Mi Xuan’s phone rang with the default bell. She checked the incoming text from Qi Sho. He had encountered a problem with a dog and couldn't pick her up for their date. She closed out of the message and everyone's eyes peered over to see what the message was about.

"What?" Mi Xuan snatched her phone back into her pocket. She didn't know why they were so nosy about her non-existent love life.

"How long are you going to pretend you're dating?" asked Yang Kang.

"As long as possible?" asked Mi Xuan.

"If it's just pretend, why are you going out on more dates than usual?" Asked Yang Kang.

"You're imaging it."

Li Yun’s phone also went off. He checked on his messages and then quickly gathered his backpack, "Looks like I'm heading out, see you guys in two weeks."

Everyone watched as Li Yun left in a hurry. At around the same moment, everyone's pager went off. There were multiple cases of stabbing heading into the emergency room. Li Yun caught sight of the ambulances on the way and his body tensed; it was a chaotic scene. There were street punks and cops rushing inside.

Inside the car, Li Yun sped up and rushed to a small animal clinic. He had received a message from Qi Sho requesting help to fix up a friend of his. If he remembered correctly, Qi Sho didn’t hang out with the best crowd in high school.

Li Yun walked into the back entrance of the animal clinic as instructed. The closest exam room was only two doors down. As he walked inside, he saw a guy with multiple knife wounds laying on the bed designed for pets, "Qi Sho, what the hell, rush the guy to the hospital!"

"Sh!" Qi Sho rushed toward the door, pulled Li Yun inside, and locked the room. "I can't, he's going to be detained if he goes to the hospital."

Qi Sho had already cleaned out some of the wounds and given him an x-ray, but he wasn't able to determine if there was any internal bleeding.

"Maybe he's better detained if he's going to cause all this trouble," Li Yun grabbed the guy's wrist briefly to check his CV system.

The guy’s breathing was stable and there were minor injuries to the thorax. The most pressing problem was the punctures around the abdomen area. Li Yun unzipped his backpack, took out his acupuncture kit and suture kit. Looking at the guy, he vaguely remembered him in one of the skirmishes back in high school.

"Hey Bing Tou, you awake?" Qi Sho slapped both sides of his friend's face, who was beginning to lose consciousness.

"You still have contacts with these punks?" Li Yun asked as he put on his gloves.

"It is partially my fault," Qi Sho admitted. "After high school, I abandoned all of them and went off on my own. I had my family, but most of them came from broken families, and had no future ahead of them."

"Too late to regret now, and you were a kid then too, no need to feel responsible for their own decisions," Li Yun finished applying the needles around several acupoints to slow down the flow of blood. He looked around the room. "Do you have a sealing device?"

Qi Sho nodded. He performed surgeries on dogs and cats, so some tools were similar to the ones used in the OR.

Li Yun reopened the bandage Qi Sho had applied. Most of the internal bleeding was concentrated around the area of the knife wounds. Li Yun inserted the needle with the stitch scissors into the interior cavity. Qi Sho watched the movement of Li Yun's hands as they weaved side to side.

"Uh, are you suturing?" Qi Sho had never seen a surgeon suturing inside an interior cavity without a good view of the field, much less without seeing anything.

"I've practiced this quite a bit," said Li Yun. "It's faster this way."

There were multiple sites he had to stitch, and he wasn't planning to incise a bigger opening when he had a good grasp of the location. Also, it was an emergency, so he only needed to stop the bleeding. After an hour, Li Yun felt the blood stabilizing.

"I hope you don't do this often," Li Yun said, guessing that Qi Sho often helped his old gang.

"It's something that can't be helped. If Bufu and Fatty ran into problems, you would probably help them out."

Li Yun nodded. It was true, but Li Yun wasn't like Qi Sho who would rush headfirst into a situation.

Qi Sho continued to tend Bing Tou until he gained consciousness.

"Boss, you came!" Bing Tou felt like crying.

"You f***** idiot!" Qi Sho scolded Bing Tou. "I told you to stop hanging around with those people!"

"But boss, it's a really good group. We are making good money from the gambling den, I told ya we don't get involved with drugs and girls. But that punk Dou Yao brought this outsider and they want to take over our territory and convert it into a massage parlor."

"Just call the police," Li Yun didn't understand why these people were causing so much ruckus.

Bing Tou looked horrified when he recognized the guy who was standing next to Qi Sho. "You! You're one of the evils from Kaishi High!"

"Dr. Li to you," Li Yun wondered if these people ever grow up.

"You can't call the police! They will shut down our nightclub!" Bing Tou.

"Find a real job."

Gang's activities sounded more tiring than being a surgeon, and the risk of getting stabbed was exponentially higher. From an economic standpoint, like any career choice, only the top 1% or a mob boss could make millions. Most of the time, underlying were paid the bare minimum and there were other risks like a prison sentence and poor reputation.

"Most of us have no skills, who's going to pay a bunch of high school dropouts?" Bing Tou's gang had close to two dozen people, and most of them dropped out of high school.

"There are many jobs that don't require a degree. There's a pharmaceutical company in Yide looking to hire people for farm work."

"Uh…" Bing Tou scratched his head, farm work sounded boring. "I've never worked on a farm before."

"Figures," Li Yun thought.

Gang members liked the thrill and excitement they couldn't get in a regular job. However, they were also too much of a coward to do money-making activities like extreme sports. People in gangs lived on the edge by choice. Unless they had a gun to their head, Li Yun didn't believe that life of crime was their only option. If Li Yun became an underworld mob boss, it was definitely by choice.

"Boss, you gotta help us out!" Bing Tou pleaded with Qi Sho. "If they take over our territory, we are going to either be forced to live in the streets or follow their way, and I know you hate that sort of stuff."

"Look, I'm a vet, I can't help you any more than the next person," Qi Sho was already feeling tired after bandaging the knife wounds. "Since there's already a big disturbance, the police will likely find your hideout. Take my advice and move somewhere far away."

"But boss, the new boss that Dou Yao invited is Shudi," Bing Tou said hesitantly.

Li Yun saw Qi Sho's eyes raised in a surprised expression. "Who's Shudi?"

"He's the underground mob boss from Angao City," Qi Sho explained. "He has a lot of connections."

"Yeah, even if we bring in the police, they will close down our club, but the guy will likely start up something elsewhere," Bing Tou explained.

It sounded like something out of a movie plot, but police connections to the mob were often based on reality. The major problem was, the source of information was also heavily monitored. If the police force were in with the mob, how far up did it go and how many politicians were also involved? Li Yun wasn't too familiar with the politics of Qinbei, much less the neighboring city of Angao.

Qinbei wasn't Li Yun’s hometown, but it was Qu Sho’s. Li Yun saw the Qi Sho's head spinning up a half ass plan. The guy was going to find a way to stop Shudi from entering his city.

"Don't act recklessly," Li Yun warned Qi Sho.

"Shudi expanding to Qinbei will not be good," Qi Sho rubbed the side of his forehead. "The inner city of Angao City has been messed up for years. Many people heading to Qinbei have escaped from there. Not only that, they have a lot of resources after running the drugs, prostitution, and racketeering ring for years."

Li Yun understood why he was concerned, but the problem wasn't something they could handle overnight.

"I'll talk it over with a detective in Yide," Li Yun suggested. "In the meanwhile, send me all the information on this guy."