In the early morning hours of Australian time, Ye Chen landed at Melbourne Airport with Hong Wu and Chen Zekai.
Melbourne time was two hours ahead of the mainland, and it was still dark there, so Ye Chen refrained from messaging Xiao Churan for fear of disturbing her sleep.
Chen Zekai had long since arranged for staff from the local Buckingham Palace Hotel to deliver a Cadillac off-road vehicle.
After collecting the car, Chen Zekai, who held an international driving licence, took the wheel, and Ye Chen instructed him to head straight for the hospital where Tang Sihai was staying.
On the way, Ye Chen asked Chen Zekai, “Old Chen, are you certain Butler Tang is still at that hospital?”
Chen Zekai, ever cautious by nature, replied earnestly, “Young Master, the men I arranged reported back that they sneaked in three hours ago and confirmed he is still there.”
“Good.” Ye Chen nodded, sighing, “Once we see Butler Tang in a bit, I’ll heal his injuries for him, then we’ll take him straight back to Buckingham Palace. After I get some answers from him on a few matters, we’ll settle the score with those little punks.”
Hong Wu pulled a small utility knife from his pocket, gritted his teeth and said, “Master Ye, as soon as we catch those little bastards, I’ll carve the word ‘bastard’ right on their foreheads!”
Ye Chen asked in surprise, “Where did you get that knife from? You couldn’t have brought it on the plane, surely?”
Hong Wu chuckled, “No chance, the security checks at mainland airports are so strict, how could I sneak something like this aboard? I bought it just now at the airport convenience store while picking up some smokes.”
With that, he produced a pack of export-version Zhonghua cigarettes and grumbled, “I have to say, smokes are bloody expensive in this godforsaken place. A pack of hard Zhonghua sets you back nearly three hundred quid.”
Ye Chen smiled and said, “You never go anywhere without indulging in your little performance art.”
As the thought struck him, he reminded Hong Wu, “That said, I must warn you in advance: once we find them, no matter the circumstances, you can’t carve ‘bastard’ on their foreheads.”
Hong Wu asked, puzzled, “Why not, Master Ye? If we don’t give them a lifelong lesson to remember, it’ll be letting those little bastards off far too easy!”
Ye Chen replied seriously, “Why? Let me tell you, first of all, the local brats don’t recognise Chinese characters, so even if he goes out with the characters on his forehead, not everyone would identify them. Worse, the other little punks might think it’s some cool, trendy tattoo.”
“Secondly, we mustn’t give the local media any ammunition. Carving Chinese characters on their foreheads would give those unscrupulous hacks endless fodder to sensationalise the story, and who knows how they’d twist it against us? You know how these birds operate: their own lot shooting it out on the streets with guns, leaving seven or eight dead, that’s just a minor hiccup to them. But if a foreigner, especially an Asian, casually drops a bit of packaging paper on their pavement, it’ll be elevated to a national outrage with a mob piling on in condemnation. Better we keep a low profile. If we’re carving anything, make it not in Chinese characters.”
Hong Wu chuckled, “Easy fix then, carve the Japanese ‘baka yarō’ on them, or the Korean ‘sae-ki’.”
Chen Zekai, driving along, teased, “Hong Wu, do you even know how to write the Japanese ‘baka yarō’ or the Korean ‘sae-ki’?”
Hong Wu replied gravely, “No, but I can learn! Spot of on-the-job training, no bother!”
Chen Zekai gave a thumbs-up and praised, “Fair play, still so keen to learn at your age, you’ve got a future!”
Ye Chen, laughing from the passenger seat, said, “Now’s not the time to sling mud at the Japanese or Koreans. These people harbour hostility towards all Asians right now, and Asians slinging mud at each other would only fuel their animosity towards us even more. I’d say English is the way to go, since it’s what they speak anyway.”
Hong Wu snickered, “I hear this place, going back two hundred years or so, was where the Brits dumped their convicts?”
“Aye, that’s the tale.” Ye Chen replied offhandedly, “It wasn’t exactly prime real estate back then, or so they say: more rabbits than people, spiders bigger than the rabbits, over seventy percent of the land won’t grow crops, and more than half won’t even sprout grass. But the iron ore reserves are staggering, with iron content over sixty percent in many spots.”
Hong Wu smacked his lips and said, “No wonder the Brits shipped their criminals here back then. Build a prison, and you could mine the ore on-site to forge the steel bars.”
Ye Chen knew he was just mouthing off, so he smiled and said, “Their early history might not be all that glorious, but they do have the minerals. In this era, it’s wealth that counts, not morality; whoever has the money is the beacon of modern civilisation.”
Hong Wu’s expression soured a touch, and he muttered under his breath, “Plenty of so-called developed nations built their empires on invasion and plunder, then they rebrand as civilised societies overnight.”
