By about 9 am, Dali’s stomach was rumbling with hunger. "All we’ve had since yesterday was a bowl of congee. Aren't you hungry?” he asked. “Dude, where’s the chocolate Bingxin-meimei gave you yesterday? Take it out, I’m starving!"

"I left it in the dormitory,” I said. “How could I eat it all at once?"

I didn’t mean to imply anything, but Bingxin seemed to have caught on to some nonexistent allusion and blushed shyly.

"How much longer do we have to wait?" Dali cried dejectedly.

"You’ll have to be patient. I’m guessing the abbot will only return when he’s handled the matter."

Capturing our suspects alive was trickier than killing them. In fact, all I had to do was whistle for Song Xingchen to jump off the roof and kill Scarface. But therein lay the rub; how would we explain all the dead bodies to the police when they arrived at the scene? If the matter wasn’t well handled, we might all end up in jail.

Right now, impatience was written all over Scarface’s face. He glanced...