It never rains, but it pours.

As Bai Haonan hung up the phone, Little Zhou, who had been screaming the most miserably, had finally calmed down completely. He took off his innermost T-shirt, tore it into strips to bandage and stop the bleeding, and even asked President Wang if he needed to be bandaged as well. Bai Haonan felt a strong urge to curse, but once the profanity escaped his lips, he realized how completely useless it was. Could complaining or yelling bitterly solve the current situation?

Wasn't he just as much of a scoundrel at that age?

As if suddenly endowed with a more rational approach to handling the matter, he muttered, "Never mind me..."

For Bai Haonan didn't even dare to go to a hospital; he finally remembered that he was a fugitive, and recalled what Chen Sufen had told him—that any hospital emergency room receiving such stab or gunshot wounds would likely tip off the police. He dumped the two damn young players at the hospital entrance, telling them to register for the emergency room and treat their wounds themselves, and promised he would soon send someone to pick them up. He called Carla, telling him to go downstairs and buy some bandages and the like. Having patted his backside just now, he figured it shouldn't be anything too serious and might not even require stitches.

He decided to go back first and assess the situation. Ah Da seemed to have caught the scent of blood inside the cabin, glancing sideways at Bai Haonan from time to time from the passenger seat.

When the bright yellow Hummer bumped over the curb and parked beside the inner passage door, he found Xiao Wan and Li Lin both standing at the entrance, looking somewhat anxious as they watched him step out. "Uncle Carla said you were hurt?! Xiao Mang and the other girl went with him to buy medical supplies..."

Before Bai Haonan could even say he was fine, Xiao Wan had already zipped around him in a blur, looking so alarmed she almost shrieked, "So much blood!" Then she immediately reached out, trying to hoist Bai Haonan's arm over her shoulder to support him. But how slight was her build, and she wasn't even tall enough; even standing on tiptoes, she couldn't muster any leverage, anxiously calling out to Li Lin for assistance. Who would have thought that this other girl, upon craning her neck to take a peek at Bai Haonan's backside, would let out a sudden snort of laughter and burst into uncontrollable giggles. Even as she wedged herself beneath Bai Haonan's other arm, her shoulders shook incessantly with laughter.

Bai Haonan was somewhat bewildered by this girl. "What's so funny?" As for Xiao Wan, it went without saying.

Li Lin actually stretched her neck out to share her amusement with Xiao Wan. "Don't you think this looks like he's on his... his period? Hahaha... totally!"

With a head full of dark lines, Bai Haonan stood there in his light gray athletic sweatpants, his crotch soaked in blood, and noticed that even Xiao Wan was beginning to tremble with suppressed mirth.

How could an incident that was clearly somewhat ill-fated and infuriating become so utterly hilarious in the presence of these Northeast lasses? The three of them half-carried him into the elevator, and Xiao Wan, burying her head to help Bai Haonan take off his outer shirt and gently pressing her palm against his backside, couldn't help bursting into laughter either. Especially when she caught sight of her own reflection in the stainless steel elevator car, she found it even funnier.

This left Ah Da utterly perplexed as to what on earth was going on.

Her mood had completely flipped compared to the days in the pyramid scheme. Infected by the atmosphere, Bai Haonan chuckled foolishly as well, while Li Lin explained between fits of breathless laughter, "Oh gosh! Don't blame me, but fighting like this is really an everyday occurrence back where we're from! I've seen plenty of it ever since I was a kid. The boys always loved to brawl like this right outside the restrooms, especially on snowy days. Oh man, it would be an absolute bloodbath..."

Bai Haonan seemed to recall that the players from the Northeast had mentioned their fights were quite ferocious, so he could only purse his lips in silence, though he secretly wondered why they always insisted on fighting outside restrooms.

Back at the fitness center, lying facedown on the abdominal bench, Xiao Wan looked a bit startled and apprehensive, while the thick-skinned Li Lin tried to tug at Bai Haonan's athletic pants, clicking her tongue as she remarked, "There's so much blood... This volume is no joke, you know. Do you want me to wash you down with hot water and grab you a sanitary napkin?"

The former professional athlete snapped back irritably, "I'm waiting for them to disinfect me!" Remembering something, he instructed Li Lin to give Old Li a call, and asked him to drive to the hospital to pick up the two injured young players after their surgeries and bring them back. Just as he was speaking, Carla and the other two girls arrived with the supplies. The big black guy chuckled a bit upon seeing Bai Haonan's condition, casually surveyed the scene, and told the girls to fetch a few more desk lamps for illumination so he could disinfect and treat Bai Haonan's wound. Bai Haonan turned to look at the four girls. "What are you staring at? Clear out!"

Xiao Wan's expression was one of rapidly blinking eyes as she looked away. "We need to hold the lamps. Don't surgical lights need multiple lamps to create a shadowless effect..." Xiao Mang also picked up a desk lamp with a deadpan expression, while another girl giggled softly, "It's not like we haven't seen it before..."

Bai Haonan wasn't being prudish or coy; he was primarily targeting Li Lin: "I'm talking to you!"

If others stayed, she might have walked away, but left by herself, the girl felt isolated. With a touch of childish defiance, she turned on the flashlight feature of her discarded cell phone. "I don't need to hold a lamp anyway, what's so rare about it!" Though in truth, her face was still slightly flushed.

And so, right under the direct gazes of the four girls, Bai Haonan had his trousers pulled aside by a grinning Carla, who proceeded to clean and treat his wound. The voices of the girls rose and fell in chorus, mostly expressing amazement at the shape of the injury. It was evidently inflicted by a thin-bladed dagger; because Bai Haonan had been running, the cut wasn't terribly deep, but it ran diagonally across his flesh for the length of a palm. It had bled profusely, though the flesh wasn't terribly gaping. Carla also concluded that stitches were unnecessary. After cleaning the wound, applying iodophor, and dusting it with powder, he began wrapping it with gauze bandages. To ensure the wound wouldn't burst open, the binding was done rather tightly. As they discussed how to repeatedly wrap the bandage around Bai Haonan's firm, well-rounded backside, the girls offered plenty of suggestions.

Bai Haonan tried to steer the conversation elsewhere by talking about how he got injured, but none of it could attract the females' peculiar focus. Xiao Wan even stepped up to tie a butterfly bow herself, because Carla had intended to use a safety pin to secure the bandage, a method the Chinese women collectively rejected.

After a while, Old Li returned first. Since the male coaches shared a dormitory together in the urban village right next to his place, he had dropped off the two wounded men before coming over; there were fitness coaches there who could look after them. Judging by his expression, he wasn't particularly shocked. "The stab was quite deep, but it's mostly a flesh wound. The doctor said Liangzi's case was a bit dangerous—just two centimeters away from the artery. What on earth happened? Neither of them would say."

Bai Haonan had to explain from the beginning. Thinking about it, this was the third perilous situation he had faced since the trouble started—not counting the time with Isa in the mountains, since that hadn't really been very dangerous. Yet Bai Haonan found that he didn't take these dangers all that seriously. It wasn't that he wasn't afraid, but rather that he didn't seem utterly scared out of his wits, nor did he feel it was a profound lesson. This left him baffled as he lay face-down on the bed.

The exact moment his car was smashed to pieces by the excavator had certainly terrified him out of his wits, but the moment it was over, he had simply dusted off his backside and moved on without giving it another thought. The incident he went through with Yu Jiali hadn't left a deep impression either. Today, perhaps his mood had been completely defused by that silly girl Li Lin; at least when Qian Niu came back, he reported that the players he went to pick up were still hot-headed and wanted revenge!

Bai Haonan irritably told him to properly whip those young players into shape in a couple of days!

The next morning, Yu Jiali, who had undoubtedly received the report of Xiao Wan coming to work, arrived looking rather tense. Instead, she found Bai Haonan lying face-down in the fitness center's physical therapy room, roasting his backside under an infrared lamp. Gazing at that bright red monkey-like rear, she still felt a bit shy, blocking her eyes with her hand as she entered to complain, "I heard you went out for drinks and got into a fight over a woman?!"

Bai Haonan let out a stream of aggrieved cries, explaining the entire process while taking the opportunity to discuss his own mental journey. Yu Jiali actually found Bai Haonan's method of baking his backside rather odd. "Is this even effective? Do you want me to call a doctor over?"

Bai Haonan explained that such superficial wounds were simply treated with infrared rays to accelerate muscle and skin regeneration, nothing major. Only then did Yu Jiali retort, "You simply don't think you did anything wrong, which is why you have no intention of learning any lessons whatsoever! Have you ever thought about it: if you weren't match-fixing, would you have gotten into that kind of car accident? Of course, you pushed Old Tan's affair onto me, but aren't you at fault at all? Weren't you a bit too arrogant when you dealt with him, which made others want to teach you a lesson? Last night might not have been your fault for offending someone, but if you had honestly just focused on business and playing football, and avoided those kinds of places, would you have drawn this kind of trouble upon yourself?"

Bai Haonan curled his lips in disdain; he truly couldn't be bothered to waste breath on this shrew who loved to lecture him.

Yu Jiali cast a somewhat cautious glance to verify that the wound was indeed healing and scabbing over, before rapping Bai Haonan on the head a few times and hurrying back to the company. She was genuinely busy.

At noon, that Mr. Xu patron actually came by. Not only did he refuse to let Bai Haonan pay for the broken glass, but he also wanted to buy two membership cards. Bai Haonan simply gave him two seasonal passes instead. Standing by the rooftop artificial turf, Mr. Xu cautioned President Wang, who was sitting with his weight shifted to one side, that it would be best if his people avoided playing football on that pitch for a while, as that flat-topped ruffian had openly declared his intention to deal with these football players!

Still, there was no need to worry too much; after all, thugs who only lorded over a street or two were no big deal. As long as they dared to pull another stunt, a notification to the police or the government would teach those scumbags how to behave in a split second. Showing them a bit of courtesy ordinarily was merely a matter of mutual convenience.

Yet listening to this, Bai Haonan felt a sudden jolt of alarm. The tiny romantic spark that had just begun to sprout within him was promptly doused. It was better to focus wholeheartedly on his own career.

And so, staying holed up inside the fitness center without stepping outside for nearly a week, Bai Haonan finally began trying out the hydrotherapy pool to test if his muscles had recovered.

During this week, naturally, it was mostly Xiao Wan and Li Lin who took care of Bai Haonan. Yu Jiali was busy; the fact that she could carve out enough time every day to work out was something only she knew was a rarity. Therefore, even when she saw the girls taking turns accompanying Bai Haonan for walks on the artificial turf to exercise his muscles via the surveillance monitors, she had no choice but to let nature take its course.

The care styles of these two young women were completely contrasting. Since Xiao Wan spent most of her working hours at the Jiadheng office, she usually came by early in the morning or at dusk. She spoke very little, simply and clearly reporting on the financial, promotional, and other conditions of the company and fitness center. At most, she would mention that Chen Meijuan had already collected the goods, that the rented apartment was doubling as a warehouse, and that the storefront was already being renovated and prepared. The rest of the time, she would silently support Bai Haonan.

During other working hours, it was Li Lin who took over. This girl was purely a chatterbox, talking endlessly—blah, blah, blah—rambling on from the trivial nonsense of her childhood all the way to college, telling how she had been cluelessly pursued since junior high, and how Old Li had chased away other boys, turning things upside down. After all, her hometown in the Northeast wasn't a major city; it was more like a small, aviation-industry-related municipality converted for civilian use. Anyone who dared to pester her would have her parents showing up right at their doorstep, fitting the classic description of someone whose parents forbade any thoughts of romance during school years, only to suddenly start nagging and questioning her about it now.

Had it been any other girl, Bai Haonan might have exchanged slick banter with her, but facing Li Lin was much like how Xiao Wan faced him: he simply listened quietly, rarely speaking and hardly even responding. Sometimes Li Lin would look puzzled, crane her neck to study his expression to confirm he was actually listening, and then resume her babbling. On this particular day, while accompanying Bai Haonan to the hydrotherapy pool in the fitness center, she suddenly took it upon herself to trim his beard, claiming she had once thought of becoming a hairdresser because she felt her fingers were nimbler than her brain.

Mentioning Bai Haonan's facial hair was a frequent topic of her idle chatter. At first, she thought it made him look old, but once she got used to it, she found it carried a mature charm; now, however, she felt it looked a bit messy and wanted to tidy it up.

Actually, the so-called hydrotherapy pool existed because a fitness center of just over a thousand square meters could hardly accommodate a swimming pool, yet they wanted to round out the facilities with enough of a gimmick. Following Bai Haonan's suggestion, the renovation included a sauna room and a deep-water hydrotherapy pool that was roughly the size of an ordinary bathtub. It allowed an adult to stand on the floor of the chest-deep water and use a simple, non-motorized treadmill. For those with injuries or weight issues, running in the water used buoyancy to drastically reduce the stress on knees, ankles, and injuries. In essence, it was just a deep tiled basin with steps leading down, featuring a full-length glass wall on one side so observers could monitor movement dynamics and physical conditions. It was a standard piece of rehabilitation equipment that didn't cost a fortune yet looked impressive and served a real purpose. Right now, Li Lin was standing by the edge of the pool; being tall, she could easily reach in with scissors to trim Bai Haonan's beard. Since he hadn't groomed it for many days, Bai Haonan simply let her do as she pleased. Besides, having such a smiling, chattering girl trim his beard was rather enjoyable to him.

As a result, Li Lin had a sudden flash of inspiration. "Why don't you shave off all your beard and let me see how you look?"

Bai Haonan was still shaking his head when he heard the girl exclaim, "Oops! Sorry, I cut too much—I gave you a notch right here!"

Her tone sounded entirely mischievous, like a child's mischief. Bai Haonan couldn't help laughing first, then reached up to touch the side of his face, where there indeed seemed to be a gap. Feeling indulgent toward her, he said, "Just cut it however; trim it shorter is fine, but don't shave it completely, otherwise my skin will break out in a rash."

And so Li Lin used the scissors to transform the full beard Bai Haonan had grown ever since meeting Isa into a shadowed stubble. His chin, no longer completely smooth, paired with his still salt-and-pepper hair, shed a bit of its weather-beaten look and took on a sharper, more resolute air. When Bai Haonan stepped out of the deep-water pool in his athletic shorts, soaking wet, and looked at himself in the mirror, he felt that compared to his previous self, though it wasn't as deeply concealed by the full beard, it wasn't the kind of face people would easily recognize at first glance. Moreover, the family's manhunt had been over for half a year, and Bai Haonan's sense of that danger had grown somewhat hazy—perhaps just as Yu Jiali had put it, because he fundamentally didn't think he was in the wrong, he lacked a sense of urgency. Instead, he felt more startled by the local bullies he had provoked. Truth be told, despite the title of "Brother Nan of the Streets," he had actually rarely dealt with underworld figures, and the ones he did know were the types athletes preferred to keep a wide berth from.

By changing his look, shedding the full beard, he figured he might even evade that flat-topped thug and his gang. That was what Bai Haonan was thinking at the moment.

Indeed, he was a fellow accustomed to focusing solely on the immediate circumstances right in front of him.

Yet reality would never allow him to remain this indolent.