That afternoon, Yan Xiaodao met several of the group’s business partners for coffee on the first floor of their corporate headquarters. In the evening, they went together to an upscale restaurant for another round of drinking. Business was discussed over the dinner table; once men were pleasantly warmed by alcohol, conversation tended to become more open and heartfelt.
If the gentlemen remained in high spirits, Yan Xiaodao would probably have to arrange a midnight round after dinner and drag them to Linwan’s most luxurious club, Yurun Paradise, for entertainment. In business circles and even officialdom, gathering allies and building your own faction often relied on this exact method: everyone slept around together and stopped observing boundaries with one another, becoming what was crudely called “bedmates.” A group of people met one another naked in a hot-spring pool or on the same large bed, stripped off their masks and respectable clothes to expose their animal faces, and after communicating through the flesh supposedly reached one another’s hearts. Only then could they trust that everyone belonged to the same side. If you refused to do things that way, nobody believed you were truly one of them.
Yan Xiaodao parked with the executives in the underground garage of Yurun Paradise and still found time to discreetly call home whenever he had an opening. The truth was that somebody there genuinely remained on his mind.
One of his sworn brothers, Kuanzi, told him over the phone, “Boss, don’t worry. That gentleman’s doing great! Everyone was playing cards and watching TV just now. Later I carried him upstairs. He’s reading in your bedroom. Want to talk to him?”
“No need. It’s fine. Mm… let him read. Nobody needs to stay awake waiting for me to come home,” Yan Xiaodao said.
Kuanzi added with a half-suppressed laugh, “Boss, the cigarette, alcohol, and meat money for all of us next month is gone. Are you going to subsidize us?”
Yan Xiaodao frowned and cursed. “What the hell did you spend it on? Feeding all your little lovers?”
“What lovers? We’ve been wronged!” Honest, good-natured Kuanzi protested. “Bro, you’re the God of Gamblers of our generation, right? Then this Mr. Ling you brought back must be the Saint of Gamblers! What a fucking scam. We finally couldn’t take losing anymore, so we carried him upstairs and made him go read instead….”
“…Seriously?” Yan Xiaodao was surprised too. He had not expected this development. He had never actually sat at the same table and played cards against Ling He, so how badly could the man have fleeced them?
Or rather, perhaps they had played at the same table once. That night, however, Ling He had been trapped in a demon’s lair with his life hanging by a thread, lying flat on his back across the gambling table on Yilu Island. He had been the largest stake Yan Xiaodao had ever gambled for and the most expensive prize he had ever won. Whenever Yan remembered that scene, it felt like a thrilling, fascinating dream played out high above the clouds. Along with satisfying a man’s pride and sense of achievement, it left a trace of sweetness on his tongue—he had won that city-toppling stake.
Yan Xiaodao greeted the several pleasantly drunk executives and ushered them into the sauna changing room. Inside the VIP suite decorated with old-fashioned carved rosewood, white steam curled through shifting human silhouettes while scantily dressed female attendants carried towels and provided close personal service….
Yan Xiaodao slipped the female manager at the front desk three times the normal tip. When he stopped before the counter, his posture was tall and straight, his face handsome beneath the dim lights and strikingly different from the potbellied drunks passing through. The manager knew him well. Smiling, she lowered her voice. “Mr. Yan, just tell us if you need anything. Are you still looking for Miss Yin? She said she only receives you, Mr. Yan, and won’t take any other customers. Otherwise she just goes onstage to sing.”
Women with higher status and a little seniority learned to choose their customers rather than merely waiting for customers to choose them. They could refuse anyone they did not wish to serve and turn up their noses at greasy, potbellied men with obscene faces. In truth, who sincerely wanted to spend her life doing this sort of work and serving other people? Who did not dream of being fortunate enough to meet someone decent and leave this life while there was still time?…
“I’ve got other business tonight. Another day. Give her my regards.” Yan Xiaodao declined the opportunity, but still took a red envelope from the counter, generously placed a stack of money inside, and asked the manager to pass it to Miss Yin.
Even if he did not sleep with her, he still paid. Nobody had an easy life. To him, this was a matter of affection and human obligation. Whether between men and women or in any other relationship, he did not mistreat the people around him. Yan Xiaodao believed he could face anyone beside him with a clear conscience.
His phone had chimed with several messages already, and he had been finding the matter too troublesome to answer.
But he could not keep ignoring them. His fingers moved rapidly: 【Uncle, I’m handling business these few days. Can I come see you in another couple of days?】
Bureau Chief Bao had grown accustomed to ordering the people beneath him around like donkeys. It made no difference that Yan Xiaodao did not actually work for him and had no obligation to obey: 【Today. Right now. Hurry over and see me.】
Yan Xiaodao helplessly pinched the bridge of his nose: 【Uncle, it really isn’t convenient right now. I can’t get away.】
Bao Zhengwei was nearly losing his temper: 【Where the hell are you? I’ll come find you myself!】
Yan Xiaodao hurriedly replied: 【No need. I’m the one who hasn’t been attentive enough. Give me a time and place.】
Bao Zhengwei did not stand on ceremony: 【Right now. No. 101 Quefang Road, Lianxin Tea Retreat. I’ll wait in a private room.】
…
Yan Xiaodao entrusted the manager and several subordinates with looking after the guests in the sauna suite, then hurried straight to the garage, retrieved his car, and raced toward Quefang Road in the gap he had managed to create.
Bureau Chief Bao did not meet Yan Xiaodao often. He only called him over for genuinely important matters and was extremely cautious about it, choosing a different location every time and certainly never summoning him directly to the bureau.
This was a private tea restaurant. During the day, it sold simple Western meals and catered to nearby white-collar office workers. At night it served coffee, tea, and desserts for fashionably middle-class men and women looking for somewhere to socialize. The Tea Retreat was decorated with considerable atmosphere. Before entering the corridor leading to the private rooms, guests were required to wash their hands and face and change into slippers handwoven from palm leaves.
Yan Xiaodao thought this place really did not resemble anything Bureau Chief Bao would normally appreciate. How cautious and secretive did the man have to be to pick a dating spot like this to discuss a case with him? Anyone who did not know better might think spring had finally returned to the old dead tree and their bureau chief was blooming romantically again!
A row of dim yellow lanterns swayed beneath the eaves as Yan Xiaodao found the private room Bureau Chief Bao had named.
Bureau Chief Bao sat beside the low tea table with his legs stretched out, both slippers rudely thrown into a corner, wearing glasses as he read through documents. He lifted his eyelids and shot Yan Xiaodao two glances over the rims by way of greeting, then slapped the cushion beside him.
Yan Xiaodao respectfully inclined his head, sat down beside Bureau Chief Bao, and poured tea for him.
Bureau Chief Bao mocked him. “Now you’re acting all polite like a mouse in front of a cat. Just now you were too scared to come see me no matter what?”
Yan Xiaodao smiled. “A mouse is supposed to be afraid of seeing a cat.”
Bureau Chief Bao interrogated him like a parent questioning a child. “Where were you eating, drinking, whoring, and gambling just now? I was about ready to raid your den myself.”
Yan Xiaodao hurriedly said, “Please don’t. I was at Yurun Paradise. Someone like you really shouldn’t follow people like us around and make mistakes.”
Bao Zhengwei cursed. “Shameless little bastard. Just wait. One of these days I’ll send the vice squad over to raid that filthy den of yours.”
Whenever Yan Xiaodao met this King Yama, he immediately wore the smiling face of some minor ghost serving under him. “Before you raid the place, make sure you warn me in advance. Don’t trap me inside.”
Bureau Chief Bao could do nothing with Yan Xiaodao, but he had always held a certain appreciation for him too. He knew Xiaodao was still different from most of those people—and even more different from Qi Baoshan. He was a “middle element” who might still be drawn over and rehabilitated…. Bao met Yan Xiaodao entirely in a private capacity through a private relationship, something that could never be displayed publicly, yet the purpose was official work rather than personal favoritism. A magistrate in the government yamen privately cultivating several informants from the underworld was hardly some unforgivable flaw even if colleagues discovered it someday.
Bureau Chief Bao returned to a serious expression and took out the file. “It’s a homicide case. We’ve hit a wall at the forensic stage and can’t move forward. I need you to help us take a look. The important photographs of the remains are all here. First, you keep this to yourself and keep your mouth shut. Second, tell me how this person died.”
Keeping his mouth shut was something Yan Xiaodao could absolutely do, because he was neither stupid nor foolish. His private meetings with Bao Zhengwei were definitely concealed from Qi Baoshan. Under the old rules of the jianghu, what Yan Xiaodao was doing now amounted to secretly colluding with the Ministry of Justice yamen and betraying his own side. In a gang, that could cost him several fingers….
Bao Zhengwei provided no further background whatsoever about the time, place, or circumstances of the case. As an old hand in this line of work, Bureau Chief Bao understood confidentiality and treated it extremely cautiously. Whenever he asked Yan Xiaodao to examine something, he simply threw down several photographs, a piece of evidence, or a knife and asked him to look. Nothing else was disclosed. Several times, Yan Xiaodao only realized after reading the news report announcing a solved case that it seemed to be something he had once helped the cops inspect.
If they had brought Yan Xiaodao in to examine the cause of death, it had to involve blade wounds.
None of the photographs carried identifying information. After several glances, Yan Xiaodao felt that there was simply no way to judge.
It was a pile of human bones, and an incomplete one at that. The police had photographed every possible part of the remains in as much detail and clarity as they could, but obviously the body had decayed far too long ago. The person had been dead for Heaven knew how many years.
Yan Xiaodao stared at the photographs, baffled. “How long has he been dead? It’s too difficult to find traces now.”
Bureau Chief Bao scrutinized him without answering the question.
Yan Xiaodao asked, “Any other evidence? Clothing, possessions, or the murder weapon?”
Bureau Chief Bao shook his head with a movement so slight it was almost impossible to detect. “If it were that easy, we have experienced forensic pathologists. Why would I need you?”
Yan Xiaodao asked again, “What did the forensic examiners say?”
Bureau Chief Bao could tell Yan Xiaodao was another tight-lipped gourd who refused to show his hand until he saw the rabbit. “The forensic team said every mark on the bones was made by a blade. But every professional forensic pathologist in the bureau is still, at the end of the day, a university graduate raised in an ivory tower. None of them has spent his life outside the laboratory and morgue actually taking a knife out and chopping people.”
“…”
Yan Xiaodao silently studied the photographs for a full twenty minutes. Bureau Chief Bao was extraordinarily patient and did not rush him, but neither did he show any intention of letting him go. He simply sat there drinking tea, resting, and staring. This was how leaders watched subordinates work: if you could not produce a result, you could sit there and look all night.
Yan Xiaodao was cautious too. He only dared speak after thinking things through and confirming them. He would not talk nonsense.
Why was he being so cautious? Bureau Chief Bao would only seek him out for some difficult major case. Yan Xiaodao suddenly remembered the gossip from the police officers he had taken to dinner not long ago: the authorities had found the remains of the principal offender in a major robbery from more than ten years earlier. Bureau Chief Bao stubbornly refused to reveal the details, so Yan Xiaodao could only guess. If these were indeed those white bones, then the suspect really had been ambushed, retaliated against, or perhaps merely met with karmic retribution and been hacked apart by a chaotic storm of blades. If you lived in the jianghu, how could you never take a blade? The world went in cycles. Every debt eventually came due.
At last, he spread the photographs across the table in a particular order and began explaining. “Uncle, this man died badly. The killers… I think there were at least four of them.”
Bao Zhengwei’s hawk-like eyes remained sharp and bright, his pupils still blazing with the capable intelligence of a much younger man. His gaze clearly told Yan Xiaodao to keep going, quickly.
Yan Xiaodao said, “Too much time has passed. This person has been rotting for at least ten years, so there’s no possibility of recovering the original muscle patterns. But you can still see certain things from the joints and seams of the bones in key areas. He was probably hacked while he was still alive, for quite a long time, with a great many blows, and then dismembered after death.
“Look at this mark on the leg bone. It resembles a fracture, and one that never healed. There may have been a violent struggle. He fell from a height, broke the bone, was pursued and hacked at, was overwhelmed by superior numbers, and ultimately died.
“There are also several traces of corrosion. Perhaps after burial the remains came into contact with some corroding metal substance….”
Bao Zhengwei abruptly interrupted. “Forget everything else. Give me the important part. Four people.”
Even the forensic examiners had not dared give that number. Four perpetrators instantly multiplied the complexity of the case geometrically—but at the same time, it tore open many possible points of breakthrough.
Yan Xiaodao drew in a deep breath. “Whenever someone uses a blade, the technique, force, and angle are different. Whether you’re talking about a killer or a cook working in a kitchen, knife work is like a fingerprint. It can distinguish one person from another.”
Bureau Chief Bao asked, “Were they trained professionals?”
Yan Xiaodao shook his head with certainty. “No. They were extremely bad with knives.”
Bureau Chief Bao clarified, “Bad compared with you, or…?”
Yan Xiaodao shook his head again. “A complete group of amateurs and rabble. Something happened unexpectedly, they started killing at random, and they just hacked away wildly.”
Bureau Chief Bao asked the most practical question. “If it was random hacking, how can you tell there were four people? Can you give me profiles of all four?”
Yan Xiaodao half-curled one hand over his mouth while thinking through and narrating the scene his mind had constructed. “None of them had experience. They didn’t know which joint to strike to disable somebody cleanly and efficiently, so they wasted a lot of blows. One of them was comparatively calm and not stupid. He had a sharp eye and hit several genuinely damaging areas, quickly destroying the victim’s ability to resist. The important point is that this person should have been left-handed. The cuts entered the bone at a slant from the left. The marks are already extremely faint because of erosion, but I think he was left-handed. His direction with the knife was the opposite of mine.
“The second person is extremely strange. Either he was insane, intellectually disabled, or more likely had some particular psychological disorder and was seriously abnormal. The marks he left were made with the point of the knife facing straight downward, stabbing vertically from above….” Yan Xiaodao even provided a standard physical demonstration to accompany his story, somehow producing a long knife from his waist so quickly that Bureau Chief Bao did not clearly see the movement and gesturing over the table with it. “Normal people don’t do this. It’s like a child mindlessly jabbing at something. He stabbed downward over and over in a mechanically repeated movement with considerable force. The marks belonging to the point of his knife are concentrated around the victim’s hip bones and pelvis.
“The third person is the only one whose sex I can’t determine. The other three were men. This one might have been a man or a woman, perhaps even a child, because the person was far too weak. Their courage was barely the size of a needle’s eye too. I honestly don’t understand why they even bothered using the knife.” Yan Xiaodao narrowed his eyes halfway, as though he had already transported himself into some imagined crime scene in a blood-soaked wilderness on a dark rainy night, watching a group of people reveal vicious faces while committing robbery and murder.
Bureau Chief Bao leaned forward, listening with complete concentration. “What do you mean, the person was timid too?”
Yan Xiaodao said, “All of the third person’s marks are on the victim’s feet, and the blade traces are faint and wavering. That points to at least three possibilities. First, these marks were made after the victim had already fallen and could no longer move. Another few cuts or a few fewer would have made no difference. Second, this person stayed relatively far from the victim, positioned down by the feet, away from the face and neck where blood would spray. That suggests fear—a normal person’s instinctive terror of death and capacity for empathy. Third, the person was either physically weak or too frightened to use force. Even hacking at the feet, the blows were feeble. If the skin and muscle there weren’t so thin and the blade hadn’t lightly touched bone, there wouldn’t have been enough evidence left to reveal that this person had ever participated.”
Bureau Chief Bao rapidly sketched a position diagram and wrote down the important elements. “So this person might have been one of the principal offender’s followers?”
Drawing on years of experience, Yan Xiaodao said, “Followers are usually the ones who strike hardest. People with higher status don’t need to do the dirty work personally. After all, everybody would rather achieve the goal while leaving the blood on somebody else’s hands.
“There’s another possibility. Four people committed an irreversible crime together, and every one of them had to stain their hands with blood as a bloody pledge of allegiance, binding them to one another and proving they would never betray the group or reveal the secret of the murder. This person may have been forced by the others to use the knife, but because they were cowardly, they ultimately only trembled the blade across the victim’s foot.”
Bureau Chief Bao gave him a long, deep look, making Yan Xiaodao wonder whether he had said too much and been a little too honest….
Bureau Chief Bao stabbed his pen against the paper. “The fourth person?”
This time Yan Xiaodao leaned slightly forward, his expression grave. “The fourth person is the most important. He was the principal killer who caused the death—or, more precisely, his blows were the most savage. Extremely savage. He was hacking wildly too, but his was the kind of brutal hacking done without any psychological restraint. Several blows landed directly on the skull and shoulder, another cut horizontally across the sternum. The marks are deep, made with tremendous force, leaving himself no road back…. This was a ruthless desperado with little sympathy for bloodshed or human life. Definitely a man in his physical prime, with very powerful hands, and possibly the ‘big brother’ figure who exercised some leadership and control over the others….”
Bureau Chief Bao said, “…Good!”
It was almost too perfect.
Bureau Chief Bao capped his fountain pen, reached out, and gripped Yan Xiaodao’s shoulder, silently expressing his gratitude. There was no need for unnecessary words.
As Bureau Chief Bao stood, he even tossed out one shamelessly convenient remark. “Xiaodao, I’m not bringing you any gifts. If I give you something, that counts as offering benefits to buy you off. I don’t dare accept anything you give me either, because that would count as taking bribes from a businessman. Everything’s being investigated too strictly these days!”
Yan Xiaodao had never seen such an unreasonable superior speak with such righteous conviction. Rubbing his reddened eyelids, he said, “Uncle Bao, I understand. What you mean is I shouldn’t bother expecting any allowance or subsidy for being your unofficial employee.”
Under the light in the private room, Bao Zhengwei looked at Yan Xiaodao with thoughts he could not conveniently express. Finally, he could not resist saying, “Xiaodao, you don’t even know who your biological parents are. Truth is, if you weren’t that person’s godson already, I’d want to take you as my own godson.”
The implication was fairly obvious. Yan Xiaodao used the motion of tidying the tea set to conceal his reaction and did not answer such a direct gesture of goodwill from the lord of the government yamen. He had always been fortunate with elders and older men. Despite having no biological father, more than one person had apparently entertained the idea of claiming him as a godson.
Being “a servant of two masters” was not how Yan Xiaodao conducted himself. Even though he respected Bao Zhengwei from the bottom of his heart and was willing to help him out of loyalty, without payment and so long as certain core interests were not touched, he would not shift his allegiance.
Bao Zhengwei did not force him to declare anything. He patted Yan Xiaodao’s shoulder. “I only want to remind you to behave yourself and be careful. Anything illegal or criminal—if you can avoid doing it, then absolutely do not do it! Even if somebody forces you, you’re still not allowed! Otherwise I won’t bend the law or let you go just because I know you!”
Yan Xiaodao nodded sincerely. “Don’t worry, Uncle. I’ll listen to you.”
…
As usual, Bureau Chief Bao left the Tea Retreat first, and Yan Xiaodao waited several minutes before following.
He sat in the car with the window open, letting the cool, waterlike night breeze mess up the hair across his forehead. He genuinely had no desire to return to Yurun Paradise. He could not summon any interest in going back to the sauna and massage rooms to socialize with those broad-shouldered, potbellied old men. It felt boring. Or perhaps Bao Zhengwei’s pile of photographs had simply disgusted him too thoroughly. Looking at bones made him think of corpses, and once he thought of corpses, he did not even want to look at naked bodies anymore!
After all, Yan Xiaodao was not a forensic pathologist. He took no pleasure in studying things like that.
He wanted to go home.
He simply wanted to see the person who made him relax, feel happy, and feel at peace. Even if that certain person had a mouth full of unpleasant things, constantly tried to outdo everyone, insisted on being strong, and never let anything go once he had the advantage, catching a cricket and bickering with him during quiet moments at home could actually be rather entertaining….
Yan Xiaodao rested his left hand along the open window frame and called the deputy he had left at Yurun Paradise, telling them to look after the guests properly. His right arm had not completely recovered, so he kept it close against his body and used a small but practiced movement to turn the steering wheel. At the intersection, he suddenly swung onto another road, deciding not to return to the club and to drive straight home instead.
It was during that casual sharp turn that Yan Xiaodao propped his cheek on one hand and glanced indifferently into the left rearview mirror. A black car seemed to be following him, rushing through the yellow light to make the same turn.
Yan Xiaodao half-lowered his eyelids and watched the mirror from the corner of his eye. At the next small intersection, he immediately turned again….
He drove a large figure eight around the surrounding neighborhood.
Perhaps the black car realized he was deliberately circling. Without a sound, it abruptly turned the opposite way at one intersection and disappeared. Yan Xiaodao only managed to catch a glimpse through the window of a young man’s profile, his face hidden beneath a cap and sunglasses, leaving his appearance impossible to make out.
Because I just met Bureau Chief Bao?
Was someone following me and Bao Zhengwei?
Or was there some other reason?
Yan Xiaodao drove all the way toward his villa community with no tail behind him now.
Perhaps he was simply too cautious and suspicious by habit and had imagined the whole thing. Qi Baoshan was not even on the mainland, so Yan had far fewer reservations. There was nobody else he particularly feared. If Master Qi had still been sitting at home holding down their territory, Yan Xiaodao would neither have dared nor wanted to meet privately with Bureau Chief Bao.
When he drove into the villa courtyard, he saw that a table lamp was still glowing in the little sitting room beside the bedroom where the books were kept. At that moment, the light seemed to illuminate the entire house and make it extraordinarily warm.
He would simply pretend that somebody was still awake waiting for him to come home…. After the whole day, a trace of warmth finally rose inside Yan Xiaodao’s heart, as though from its deepest and loneliest place a small pale-yellow flame had suddenly leapt into life, flickering with anticipation.
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