“In this city that devours people, you either live on your knees or die on your feet.”
Twenty-year-old dockworker Chen Mo was huddled in a slum with his dying mother after gangsters tortured his father to death. A bloody brawl caught the eye of Du Yuesheng, godfather of the port city. Using a bloodstained jade thumb ring as his token, Du dragged the battered young man into the abyss.
From a debt collector on the docks to ruler of an underground empire, Chen Mo clawed his way up through betrayal and bloodshed:
- In his first year, he slit an enemy’s throat with a butterfly knife in an auto shop, completing the most brutal initiation in the underworld.
- In his third year, he led eighteen elite fighters in a massacre at a Golden Triangle drug lord’s base, making “Silence Is Golden” the most terrifying legend in Southeast Asia.
- In his fifth year, at his mother’s deathbed, he tore open an old photograph from thirty years ago and discovered that Du Yuesheng was the real killer of his father.
When the gun of his undercover police brother is pointed at his back, when the childhood friend who became a journalist holds evidence of his drug trafficking, when his adopted daughter is strapped to a bomb by a rival gang... this kingpin who walks the line between law and crime finally understands: the underworld isn’t about fighting and killing. It’s about human relationships and the ways of the world.
