Chapter 1682 — A Big Fright: Wei Zhao Drove Straight to the Orphanage, and There in the Alley He Found Little Ken Waiting Anxiously, Craning His Neck This Way and That

"You must have been waiting forever. Get in, we'll talk on the way!" Wei Zhao pulled the car up beside Little Ken, opened the door, and called out to him.

"Ah! Big Brother Wei Zhao, you came!" At the sight of him, a flicker of joy lit Little Ken's face, and he scrambled nimbly into the car.

Once Little Ken was aboard, Wei Zhao pulled into a parking space by the roadside and said, "Now you can talk. What's so urgent that you had to send for me?"

"Mm..." Little Ken nodded hurriedly. "Big Brother Wei Zhao, something has happened to Sister Xiaoke. Can you help her?"

"Xiaoke? What's happened to her?" Wei Zhao was struck blank for a moment, and then a sudden tightness seized his heart... Yu Xiaoke. He had not seen her since the tomb robbery, and yet at this instant her lovely, bashful face rose before him with perfect clarity.

The moment Yu Xiaoke had bared her heart to him might have been yesterday; he could see it all still. He had even come to feel a certain fondness for the girl, but the two of them were fated never to cross paths again. The Male Thief's identity had passed forever into history; that face could never again be shown to the world.

Still, at the news that something had happened to Yu Xiaoke, his heart clenched. He did care for her, a little. True, she was someone he had known under another identity, but just like Eagle in Yu Ning's day, the Male Thief was one of Wei Zhao's selves.

"Sister Xiaoke means to ambush the convoy and snatch a prisoner free. Won't you help her? If you don't, she'll never come back alive!" Little Ken said in a rush.

"Ambush a convoy?" Wei Zhao blinked. "Snatch who, from what? She hasn't been watching too many dramas, has she?"

"No, it's like this..." Little Ken dared not hold anything back, and recounted to Wei Zhao, point by point, everything Yu Xiaoke had told him. His memory was good; he passed it on almost word for word...

"What! You're telling me Yu Xiaoke means to rescue the Male Thief?" Wei Zhao's eyes went wide, and for a moment he had no idea what to say. Yet those few words of Yu Xiaoke's left a sour ache in his chest...

There is a kind of love that shares life and death, that flings caution to the winds. Love at first sight; the moth's headlong charge into the flame.

That was the very portrait of the love between Yu Xiaoke and the Male Thief. The two of them had passed through death together in the ancient tomb; his protection of her had made her fall for him at first sight, and that was what now drove her to this recklessness, this moth's charge into the fire.

Knowing full well it could not be done, she went and did it anyway, and that alone proved what lay in Yu Xiaoke's heart...

"Yes, Big Brother Wei Zhao, could you go and help her..." Little Ken was uneasy. He feared that Wei Zhao might be fond of Yu Xiaoke too, and that on learning she loved another man he would take offense and wash his hands of the whole business. But he could not bring himself to lie to Wei Zhao either.

"That foolish girl, honestly..." Wei Zhao gave a wry smile. "Ambush a convoy? Does she think she's in some costume drama? Easy enough to say!"

"I know... so... what do we do?" Little Ken could not tell what Wei Zhao really meant, so he could only ask cautiously.

"All right, leave it to me. I'll help her. But you're not to breathe a word about my part in it. I may be helping her from the shadows." Wei Zhao mused a moment, then said to Little Ken.

"Ah... all right!" Little Ken was taken aback. What did Wei Zhao mean by that? Doing a good deed and leaving no name behind? Or was it that he did love Sister Xiaoke after all, and had no wish for her to know he was helping her run off to rescue his own rival?

Be that as it may, Wei Zhao had agreed, and that was good news. Whatever he asked, Little Ken would agree to without a moment's hesitation.

"Good, then it's settled!" Wei Zhao said. "You go on back. I give you my word, I'll see your Sister Xiaoke safely back to the orphanage."

This was one matter he truly could not leave alone. Yu Xiaoke was going to rescue the Male Thief, but the Male Thief was Wei Zhao himself. The real Male Thief had long since died; what was there to rescue? The people locked up in that detention house were accomplices of the husband-and-wife bandit gang; the news reports simply had not gone into such detail.

Wei Zhao saw Little Ken out of the car, but instead of heading straight for the detention house, he first went home and dug the Male Thief's mask out of the storeroom. Only then did he hurry off toward the detention center. Near the place he parked the car, put on the Male Thief's mask, and stepped out...

Wei Zhao had once worked as an assassin, and reading a patch of ground, knowing where a man might best hide and keep watch, was a skill he had mastered. From a first survey he quickly settled on the two positions where Yu Xiaoke might be lying in wait.

He reasoned from his own habits: if he were Yu Xiaoke, where would he hide? Thus the two conclusions came to him easily.

Yu Xiaoke was hidden in a big tree to the right of the detention-house gate. It was a good spot: the dense branches screened her from the cameras, and from up there she could see plainly everything that stirred before the gate.

Even so, Yu Xiaoke was thoroughly miserable. Only after she arrived had she felt how small she was. Just now a dozen or more police cars had rolled into the compound, led by armored vehicles packed with armed police. Under such conditions, for one girl on her own to snatch a prisoner away was sheer fantasy.

Never mind the armed police of the escort, even if Yu Xiaoke could slip past their eyes and outrun their pursuit, to pick out the single car holding the Male Thief from among so many vehicles was a task of impossible difficulty. She could hardly open each one for a look.

She would have been seized or shot dead long before that.

"Ugh, this is miserable. Yu Xiaoke, Yu Xiaoke, Wei Zhao had you pegged, all right. Your skills really are the clumsiest of the clumsy. You never curse your shallow kung fu till the day you need it!" Yu Xiaoke muttered to herself.

"If you know your skills are poor, you should just practice more often." A low male voice came from behind her.

"Practice?... That's easier said than... Gah!" Yu Xiaoke answered out of pure reflex, then gave a violent start and nearly toppled out of the tree.

Who was talking? Up in this tree, wasn't she alone? When had another person appeared? Yu Xiaoke turned her head in terror and looked behind her, and there she saw a masked man! Yet this masked man did not frighten her further; instead she was startled and overjoyed at once: "You... you... you..."

"Me what?" Wei Zhao asked.

"You... shouldn't you be in... in there?" Yu Xiaoke pointed toward the detention house not far off, rubbed her eyes in amazement, and looked at Wei Zhao again. "I'm not mistaken, am I? You really are the Male Thief?"

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