Chapter 2: The Black Iron Token!

The Jianghu Giant Rankings Battle is a power struggle staged by Hong Kong's underworld to seize decision-making authority. It will decide the final six men, who will form the Six Greats and handle mediation and decision-making for Hong Kong's underworld affairs. The top figure among them will become the publicly recognized Grand Marshal of Hong Kong's underworld, in other words, the black-world overlord of Hong Kong's triads.

This system was created by Xuanjizi, a legendary mystic from an earlier generation, and is held once every twenty years. The last Grand Marshal was Jiang Tiansheng's father, Jiang Zhen, the founder of Hongxing, which is why the Black Iron Token has always been in Hongxing's hands.

Now that the twenty-year cycle is almost up, Hongxing has to hand over the Black Iron Token to Xuanjizi's successor, the Tiantong Daoist Mi Jingzi, so he can convene and preside over a new round of the Jianghu Giant Rankings Battle.

Sending the underlings over was really also a way to test Mi Jingzi. No matter how impressive the title sounded, Tiantong Daoist or whatever, they still had to probe his level first. If he wasn't as formidable as the legend claimed, then the later Jianghu Giant Rankings Battle could be controlled outright.

Chen Haonan didn't know any of that. He had only heard of the Black Iron Token, and seeing Mr. Jiang entrust him with such an important task, he was beyond excited, almost seized by the urge to die for the one who understood him.

Without another word, Chen Haonan took his men Shan Ji, Da Tian'er, and Bao Pi and headed for Windsor Tower. But as soon as they reached the building and confirmed that the photo studio was on the top floor, Bao Pi's face suddenly turned sour. "No way, it's on the top floor? That's a seriously unlucky place."

"Unlucky? How is it unlucky?"

"I heard that back in 1989, there was a restaurant called Mei Xin Palace that opened on the top floor. At the time, a wealthy family's child had its one-month celebration there.

During that time, the child kept crying. The family thought there were too many people and too much noise, so the child was unhappy and didn't pay it any mind. They just kept holding the baby and soothing it. About half an hour later, the child seemed to have fallen asleep and became very quiet!

By the afternoon, the banquet had ended.

The mother holding the child seemed to notice something was wrong. The baby looked like it was asleep, but when she touched its face, it felt a little cold. She looked closer.

It turned out the child had stopped breathing. They rushed it to the hospital right away, but it was already too late.

After the incident, the newspapers printed the story. As it kept spreading, strange rumors also started circulating in the clothing department of the building's shopping center.

According to the employees there, everything was fine before they got off work every day, but when they opened the store the next morning, everything had been thrown into chaos. The clothes were in a complete mess, and the mannequins' arms, legs, and heads had been taken apart.

Even the toys in the children's department had been scattered all over the place.

For several days in a row it was the same, and the media even ran special reports on it.

What was strangest at the time was the marble floor at the building's entrance. There were fox-like patterns on the walls, seven or eight in all, large and small. The patterns in the marble didn't look like they had been painted on from the outside, and no matter how hard anyone scrubbed, they wouldn't come off.

In the end, as the ghost stories spread further and further through the newspapers and media, the building's owner hired the most famous mystic in Hong Kong at the time to perform a ritual.

It was said that the ritual was enormous. To appease the fox immortals and stop them from causing more trouble, the master set up an amusement park on the building's top floor. The park wasn't open to the public, and employees weren't allowed up there either.

After a while, the trouble finally died down. But there was still one incident: two employees from the building's shopping center hid during work to slack off, and the two of them sneaked up to the top floor.

It was said the two employees were new and didn't know the building well. If they had been old hands at the shopping center, they would never have gone up to the top floor.

When they saw the amusement park on the top floor, with a carousel and lots of other rides, curiosity got the better of them and they ran in. In the end, both of them were scared out of their wits. They saw that the rides were all switched on even though nobody was using them.

While they were there, they faintly heard fox cries.

It was said that amusement park is still on the top floor today. Brother Nan, are you sure we're going to the photo studio on the top floor? They say that place was sealed shut and nobody can go up there."

Chen Haonan had never been afraid of this sort of thing before, but after Bao Pi said it so seriously, he really did feel a chill run down his back. After all, anyone mixing in the trade believed in these things to some degree. They prayed to Guan Gong every day; by now, it was second nature.

But there were four grown men here, and this was a major matter personally assigned by Mr. Jiang, the boss of Hongxing. If they couldn't even handle a trivial errand like this, how were they supposed to make a name for themselves later?

"Is it on the 57th floor?"

"No. I heard the top floor here is actually the 58th floor, but the elevator only goes to the 57th. The top floor and the rooftop are locked off, and nobody is allowed up there. You have to break the door open and climb the stairs. They say there's not even any lighting in the stairwell, just total blackness. You can't see your hand in front of your face."

"No way. It's that haunted? How about we go get some black dog's blood first? I heard tampons soaked in menstrual blood work pretty well too. Those Jianghu con artists call it the 'Red Dragon.'"

The more Chen Haonan listened, the angrier he got. He immediately put on a boss's face and warned the three men, "This is an expert. We'll do whatever the boss tells us to do. If he says climb the stairs, then climb the stairs. If we can't even handle something this small, what are we good for?"

After saying that, Chen Haonan pressed 57. When they got to the 57th floor, he led the three men straight toward the fire escape. Sure enough, it was locked. It looked like there really was another floor above. What could they do now?

Naturally, they would have to hack the door open with a blade and then head up to the legendary 58th floor.

At that moment Bao Pi suddenly had a wild idea: "Maybe the top floor they were talking about is the 57th floor?"

When everyone heard that, it sounded very reasonable, so they began searching the entire 57th floor. Sure enough, there was no photo studio there. It looked like if the studio called "Bu Yi Photo Studio" really existed, it had to be upstairs. It was bizarre and eerie everywhere you looked, creepy enough to make anyone's skin crawl.