After that night, Beijing was no longer an option.
With an old bag on his back, he headed south, first to Guangzhou’s Zhanxi Road, then on to Shenzhen. He had no connections, no capital, just courage and a hard line. He opened a watch shop, made his way through Dongmen, entered the Paris Hall, took in Zuo Shuai, met Qiaoba, and crossed paths with Bai Xiaohang. Some people respected him along the way; others wanted to crush him.
The underworld isn’t built by fighting. It’s built one dinner table at a time. A reputation isn’t made by boasting. It’s made by settling old scores, again and again.
From Beijing to Shenzhen, Ren Jiazhong became Jiadai.
But once he had secured his footing in the south and looked back toward the capital, he realized that the night he left hadn’t been the end. It was the beginning of a lifetime’s worth of underworld debts.
