Silent Reading 默读 [BL Novel by Priest]

Chapter 11-20

CHAPTER 11 [Julien-Ten]

The counselor carefully scrutinized Fei Du. For a moment she had seen a complicated expression of unspeakable irritation flash across the young man's face, which made him seem more than ordinarily young and lively. She was almost a little astonished by this.

Fei Du had been referred to Dr. Bai some years ago. His previous counselor had been her shidi, an expert in young people's problems. Before that he had gone through an unknown number of counselors; probably Fei Du himself didn't clearly remember how many. It sounded as though he was simply a difficult person.

When referring the patient to her, her shidi had naturally contacted her in advance. Dr. Bai had wanted to know what problem had brought this child to seek psychological counseling and also why his current counseling couldn't continue.

"In fact, I don't know what his problem is," her shidi had said. "He's pretty cooperative. If you ask him to say something, he'll talk about it. I've tried to discuss the problem of the lack of affection during his childhood, and his mother's unfortunate death, and so on. He doesn't evade anything, his manner is very sincere. When you don't have anything to say next he'll sometimes even very considerately hand you the next topic. Bai-jie, you understand, right?"

Dr. Bai had quickly heard his implication—the patient was uncooperative.

Dr. Bai had been working for many years. She had seen each and every type of uncooperative client: there were the ones who fabricated things during the evaluation; there were the ones whose relatives were forcing them, who persisted in thinking they didn't have a problem; there were also those who thought themselves very clever and tried to reverse analyze the counselor, and the process became a battle of wits.

A psychological counselor wasn't all-powerful. There would always be some people who, for various reasons, would never be able to build a relationship of mutual trust with the counselor, and the counseling would fail in the end. These patients were either referred to others or slowly gave up on psychological counseling and didn't come again.

Fei Du was, without a doubt, a special case among special cases.

He belonged to the type that fabricated at the initial evaluation, and moreover his fabrication was totally unassailable. He was also an engaging conversationalist during the sessions. He evaded very little. At first glance he even gave the impression of having nothing to hide. When he had been a little younger, he had already been very adept at self-control; if the conversation touched on a sensitive subject, he would display neither aggression nor defensiveness towards the counselor; his emotional feedback was direct from start to finish.

The only problem was that it was too direct.

Encountering keenly felt pain, the healthiest and most powerful person still couldn't maintain an inward intellectual calm from start to finish—after all, a mighty AI only needs to have its batteries charged; it doesn't need psychological counseling.

Dr. Bai used countless methods without being able to establish an effective doctor-patient channel of communication. She could only lay down her cards and acknowledge to him: "My level of expertise ends here. I may not be able to help you. If you believe you still need help, I can try referring you to a better counselor."

She hadn't expected Fei Du to refuse. Further, after going through over a month of treatment with no outcome, like someone with more money than brains, he had doubled the counseling fee, buying out the last two hours of Dr. Bai's schedule every Wednesday evening. And every time he came, he would very sweetly compliment, "I feel very comfortable here with you. It's really helping me."—If Dr. Bai didn't think she was old enough to be his mother, it was possible she would have gotten the wrong impression and suspected this little playboy was coming to try to pick her up.

There weren't so many things worth talking about in his ordinary life, so Fei Du would borrow a book from her, then come to return it the week after. He would discuss the borrowed book with Dr. Bai, just as if he wasn't coming for psychological counseling but instead was doing graduate studies with her. Very slowly, she found that although the effects were slight, this method could sometimes make him reveal a bit of his true ideas; though as soon as she tried to follow up, he would once again very cunningly avoid her.

He was like a person living sealed in a castle, surrounded on all sides by an iron fastness with only one clear window, from behind which he quietly observed the people outside. Only by remaining very composed could you make him cautiously open the window a crack.

Dr. Bai cautiously examined Fei Du, then asked him, "A friend?"

"A practical joker who bites the hand that feeds him." Fei Du ground his teeth lightly and put his phone back in his pocket. "I'll be going now. I'll come bother you again next week."

According to habit, Dr. Bai saw him to the door.

With one hand on the door, Fei Du signaled behind him with the other that there was no need to see him out. Then he suddenly remembered something and said, "Right, Dr. Bai, I suppose next week will be my last time coming. I thought I should tell you ahead of time so you could arrange to give the time to someone else."

Dr. Bai froze and automatically asked, "You feel that your problem has been resolved? You won't need to come again after this?"

Fei Du nodded. "Yeah, lately I've felt like I've slowly been moving on from where I started and sampling new modes of life. I'm very grateful for your help all these years."

Dr. Bai smiled bitterly. "But I still don't know where you started."

"It's enough that I know." Fei Du smiled at her. "We'll chat again next week."

The next morning, Yan City's much-bemoaned great traffic restriction continued.

As for one person, once again riding a jangling broken-down bicycle, looking like he was delivering take-out, some cat hairs still stuck to his pant leg, in this condition having an unavoidable encounter with his luxury-sedan-driving rival in love—

Who knows how another person person would have reacted? Captain Luo, anyway, was habitually shameless; his psychological quality was sufficiently firm. His pedaling gave the bicycle the imposing bearing of an aircraft carrier; using the "foot brake," he stopped the bike by the side of the road and raised his chin at Fei Du. "Come to give charity to the comrades at the Traffic Police Team again, you local tyrant? In a while I'll have them give you a wholesale VIP parking ticket."

Fei Du unhurriedly opened his mouth to return fire. "I still get hit with a ticket when accompanying a friend's sister to cooperate with a police investigation? Captain Luo, your bureau truly won't attend to legitimate business if there's no way to make a profit off of it."

Then he looked the doors of the City Bureau up and down, the words "Tsk, how poor" clearly hanging on the corners of his eyes and the tips of his brows.

Luo Wenzhou looked behind him and saw a young man and woman get out of the car. The girl's eyes were red. Looking closely, there was some resemblance to Zhang Donglai.

Luo Wenzhou got off his "bike-shaped carrier." "Zhang Ting?"

Zhang Donglai had a little sister named Zhang Ting. Luo Wenzhou wasn't well acquainted with her—after all, she was a well-behaved young lady who didn't get tossed in little dark rooms in police stations for speeding like her useless big brother.

Zhang Ting was about to answer when the man next to her stopped her.

The man walked up, gave Luo Wenzhou a business card, and rushed to open his mouth before Zhang Ting could. "Hello, officer. I'm a lawyer. I have accepted the position of assisting the party Zhang Donglai. I'd like to understand something of the circumstances of the investigation from you."

Luo Wenzhou frowned, his gaze scraping over the lawyer's face. When he was neither speaking nor smiling, his countenance had a sort of haughty coldness.

Luo Wenzhou didn't move to accept the business card. He looked at Fei Du; Fei Du was leaning against the car playing on his phone as if the matter was no concern of his. Luo Wenzhou spoke past the lawyer to Zhang Ting. "Did you talk to your family about hiring a lawyer? Does your uncle know?"

Zhang Ting stared.

Without waiting for her to answer, Luo Wenzhou took the lawyer's business card and smiled hypocritically. "You came very promptly. Twenty-four hours haven't passed yet."

"In these circumstances, the sooner a lawyer gets involved, the better, isn't that right?" Not to be outdone, the lawyer gave him a fake smile in return. "We've come to safeguard the party's fundamental rights."

Just then, a weak greeting came from behind them: "Good morning, Captain Luo."

Luo Wenzhou looked around and saw Xiao Haiyang standing at the door hugging a stack of folders.—The day before he'd been brought to the City Bureau by Tao Ran; today, unexpectedly showing initiative, he'd come himself.

"Perfect." Luo Wenzhou looked at him and smiled. Pointing behind him, he said to the lawyer, "Why don't you go and speak to the person in charge of this case?—You there, go on."

Xiao Haiyang still hadn't come around from inexplicably having a lawyer thrown full in his face by Luo Wenzhou when the lawyer started pestering him with a string of questions. He was entirely bewildered. "Where...where's Deputy-Captain Tao?"

Luo Wenzhou smiled benevolently at him. "Tao Ran had some business at home to take care of. He asked for the day off. Xiao Xiao, this case is still your people's responsibility, after all. You'll be able to tell it best and clearest."

Having disposed of Xiao Haiyang and the lawyer, Luo Wenzhou grew serious and turned to Fei Du. "What's this all about?"

Fei Du raised his eyebrows. "I don't know. I'm just a driver who hasn't reached the legal age to marry, come to drop them off on my way."

Luo Wenzhou rolled his eyes at him, his gaze sweeping over to the stunned Zhang Ting. He got out his phone, clicked a few times, and pulled up a photograph of He Zhongyi. "I'll make this short. Have you seen this man?"

Presented without warning with a human face, Zhang Ting was startled into backing up. She instinctively hid behind Fei Du.

Fei Du raised his hand to block Luo Wenzhou's wrist. "Can't you be a little more polite to a young lady?"

"Zhang Ting." Fixing a look on Zhang Ting, Luo Wenzhou said in a quiet but severe voice, "This man was killed two nights ago. Your brother is under serious suspicion. This is a homicide inquiry. Every sentence of your testimony is essential. What are you doing hiding behind someone who has nothing to do with this?"

Zhang Ting trembled and clutched Fei Du's sleeve.

"It's all right." Bending slightly, Fei Du spoke next to her ear. "Tingting, tell the truth. Captain Luo thinks the same as I do. We both believe your brother can't be involved in this."

Perhaps taking some comfort from him, Zhang Ting hesitated a moment, then took the phone from Luo Wenzhou's hand. For a long time she couldn't calm down and nearly bit her thumbnail down to the quick. Then she nodded irresolutely. "The photograph doesn't look very like him...but I think I did see him. I have an internship at the Economic and Trade Center. One day I went downstairs to buy bubble tea and ran into a weird person."

She pointed at the photograph on Luo Wenzhou's phone. "It was this person. He stopped me and asked whether I knew someone called 'Fengniange.'" 

________________

CHAPTER 12 [Julien- Eleven]

Luo Wenzhou looked fixedly into her eyes. "Surname Feng, full name 'Feng Nian,' or 'Feng Niange?'"

"I don't know... That's what it sounded like, but he had a bit of an accent, I don't know what the characters were, or even if the last character was a form of address or part of the name," said Zhang Ting numbly. "It was already late that day, and he suddenly jumped out, smiling so fawningly and saying weird things. He seemed a little crazy, and I didn't have anyone with me; I was a little scared, so I kept saying, 'I don't know him.' I wanted to go around him..."

"When did this happen?" asked Luo Wenzhou.

"A while ago," said Zhang Ting. "A while ago there was a kind of mentally unstable flasher running around near our company. A lot of people had seen him. Our boss even didn't dare to have us work overtime, but I happened to have something to finish that day, so I stayed a while. By the time I got downstairs there weren't many people around, so I was a little scared to start with... Otherwise I wouldn't have called my brother to come pick me up."

Fei Du remembered the delivery man he'd met at the coffee shop and suddenly couldn't quite understand something. Thereupon he couldn't resist putting in a word. "And then? Did he pester you?"

Zhang Ting nodded. "I saw my brother had come, so I went around him to cross the street to go meet them, but he suddenly started following me for some reason. I was panicking a little, so I ran a few steps and loudly said, 'Who are you, I don't know you,' and they heard. My brother may have thought he was harassing me, so he came over and hit him."

"He Zhongyi—the man in the photograph, did he fight back?" asked Luo Wenzhou.

"No," said Zhang Ting, her gaze falling as if she couldn't quite bear to go on. "He only covered his head and dodged. I saw then that he actually looked pretty young. I thought I'd been too sensitive and quickly stopped my brother."

Fei Du looked up slightly. "You went to meet...them? Who else was there?"

Zhang Ting said, "My boyfriend was driving. My brother was a little drunk."

"I see," said Fei Du, then made a perfectly right and realistic display of disappointment. "How come all the good girls have boyfriends already? Who's moving so fast?"

Luo Wenzhou frowned at him making such a weird diversion at such a time but didn't tell him to be quiet.

Zhang Ting blushed a little at his suggestive words. "It's Rongshun's Zhao Haochang, don't you know him, too?"

"The Rongshun Law Firm's Attorney Zhao?" Fei Du, seemingly inadvertently, looked past her at Luo Wenzhou. "No wonder the lawyer came so promptly."

Luo Wenzhou asked, "And after that? Did you see He Zhongyi again?"

Zhang Ting shook her head. Looking at Luo Wenzhou, she stammered out, "Captain Luo, my brother couldn't have killed someone."

Luo Wenzhou's expression relaxed. He said to Zhang Ting, "If your brother hasn't done anything wrong, we won't unjustly accuse him. Even if we were so unreasonable that we wanted to pick someone at random to unjustly accuse, we still couldn't pick our old director-general's relative, right? Rest assured: since your brother couldn't have killed anyone, nothing will happen to him here."

Zhang Ting heard him, but it was no use—the useless Zhang Donglai really wasn't easy to handle. So while she'd said he "couldn't have," inside she wasn't so sure.

"Go in and give them a statement," said Luo Wenzhou. "I'll have Lang Qiao come. You just tell her the truth. It'll be all right."

Before he had finished speaking, Fei Du had already moved slightly in front of Zhang Ting and beckoned to her like he was coaxing a child. He quietly said, "Don't be afraid. I'll come with you."

This conduct of waiting hand and foot on someone else's little sister really made it seem like he was the "brother-in-law." Luo Wenzhou couldn't stand this degenerate bourgeois lifestyle of chatting up girls for no reason. He wanted to sneer, but he was afraid of upsetting Zhang Ting again, so he had to let it go.

Fei Du accompanied Zhang Ting into the City Bureau and sat waiting outside holding a paper cup while she was giving her statement.

After a moment, Luo Wenzhou strolled over and sat next to him. "You people, calling in lawyers at the first sign of trouble. It puts us in an awkward position."

"I didn't tell them to call a lawyer," said Fei Du. Just when Luo Wenzhou was thinking in wonder that he would actually use human speech to defend himself, he quickly added another sentence that didn't sound so sensible. "If Zhang Donglai had killed someone and I wanted to get him out of it, I'd have no need for this useless lawyer; I'd give you another murderer."

When he spoke with Tao Ran, Fei Du was forever showing a sound and law-abiding aspect; speaking to him, however, it was forever the wretched and grim aspect, defying laws human and divine. Neither end seemed especially like the truth, anyway; Luo Wenzhou didn't know when he was just running his mouth and when he was telling the truth.

"You believe that money is all-powerful," said Luo Wenzhou, his expression stern and grave but his voice indolent, his manner lying somewhere between joking and proper. "Comrade, your views are very dangerous."

"If it isn't all-powerful, that's only because you don't have enough money." Fei Du's expression didn't alter. He changed the subject: "Where's Tao Ran?"

"Much obliged to President Fei for showing us the way," said Luo Wenzhou, "but the manner of showing it could stand discussion. It can't serve as evidence in court. I had to send him to find some evidence we could use. Otherwise when that lawyer you people brought forces us to release Zhang Donglai, will we have to release him or not?"

This speech was very indistinct; it sounded very much like he was giving a spy's countersign. Had the walls had ears, they would probably still have been all at sea. Fei Du, however, knew that he was talking about the cigarette ends—though he had promptly brought the cigarette ends over, in the end they were still objects of unknown origin. Even if Luo Wenzhou trusted him, the collegiate bench wouldn't. The police had to follow his clue to find other traces.

"Even if I hadn't touched them, you wouldn't have been in time to get them. You wouldn't even be able to determine whether that person was the victim." Fei Du shrugged. "Someone once said to me that 'everything that happens in this world leaves traces,' but whether you can find them depends on each side's luck. Is your luck good this time?"

Luo Wenzhou suddenly froze. The blow-for-blow probing, bantering, and hinting vanished utterly from his face. For an instant the corners of his mouth were even pulled a little tight.

Luo Wenzhou subconsciously got his cigarettes out of his pocket, thought of something, and put them back.

Instantly there was deep silence between the two of them. Neither looked at the other. They only sat side by side with a distance of about one meter between them, like complete strangers.

"The windows and doors were locked. None of the rooms showed signs of forced entry. The most advanced security system of the time was entirely untouched." Luo Wenzhou abruptly opened his mouth to speak, his voice very low and his speech very fast, as if he had already recited these words many times and could smoothly say them without missing a single punctuation mark.

"She had done her makeup and changed her clothes, even put on music. The scene had a certain feeling of ritual. There was a suicide note arranged on the writing desk next to her. It was analyzed, the handwriting confirmed to belong to the deceased. The person who had written the letter showed clear depressive tendencies, which tallied with her daily use of antidepressant medication. The deceased was an adult, with no illness or injury that may have led her to be unable to act for herself. No drugs sufficient to cause unconsciousness were found in her system. There were also no defensive wounds on her body.—That's all the evidence we collected at the time. You were the one who reported the case. You reached the scene before we did. Unless you want to tell me that you hid some evidence back then, it was without a doubt a suicide."

Fei Du didn't speak. His sitting posture seemed very relaxed—legs crossed, upper body leaning forward slightly, one hand casually lying on his knee and the other holding a paper cup that was no longer steaming. His long and slender fingers were tapping out a beat on the rim of the cup, as if there was a melody no one else could hear filling the air.

"I said to you then, 'Everything that happens in this world leaves traces, as long as it's real. Without traces to support your opinion, however much you believe in it, it's still only a dead end of the imagination.' Fei Du, you may have had a certain intuition, but we can't do our job based on intuition. My intuition tells me every day that I can make five million." Luo Wenzhou's gaze stopped on Fei Du's fingers. Then, in an almost callously objective tone, he said, "And you know, there's a theory abroad that says that if a person wants to kill herself, she may suddenly use some means to confess it to the people close to her—you heard her confession back then."

Fei Du's fingers suddenly stiffened.

Luo Wenzhou reached out his arm, pulled the paper cup out of his hand and put it aside. "If you really want to talk over this case with me, I maintain my judgment to this day—but it doesn't matter whose judgment it is. That isn't important anymore. She's been dead for seven years. When the coffin is closed, you can judge a person's life. The relevant evidence has all disappeared. This isn't going to sound good, but if she's reincarnated she'll already be attending primary school. The living can cling on without letting go; it's a form of emotional sustenance. But there's no sense in blindly clinging to the wrong course."

Maintaining his original posture, Fei Du sat without moving a muscle, as if he had turned into a statue.

Just then, Zhang Ting and the lawyer came out side by side, and Fei Du's gaze moved slightly, giving off a trace of living energy.

"I don't accept your conclusion, Officer Luo," said Fei Du.

Hearing this, Luo Wenzhou wasn't at all taken aback. He only shrugged.

Fei Du adjusted his jacket and stood to meet Zhang Ting and the lawyer. He looked down at Luo Wenzhou. There was no smile on his face; his expression was even somewhat somber. "But perhaps there's some merit in your heartfelt advice."

Luo Wenzhou was surprised, but after saying this, Fei Du once again put on his graceful mask and left with Zhang Ting. They didn't have any further interaction.

Fei Du had just opened the car door for Zhang Ting when he saw a car with police plates stop at the gate of the City Bureau. The driver got out first, pointed to the City Bureau, and said a few words. Next, a thin, middle-aged woman staggered out of the car. Her mouth was open, her face both frightened and dazed.

Her fingers clutched the car door. The printed cotton of her pants trembled faintly around her legs, which were as thin as sesame stalks.

The driver closed the car door and, half-supporting, half-pushing, took the woman towards Yan City's City Bureau.

Clutching the hand of the person next to her as if it were her last hope, the woman walked a few trembling steps, then slowly crouched down and let out a breathless-sounding sob. Then she stopped for a moment before beginning to wail hysterically. All the people passing in the street stopped; some even got out their phones.

Fei Du's brow creased lightly. He heard the lawyer chattering to Zhang Ting: "Their so-called 'serious suspicion' has no evidence to support it. Miss Zhang, set your mind at ease. I'll stay here to keep an eye on things. When the time comes, they'll have to release him."

"He Zhongyi's mother suffers from uremia. She has to go for dialysis constantly. He was the family's only source of income," Lang Qiao was saying quickly next to Luo Wenzhou. The sound of the woman's crying had the power to penetrate into the City Bureau and echo. Lang Qiao frowned as if she couldn't quite bear it. "Will she be all right crying like this? She's already sick, I don't want something else to happen."

Luo Wenzhou didn't have time to answer.

Another officer from the Criminal Investigation Team came trotting over. "Chief, the Flower Market District Sub-Bureau has sent in a request. Because the murderer is suspected of having moved the corpse, the original scene of the crime is unclear, and the sub-bureau's jurisdictional powers are limited, they want to pass the '520' case on to us."

"Captain Luo, the lawyer Zhang Ting brought keeps questioning our procedure for taking the suspect into custody. We didn't have enough evidence to arrest Zhang Donglai. Should we release him?"

"Chief Luo..."

Luo Wenzhou pressed his hand down, pressing down everyone's simultaneous talk.

Amidst the sound of He Zhongyi's mother crying, he picked up his phone. "Tao Ran, go ahead."

"Wenzhou, I've got the surveillance footage for the Number 34." 

_________________

CHAPTER 13 [Julien-Twelve]

"Around ten past nine, He Zhongyi got on the Number 34 bus at the East Nanping Road stop. When the Number 34 arrived at the Wenchang Intersection stop twenty-some minutes later, He Zhongyi got off. A security camera near Wenchang Intersection caught his back. Several minutes later he walked out of range of the security cameras. He didn't show up again."

Luo Wenzhou had grown up in Yan City. When he heard the names, he understood the approximate location.

Wenchang Street was to the southeast of the Flower Market District commercial center—in other words, after leaving Chengguang Mansion, the victim had not only not gone home, he had gone even further in the opposite direction.

"I'm at Wenchang Intersection now," Tao Ran said over the phone amid the noisy din of traffic. "So at any rate He Zhongyi wasn't in the West District between nine and nine-thirty. The argument the people living around there heard at the time wasn't related to the homicide. Ma Xiaowei was wronged. What was Wang Hongliang doing snatching him up in such a hurry? If I didn't know better, I'd think the police had killed He Zhongyi and wanted to find someone to take the blame."

"Captain Luo." Just then, a criminal policeman ran over and passed Luo Wenzhou a stack of materials. "The medical examiners have sent over their report. They've deduced that the victim He Zhongyi's approximate time of death was between 9 PM and 10 PM on the night of May 20th."

"Between 9 PM and 10 PM." Luo Wenzhou took the report and flipped through it. He didn't respond to Tao Ran's suspicions. "According to this conclusion, there's a great likelihood that He Zhongyi was murdered not long after getting off the bus."

Tao Ran must have found a quiet place. The noise coming over the phone decreased significantly. "Around nine, Chengguang Mansion's dinner party was just ending. Zhang Donglai went outside; the security cameras in the courtyard caught his face for the first time. He stayed in the courtyard for a while, then went back indoors. At 9:45, the cameras in the courtyard caught him again. He spoke to a girl for a bit, and then they went into the woods holding hands."

Luo Wenzhou sighed. "I see Young Master Zhang's itinerary was really crowded. He must have been so busy he didn't have time to spare to kill anyone."

"If he doesn't have an identical twin, Zhang Donglai is cleared of suspicion. Should we release him?"

Luo Wenzhou declined to comment. He asked, "What else did you turn up?"

"There's also a cell phone record," said Tao Ran. "Let me tell you, this is a strange thing.—Didn't the victim get a phone call while he was waiting outside Chengguang Mansion? I got his number from his roommate and went to investigate his phone records. On the night of the twentieth, He Zhongyi called an unregistered number several times."

"Oh?" Luo Wenzhou raised his brows. "What's strange about that? Hadn't we already determined that the victim must have known the killer?"

Tao Ran said, "The strange thing isn't the phone calls.—That night around 9:50, He Zhongyi's phone received a text message from another untraceable number. The contents are: 'Location of settling accounts changed to Golden Triangle Lot, May 20.'—What do you think that means? Settling accounts? Settling what accounts? Settling them with whom? What is the 'Golden Triangle' Lot? I feel like that name sounds a little..."

Luo Wenzhou suddenly opened his mouth to interrupt him. "Don't worry about that for now. Wenchang Street is at the heart of the old city sector. There are a lot of people, and past nine isn't very late. Take some guys to go ask around, see if there's anyone who may have seen him."

Tao Ran froze. Before he could say anything, Luo Wenzhou had already hurriedly hung up the phone. He couldn't resist frowning at his cell phone.—Before, Tao Ran had thought that Wang Hongliang only got up to simple tricks like shifting responsibility, enjoying the benefits of his position without doing any of the work. Therefore, in order to prevent him from obstructing the course of the investigation with his lax methods, they would have to find a pretext to bring him down.

But now Tao Ran was dimly becoming aware that this case had more to it than politics.

The City Bureau's Criminal Investigation Team's movements were very orderly. Less than an hour later, the criminal policemen took up their positions, got their marching orders, and began asking around everywhere, carrying a clear close-up photograph of He Zhongyi.

This type of work was ordinarily one of the criminal policemen's daily activities. It had to be done. It was extremely time-consuming and dull, about as miserable a process as handing out leaflets by the road. They had to repeat the same words countless times, and whether they would succeed in tracking down any trace depended entirely on luck.

Because eyes aren't camera lenses; they can't retain an impression of every person they see.

And this city was too big. Everyone went around and around in the powerful current, leaving early and coming back late—most neighbors were only on nodding terms; on public transportation there was only a field of lowered heads. Through a palm-sized screen, people could observe the farce going on on the far side of the great ocean, explore fantastic stories from furthest north to furthest south, participate in all the big and small trending discussions taking place over 9.6 million square kilometers; every hour and every minute, they were amazingly busy. Of course they didn't have time to spare to remember one unfashionably dressed worker.

Because he really was too ordinary, too dull, not worth paying any attention to, and not worthy of temporarily existing in anyone's memories.

Dead or alive.

This time, the police force's luck had run out. Tao Ran and the others worked with the sun beating down on them, and when the sun had rolled down behind the mountains, they were still empty-handed.

"Deputy-Captain, they say they haven't seen him over here."

"Deputy Tao, we made inquiries on the street to the west, pulled up all the security cameras from the stores facing the street and watched them one by one. Guess what we got—nothing."

"There's an old man who said he may have seen him. I asked which way he went, and he pointed me towards a construction site."

Up to this point, they hadn't been able to connect the threads to show where He Zhongyi had gone after getting off the bus, nor where he had been murdered.

This young man, not twenty years old, had come to enormous Yan City less than a year ago. On the silent film of the security cameras, he had travelled an arc around the center of the city and then disappeared without a trace, dying in some unknown corner.

And when he was dead, his body still hadn't been allowed to rest. In a bizarre course of events, it had been transported, brought all the way back to the West Flower Market District—he had gone back to where he'd come from, making no impact on the flourishing sector's urban activities.

Tao Ran was at his wit's end. He had no choice but to disband the throng of criminal policemen who had been roasted by the scorching sun until oil was pouring out of them, then briefly report to Luo Wenzhou that they had failed to make any advances in their work.

"I figure I've made no headway here," said Tao Ran. "I think we ought to go back and perform an analysis of the victim... Are you out somewhere?"

Luo Wenzhou seemed to be in someone's car just now, because the sound of a car radio reporting on the road conditions was coming through the phone. The anchor was just using the process of elimination to describe "all the places in the city without a traffic jam" during the evening rush hour.

Luo Wenzhou agreed indistinctly, paused, then turned off the radio. "Or you could think of some way to keep following up on the Zhang Donglai thread."

"Zhang Donglai?" Tao Ran had been talking all day; his throat was steaming, and his brain was a little foggy. He blankly asked, "Hasn't he already been virtually cleared of suspicion?"

"Zhang Ting said that when He Zhongyi stopped her, he asked her about a mysterious individual surnamed 'Feng.' If He Zhongyi hadn't incorrectly identified him, then this mysterious individual has likely crossed paths with Zhang Ting and her crowd. Second, I don't know whether you've noticed, He Zhongyi left the area of Chengguang Mansion at about the same time that Zhang Donglai came out of the club into the courtyard for the first time. Zhang Donglai obviously wasn't planning to leave Chengguang Mansion then, so aside from getting a breath of fresh air, why did he go out?"

Tao Ran stared at first, then quickly came around. "There were people who left when the dinner party ended; he went to see them off.—You mean it's likely that the person He Zhongyi wanted to see was among the crowd of people who left then?"

"Ten points, no bonus.—And then there's that suspicious phone. The reason we found Zhang Donglai in the first place yesterday was because of that phone. Going by Zhang Donglai's character, he may not even know how to write the words 'formal apology,' but if the phone didn't come from him, then did the person who gave He Zhongyi the phone do it under Zhang Donglai's name? Or did the victim lie to his friends about it? Why would he tell such a lie?"

Luo Wenzhou had said this much on one breath of air. He took another breath and counseled, "Look, why don't you get off work? Come a little early tomorrow. Before the forty-eight hours run out, question Zhang Donglai again. I'll tell Lang Qiao to take a little team to investigate He Zhongyi."

Before he hung up the phone, Tao Ran suddenly said, "Are you in the West Flower Market District now?"

Luo Wenzhou, who was just sitting in a black cab, paused. With a smile that wasn't quite a smile, he said, "The only person on earth who can track me is my wife. Taotao, are you sure you want to ask?"

"Are you investigating Wang Hongliang?" Tao Ran ignored his nonsense. Lowering his voice, he said, "I don't want early promotion, I'm not concerned about how Director Zhang plans to fix Wang Hongliang, and I don't want to know who's going to be the next Director-General. But if someone has committed a crime, whatever his position, it's our responsibility to arrest him."

"Your responsibility right now is to catch He Zhongyi's murderer." Luo Wenzhou laughed. "All right, you little devil, if you have so many questions, let me tell you—I currently only have a suspicion that Wang Hongliang has done something wrong. No matter what his position is, labelling him a criminal based solely on the information contained in one report would be rather sloppy. I'm leading the initial campaign. As soon as I have hard evidence pointing to him, you'll all have your share of overtime. I won't leave you out."

Luo Wenzhou hung up the phone and turned to the black cab's driver, who was sitting stock still.

The black cab driver hadn't been willing to tell him his full name. He only called himself "Xiao Zhen." He was full of mistrust aimed at all the two-legged animals on earth. His gaze met Luo Wenzhou's in the rearview mirror, and he looked away quickly, pretending that he wasn't concerned with the subject of his phone call.

Luo Wenzhou said, "This case is currently under investigation. When the investigation is over, you'll be able to reveal the details as you see fit, but while the investigation is ongoing, I'll trouble you to keep them secret."

Xiao Zhen's gaze flashed. "What are you talking about? I didn't understand that."

Luo Wenzhou fixed the young cab driver with a look through his sunglasses. "Last time you told me that your big sister was murdered by Wang Hongliang and his drug trafficking gang. But I went back and looked into it and found that your sister was arrested for prostitution and later died of a drug overdose. Chen Zhen, this touches on the person in charge of public safety for a whole district and all the people working under him. We can't prosecute based solely on your words."

When he exposed Chen Zhen's full name, the young man slammed on the brakes, stopping by the side of the road.

Luo Wenzhou expression didn't flicker. "You're parked in violation of traffic regulations. If you get a ticket, I won't grant you leniency."

Chen Zhen's face was ashen, humiliation and anger mingled in his expression. He stared fiercely at Luo Wenzhou. "My sister wasn't that type of person."

Luo Wenzhou was entirely unmoved. He knocked on the car window and said one syllable at a time: "E—vi—dence."

"My sister didn't have time to tell me anything," said Chen Zhen. "She wasn't sleeping at night then, and she was always afraid of something. I asked her, but she would only get mad at me and tell me to mind my own business. I...I overheard her talking to someone on the phone..."

"Who?"

Chen Zhen rubbed his eyes and quickly shook his head.

Luo Wenzhou passed him a tissue. "Now, have you ever heard of the Golden Triangle Lot?"

Chen Zhen froze.

In the Fei Clan Building, a secretary knocked on the door of Fei Du's office and went in. "President Fei, Rongshun's Attorney Zhao is here."

Fei Du nodded. "Right on time. Ask him to come in."

Since she had started working for Fei Du, the secretary hadn't worked overtime. She had also never seen him receive work-related guests at this hour. She couldn't help feeling a sense of novelty.

Smiling radiantly, she asked the guest to come into Fei Du's office. She poured tea and surreptitiously examined him. She found that this Attorney Zhao was exquisitely dressed and could be described as tall and handsome, but he had a particular kind of youthfulness about his countenance; the combination of the two factors gave him a particularly pure-hearted quality.

The secretary had always been aware that rich kid Fei shunned neither men nor women, and that he especially liked the quiet and refined, not too forward type; she "saw the light" at once. Before the light had passed, she met Fei Du's not quite smiling gaze. The secretary stuck out her tongue, then quickly took on the professional discretion of a palace steward calmly kneeling to one side, minding her own business, seeing nothing.

Rongshun were the company's legal advisors engaged in connection with some special projects. Chin in his hand, Fei Du solemnly listened to Attorney Zhao carefully explain several documents fast enough for spit to fly, then mercilessly went off topic: "How is Tingting doing?"

Attorney Zhao paused. He seemed not to have expected that this ignorant and incompetent second generation patriarch wouldn't even be willing to pretend for a while. But he quickly recovered. With his expression unchanging, he put down the materials he had spent so much time preparing. "I hear from my criminal law colleague that the police's evidence was insufficient to make an arrest. President Zhang should be released tomorrow. It'll be all right. Tingting has only suffered a false alarm. Thank you for your concern."

"Tingting isn't the only one I'm concerned about." Fei Du smiled ambiguously at him, the smile containing a thousand words, but he didn't say anything else. "It seems that at the critical moment, knowing talented young people like Attorney Zhao really is very useful.—Would you do me the honor of dining with me?"

Attorney Zhao frowned faintly, as though he was planning to refuse, but Fei Du had already stood up and, brooking no argument, was gesturing at him in invitation.

The Fei Clan was Rongshun's largest client. The two sides had been working together since before Fei Du had taken over. They had always been one of Rongshun's major bankrollers. Zhao Haochang couldn't afford not to defer to him; he very unwillingly stood up.

"I didn't know whether you had any dietary restrictions, so I had them throw something together." Walking ahead of him, Fei Du seemingly carelessly said, "Oh, Haochang, where are you from? Are you a local?"

This was a very easy to answer bit of idle conversation, but Zhao Haochang was suddenly caught up short. Only when Fei Du noticed something wasn't right and turned to look at him in surprise did Zhao Haochang finally avoid his gaze and murmur an indistinct "right," not answering the question either way. 

_________________

CHAPTER 14 [Julien-Thirteen]

On May 24th, four days had passed since the young man He Zhongyi was killed.

Wearing gloves, Luo Wenzhou flipped through an old photo album—he had taken it from the black cab driver Chen Zhen.

Chen Zhen and his sister Chen Yuan were twins. They had grown up locally, raised by their grandparents. Afterwards, the elderly couple had passed away one after another; the sister Chen Yuan had tested into university; Chen Zhen's grades were bad, however, so he had simply abandoned school early and gone out to earn money.

The girl in the photographs was very delicately-made, smiling broadly in every picture, revealing a pair of not very symmetrical little canine teeth.

This was the only thing she had left behind. The circumstances of her death had been obscure; due to the undignified manner of it, the police, on the grounds of suspecting the presence of hidden drugs, had searched through her personal possessions several times. Neither Chen Yuan's second-hand computer, nor her cell phone, had been left behind.

Luo Wenzhou flipped through the photo album from beginning to end, his gaze pausing on a few photographs that seemed to be mementos of a university club event. There was a girl in them who seemed very close to Chen Yuan. On the backs of the photographs there was a date written in pencil, and the note: "At the Art of Tea Club with Xiao Cui; glad you were there."

"Xiao Cui." Luo Wenzhou turned to the cell phone record he'd found—about half a month before her death, Chen Yuan had made a phone call to a user named "Cui Ying."

Just then, Lang Qiao knocked on the door of his office and beckoned to him, more dead than alive. "Chief, come and watch the moron. Tickets ten yuan each, your money back if he isn't moronic."

Yan City's City Bureau's Criminal Investigation Team's appreciation for Young Master Zhang was extraordinary. Out of every ten sentences he said, nine were bullshit. Being detained at the City Bureau for forty-eight hours had boiled off his initially scant brains; it was anyone's guess what had been left behind in the empty shell. The intellectual level of the words that came out was deeply affecting.

"'Feng Niange?' Never heard of 'em. I don't know anyone with the surname Feng. Is it a man or a woman? Why don't you tell me what they look like? I may have slept with them and not remembered the name."

"Was there anyone I knew at Chengguang Mansion on the night of the twentieth? I knew all of them... What? Who was there? Ow, police uncles. Honorable police uncles! That night I got half a liter of white wine poured into me, I don't know how many glasses of red, cut with half a dozen of champagne. The Holy Trinity! I was doing all right if I could still remember my own name. How could I tell you everyone who was there?"

"I haven't quarreled with anyone recently. I'm very friendly. Huh? Hitting people counts? Oh, then I really can't say... So I hit them, what are they going to do to get back at me? Don't you know who I am!"

"How many times have I said it, that phone didn't come from me. I only give gifts to my intimate friends. Anyway, if I were going to give someone something, it wouldn't be a stupid phone, right? Who are you insulting?"

Aside from spending money and sleeping, Young Master Zhang's daily life was full of chaos; matters big and small passed before his eyes like mist, making absolutely no impact on him; his psychological state could be described as "free of earthly concerns."

Luo Wenzhou listened in for a while and issued a categorical assertion concerning Zhang Donglai. He said, "This child got dropped on his head by his dad when he was little."

With all the patience in the world, Tao Ran tried every possible method to quiz him again and again from each and every angle, yet he was still unable to extract any useful information from Zhang Donglai's carelessly formatted memory.

In a flash, the time came. The lawyer Zhang Ting had found stood at the City Bureau's doors, contending on strong grounds that the Criminal Investigation Team had to release Zhang Donglai.

"There's really nothing I can do." Tao Ran let out two long breaths and helplessly shrugged his shoulders at Luo Wenzhou.

Luo Wenzhou considered and lightly lifted his chin. "The evidence is insufficient. Let's release him."

"Captain Luo!"

"Chief!"

Lang Qiao pulled at Luo Wenzhou. "Chief, yesterday when He Zhongyi's mom was howling outside, some busybodies filmed her. Now there are a whole bunch of people who think there's no smoke without fire and are waiting to see the fur fly. If you release him just like that, how will it look when it gets out?"

"We can release Zhang Donglai." Tao Ran thought about it, then proposed, "According to the victim's time of death and last known whereabouts, his alibi is fairly clear-cut..."

"No, don't mention any of that for now. Just say that the evidence is insufficient," said Luo Wenzhou, interrupting him. "Don't announce the details of the investigation. Release him."

Hearing this arbitrary decision, Lang Qiao couldn't help saying, "Chief, have you been infected by Zhang Donglai? If it can infect you through a window, his mental deficiency must be a virulently infectious disease."

Luo Wenzhou rapped once on the back of her head. "Glib, aren't you. Careful you don't get laugh lines."

Meanwhile, Tao Ran muttered quietly to himself for a moment, then thoughtfully said, "You're thinking..."

"Right, starting now, no one is allowed to reveal any details concerning the course of this investigation. Tell them 'the evidence is insufficient, no comment, we're currently once again investigating all of the victim's relationships starting from childhood.'" Luo Wenzhou nodded at Tao Ran, then evenly said, "This is discipline. Anyone leaks, I'll deal with them. Disperse."

A little transient worker had met an unusual death, the City Bureau's Director-General's nephew was a murder suspect, and he had been quickly set free due to "insufficient evidence"—this news was even more explosive than Lang Qiao and the others had been afraid of. Before the procedures for setting Zhang Donglai free had been finalized, all kinds of print and digital media were already staking out the City Bureau's doors.

The Criminal Investigation Team's phones were like a hotline, ringing one after another, wave after wave. Even Director Zhang's replacement Director Lu was alarmed and called Luo Wenzhou in to question him.

Director Lu looked out the window at the people crowding outside the reception area. With a rather grave expression, he asked Luo Wenzhou, "Are you sure you can handle it?"

Luo Wenzhou smiled at him without the least shred of concern. "I'm on the job, and you're still worried?"

Director Lu rolled his eyes at him. "When you want to let out some line to hook your fish, you have to be careful not to let it slip away.—The city's higher-ups are sure to put pressure on us for the next few days. I'll hold them off for you, and you can do as you see fit."

"Thank you, Uncle Lu." Luo Wenzhou thought, then lowered his voice slightly. "You can relax about Wang Hongliang, too. People just haven't been looking into him for the past few years. I don't believe anyone can blot out the sky with one hand."

Director Lu pursed his lips and turned serious, looking at him. "As long as you can verify that the substance of that report is true, it doesn't matter how extensive his network is or who is protecting him. As long as Lao Zhang and I are still here, we'll be able to handle him.—And you be careful, you hear me?"

Luo Wenzhou came downstairs just in time to run headfirst into Zhang Donglai's "group of family and friends."

In order to minimize the social impact, the Zhang family hadn't sent their people to come pick him up; they only had Zhang Ting show her face, wanting to be as low-key as possible.

But things unexpectedly turned out contrary to their wishes. Children are a debt: Zhang Donglai's crowd of disreputable companions had somehow gotten wind; wanting nothing but to see the world in chaos, they ran over to the City Bureau as a group. Several luxury cars parked at the City Bureau's doors and several gorgeously dressed young men and women made brilliant appearances, though it was unclear whether they had come to mount the stage or makes fools of themselves.

The lawyer rolled up his sleeves and went in first to scoop up Zhang Donglai, while Zhao Haochang didn't budge from Zhang Ting's side—among Zhang Donglai's crowd of good-for-nothing friends, the young couple stood out, refreshing and refined, simple and honest.

Fei Du was of course present as well, though this time he had come purely as an outside observer and was unobtrusively standing behind Zhang Ting. When Luo Wenzhou saw him, he was wearing his beast in human clothing get-up, earbuds stuck in his ears, completely absorbed in playing a game on a very old model PSP.

Luo Wenzhou had meant to bundle up the forces of evil and throw them out, but when his gaze fell on Fei Du's scratched-up old game machine, his expression suddenly relaxed. In a groundbreaking occurrence, he didn't open his mouth to pick a fight; almost gently and peacefully, he strolled over beside Fei Du, taking a deep breath to mentally prepare himself—even if he saw the brat playing some violent and bloody assault game, he had determined he would maintain his emotional stability.

But after spending so much time preparing, when he looked over at the screen of Fei Du's old game machine, he saw a crowd of charmingly naive "big-eyed lamps" running around—this domineering director-general was enthusiastically playing Patapon.

Luo Wenzhou: "..."

While Fei Du was surmounting all difficulties on his path to victory, Zhang Donglai at last breezed out. Before he'd even made his way out of the police station, he was already beside himself with joy and loudly proclaimed, "All of you here today are my brothers who have passed through life and death with me. If there's anything you need in the future, just say the word. I, your brother, will be pierced from both sides by knives for you, pierced until I turn into a knife block!"

Fei Du's big-eyed legion had been progressing steadily, but this bloodthirsty cry knocked them off tempo; the drumbeat skipped, and the troops were at once defeated in a landslide.

Luo Wenzhou held back until he got a "Game Over," then slowly spoke: "It's always perplexed me a little, why you'd hang out with Zhang Donglai and his ilk."

Fei Du shot a glance at him and calmly stuck the game machine in his pocket. "Because I think he lives especially philosophically."

Luo Wenzhou was unable to distinguish whether these words had a positive or negative connotation.

Fei Du waved a hand at Zhang Donglai, who was running over to him, turned to give Luo Wenzhou an artificial smile, then went to talk to Tao Ran.

The crowd of young masters swaggered out of the City Bureau; even thinking with your toenail, you could imagine how this excited the media lurking outside.

Lang Qiao seemed to have seen the next week's worth of trending topics. She couldn't resist covering her eyes with her hand and quietly saying to Tao Ran, "I can't look."

"Then don't look," said Tao Ran. "Get to work."

When the young masters had just walked out through the gates, without warning a figure suddenly burst out among Zhang Donglai's group of friends and relatives.

She was small and skinny, her hair withered and yellow. This was He Zhongyi's mother.

The leading wastrels looked in helpless bewilderment at this comically dressed woman. Someone quietly said, "Who's that?"

He Zhongyi's mother's eyes were dry and bloodshot; they swept over these people's faces. Her lips trembled violently, and a voice as indistinct as a kitten's came out of her throat: "Who killed my son?"

Her pronunciation was unclear and her accent was heavy. Only when she had repeated herself three or four times did they understand what she was saying.

Zhang Donglai's expression sank slightly. He rather calamitously said, "Who knows? It wasn't me, anyway."

Then he looked down, avoided the woman's line of sight, and started walking away, brushing past her. His group of friends and family followed closely after him, splitting into two halves as though they were avoiding the plague, keeping away from the woman as much as they could.

"Is that woman a little insane?"

"Quiet, she's a little pitiful."

"And being stuck in a little dark room for no earthly reason isn't sad?"

"I'm telling you, I'm nearly on Dou E's level, I didn't even know her son..."

The woman stood blankly where she was, hazily looking at the people walking by her without touching her. "Who killed my son? You...all of you, you can't go..."

Seeing that this crowd of people was about to walk away from in front of her eyes, the woman panicked, clawing wildly at the air, accidentally catching a girl's hair.

The girl shrieked as if she'd had her tail stepped on, snatched back her hair and clutched it in front of her chest. She leapt away and hid behind a friend. A young man next to her instinctively reached out to block the woman. "What are you doing! Are you crazy!"

The woman bumped into his solid arm and fell to the ground, bumping into Fei Du, who was bringing up the rear.

Fei Du had been saying goodbye to Tao Ran. Being bumped into unexpectedly, he was startled and took half a step back.

Before he could react, she reached out a hand like a chicken's claw and desperately grabbed Fei Du's costly pant leg like she was grasping at her last hope. Over and over, she said, "You can't go, you can't go! You owe me an answer... You can't go..."

A few policemen went over wanting to pull her off, and the young man who had knocked her down came over as well, frowning. "Master Fei..."

Wrongly attacked, Fei Du frowned as he looked at the woman clinging to him, then awkwardly patted her shoulder. "Would you like to stand up?"

The woman suddenly looked up, her gaze locking with Fei Du's. She was sobbing, tears running down her face. Her appearance really wasn't very dignified, powerful grief having turned her into a heap of mud.

Fei Du suddenly froze, seeing someone else in her eyes.

He bent, very gently took hold of the woman's shoulders, and lifted her back to her feet. He waved a hand at Zhong Donglai and the others. "You guys go on ahead."

________________

CHAPTER 15 [Julien-Fourteen]

"I hate doing an analysis of the victim the most." Lang Qiao pouted, holding her pen between her nose and mouth. "Sometimes the victim was killed for no reason, and I can't let it go for a long time. I keep saying, Why? Why did a perfectly nice person run into some bad luck and end up like this? Why did someone who'd worked hard all his life, struggled for years, at the very last get finished off by some scumbag coming out of nowhere? But when the victim wasn't innocent, or he was simply guilty and deserved to be punished, I think he had it coming, and us tracking down the murderer for him is just giving succor to the enemy, and I...ouch!"

Luo Wenzhou had rolled a document into a paper tube and hit her on the back of the head, breaking off Lang Qiao's long-winded speech.

Lang Qiao held the back of her head. "What are you hitting me for? Everything I'm saying is normal human feelings. Police are human, too!"

"Do you want your salary?" asked Luo Wenzhou.

Lang Qiao said, "...Yes."

"If you want it, then do your job. What's all this pontificating for?" Luo Wenzhou pulled over a whiteboard. Under a photograph of the young man with a moon-shaped scar on his forehead, he wrote: "He Zhongyi, male, eighteen years old, delivery man, H Province native" and other such basic facts.

Then, taking advantage of his height, he looked over the little whiteboard and through the office's clear glass window at Fei Du keeping He Zhongyi's mother company.

Having heard some wild talk, Mother He had felt very desperate over the City Bureau setting Zhang Donglai free. As if determining that she had nowhere left to turn for help, she'd cried herself to the point of collapse; she had been hardly able to walk upright. She had been propped up by Fei Du on the way in.

Perhaps she had instinctively clutched at a straw, or perhaps she'd determined that Fei Du was part of Zhang Donglai's group, so she "couldn't let him get away"; when Mother He's mind had gone blank, she'd subconsciously tightened her hold on to Fei Du's clothes.

Fei Du had been dramatically forced to stay, leading to the scene outside the window.

Fei Du was a young man, after all. If he'd wanted to forcefully shake off this chronically ill woman who barely reached his chest, it would have been easy. But contrary to expectations, he hadn't flared up; he'd only calmly sat with this old and ugly woman.

By now Mother He had already come back from the exhaustion of her collapse and recovered some metal faculties. Luo Wenzhou watched as Fei Du held her hand and bent down, quietly discussing something with her. Whatever fine words he was using, they were actually making Mother He slowly calm down; she was even occasionally able to nod or shake her head in response.

"Has Ma Xiaowei been released?" Luo Wenzhou asked, looking out the window.

Tao Ran put down the phone. "No, the person I talked to at the sub-bureau says that Ma Xiaowei started going into withdrawal over there. The civil police went to search his residence and turned up a good deal of loose drugs, so they've kept him under arrest."

"Can we get him over here for questioning?" said Luo Wenzhou.

Tao Ran shrugged. "No. They say his condition is very unstable. If something happens, the sub-bureau won't be able to shoulder the responsibility. If we really want to question him, we'll have to send someone to the sub-bureau to question him there."

Wang Hongliang had settled on the idea of not letting anyone speak to Ma Xiaowei alone. To this end, he was giving the teenager the treatment of a relic in a museum—others were only permitted to look at him through a window; if they wanted to take him away, there was no door.

Just then, two policemen from the Criminal Investigation Team came in, carrying a cardboard box. "Chief, we brought over all of He Zhongyi's personal possessions. When we've finished investigating, we can return them to the victim's relation. There may be something useful."

He Zhongyi had few personal possessions. There was some clothing—mostly the standard delivery uniforms handed out to all workers—some extremely basic daily necessities, the cell phone packaging he hadn't been able to bring himself to throw away, and a diary.

It was called a diary, but it really didn't have the contents of one; it was basically a ledger and record book.

Aside from being a delivery man, He Zhongyi must also frequently have done short-term temporary work. There were scattered bits of income all over. Scraped together, his monthly income could measure up to that of a white collar worker.

The ledger was kept very carefully; even things like spending 2.5 yuan to buy breakfast were recorded. Luo Wenzhou flipped through a few pages, then suddenly paused. "What did the piece of paper stuck to the victim's head look like? Let me see it."

Someone next to him quickly got out a close-up photograph and passed it to him.

The character "money" was crooked, written in unprepossessing childish handwriting. The right-hand hook was very large, almost occupying the territory of the whole character and looking very uncoordinated—it was identical to the character "money" written in He Zhongyi's ledger.

"This character is in the victim's own handwriting." Tao Ran paused. "Hold up, I remember that when He Zhongyi was waiting outside Chengguang Mansion that night, he was holding a kraft-paper envelope. Could the pierce of paper have come from the envelope? We never found that kraft-paper envelope. What was in it?"

Luo Wenzhou quickly skimmed through He Zhongyi's notebook. "Could it have been cash? Look here."

Outside the window, Fei Du was nodding in agreement. "The money to pay for your treatment really was considerable. But back then he must have only just come to Yan City, just started working. Where did he get so much money?"

Hoarsely, Mother He said in a low voice, "He said he got an advance from his fixture."

"Fixture?" Fei Du wasn't very familiar with this usage of the word; he only came around after a pause. "You mean the place he worked at?"

Mother He's health was poor; she was a village woman who rarely had contact with the outside world. She didn't understand the employment relationships of manual laborers with their temporary and toilsome work—many people earned just enough to live to the next day; bosses and workers each suspected that the other could run off at any time. A boss who was willing to give a worker an advance on his wages was basically engaging in charity.

But even if a boss was accumulating merit by doing good deeds and so was willing to help out in an emergency, giving an advance on a month or two's wages would already be very kind. The money to pay for Mother He's treatment, however, would probably make up a few years of a delivery man's wages.

There was no way selling physical labor could repay such an enormous favor, but selling one's body would just about cover it.

But when President Fei, who had some understanding of male beauty, objectively recalled the briefly-glimpsed He Zhongyi, he thought that based solely on looks, that young man really wouldn't be worth such a price.

So who had lent him the money? Why hadn't he told even his own mother the truth?

There was a debt of 100,000 yuan recorded in He Zhongyi's ledger, but there was absolutely no explanation of where this mysterious debt had come from. With regards to this, the City Bureau's criminal policemen all went into action, spending the better part of the day questioning He Zhongyi's coworkers and acquaintances. Everyone they asked was totally bewildered; they not only didn't admit to lending him the money, each in turn also said that they hadn't even known about him borrowing it.

When Luo Wenzhou and Tao Ran returned to the City Bureau, they found Mother He curled up on some chairs, sleeping. Fei Du had gotten a thin blanket from someone and put it over her.

Tao Ran went over and, keeping his voice low, asked, "Why's she sleeping here?"

"I said I could take her to a hotel, but she didn't want to. She insists on waiting until you've caught the murderer." Fei Du looked up and saw that Tao Ran's forehead was covered in sweat. He frowned, got a tissue out of his pocket and handed it over. "Do you always work this hard? It makes my heart ache to see it."

Before Tao Ran could answer, next to him, Luo Wenzhou coolly said, "This is what it's like for the people's police. If your heart aches, pay some more taxes and don't make so much trouble. Though, now that I think of it, President Fei, don't you domineering director-generals have a myriad of business affairs to attend to? How come you always seem so idle?"

Fei Du smiled slightly. "I don't keep my crew of professional managers around just so they can run their mouths. I'm truly very grateful for Officer Luo's concern for the security of my financial affairs, but it's really not necessary. Even if I threw away all my family's property, the interest I collect on the spare change left in the bank would still be more money than you'll earn in your lifetime."

Tao Ran: "..."

As expected, these two mental deficients couldn't keep the peace for three minutes at a time before they were fucking at it again.

Grabbing one with each hand, he forcibly pulled the two fighting cocks apart. With one hand, he dragged Luo Wenzhou into the office; with the other, he pointed warningly at Fei Du.

Not finding this at all uncongenial, Fei Du very suggestively grabbed his finger.

Luo Wenzhou lost his temper. "That little..."

Tao Ran closed the office door and very helplessly said, "In a while when I get off work, you two can make a date to go fight it out to your heart's content."

Luo Wenzhou acutely picked out some implication behind these words. "Oh? You have something after work today?"

Tao Ran turned and looked at him. "I have a blind date."

Luo Wenzhou was stunned.

Tao Ran patted his shoulder. "I've reached the age where I can't keep you company as a bachelor anymore."

Luo Wenzhou's gaze flickered to the floor. He muttered to himself for a moment, then smiled. Pointing at Tao Ran, he said, "You traitor! Going and selling out the club without so much as a by-your-leave. Our undying 'Drop Dead League' will never let you off."

Tao Ran considered. "Then I'll bribe you—when I have a child, I'll make you the godfather."

"No," said Luo Wenzhou, waving his hand. "One Luo Yiguo is enough for me. I don't have a craving for fatherhood. The future of the nation will have to rely on the strenuous exertions of you straight people.—All right, if you have something to do, go do it. You won't find any clues by wasting your time here, anyway. If the murderer is close to Zhang Donglai and following the course of the investigation, I figure he'll act soon. We'll investigate while we wait."

Tao Ran shook his head, gathered up his things, and was about to leave when from behind him Luo Wenzhou suddenly called him to a stop.

"With you betraying the club, I really feel a little like I've been jilted," Luo Wenzhou whispered. "Right, mortgage slave, do you want to borrow a car?"

"Get out!" said Tao Ran.

That evening, Zhang Donglai heard the whole course of his getting into and getting out of the little dark room from Zhang Ting. He thought that most of the credit in this belonged to the lawyer, so he went home, took up a pomelo leaf, bathed, then that very day asked the lawyer to a one-on-one dinner.

Compared to their fellow professionals who performed non-litigation legal services for all the great bankrollers, criminal lawyers had high risk, high stress jobs that didn't pay very much. It was truly very rare to run into an uncomplicated case like this one, with a client who had more money than brains. If not for the fact that he'd gone to school with Zhao Haochang, this kind of good fortune wouldn't have come his way, either; the lawyer cheerfully kept the date.

Zhang Donglai very politely gave him a red packet. He'd said at first that he would drive the lawyer home, but when they'd just left the restaurant, they ran into a great beauty who greeted Zhang Donglai very familiarly, then in a very natural manner got into Zhang Donglai's car.

The lawyer didn't think it would be very good to get too to close them making eyes at each other, so he tactfully sat in the last row of seats, then said that he only needed to be dropped off at the nearest subway station.

In the car, the beautiful woman and Zhang Donglai shamelessly went back and forth in a way that would make any onlooker feel like he was sitting on pins and needles. The lawyer's face wasn't so thick; he could only pretend to be a bit of empty space, leaning back and fiddling with his phone. While driving through an intersection, Zhang Donglai slammed on the brakes a little forcefully, and the lawyer went pitching forward; out of the corner of his eye, he seemed to see something in a corner.

The lawyer thought it was something that had been knocked off the seat by the stop just now. He decided to pick it up and had just bent down when he abruptly froze.

He saw that it was a striped silver-gray tie, its tail still bearing a famous brand's label. It was of superior make, but it seemed to have been mistreated; it had been rolled up into a shape like a piece of dried fish and stuck in the gap between the seats in the back row.

"There was blunt force trauma to the back of the victim's head, and he was asphyxiated; the murder weapon was a piece of soft cloth, possibly a silk scarf, a necktie, a soft rope and so on..."

The lawyer had had a bit to drink. At this moment, the alcohol evaporated from his open pores in an exhalation.

Just then, Zhang Donglai seemed to finally remember that there was a living creature in the backseat. While he got the car moving, he turned back to look at him. "Attorney Liu, why are you bending over? Did you have too much to drink, or does your stomach hurt?"

The lawyer hurriedly straightened up, all the blood in his body fighting to get to his head first. His limbs went cold, his ears roared, and he forced out a smile. "I...I'm a little dizzy."

Zhang Donglai looked at him in the rearview mirror. Perhaps it was the light, but Attorney Liu felt that there was something sinister in his look.

Luckily Zhang Donglai didn't take much notice of him. He only looked at him a couple of times, then quickly devoted himself whole-heartedly to flirtatious banter with the great beauty next to him. Attorney Liu stiffly maintained his posture, opened the camera on his phone, and sneakily took a picture of the place where he'd found the tie. Then he stretched out his foot bit by bit and used the tip to pull the tie out. Behind the screen of his briefcase, he quickly picked up the tie through his sleeve and shoved it into the briefcase.

Before he'd had time to pull his hand out, Zhang Donglai once again unexpectedly looked at him through the rearview mirror. "Is it the subway station up ahead, Attorney Liu?"

Attorney Liu was so startled his heart nearly stopped. He completely lost his powers of speech and nodded falteringly.

Zhang Donglai raised his eyebrows. "Why is your face so sweaty? Is the air-conditioning not cold enough?"

His companion in the passenger's seat wasn't having this. "Don't turn it down anymore, I get cold."

If it hadn't been for this entirely ignorant silly girl interrupting, Attorney Liu thought he would have gone out of his mind with fear. He didn't know how he managed to get out of Zhang Donglai's car. Zhang Donglai politely stuck his head out the window: "Attorney Liu, are you really all right? I really don't need to drive you home?"

The lawyer strove to arrange his facial muscles. "There's really no need."

Luckily, Zhang Donglai's thought processes were addled by lust, and he didn't seriously want to drive this sturdy fellow home. Having received a confirmation, he quickly stepped on the gas pedal and drove off.

The night wind blew past, and Attorney Liu discovered that his spine was soaked.

________________

CHAPTER 16 [Julien- Fifteen] 

Tao Ran went out and saw Fei Du, hands stuck in his pockets, waiting for him at the door.

The "woodpeckers" making an uproar at the gates had yet to disperse. With the City Bureau having just been forced to release a very suspicious-looking rich kid, even Fei Du could see the pressure hanging in the air over the Criminal Investigation Team, so he had made his preparations to wait until the day wore out. He hadn't expected Tao Ran to be in such a hurry to get off work. He paused slightly; Tao Ran spoke first: "Fei Du, come over here. I have something to say to you."

Fei Du blinked, then looked at the woman curled up on the chairs. "What about her?"

Hearing this, Tao Ran was at some difficulty.

"It's fine," said Luo Wenzhou, coming out and leaning against the door. "When she wakes up, I'll ask her what she wants. There's a guesthouse by the gates where our people stay when they're traveling for business. It's safe and cheap. If she's willing, I'll have them get her a room over there. If she still isn't willing, I'll have the officer on duty make up a simple bed for her."

Hesitantly, Tao Ran said, "Isn't that against regulations?"

"A word from me will take care of it." Luo Wenzhou waved a hand. "Hurry up and go. No one frets as much as you do."

Hearing this, Fei Du asked in surprise, "What, Tao Ran, do you have something to do tonight?"

Tao Ran didn't answer. He only said, "Come here."

Luo Wenzhou watched Tao Ran pull Fei Du aside; because they'd just gone a round, he had for the moment forgotten the game machine and its associated tender feelings.

He swept a critical gaze over Fei Du's back, feeling that every stitch of him expressed the word "flirtation"; put him in a spy drama, and you wouldn't need any makeup to turn him into the classic image of a traitor to the nation.

But however flirtatious he was, what was the use? He'd be jilted just the same.

Luo Wenzhou suddenly felt an odd twinge of schadenfreude towards his fellow sufferer; in high spirits, he hung back by the office door unwilling to leave, wishing his neck could grow long enough to observe the process of a second generation patriarch meeting with a rebuff up close.

Luo Wenzhou had known Tao Ran for many years. They had been through everything: searched for missing children together, fought diabolical evildoers together, won honor and written self-reflections together. Their relationship ran deep.

Though Tao Ran was poor and wretched, he was a nice person, nice in a quiet and obliging way. As time went on, this would almost unavoidably bring about a few inordinate ambitions in a "gender: male, interest: male" individual. But on the subject of sexual orientation, Tao Ran walked an entirely separate road from Luo Wenzhou; he was straight enough to hold up the sky. Insisting would have been cruel, so Luo Wenzhou had quickly put on the brakes, only sometimes putting in a few words brushing up against the bounds of propriety from force of habit.

Tao Ran's reaction had always been neither ashamed nor angry nor over the line; he was entirely magnanimous. And there were some beautiful thoughts whose beauty could only ferment if kept hidden away; once exposed to the clear light of day, it was very easy for them to be sterilized by the ultraviolet rays.

And now, with Tao Ran clearly displaying that he was about to move on to another stage of life, Luo Wenzhou followed along readily, releasing these non-polluting worries, which under the ultraviolet rays had been almost entirely neutralized. Aside from a small handful of regretful dust, this didn't arouse any notable waves, but rather the relief of a problem coming to its natural resolution.

Although many articles have been written by the worldly, feelingly advising the people of the world that "you must not display to others that you are doing well, because others do not necessarily want to see you doing well," Luo Wenzhou felt that there were a few people he knew, concerning whose existence he felt that "seeing him doing well will make me happy"—even if a meteoric rise gradually took that person farther and farther away from him.

Though turning the subject back to Tao Ran, in the here and now, his only remaining option for a meteoric rise was buying a lottery ticket.

Fei Du had an unusual sensitivity. Often he could tell from a single look more or less what another was going to say. This time, when Tao Ran pulled him aside, he seemed to have some premonition; he stood up straight, turned down his drifting peach blossom gaze, and actually seemed something like a decent person.

Tao Ran considered, not knowing where to begin—he had to start at the top.

He drew a line in the air with one hand and said to Fei Du, "The first time I saw you, you were only this tall, hugging your backpack, curled up in my car. When I called your dad's number for the third time and got a busy signal again, you looked up at me...and I thought then, I have to look after this child."

Fei Du's eyelashes flickered lightly as he looked at Tao Ran.

His appearance today was far removed from that pitiful child hugging his backpack, curled up in a car; Tao Ran gave a dry cough. "And in the blink of an eye you've grown so big."

While he was somewhat at a loss for how to go on, Fei Du suddenly spoke, calling him "ge" as he hadn't in a long time.

Tao Ran froze, then heard Fei Du say, "I've troubled you too much, haven't I?"

Tao Ran hadn't expected him to be "sensible" to this extent, perceptive almost to the point of precognition. For a moment he stared, rather tongue-tied.

But Fei Du smiled suddenly, considered his wording, then very considerately said, "These last few days, I've been thinking: in a year or two you may get married, and when you have a wife and kids, I won't be able to pester you for no good reason all the time.—My psychiatrist says, friends setting up households or moving away, the people close to you gradually getting older, people parting never to meet again, all these things aren't mishaps, but part of the natural order, like clouds and clear skies, rain and snow, objective and eternal. There's no hidden meaning in them, and excessively wallowing over them is like excessively lamenting the passing of the seasons; there's no sense in it. The world is changing, people are changing, and you yourself are changing, too. Refusing alterations and separations is illogical—and what's more, I've already said that I'm not looking for any result from pursuing you. No matter what, you'll always be my ge."

With every word he'd meant to say snatched away from him, down to the last punctuation mark, Tao Ran really had nothing to add. He could only dryly say, "...You're seeing a psychiatrist?"

Fei Du raised his eyebrows. "Going once a week to see a psychiatrist is a fad for us 'bourgeoisie,' like the masses sampling bottled water from the year '82, right?"

Tao Ran was like the employees at Fei Du's company—he knew perfectly well that he was talking nonsense, but he couldn't help being talked into serenity.

"Is there suddenly someone you like, or are you going for a blind date?" asked Fei Du.

"A blind date."

The corners of Fei Du's mouth twitched, as if he had just barely kept the assessment "how very earthy" from slipping out. Then he sighed. "All right, then. How are you getting there? You're not walking, not dressed like that? Do you need to borrow my car?"

Tao Ran the Mortgage Slave, attacked twice within ten minutes, didn't know whether to laugh or cry. "That's enough of you two. You arranged your lines ahead of time, didn't you?"

At these words, Fei Du subconsciously looked up, just in time to meet Luo Wenzhou's gaze. Finally, both of their expressions became impossible to describe, and simultaneously each of them redirected his line of sight.

When Tao Ran had gone, Fei Du didn't leave after him. He waited until he had seen Luo Wenzhou call over the civil policeman on duty and make appropriate arrangements concerning Mother He. Only then did he gently put his business card into her hand and turn to leave.

Luo Wenzhou didn't know what was wrong with him—perhaps he thought that when Fei Du turned around, he seemed to have a desolate look; or perhaps, having entered the alliance of the jilted together, an emotional link had arisen between him and this silk-clothed demon, smuggling in some sympathy. At any rate, he impulsively opened his mouth to stop Fei Du. "Hey. I guess you're eating alone tonight?"

Fei Du took a deep breath and turned around. The nearly "free from human desires and passions" appearance he had shown as he walked away was at once overwhelmed by his lively poisoned tongue: "For once in a hundred years, I'm living like you elderly empty nesters."

Faced with this display, Luo Wenzhou's hand started to itch; he would have loved to go back five seconds and slap himself—teach you to run your mouth.

But with matters as they stood, trying to back away would have been petty; so Luo Wenzhou, expressionless, said, "You placated the victim's relation today, kept her from talking a lot of nonsense to the media. That was a help to us. On behalf of the Criminal Investigation Team, I can get you something to eat here if you'll stay."

Fei Du's steps paused. He looked a little surprised.

In fact, Luo Wenzhou was only being polite. He hadn't actually expected that President Fei would really condescend to stay...just as Fei Du hadn't expected that when Luo Wenzhou had said "get you something to eat here," he'd meant it literally—the location was the City Bureau's dining hall.

Silent for once, Fei Du stood at the dining hall's doors, smelling the maze of scents, looking at the colorfully painted ceiling, then at the glittering floor tiles; his gaze briefly surveyed the red, yellow and blue plastic chairs, and finally fell on the decorative painting on the wall.

Quoth the painting: "The food infinitely nourishing, the mince infinitely fine."

Fei Du was shaken by this boast, feeling that the City Bureau's dining hall's shamelessness was of a kind with Luo Wenzhou's.

When Luo Wenzhou didn't want to cook, he would grab something from the dining hall to take home, so now he went very familiarly towards the windows and out of politeness said to Fei Du, "Do you have any dietary restrictions?"

Fei Du, wholly impolitely, answered, "I do.—I don't eat raw scallions or cooked garlic; I don't eat ginger, raw or cooked. I don't eat sour things or spicy things. I don't eat animal fat. I don't eat the stalks of plants. I don't eat eggplants or tomatoes with their skins on. I don't eat animals from the knee down or the neck up, and I don't eat organ meat."

Luo Wenzhou: "..."

Fei Du met his gaze coolly and unflinchingly, considered carefully, then added, "I also don't eat cooked egg yolks or brined tofu—oh, I can make do with the gypsum kind."

Luo Wenzhou had never before seen a primate who was even harder to satisfy than Luo Yiguo. He felt that it took all of his assembled forces to hold back the sentence, "Then you can get the hell out and eat shit."

Drawing an overdraft on the rest of his life's supply of patience, Captain Luo ordered some dishes from the stir-fry counter, explaining to the cook that this and that wasn't wanted. Then he went to deliver feed to the pestilential "Fei Yiguo."

The outcome was that Fei Du picked through all the things laid out on the table and finally picked up a brown sugar-filled sweet bun, then nibbled at the candied apples.

The corner of Luo Wenzhou's eye twitched. "You didn't say you don't eat seafood."

"I do eat it," Fei Du answered without glancing up. "I just don't want to peel it."

Luo Wenzhou took a deep breath, once again feeling a deep sense of recognition towards Tao Ran's saintly nature—he had resisted throttling this bit of goods for seven years.

Luo Wenzhou rapped on the table. "Did you mean what you said to Tao Ran?"

Fei Du didn't answer. He gave him a half-mocking look, seeming to have just heard something stupid.

"What's with the attitude? I only asked you to stay to eat because I felt sorry for you for getting jilted." Luo Wenzhou got out a pair of single-use gloves and, pretending he was feeding a cat, shelled a plate full of braised jumbo shrimp. "Why did you stay?"

The tips of Fei Du's chopsticks paused, and he grabbed a shrimp. As a form of equal exchange, his next sentence wasn't an attack. "No reason.—Have you released Zhang Donglai as a lure because you suspect the murderer is close to him and is attentively following the police's movements?"

"Do you have an opposing view?"

"My line of thinking is about the same," said Fei Du. "In fact, if you'd gone from the victim himself in the first place, it shouldn't have been hard to find this person. He's probably known the victim for a long time. He may have changed his name, but in this society where everyone has an identity card, it's impossible to change your name without leaving a trace. It's all right as long as no one suspects and goes looking, but once your system goes to investigate, he'll very soon be revealed. Therefore, he'll be desperately trying to turn your attention away."

"You think the victim knew the murderer before coming to Yan City," said Luo Wenzhou, "not that he was secretly doing business that couldn't stand the light of day for someone."

"The money to pay for his mom's medical treatment," said Fei Du, "that 100,000 yuan, was sent back when he'd been in Yan City less than a month. If I wanted to commit some crime, I wouldn't let someone I didn't know the first thing about into my circle. A criminal gang making that much money would certainly have higher requirements than the ones for testing into your bureau."

Luo Wenzhou chose to overlook his last sentence. "And if he had a mysterious hometown acquaintance who introduced him to a criminal gang? The person who made the introduction and the murderer may not be the same person."

"His mom said that He Zhongyi—that's his name, right? He Zhongyi only knew one person here, named 'Zhao Yulong,' who found him his job. He didn't mention anyone else to her. If he'd met someone from his hometown who he knew all about, he would have mentioned it to his family."

"Even if they were committing crimes together?"

"Especially if they were committing crimes together," said Fei Du. "He'd know it wasn't safe, so he would subconsciously seek out a sense of safety, tell his family, 'I'm with so-and-so.' It's a form of over-compensation to comfort yourself.—Why are you so sure there has to be this hypothetical 'gang' involved?"

Luo Wenzhou's chopsticks stopped. He stared at the edge of his bowl, deliberating for a moment. "I can't tell you in too much detail.—Because on the night he was murdered, the victim's phone received a mysterious text message whose meaning was unclear. Because he was likely murdered in the East Palace Gate District, but his body was moved to the West Flower Market District, half an hour's drive away. And because we just happened to receive an informer's report concerning the West Flower Market District."

Fei Du frowned, at last revealing a trace of surprise.

Just then, Luo Wenzhou's phone suddenly rang. The call came from a number that wasn't in his contacts.

Luo Wenzhou picked it up. "Hello?"

On the other end there were faint noises, followed by heavy breathing.

"Who is this?" said Luo Wenzhou.

Just as he had decided it was a prank call and was about to hang up, an urgent cry came over the phone: "Help me! Help..."

The call dropped. 

________________

CHAPTER 17 [Julien-Sixteen]

The short, sharp cry for help had passed through the speaker, puncturing the dining hall's quiet. Even Fei Du, sitting across, had heard it. Luo Wenzhou called back, but the call wouldn't connect.

Though it had only been a brief sound, Luo Wenzhou had still been able to recognize it as the black cab driver Chen Zhen.

Chen Zhen had reported Wang Hongliang because of the phone call he'd overheard Chen Yuan make, as well as some seemingly unsubstantiated guesses; from start to finish he'd produced no concrete evidence.

There was no telling whether Chen Yuan hadn't left anything behind because she'd been afraid of burdening her brother, or whether, having silenced her, Wang Hongliang had gone in under the guise of "cracking down on drugs" and removed all the clues. At any rate, all Luo Wenzhou had gotten from Chen Zhen had been his sister's old photo album.

When they'd parted, Luo Wenzhou had distinctly felt the young man's dissatisfaction and had purposefully enjoined him: "Don't go blabbing about things there's no evidence for, and especially don't go looking for evidence yourself. If you remember something, give me a call any time.—Even if you endanger yourself to find some evidence, it may be of no use. We won't necessarily think it will lead to anything."

Luo Wenzhou had thought he'd covered both the emotional and the logical aspects, which should have been enough to keep that brat Chen Zhen well-behaved. But not a full day later, he'd gotten into trouble.

Luo Wenzhou at once pushed the plate of shelled shrimp towards Fei Du. "You go ahead and finish eating. When you're done, clean up the plates yourself. I've got something to take care of, so I'll be off."

Fei Du didn't say that this was fine or that it wasn't. He slowly poked open a box of lemon-flavored black tea and drank a mouthful; he felt it was both sour and bitter, really not suitable for human consumption, so he tossed it aside and thoughtfully watched the hurriedly departing Luo Wenzhou on his way out.

Luo Wenzhou had Chen Zhen's contact information, but the number that had called him just now had been totally unfamiliar. As he drove swift as the wind towards the Flower Market District, he gave Director Lu a call.

"Uncle Lu, it's me, it's an emergency, I don't have time to submit a request for clearance, can you think of a way to locate two phone numbers for me?"

Despite getting a call out of nowhere after getting off work, Director Lu was unsurprised. "What numbers? Where are you?"

Luo Wenzhou rapidly told him Chen Zhen's number and the unfamiliar number from earlier.

Director Lu jotted them down. Before hanging up, he asked, "What's going on with you right now? Can you guarantee your safety?"

"Safety is your humble servant's middle name." Luo Wenzhou gave an inscrutable laugh, then turned the steering wheel and left Nanping Road, headed right into the West District.

The night had turned sultry without any warning; the summer heat was oppressive. Birds occasionally hurtled daringly through the sea of cars, almost skimming the ground, hinting that a rainstorm was about to strike.

Friday's evening rush hour regularly lasted longer than usual, but luckily this was the last day of the traffic restriction. The city center was warming up for the weekend. The enormous outdoor Canopy of Heaven unfolded, dazzling the eye with its scrolling LEDs. These nighttime lights relentlessly pursued all the people coming and going and crossed over the wide road to flash over Luo Wenzhou's car, ceasing hostilities only when he had thoroughly wound his way into the complicated streets of the West District.

Director Lu was both orderly and reliable; not much time had passed when a technician returned Luo Wenzhou's call—Chen Zhen's phone had been located near the West District's West Guanjing Street. The unfamiliar number's position was close by; it was registered under a real name: it belonged to a woman named Wu Xuechun.

"Wu Xuechun." Luo Wenzhou was a little taken aback. "It's registered under a real name?"

"Yes. That's the name." The technician gave him a definite reply. "Captain Luo, I'll send her identity card information to your phone in a bit."

The GPS told him he was near "West Guanjing Street." Luo Wenzhou slowed his car.—The reason why he had dared to rush over alone in the middle of the night was that he had determined that Wang Hongliang wouldn't dare to do anything to him.

A creep like Wang Hongliang habitually bullied those below him and fawned on those above him, clearly separating haughtiness and reverence, dividing people into various grades and ranks; for him, there were people like ants whom he could crush as he liked, and people whom, however he loathed them, he'd still have to hold his nose and make up to.

Luo Wenzhou himself wasn't anything much, but luckily his dad hadn't retired yet.

If Chen Zhen had run into danger while calling for help, whoever he'd run into would definitely know of Luo Wenzhou's existence. The phone number had been recorded and would be easy to trace; Wang Hongliang ought to have understood at once that it was only a matter of time before Luo Wenzhou arrived.

According to reason, Wang Hongliang would now take the initiative to contact him and feel out his disposition, seeking a private channel for resolution.

But so far, he hadn't.

Luo Wenzhou quickly realized—whatever had happened tonight, it was likely Wang Hongliang still didn't know about it; it may have been his subordinates acting on their own.

This was very dangerous, but it was undoubtedly also an opportunity.

Luo Wenzhou's phone made a noise as it received Wu Xuechun's identity card information. He parked his car at the end of West Guanjing Street.

West Guanjing Street had an open air barbecue, a night market, and "major health services" among other functions, all collected into a "pedestrian street." Being a pedestrian was the only way to get by here; because of the vendor's stalls illegally occupying the road, no motor vehicle apart from a buggy could drive in.

The air was full of the smoky smells of roasting meat. Bare-armed burly men fried river snails in iron cooking pots until they sizzled, heavily made-up special "service workers" stood at the street corners, skewer sellers did non-stop business, and the smell of the sewers wafted progressively up; not far off, some people were brazenly scooping up recycled waste cooking oil.

Luo Wenzhou's gaze swept around. He was nearly stifled by the flood of people. He stood deliberating a moment, then went over to a black cab driver mustering point.

The black cab drivers had called quitting time long ago. They were just gathered into a group to gamble. One middle-aged man who was having luck at cards, cursing up a storm, slammed his poker hand down on the hood of a car and laughed, showing a mouthful of uneven yellow teeth. "Fuck, how's that, good enough for you? Pay up."

Saying so, he stretched out his hand and asked his companions for a cigarette; before his companions could provide, a hand suddenly reached over from behind him, passed over a cigarette and even lit it for him.

The handful of black cab drivers turned their heads all at once. They saw a broad-shouldered, long-legged man who was very easy on the eyes.

It was Luo Wenzhou.

"Buddies, I need to ask you about something." Luo Wenzhou very politely produced a round of cigarettes. Then, smiling radiantly, he said, "Yesterday my car was under the restriction, so I rode with one of your brothers and accidentally dropped a contract that'd just been signed in the car. The contract is just some paper, not worth any money to anyone else, but if I can't get it back I'll have to kill myself to atone.—You wouldn't be helping me for nothing. Anyone who saw him and can tell me, I'd be very grateful."

Having said so much, Luo Wenzhou wasn't at all vague. He suited action to word: not pressing on to ask his question, he first opened his wallet and gave each person a bright red banknote.

"Allow me to trouble you. If you get me the information, I definitely won't go back on my word."

He was a fair hand at deception—he gave a minutely accurate account of the car's make, model and external appearance, but was vague about the license plate, saying the first two letters and the last number, skirting past, then describing the driver's appearance with broad gestures.

The black cab drivers had their own organization and territorial partitions. With this bit of information it was easy for them to come to a conclusion after a many-voiced discussion: "Isn't it that brat Chen Zhen?"

Luo Wenzhou closed his mouth in good time, his gaze level, floating doubtfully from one to the next, displaying just the right amount of confusion.

With the promise of a pecuniary reward, the black cab drivers rapidly broke up their game and obligingly dove into the intricate system of narrow alleys. Luo Wenzhou lit himself a cigarette and had yet to finish smoking it when he got the information he wanted—someone claimed to have seen Chen Zhen's car parked by the road, then gave him the exact location as well as Chen Zhen's phone number.

The number didn't connect, of course. Luo Wenzhou quickly handed over the cash and settled up, then had the person take him to where Chen Zhen's car was parked—it was an outdoor parking lot, outside of West Guanjing Street, the spots regularly laid out but with no one to mind it. Chen Zhen's second-hand sedan was parked on its own by the roadside. People came and went, but there was no sign of the car's owner.

The parking lot's sole security camera had been half-smashed by some juvenile delinquent; its bones were already cold.

The person who had given him the lead must have felt that the money had been too easily earned, felt apologetic, and undertook to ask around to find out where Chen Zhen had gone.

Alone, Luo Wenzhou walked a circle around Chen Zhen's car; he found the ground by the driver's side door scattered with cigarette ends. When the person standing here had stomped out the ashes, he'd left behind a frantic-looking footprint.

Luo Wenzhou stood just where the footprint was, leaned back against the car door, and looked all around.

Chen Zhen had ignored his warning and acted alone. In all likelihood he had been in a very fevered condition. Then what had he been doing standing here alone, smoking several cigarettes in a row? Had he suddenly developed some qualms about his own conduct?

Or...had he been waiting for someone?

Just then, the person who'd taken his money came trotting over and quietly told Luo Wenzhou, "I think you'd better leave a note on his car. When he sees it, he'll get in contact with you. I just spoke to that woman selling clothes over there. She saw Chen Zhen. He was acting weird. He stood here for ages, then went into the Great Fortune Building."

"The Great Fortune Building?"

"Right there!" The informer pointed just across from where Chen Zhen's car was parked. It was a brightly lit-up entertainment center, with big signs advertising "POOL, CARDS, MASSAGE, KARAOKE" hanging by the door; a line of cars was parked in front of it.

Luo Wenzhou surreptitiously sent a text message to Director Lu: "West Flower Market District, east end of Guanjing Street, The Great Fortune Building, requesting reinforcements"; then he briefly sent off the informer and walked around the Great Fortune Building. When he understood the surroundings, he rumpled up his hair and swaggered in.

The hall was floored with stately marble; some bulbs in the large European-style lamp had burnt out, making the lamplight look rather dim. Some idle young people who may have been delinquents were patrolling the hall and smoking; when they saw someone come in, they shot over furtive appraising looks.

Luo Wenzhou acted like he'd seen none of this. He went straight towards the front desk and rapped on the tabletop. "Get me a private room, I've got friends coming in a bit."

Then he snatched up the drinks menu next to him, his gaze quickly scanning the list of drinks marked up 5% from their market prices, and, seeming entirely unaware of this, ordered a heap.

The front desk attendant hadn't expected a major customer with more money than brains to drop out of the sky. She hastily took down his order. "Sir, could you speak a little slower..."

But Luo Wenzhou suddenly shut his mouth.

The front desk attendant looked up hesitantly and saw the "guest" looking straight at her, his gaze ambiguous yet full of meaning. Lowering his voice, he asked, "What's the least I can pay to get some 'service workers' here?"

After a pause, the front desk attendant put on an "understanding" smile and lowered her voice as well. She gently took a photo album out from under the table and pushed it over. "You can look at the photos first."

The photo album was a series of "skilled portraits," the skills very lacking. All the faces belonged to heavily made up temptresses, giving off a strong sense of cloying sultriness.

Luo Wenzhou flipped through the whole album twice, then deliberately displayed some irritation. "These are all made up so their own mothers wouldn't recognize them. Do you guys have some more normal ones?"

The front desk attendant was about to answer, but Luo Wenzhou leaned forward slightly. As if he was dropping an act, impatiently "revealing his true intentions," he asked, "Do you have one called Wu Xuechun?"

_______________

CHAPTER 18 [Julien- Seventeen] 

"Wu...Wu Xuechun?" The front desk attendant's smile suddenly stiffened.

Luo Wenzhou looked at her, the feigned suggestiveness in his keen gaze developing a crack. He said heavily, "What's wrong?"

The front desk attendant seemed to have been frozen by his gaze; she involuntarily averted her eyes, then forced herself to calm down and give Luo Wenzhou a sugary smile. "Nothing, it's like this: our services workers here all use English names. Hearing you suddenly say her original name, I didn't quite follow... Wu Xuechun, I think Wu Xuechun must be Linda?"

Though Luo Wenzhou was currently in the tiger's den, hearing this, he still couldn't resist running off at the mouth. "Your corporate culture here is pretty Westernized."

The front desk attendant's eyes flashed, and she pushed the picture book into Luo Wenzhou's hands again. "Sir, Linda isn't feeling well today. Would you like to see the others again? Or have you met her before?"

Luo Wenzhou leaned back and didn't answer. He looked loftily down at the girl at the front desk and asked in turn, "What, you need to get a background check to order a service worker?"

The front desk attendant hurriedly apologized in a low voice, then quickly arranged a private room for him and had someone lead him there. It may have been Luo Wenzhou's mistaken impression, but there seemed to be more eyes watching him now.

When he'd gone, the front desk attendant let out a long breath, picked up a commercial walkie-talkie beside her and quietly said, "He's here, like you said. In the Hibiscus City room."

Static came over the walkie-talkie, then a male voice: "How many with him?"

"Just...just him." The front desk attendant pursed her lips, her palms sweating, nearly unable to hold onto the big black implement. "Next time, don't...don't make me do this, all right? I..."

She hadn't finished speaking when an obscenity-filled voice came faintly over the walkie-talkie: "Motherfucker! Just him. He must must think he's pretty lucky! If I'd known, I'd have had someone lying in wait at the door with a sack to kill him, what the fuck's the point of going to all this trouble!"

Amidst the profanity, the wireless link was cut off from the other end.

Just then, a girl wearing a white dress was shoved and prodded in by two people. There was a name tag reading "Linda" on her chest; this was Wu Xuechun.

Wu Xuechun passed the front desk, looking helplessly at the girl sitting at it; the two of them exchanged a look, then each quickly glanced away.

A few minutes after Luo Wenzhou had gone, Fei Du didn't feel like eating anymore and walked out of the City Bureau's dining hall; on walking out he saw that Mother He had woken up, and an officer on duty was drying out his mouth trying to talk her into going to a hotel. Mother He's eyes were bulging, her face waxen; she clutched at her own clothing, neither speaking nor nodding.

She understood nothing of what went on outside, so she always suspected that others wanted to trick her, always felt helpless.

Living year-round in sealed-off surroundings and lacking contact with the outside world will often produce this kind of ignorant cowardice and stupidity. For this woman, who had been sick for many years, her son had been her only support, her only link to and shield from the whole bustling world.

Fei Du considered her through the glass for a while, thinking she seemed like a snail that had lost its shell.

He didn't disturb Mother He. He quickly left the City Bureau, heading for the West Flower Market District.

Hibiscus City was a private room in a corner. Luo Wenzhou felt there was something off as soon as he came in—because in here it didn't look as dim as in the other private rooms. His gaze swept around the room, finding some arcane mysteries in a corner.

While going around the Great Fortune Building earlier, Luo Wenzhou had found that, owing to a problem with the construction, there were some unsealed windows at the building's four corners—it seemed that one of them was in this room.

No one opens windows in karaoke rooms, so blackout curtains had been pasted over the wallpaper, sealing the window from inside. Perhaps too much time had passed; the places where the curtains were glued had come a little loose, some light from the street lamps leaking in through the crevices.

Luo Wenzhou looked around, seemingly indifferent, turned on the music and examined the ceiling as if looking for a smoke alarm.

Apparently having noticed nothing unusual, Luo Wenzhou got out his cigarettes and lit one.

He held his lighter in one hand and very naturally cupped the flame with the other, using this gesture to furtively unfold a piece of paper hidden in his palm.

The second time the front desk girl had pushed the photo album towards him, using the album as cover, she'd passed him a note.

On it was a line scribbled hastily in ballpoint pen: "Someone's lying in wait for you."

Luo Wenzhou was a little surprised.

Of course he knew there was someone lying in wait for him. Chen Zhen had phoned him to call for help; the other party would certainly anticipate that he would come. Because of this, Luo Wenzhou had mentioned Wu Xuechun at the door on purpose, publicly barging right in, acting experienced but not very brilliant, showing himself fully alert but alert in an entirely muddle-headed way.

This way, the person behind the scenes would be sure of success, and wouldn't feel cornered and get desperate. He would even try to be clever, circling around Luo Wenzhou.

Luo Wenzhou had planned to use himself to lure the enemy in, playing a hand of the oriole walking behind.

But he hadn't expected that the front desk receptionist, a complete stranger to him, would secretly help him.

It seemed obvious that arranging for him to be in the Hibiscus City room with its secret window was another one of the girl's maneuvers for helping him—if anything went wrong, the room had a window, and he had a means of escape.

Luo Wenzhou pinched his chin, feeling boundlessly moved.

He thought, Being good-looking has some benefits after all.

Just then, the private room's door was opened from the outside. Luo Wenzhou calmly put down his lighter, crushed the note in the palm of his hand and looked up.

There was a girl wearing a white dress standing at the door. Her dyed hair looked a little faded; her makeup was unusually thick. The girl smiled at him, puckering her lips, and coquettishly said, "Hello, sir. I'm Linda."

Luo Wenzhou was speechless.

This person's nose and mouth seemed to have been flattened and then rebuilt with makeup; he really couldn't quite tell whether this was Wu Xuechun.

Some attendants followed her in, bringing the drinks he'd ordered.

Luo Wenzhou nodded at the girl. "Sit."

Linda was devoted to service; after coming into the room, she wasn't idle. While starting a conversation with Luo Wenzhou, she quickly laid out the drinks; Luo Wenzhou was just thinking of tapping out his cigarette ash, and she very alertly held up an ashtray and said, "You've ordered so many drinks, handsome. There must be a lot of guests coming? Do you need me to call some more girls?"

Her voice was sweet and simpering, but it inadvertently sounded a little nasal. Looking close, there was a layer of red over her eyes—she seemed to have just been crying; the face-full of heavy makeup must have been to cover up her reddened nose and eyelids.

Luo Wenzhou paused, then gently held her chin, looking her over left and right. The action was lecherous, but his expression was very grave, as if he was trying to detect some resemblance to the girl on the identity card. After a while, seeming to have learned something, he was about to draw back his arm and speak, but Linda suddenly grabbed his wrist.

Luo Wenzhou narrowed his eyes slightly.

Holding his arm, Linda put on a just convincing enough display of refusal and said in a displeased voice, "Don't, handsome. It's that time of the month. I can only drink with you."

Saying so, she leaned back weakly, knocking over a bottle of alcohol on the coffee table. The bottle wobbled, about to fall; the girl's thickly-painted face showed a flash of nervousness.

But in that instant Luo Wenzhou reached firmly around her and scooped up the bottle, not spilling a drop.

Linda froze.

Luo Wenzhou sighed silently. Of course he'd guessed there was a listening device planted in the private room; if it wasn't under the coffee table, then it was in the base of the couch.—Now it looked like it was under the coffee table. The girl's attempt to fake an accident and use the spilled alcohol to damage the listening device was really too obvious.

Luo Wenzhou looked at Linda and spoke with a double meaning: "A girl should be a little more careful—not so clumsy."

Linda thought he hadn't followed her meaning; her not-so-subtle face at once revealed an anxious look. But Luo Wenzhou unhurriedly put the bottle back, then, as if chatting idly, said, "How long have you been here? Do you have a boyfriend?"

Linda looked at him blankly, the automatically answered, "Over a year. No."

Luo Wenzhou looked fixedly at her eyes. "You haven't considered it?"

Linda shook her head.

"You'll have to consider it someday." Luo Wenzhou smiled, fingers lightly tapping on the edge of the edge of the coffee table. He quietly asked, "Are there any boys you hang out with normally?"

His hands were long and slender; ordinarily, when he tapped on something, it was very attention-grabbing. Linda instinctively watched him and found his fingers weren't tapping in the same place, but going up, down, left, right...apparently forming the character "Chen!"

He knew there was a listening device in the room!

Linda's—Wu Xuechun's eyes immediately misted over; she forced back her emotions and spoke deliberately: "There...there's one, he used to be my neighbor. People were bothering me after work, and he helped me. He's always looked after me...but what's the use? I belong to this place. Inside he must hate me."

"Hate you?" said Luo Wenzhou.

Wu Xuechun hadn't said "disdain"; she'd said "hate."

In a couple of sentences she'd explained her relationship with Chen Zhen, as well as the fact that she "belonged to this place," and surely knew some of "this place"'s internal affairs, maybe even those related to Chen Yuan's death.

Luo Wenzhou paused, then quietly said, "Is this boy still 'in the area?'"

Wu Xuechun nodded at him. "I don't have the face to see him. As long as he's safe and sound, I'll be satisfied."

Luo Wenzhou relaxed a little. It seemed that Chen Zhen was only temporarily confined, and this girl was even more clever than he'd imagined.

He leaned back lightly against the couch, then asked, "What does he do?"

Wu Xuechun was accustomed to entertaining guests and in the habit of weighing words and observing expressions. Seeing his relaxed pose and hearing his words, she understood that Luo Wenzhou had gotten her hint and was now asking her what Chen Zhen's purpose in coming to the Great Fortune Building had been.

Wu Xuechun forcibly restrained her impulse to look in the direction of the security camera, organized her words, then whispered, "I don't know. He must be busy. I heard there's a 'child' in his family who left home a little while ago. He must be searching all over. He heard the 'child' had come over here once after school. She seemed to have picked up some no-good boyfriend. A few days ago he came to ask me about her."

"A young teen went missing," said Luo Wenzhou, "so how come they didn't call the police?"

"It's no use. No one cares." Hearing the word "police," Wu Xuechun stiffened all over and stammered out these sentences. Then she seemed to remember something and added, "The name of a place was written in the child's homework notebook, a place around here. He lives far away, so he asked me about it."

Chen Zhen had come to ask about the "Golden Triangle Lot!"

The security camera and the listening device meanwhile were transmitting every bit of their back-and-forth chat to the ears of some people.

They were in a certain luxurious private room on the second floor, choked with the odor of liquor and another peculiar smell. Next to them some men and women, clearly already out of their minds, were shooting up, then writhing wildly together to get their blood flowing as fast as possible.

A circle of men sat on the couches, keeping an eye on Luo Wenzhou through the camera and their headphones. Their leader was the captain of the Flower Market District's Criminal Investigation Team. They were comparatively clear-headed; they hadn't touched the drugs and only had a little to drink. They were completely ignoring the Cavern of Silken Webs going on behind them.

One of them poked at the screen and said, "This Luo's been yammering with the woman for more than ten minutes. Why hasn't he stopped talking nonsense yet?"

The captain coldly said, "Haven't you noticed? He's been indirectly getting at what happened to that brat. Now he knows he's not dead, he won't dare to act rashly."

"How do you know that?"

"The brat definitely didn't tell him anything." Captain Huang adopted a strategizing manner. "If Luo knew there was anything here, he wouldn't have dared to come barging in so openly... Come to think of it, the woman's a real turncoat. We'll have to think of a way to get rid of her."

"Captain Huang, how do we take care of Luo? Report it to Director Wang tomorrow?"

"Director Wang? Director Wang's getting on in years. He's gone soft. There's no telling if tomorrow he'll take along some cash to that brat's house and beg him to let it go—even if this Luo is sensible and gets into our boat, afterwards we'll have to keep paying tribute to him. It'll never end. Better to deal with the problem once and for all." The captain gave a somber laugh. "But we can't take care of him here. There's just been a big case in the West District. It's too sensitive now. We'll have to be a little more subdued."

"You mean..."

"Leave the brat Luo for now, wait for the storm to pass, use that whelp as bait to lure him in." Captain Huang licked his lips. "On the way, if he happens by coincidence to run into a criminal and have some fun first, after all, ours is a dangerous profession—first make sure the whelp will obey. Did you give him the shot?"

A person next to him quickly stood up. "I did. I'll go have a look."

Captain Huang looked up, disgustedly avoided the attentions of a drugged and delirious woman, slowly sipped his drink and thought, So this is the level of the City Bureau's 'elite.' Revealing himself before he's gotten two full sentences out, and all of it on camera. It looks like every walk of life is the same; whether you can get ahead depends entirely on who your father is.

Expression ruthless, he drank a mouthful and watched Luo Wenzhou still exchanging coded signals with the streetwalker. An unspeakable cynicism rose in his heart.

Just then, the person who'd gone out suddenly came rushing back in a panic. "C-c-captain Huang, he...he...he..."

The captain looked up impatiently and saw his subordinate, ashen-faced, looking as if he'd been struck by lighting, babble out, "Dead...dead!"

Captain Huang frowned. "You dumb fucker, can't you even speak clearly? Dead what?"

"That...that..." The subordinate pointed to the place where Chen Zhen had been confined, tongue tying itself into a dead knot.

Captain Huang came around swiftly, his scalp bristling. He shot to his feet, sent his glass smashing right into his subordinate's face, then roared, "Dead! Who told you to touch him?"

The subordinate tearfully held his face, which was streaming with liquor. "No...no one touched him, I just gave him a shot, just a little dose, just a little, Captain Huang, if you gave it to these bastards they definitely wouldn't even notice it, who'd have thought he'd die? Is he a fucking insurance scammer?"

It was possible to die of a single drug overdose, but after all how much counted as an overdose varied from person to person—there were some people who could eat a peanut or drink a mouthful of milk and die of an allergic reaction, so of course there were also people who'd die if they touched drugs at all; but those were only a few extreme cases. No one had expected that a lively, strapping young man like Chen Zhen would be so weak.

Captain Huang's mind buzzed. Suddenly, he turned and stared fiercely at Luo Wenzhou through the security camera. As if to himself, he said, "This is major now. We'll have to dispose of him."

________________

CHAPTER 19 [Julien- Eighteen]

After hearing these astonishing words, the circle of clear-headed people all looked at Captain Huang, eyes wide and mouths hanging open.

Captain Huang paid no attention to any of them, irritably pacing a few circles around the room with his head down.

Just then, someone quietly said, "But he's from the City Bureau..."

These people had neglected their duties, bent the law for their private ends, harbored criminals, and collected illicit money from all of this. Of course their hands weren't clean. But taking money and keeping your mouth shut was one thing; killing someone with your own hands was another. The people in this room for the most part hadn't been mixed up in any concrete affairs; they'd only had to turn a blind eye, sit and wait for their hush money to come in. Meanwhile they still went to work, still collected their wages. At most they received some gray income, occasionally went out to some "recreational" social engagements. None of them thought of themselves as utterly evil.—Moreover, having been deeply influenced by Wang Hongliang's worldview, they unanimously believed that while the deaths of a few prostitutes and delinquents didn't amount to anything, raising their hand against a member of their own profession? Now that was going too far.

When the eyes sitting under someone's forehead are looking directly ahead or looking up, they often think that what they see are humans.

Looking down, however, they often think that what they see are animals, beasts of burden.—Those without power or influence, drifting in the current of events and struggling for survival, the old, the weak, the sick, the crippled, for the most part belong to this category.

Looking at animals, a human thinks they also know what it is to be comfortable and well-fed, what it is to be warm or cold, but no more than that. So it's all the same if they die. After all, the idiom only says that "human life is beyond value"; other lives don't hinder the affairs of heaven.

The death of a Chen Zhen was an accident, a mistake—but the death of a Luo Wenzhou, now that was a major event.—Everyone more or less had something of this mentality; only Captain Huang with his bear's heart and leopard's guts was unexpectedly distinguished.

"Captain Huang, that won't do, that really won't do." Another person opened his mouth. "If you ask me, all right, what's-his-name's dead, we'll take care of the body. If Luo Wenzhou can't find a trace of him dead or alive, what's he going to do?"

"What's he going to do? He knows the brat disappeared here." Captain Huang's teeth were tightly clenched, his words squeezed out from the crack between them. "Today he'll go home empty-handed, but what about tomorrow? What about the day after that? Are you planning on doing nothing but squatting here waiting for him twenty-four hours a day, idiot? Can you guarantee that everyone here will keep their mouths shut tight? Business is business. Now there's been a death, never mind him, if we tell Director Wang what happened today, even he may not be willing to protect you!"

The person spoke falteringly: "They're...our own people..."

"Our own fucking people are exactly what I'm worried about! On the night of the twentieth, why did a dead man inexplicably turn up in 'that place?' You were all there, did any of you see? Even if it was just some asshole killing someone and dumping the body, what kind of coincidence made him throw the body there? It's like...it's like 'marking' us out on purpose!" Captain Huang gave a shudder at his own words and exerted himself to swallow a mouthful of saliva. "And that brat just now, popping up out of nowhere asking about 'that place,' which one of you's going to tell me how he knew about it? If it hadn't been caught on the security cameras, if I hadn't just been there, tomorrow you'd probably have been wearing those handcuffs in your pockets! How does a kid who drives a black cab get in touch with the captain of the City Bureau's Criminal Investigation Team, huh? Do you know? No, you don't. You all fucking understand shit!"

Someone had turned off the music in the room. The ones who had taken drugs were all still muddle-headed, but the sober ones were dead silent.

"There must be a connection between the the '520' case and what happened today. We must have a mole." Staring at the security camera image, Captain Huang took a deep breath and spoke one word at a time: "I'd meant to trap that brat Chen, give him a taste of the good stuff, get some use out of him... Forget it, now that we've been pushed to this, we'll have to get rough and ready. What do you say, are you guys up for it?"

At first no one answered.

Captain Huang sighed heavily. "Fine. You're a useless bunch. Do whatever you like, then; go and turn yourselves in. Go on, maybe you'll get leniency."

Just then, the person who'd just had liquor splashed in his face opened his mouth. "I was the one who gave him the shot."

Captain Huang turned and gave him a sidelong look.

"I...I...I'll go!"

"You gave him the shot. And who else was there who touched the brat? When he made a break for it, who knocked him out?" Captain Huang indistinctly twitched the corners of his lips, his gaze sweeping over all of them. "Who tied him up? Who watched the door... Oh, as far as watching the door goes, I'd also like to know, since Xiao Song says he clearly only gave him a little bit, how'd he die, huh?"

They all shook their heads one after another, saying nothing.

"Anyone who thinks he's got nothing to do with this can go," said Captain Huang with a slight smile. "But when you're gone, be sure to watch your...mouth."

Everyone had a mouth, and anyone with a mouth had only to walk out the door to be a potential mole.

No one wanted to acknowledge himself as a "mole" in front of this savage.

Finally, no one answered.

"Be careful," Captain Huang said expressionlessly. "While investigating the '520' case in the West District, Captain Luo unfortunately ran into a crazed drug addict and died in the line of duty."

Luo Wenzhou looked at his watch. It was over twenty minutes since he'd called for outside help. The thick soundproofing material couldn't block out the music from next door, which sounded like a house being torn town. He was sitting across from a girl with a not especially dignified job, beside a table covered with alcohol worth the best part of his month's wages.

Maybe the air-conditioning in the room was too cold; a chill wind blew over his neck, and from out of nowhere Luo Wenzhou had a rather bad feeling. He then took up the heavy ashtray on the table and weighed it in his hand. To Wu Xuechun, he said, "You're still pretty young. Isn't there something else you can do? Do you want to change jobs?"

Wu Xuechun shook her head. She didn't respond, only rolled up the long sleeves of her dress and showed him the track marks on her scrawny arms, as well as the bruises left behind by inexpert injection. She was very pale, making the bruises look even more ghastly. Old habits are hard to break.

Luo Wenzhou was silent.

On such an occasion, it seemed that to accord with social custom he should act like a big brother, give her some words of consolation and encouragement. But some circumstances are extremely cruel. Had he been in her position, Luo Wenzhou thought he wouldn't have made wiser choices. Saying those customary words would have been just as offensive as telling someone with a terminal illness to "drink more water."

Having nothing to say, he had to shut his mouth.

Just then, the "wall-smashing heavy metal" next door came to the interval between two songs and briefly broke off. Luo Wenzhou's ears, recovering the ability to hear, picked up the sound of hurried steps outside.

He had no time to consider. He reacted subconsciously, blurting out a question to Wu Xuechun: "Where's Chen Zhen?"

Wu Xuechun was stupefied by his sudden question and blurted her answer as well: "In the second-floor west storage room."

She'd just spoken when Luo Wenzhou hauled her up and pushed her towards the window. "Run."

Wu Xuechun backed up a few steps and twisted her ankle on her high heels. She was still a little muddled; leaning hesitantly against the wall, she said, "I..."

She'd meant to say, "I'll be all right, I'm one of theirs, they won't do anything to me." But this lengthy speech hadn't yet set out when Luo Wenzhou decisively interrupted: "I'm telling you to run. Take off your shoes and don't waste words."

As he finished speaking, the door of the private room was kicked open. A few colorful young men charged in, bringing with them the thick smell of alcohol and another distinctive stench. They didn't say anything before attacking.

Luo Wenzhou hefted the expensive ashtray from the table. A reflection flashed at the corner of his eye. He reached forward to block with the ashtray, metal screeching against glass. A melon knife connected with the ashtray and slid off.

Luo Wenzhou brought the ashtray down, fiercely slamming the knife-wielder's wrist and forcing his arm back. He brought up his knee into the knife-wielder's underbelly.

The knife-wielder's stomach contents nearly came up at this blow. The melon knife slipped out of his hand, and Luo Wenzhou smoothly snatched it up, seizing the person by his yellow hair and shoving him against the wall. He crouched down to duck another attacker, picked up a bottle of possibly fake Rémy Martin cognac, and bashed the big frying pan-like bottle against the attacker's head.

These attackers were all delinquents picked up from somewhere. Each one looked like a living ghost; drug users, to judge by their appearances. Luo Wenzhou was richly experienced in street brawls, he was young and robust, exercised regularly, and added an extra egg to his jianbing every day. Therefore he had the advantage in cleaning up this crowd of drug addicts.

He glanced back and saw that Wu Xuechun, heeding his roared command, had taken off her shoes and escaped out the window. Then he took a deep breath and headed towards the second floor storage room—why, after such a long spell of tranquility, had they suddenly attacked him?

He didn't have time to spare to think too much. In a few steps he'd leapt up to the second floor. An idea coming out of nowhere to seize his chest, he thought, Has something happened to Chen Zhen?

The little delinquents he'd knocked over banded together and came in pursuit, baring their fangs and brandishing their claws. An attendant delivering drinks was frightened into a shout and glued himself to the wall. Luo Wenzhou pushed him aside and saw the notice on the storage room: a mottled sign reading "Employees Only."

Luo Wenzhou backed up half a step, then quickly kicked the door. The rebound from the wooden door sent pain up his calf. He at once switched legs and again stamped heavily. This time his lower leg went through the door, leaving a hole.

Luo Wenzhou swiftly pushed open the door and saw a person lying unmoving inside. "Chen Zhen!"

He'd meant to go right in to have a look at him, but his legs had gone slightly numb and held him up for a moment. In that moment his brain, overheated from his fight and flight just now, slowly cooled as his breathing returned to normal. Luo Wenzhou suddenly came around—this was wrong. He'd been so direct about getting the location where Chen Zhen was being kept out of Wu Xuechun. There must have been someone watching the cameras then. So why hadn't they moved Chen Zhen?

As this thought flashed by, Luo Wenzhou backed up without even thinking. At the same time, the person lying on the floor leapt up without warning and stabbed a knife towards the side of Luo Wenzhou's neck. Luo Wenzhou had been wholly on the alert; he instantly raised his snatched melon knife to knock aside the person's wrist, grabbed the person's shoulder and shoved him towards the shelves to one side.

However, the other party was also very experienced. He drew back his shoulder to minimize the force of the blow and used the rebound of the shove to punch Luo Wenzhou under the ribs. Luo Wenzhou's breath caught, and the knife nearly slipped out of his hand. He narrowly dodged the other's grasp, grabbed him by the arm and spun him halfway around, then slammed his foot against the back of the attacker's knee.

The person shrieked and fell to his knees. By the weak light, Luo Wenzhou could at last clearly see who he was holding. He didn't know this person's name, but he'd seen him waiting upon Wang Hongliang.

Luo Wenzhou forced his head up by the hair. "Where's Chen Zhen?"

The person he'd kicked into a kneeling position was Captain Huang. He stared fixedly at Luo Wenzhou, entirely unrepentant; instead he laughed quietly. "Waiting for you up ahead."

Luo Wenzhou understood the implication. His pupils contracted. At the same time, there was a sound behind him, and Luo Wenzhou instinctively half-turned, raising his arm to protect his face. There was a loud and clear crash; a bottle of alcohol and Luo Wenzhou's left arm suffered nearly equal losses. The people waiting to take him unawares swarmed up from behind, armed with knives, bottles, cudgels and chains, all pelting towards him.

Hard pressed, Luo Wenzhou dodged left and right, wounds quickly blossoming all over him.

Before leaving, he'd actually requested a sidearm, but until his life was hanging by a thread, he didn't dare to take it out—because he wasn't at all sure that Wang Hongliang's hired thugs would be willing to behave and observe the "Five Prohibitions." These people currently thought he was entirely unprepared and could be dealt with using cold steel; they also didn't want to create such a large disturbance in the middle of a crowded neighborhood, so they were willing to fight hand-to-hand with him.

On his own, it was better to fight hand-to-hand than to use guns; and moreover the Great Fortune Building was in fact close to a crowded area. The problem would get more serious if people were caught in the crossfire.

Just then, a piercing police siren suddenly sounded. The crowd of people stiffened; only Luo Wenzhou reacted at once, pushing his hand up against the nose cartilage of the person blocking his path. He then quickly dodged a knife and a foot, and leapt out into the corridor.—He knew the police siren had to be fake. The West District's roads were hard to navigate, and it hadn't been half an hour yet; the backup he'd called wouldn't have come this fast.

Worried about an ambush, Luo Wenzhou didn't take the stairs. He burst into a corner bathroom, pulled open the window, and jumped down.

By this time, he had a gash down his back, not to mention the rest of the big and small cuts and bruises. He couldn't quite lift his left forearm; the bone may have been fractured. Two hours earlier he'd been speculating that the killer in the "520" case would take the bait of Zhong Donglai while "feeding the cat" in the dining hall, not expecting that two hours later he'd have been transported into an action film.

One's lot in life was simply as inconstant as Luo Yiguo.

Suddenly, there was a shout from behind him: "Dage, over here!"

Luo Wenzhou looked around and saw Wu Xuechun, barefoot, desperately waving her hand at him. Luo Wenzhou's scalp bristled. "Didn't I tell you to run? What are you still doing here?"

"That alarm device was me just now," said Wu Xuechun. "You don't know your way around; I'll lead you out. Did you find Chen Zhen?"

Before Luo Wenzhou could answer, the pursuing force arrived. "There he is, get him!"

Luo Wenzhou grabbed Wu Xuechun. Following her babbled directions they came to a short wall behind the Great Fortune Building. Luckily, Wu Xuechun was light as a feather. Luo Wenzhou hefted her up onto the wall, then jumped over it himself.

When he landed, the left arm he'd forced into use rudely went from a dull ache to an unbearable sharp pain. Luo Wenzhou furrowed his brow and hissed in a breath. A cool evening breeze blew, and the blood soaking through the back of his shirt chilled him to the marrow.

Under the street lamps, Wu Xuechun clearly saw his blood-stained condition and was scared out of her wits, nearly shrieking.

"Which way?" said Luo Wenzhou.

Shaking, Wu Xuechun pointed in the right direction; in the next instant, the man grabbed her and ran for it.

"It's all right," said Luo Wenzhou, casually consoling her. "They didn't get my face."

Wu Xuechun: "..."

The two of them went through several little streets; after a number of confusing turns, they actually saw the open road. Luo Wenzhou finally relaxed and said to the breathless Wu Xuechun, "For now come back with me to the bureau, then..."

His words came to an abrupt halt.

On both sides of the road, the clamoring vendor's stalls had backed up in a flash, and the pedestrians had dodged away even more thoroughly. Several rumbling motorcycles were blocking the end of the street; they had been respectfully awaiting him for a long time.

Luo Wenzhou glanced at his watch out of the corner of his eye—given the time, his backup should just about be here.

So he hid Wu Xuechun behind him and smiled at the leading motorcyclist, saying glibly, "Buddy, I think there's been a misunderstanding. Can we chat?"

But the leader didn't suffer from the Villain Dies By Talking Too Much disease. His icy gaze shot out from his helmet and fixed on Luo Wenzhou, and he quickly hit the gas, the motorcycle leaping up and heading right for them.

Luo Wenzhou had no choice; he grabbed the handgun in his pocket.

When he had yet to take the gun out, suddenly, an engine sound even more aggressive than the motorcycles's rumbles roared up.

The motorcyclists hadn't expected a brainless drag racer to appear in this place. They subconsciously panicked and dodged, immediately scattering. A sports car as colorful as a poisonous snake appeared out of thin air like a flash of lighting, executed a practiced turn, and brushed against the back wheel of the moving motorcycle, sending it and its rider flying up into the air.

Through the half-open window the side of a face, half-blocked by hair, appeared. The newcomer didn't look directly at Luo Wenzhou, only tersely said, "Get in." 

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CHAPTER 20 [Julien- Nineteen]

Luo Wenzhou was just as surprised as the hoodlums by Fei Du descending from the heavens, but the situation was desperate, and Captain Luo wasted no time; he promptly came to a decision, first shoving Wu Xuechun into the car, then jumping into the passenger's seat himself. He hadn't sat down properly yet when the car's open windows automatically rolled shut, and it started forward with a howl.

Luo Wenzhou was nearly forced backwards against the back of the seat. "Why do I get the sense your mood isn't very stable... Hey!"

Though Fei Du hadn't turned to look at him, the smell of blood didn't rely on a person's line of sight; it kept floating over in a steady stream.

The little sports car's acceleration was already dizzying, and next to him was a moving bag of blood to pile dizziness on top of dizziness. With the two combined, President Fei's brilliant moment went by, and, not at all brilliantly, he was heading right for an electricity pole.

The pitch of Luo Wenzhou's voice altered, and the veins stood out on the corners of Fei Du's forehead. In this extreme crisis, he carefully turned the steering wheel and drove clear.

Having survived disaster, the electricity pole unfortunately had yet to relax when it witnessed the car roll up and then down—President Fei had accidentally driven up onto the curb.

Luo Wenzhou buckled his seatbelt as quickly as possible, feeling that he'd just come out of the dragon's pool and ended up in the tiger's den—having avoided dying at the evildoer's blades, he was going to die at the hands of this suicidal driver.

"You're driving like a maniac!" Luo Wenzhou hollered at him.

Fei Du didn't even dare to breathe too deeply. As soon as he did, he would smell it. "Who told you to sit in the front! I'm about to throw up!"

Luo Wenzhou: "..."

Being nauseated when faced with a handsome and elegant young man? What was the matter with him?

Cold sweat was pouring off of Fei Du. Soon he simply wouldn't be able to see the road clearly. At last he couldn't maintain his airy demeanor any longer and was forced by Luo Wenzhou into letting out a curse: "Blood makes me sick, cover the fuck up!"

Luo Wenzhou froze—he'd always thought Fei Du's "blood makes me sick" was a joke, because he clearly remembered that he hadn't had that problem when he was little.

Just then, Wu Xuechun helpfully passed forward a jacket Fei Du had thrown into the backseat. Luo Wenzhou shook it out and covered himself with it. "Tsk, and I get carsick. What... Shit, are those people crazy?"

Luo Wenzhou had meant to ask him, "What are you doing here?" But when he glanced at the rearview mirror, he found that the motorcycles were actually chasing them!

Though it wasn't broad daylight now, they were still on a road in a lawful society. This was getting brazen.

Captain Huang and the others hadn't expected that a whole crowd of people wouldn't be able to stop one Luo Wenzhou in their own lair, but once you've shot your arrow, there's no getting it back. With things as they now stood, they could only carry on, whatever the consequences, frenzied to the end.

Most likely it really does only take three steps for a common person who thinks of himself as "ordinary" to go from "wisely coming to terms with reality" to "desperate criminal."

According to reason, a first-class sports car shouldn't have been surrounded and intercepted by a crew of motorcycles, but the actual road conditions always played a part. Especially in the cramped West Flower Market District, where the conditions were complicated and the roads long and full of obstacles. There were places where a rocket couldn't outrun the "Especially for picking up my grandson" mobility scooter.

Fei Du wasn't familiar with this place to start with, he hadn't had time to turn on the GPS, and it was dark; he could only rely on feeling—and there was a source of pollution next to him, making him feel he was barely functioning.

This path really was beset by perils on all sides.

Fei Du's hands and feet were cold, and even his heart rate was becoming irregular; his stomach was about to revolt, contents ready to come surging up. His hands grasping the steering wheel were white. Clenching his teeth, he said, "Tell me you didn't come alone."

Maybe because of blood loss or something, Luo Wenzhou really was a little car sick by now. So as not to upset the unsteadily performing driver, he said without any hesitation, "I didn't come alone, I have backup... Will we need to reimburse you for car repairs?"

As he spoke, Wu Xuechun shrieked. A motorcycle had quickly driven up. The rider slammed an iron chain against the window of Fei Du's car.

The window narrowly hung on without breaking, but it developed a spiderweb of cracks on the spot.

Luo Wenzhou was provoked by this sight. "This stupid car of yours is flashy but useless. If you have the money, why not get a bulletproof one?"

Fei Du gave the rearview mirror a sideways glance and turned the steering wheel, very skillfully pressing the chain-wielding rider to the side of the road. The motorcyclist didn't react fast enough, and his front wheel twisted on the curb. He made a few desperate struggles to preserve his equilibrium, but in the end still went flying along with his bike.

Holding his nose, Fei Du then said, "I'm not the President of the Republic. What bullets am I worried about?"

Of the two of them, one must have been a crow spirit. As soon as Fei Du said these words, a crack came from the car's rear window. The hair on Luo Wenzhou's neck stood up. He was the first to react. "The bastards are shooting! Young lady, get down!"

Wu Xuechun didn't need to be told again; she covered her head and curled up. At the same time, another motorcycle came up alongside them and the rider raised a hand, showing the dark and empty muzzle of a gun. Regardless of the facts, he opened fire.

Luckily there aren't so many decathlon-running bad guys in this world. This person's marksmanship looked like he was just fooling around, basically shooting blind—though if you shoot enough, there'll always be a lucky shot or two. A bullet broke through the passenger's side window. Luo Wenzhou quickly turned and blocked Fei Du while forcing himself down. The bullet brushed his shoulder and hit the windshield.

This frightening instant made almost no impression on Fei Du's thoughts or feelings. His brain, dimmed by the smell of blood, really was about to shut down. He had no time to think, and no time to feel. Amidst infinite perils, he freed one hand; able to stand it no longer, he picked up the car's air freshener and without looking sprayed it right into Luo Wenzhou's face.

Incurring an unwarranted blast of fragrance, Luo Wenzhou was simply ready to kneel in respect for the utterly fearless President Fei's spirit.

Fei Du spotted a little street with no one in it and stepped on the gas. Spinning the steering wheel as far right as it would go, he executed a turn, not giving the gun-toting motorcyclist any room to follow.

Then, having completed his turn, he immediately stepped on the brakes—at the end of the little street, like a stake-out, three or four motorcycles were waiting for him.

The sound of thunder came from behind. They were being attacked from the front and the rear, trapped in the little street.

Fei Du swept his gaze in a circle expressionlessly. His face was so cold it was a little frightening. He took hold of the gear shift behind the steering wheel, the engine giving out a brutal roar. The car seemed to be an enraged beast, covered in wounds and entrenching itself, preparing to launch a fatal attack at any time.

Fei Du quietly said, "If I run them over one by one, would that count as excessive force in self-defense?"

The noise of the vehicle was too loud. Luo Wenzhou could only see his bloodless lips moving; he didn't hear a single word clearly. But he inexplicably understood Fei Du's expression, and his heart skipped heavily. He instinctively grabbed Fei Du's hand holding the gear shift.

The hand was very cool, hard, full of cold intensity, like some dull metal.

Just then, police sirens sounded for the second time. Red and blue flashing lights lit up a large portion of the horizon.

His backup had finally arrived.

Using all his effort, Luo Wenzhou managed to unclench Fei Du's hand from the gear shift. The sound of the engine slowly calmed. Inside the badly damaged car, everything was silent for a while.

The reinforcements were extremely reliable. They had the scene under control as soon as they arrived, quickly snatching up the Biking Party and its implements, and an ambulance very considerately came after them.

Lang Qiao was the first to run over. She leaned on the car door. Breathlessly, she said, "Chief, are you guys all right? I was so scared!"

Luo Wenzhou laughed at her and hadn't had time to speak when Fei Du staggered out of the car, walked to the side of the road without saying a word, and threw up.

Luo Wenzhou was discussing follow-up arrangements with Lang Qiao when Director Lu, who had come over in person, stuffed him into the ambulance. He thought to himself that the old man was making a fuss over nothing; these little injuries didn't amount to anything. After he was forcibly escorted into the ambulance, he didn't ease up but kept issuing commands, holding the ambulance's door. "Chen Zhen may still be alive. I don't think they have any reason to kill him immediately. Go to the Great Fortune Building and give it a good search. Also, go to the sub-bureau at once to pick up Ma Xiaowei, we have to get him away before Wang Hongliang gets the news. Damn it, they may already have the news by now... All right, doctor, I'm coming, just let me finish..."

Comparatively speaking, his "fellow patient" was much better behaved—although not a hair on Fei Du's head had been hurt, when it was all over he threw up until he was half-dead, vomiting himself into collapsing of dehydration.

Tonight seemed to be a century long. For some people, each second felt like it was endlessly stretched out.

The Flower Market District Sub-Bureau was silent. Xiao Haiyang, who was on duty, clutched a cell phone in his hand. His partner had fallen dead asleep. Carefully avoiding being seen, Xiao Haiyang headed towards the place where Ma Xiaowei was locked up.

There was a text message on the phone: "We've been caught, notify Director Wang at once, get rid of Ma Xiaowei, ASAP!"

Ma Xiaowei was curled up and sleeping, having some unknown nightmare, twitching from time to time. His still childishly innocent face was so thin it had lost some of its original appearance and looked like a monkey's.

Xiao Haiyang ducked inside, cautiously turned his head to look back, then reached out to grab Ma Xiaowei's shoulder.

Shaken awake in the middle of the night, Ma Xiaowei was startled. He opened his mouth and was about to call out, but Xiao Haiyang covered his mouth with one hand. The boy's eyes opened wide in terror—

When Luo Wenzhou's many injuries had been seen to at the hospital, he felt himself to be in perfect health; he could have taken on another soccer team of delinquents. He then strolled over to see Fei Du and found him with an IV drip in his arm, leaning back with his eyes closed, looking on the verge of death, as if he'd been the one to get sliced up.

Luo Wenzhou went over and lightly kicked Fei Du's foot. "Other people get sick at blood, they just fall over. How come you get sick like a pregnant woman?"

Fei Du didn't open his eyes. He only groaned. "Stay away."

"I'm all cleaned up," said Luo Wenzhou, flagrantly sitting down next to him. "It wasn't easy getting you to sit down and eat, and now you've thrown it all up."

Expressionless, Fei Du said, "I don't think there was anything worth regretting."

Luo Wenzhou thought about the crappy dining hall at his place of employment and decided that this was reasonable. He then asked, "How did you find us?"

This time, Fei Du played dead, not answering.

Luo Wenzhou kicked him again. "You weren't following me the whole time? What were you doing following me?"

Fei Du's usual reaction to this sort of low-level prodding would be to coolly give him an expression that said, "There you go making trouble again, you stupid fucker," then glance away. But right now he really felt too bad. His stomach had turned over several times and hurt like it was being pulled out, the impossible-to-get-rid-of smell of blood still seemed to linger at the tip of his nose, opening his eyes was all it took to get dizzy, and next to him there was a "menopausal" asshole not giving him any peace. Simmering with rage, he let slip a snort.

"Then what did you go there for?" said Luo Wenzhou.

Leaning against the hospital's snow-white pillow, Fei Du frowned deeply and mobilized all the self-restraint he had ever possessed to force himself not to swear. "I went to see where He Zhongyi lived."

The place where He Zhongyi had lived really wasn't far from the street behind the Great Fortune Building, and the two roads in fact had some similarities. Luo Wenzhou waited a long time without hearing Fei Du's next words, looked at Fei Du, then suddenly saw the light. "And then you got lost, right?"

Hearing this, Fei Du said nothing, only turned his head away and pretended he'd only heard the wind by his ear.

Luo Wenzhou saw this hint of humiliated anger in wonder, feeling that Fei Du had revealed a trace of something of an ordinary mortal. The truth made him seem for the first time a little amiable.

Luo Wenzhou quickly dialed back his crassness. Taking advantage of this bit of warm and friendly "human energy", he followed up, "You went to see where He Zhongyi used to live because of that old auntie?"

Fei Du paused for a moment, then quietly said, "That place is run-down and out-of-the-way, the bad living mixed in with the good. There's a public toilet nearby, and when it's dark the whole street stinks. The surroundings are a lot worse than the other rentals in the area. Everyone who lives there is looking for somewhere cheap: the ones weighed down by having families to feed, the ones who have both aging parents and small children to take care of, the ones who have sick family members—they go out by themselves and bear hardships, saving money to give to their families. There are also some gamblers and drug addicts, so poor they rattle, who have no choice but to live there."

"He Zhongyi didn't use drugs, according to his friends, and he didn't gamble. He scrimped and saved." Luo Wenzhou rubbed his chin. "He kept daily accounts. His ledger was very detailed, and all the income had a minus sign in front of it..."

"He was saving money to settle his debt." Fei Du opened his eyes. "And the mysterious creditor may have told him, 'I'll give you the money, but you can't mention me to others.'"

Luo Wenzhou frowned. As they'd dredged up the circumstances of He Zhongyi's life, however he looked at it, he didn't think he could have any connection to the drug trafficking network. This matter had not only not come clear, it was growing increasingly convoluted.

He pinched the skin between his brows. "Forget it. We've caught the rats, anyway. When the time comes, we'll find out during questioning whether there was a connection."

Fei Du made a faint noise of agreement and closed his eyes again, not wanting to pay him any more attention.

The two of them sat together in silence for a moment. Then Luo Wenzhou suddenly rubbed his nose. Taking advantage of the "friendly atmosphere" of recently shared trials and tribulations, he opened his mouth and asked, "There's one thing I've never understood.—Back then, with your family's case, there was me, Tao Ran, the medical examiners, as well as the old medical examiners and old criminal policemen specially brought in to make sure our judgement wasn't mistaken... A whole crowd of people reached the same conclusion, so why am I the only one you've made life difficult for?"

Fei Du laughed mockingly.

"It's all right. Tell the truth." Feigning politeness, Luo Wenzhou added, "I won't be angry."

Fei Du heard this and spoke, indeed not being polite. He said, "Because that idiotic look of yours, like you think everyone else is blind and you have X-ray vision and can see through everything, is really annoying."

Luo Wenzhou: "..."

Having heard it, he really was pretty angry.

Just then, Luo Wenzhou's phone vibrated. He looked down, and his expression at once became very peculiar. The bit of anger he'd felt vanished without a trace.

He held back for a while, then weakly said, "So...you see..."

Fei Du looked at him in bewilderment.

"My colleague says that your car... It's very seriously damaged, and there may not be a way to repair it domestically."

"Oh?" said Fei Du. "What about it?"

Luo Wenzhou took a deep breath, threw caution and shame to the wind, then in one breath said, "They say the cost to repair it is really too high, about the same as buying a new one, several years of our reward fund won't cover it—would it be all right if we gave you a silk banner instead?"

Fei Du: "..."

Luo Wenzhou regretted it as soon as he'd spoken. He really wanted to pick up the colleague who'd sent him the text message and shake the water out of his brain—who knew what organ he'd been using to think up such a lousy idea!

But Fei Du, after staring for a moment, suddenly laughed—and it wasn't at all fake, but true helpless laughter.

Luo Wenzhou felt awkward and didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

But before he could work through his "hundred feelings mixed together," his phone rang again; this time it was Lang Qiao.

Lang Qiao's voice was very solemn. "Captain Luo, we found Chen Zhen. He's dead."

Luo Wenzhou's relaxed expression sank, and he abruptly sat up straight. "What?"

"Also, before he was arrested, one of the suspects sent a text message to have them take care of Ma Xiaowei. Our people are hurrying over there, but I don't know whether they'll be in time."

In a few words, Lang Qiao had given him the two worst pieces of news. She'd just hung up when another call came through right after—it was Tao Ran, who'd taken the evening off for once.

Luo Wenzhou absently said, "Tao Ran, I have some things to take care of, can you wait a bit..."

"Captain Luo, that lawyer of Zhang Donglai's just contacted me," Tao Ran said quickly. "He says he found a suspicious necktie in Zhang Donglai's car." 

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