamana to become a minister. He’s going to implement some kind of ’modernization.’"

’Modernization? What a familiar, yet foreign word,’ Fang Xinwu thought, his feelings complicated.

"Brother Fang, what’s modernization?" asked his underling, Mao Shuihe.

"It’s..." Fang Xinwu thought for a moment, then used a city his underling would be familiar with as an example. "It means becoming a city like Bangkok."

"Like Bangkok? Is that even possible?" Mao Shuihe looked skeptical.

But the attendant was full of hope. "Our manager says that if we persevere, we might just succeed."

Mao Shuihe shrugged noncommittally.

But Fang Xinwu saw something different.

It wasn’t a material change, but a spiritual one.

It was as if a light called ’hope’ was twinkling in the attendant’s eyes.

He didn’t laugh at him. At least the man had a dream, unlike a soulless, walking corpse.

After checking into their rooms, he took his two underlings to the restaurant on the hotel’s second floor. He chose a table by the window with a view of the bustling street below.

Soon, a waiter brought over their food.

A large platter of Yangzhou fried rice, a dish of Kung Pao chicken, and three complimentary bottles of Qingye Cola.

Even though the chef probably learned from ’master chefs’ on Bilibili, the food was decent enough—at least it was better than General Tso’s chicken or Li Hongzhang chop suey.

Not that Fang Xinwu had ever had authentic Yangzhou fried rice or Kung Pao chicken anyway.

He had just taken a sip of Qingye Cola.

Beside him, Mao Shuihe chugged a whole bottle in two or three gulps. "HIC... Waiter, another..." He looked at Fang Xinwu and the other guy. "Bring three more colas."

"Right away, please wait a moment." A waiter from nearby came over and wrote ’plus three colas’ on the order slip.

At first, Fang Xinwu thought there wouldn’t be many people eating at the hotel, but as the lunch rush began, groups of people in construction worker uniforms started appearing in the restaurant.

This took him by surprise.

Although the restaurant’s prices weren’t high, the local construction workers’ wages were also quite low.

He soon figured out the trick: many of the construction workers were holding discount coupons.

Besides the construction workers, many other people also came to eat with the same coupons.

Fang Xinwu slowed his eating and pricked up his ears, listening carefully to the workers’ conversations.

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