Yan Xiaodao had merely been invited to the station by the criminal-investigation team for questioning. He was nowhere near being treated as a suspect, so the accompanying officers were all reasonably polite. Every gesture began with a courteous “please,” and naturally no one put him in handcuffs. Their manner, however, remained restrained and tight-lipped, revealing absolutely nothing.
Yan Xiaodao had a feeling that Captain Xue intended to make trouble for him today.
Some people simply had no affinity with one another. There was no need to know each other deeply; one look was enough to find the other person fucking irritating.
That was especially true of Yan Xiaodao and Xue Qian, two cold, stubborn men who refused to yield an inch when pushed to an extreme. Neither wanted to look directly at the other. They silently shifted their gazes away, as if their distant, evasive expressions were telling each other, You and I aren’t cut from the same cloth. The great road of the Celestial Empire is wide enough for each of us to take our own side, so can you stop standing here and offending my fucking eyes?
In the small oval-table conference room used for routine questioning, each man had a cigarette caught between his lips, both radiating an air of come at me however you like, I don’t give a damn. Captain Xue tapped his notebook lightly. “Where were you throughout the entire night when Mai Yunliang died, Mr. Yan?”
Yan Xiaodao answered, “At home.”
Xue Qian: “You stayed home the entire night?”
Yan Xiaodao’s gaze made the certainty of his answer plain, and his voice did not waver in the slightest. “I was home the whole time. I didn’t leave until morning, when I went to work.”
Xue Qian: “Can anyone testify that you were home the entire time?”
Yan Xiaodao: “There’s a whole houseful of people living with me. Any of them can testify.”
“Excellent!” Xue Qian pointed his pen at Yan Xiaodao and snapped his fingers toward the back of the room. Under Yan Xiaodao’s wolf-like stare, his deputy hurried outside to make a phone call.
“One more thing, Mr. Yan. At around dusk that day, six hours before the crime, surveillance footage shows you leaving your company in a car with a young man. You sped all the way to a certain cha chaan teng in quite a hurry. Tell me who that man was.” Xue Qian rolled the cigarette butt around with his tongue. After several exchanges back and forth, the two might as well have been trading a set of invisible punches, their gazes clashing in midair across the interrogation table.
“Am I not allowed to meet an acquaintance privately, Captain Xue?” Yan Xiaodao asked coldly.
“What if the person you met privately happened to be the victim later that night?” Xue Qian gave no ground.
“That had nothing to do with how he was harmed.” Yan Xiaodao actually felt miserable inside when he remembered every heartfelt word Mai Yunliang had said to him. He had failed to save the man’s life, yet he did not dare simply tell the police the truth, much less hand over the watch that he believed might be crucial evidence. He genuinely did not trust Xue Qian. The stakes were too high. Who the hell knew whether this man surnamed Xue could be trusted? If he learned the truth, would he seek justice for Mr. Mai—or simply silence Yan Xiaodao along with him?
“I’ll ask you directly. Before Mr. Mai was harmed that night, did you have sexual relations with him? For example, inside a private room at the cha chaan teng? Or afterward, did you—”
Before Xue Qian could finish, Yan Xiaodao fired back two words. “I didn’t.”
Xue Qian’s expression suggested he had leapt to this point long ago and had merely been waiting leisurely for Yan Xiaodao to deny it. “You’re certain, Mr. Yan?”
The flippant question was naked provocation. Yan Xiaodao pressed his rigid back tightly against the chair to suppress the urge to spring to his feet and smash the teacup. “Mr. Mai and I didn’t have that kind of relationship. I have never slept with him.”
“Well, in that case…” Xue Qian pushed his chair back, his half-smiling expression practically transforming into two enormous words: DON’T BELIEVE YOU. “The fact is that we found biological traces from more than one man inside the deceased Mai Yunliang—semen, specifically. We’re trying to eliminate the second man. We’ll have to trouble Mr. Yan to cooperate and donate a sample for DNA testing. All right?”
Yan Xiaodao stared at Xue Qian. His tongue curled around the half-burned cigarette butt, dragged it into his mouth, and slowly chewed it to pieces before spitting it onto the round conference table at the police station.
The mangled cigarette butt was streaked with blood from the oral injuries Master Qi’s slap had caused.
Xue Qian stared back without saying a word.
Yan Xiaodao pointed at the bloodstained cigarette butt on the table. “There’s your DNA. Captain Xue can take it and test it!”
*
Yan Xiaodao understood now. Some of the things this Xue fellow said were deliberately meant to provoke and humiliate him.
In his present state of mind, being suspected to his face of having had a sexual relationship with Mai Yunliang felt like an insult.
Xue Qian, meanwhile, had deliberately angered the person he was questioning as an interrogation tactic. It was not particularly excessive. He knew the man before him was intelligent and difficult to handle. If he could provoke Yan into losing his temper, perhaps something useful might slip through the cracks. What he had not expected was that Yan Xiaodao would genuinely dare throw his weight around inside a police station. Under the combined gaze of several officers, he simply stood up and walked out, openly venting his temper and showing utter contempt for the law-enforcement yamen.
He was not technically a suspect. There was no evidence against him. He had merely been invited over for tea and a chat. The police had no grounds to keep him.
“Holy fuck… That guy’s way too arrogant!” The deputy taking notes threw his pen onto the table, then had to swallow his frustration and use an evidence bag to collect the bloody cigarette butt.
“Actually, we already know who the jade ring belongs to. It isn’t Yan Xiao. We know who the owner is. But I still think this Mr. Yan is connected somehow! How could it be such a coincidence? On surveillance, right before Mai Yunliang died, he disguised himself as though he were sneaking out for a secret affair and met Yan Xiao privately for more than an hour. What did they talk about? The only other person is dead, so unless Yan Xiao is willing to tell the truth, there’s no way to verify it.” In private, Captain Xue slowly exhaled a ring of smoke, disappointment in his eyes. The frivolous manner he had displayed earlier had vanished entirely, leaving his hard, steady profile like a metal sculpture beneath the dim light.
Xue Qian shook the thick stack of internal files in his hand. “Pull Yan Xiao’s background and you get a basketful of black history. Stack his records together and they’re thicker than Jian Mingjue’s, Zhao Qifeng’s, and Mai Yunliang’s combined. The problem is that they’re all old incidents. Taken separately, none is serious enough, there aren’t any complainants left, and nothing rises to the level where we can dig up the graves now and pursue criminal liability…. We’ll deal with that some other time. Right now, we’re investigating the actual owner of that jade ring!
“Oh, right. Where are the people who went to Yan Xiao’s house to verify his alibi?” Captain Xue suddenly turned toward the others.
*
Xue Qian had deliberately kept Yan Xiaodao occupied at the station. He had never expected to extract anything crucial from the man himself. The group led by the criminal-investigation team’s deputy captain, who had stationed themselves outside Yan’s villa, were the real thrust of the surprise verification.
The team waiting outside received the phone call from the station conference room and immediately rang the villa’s doorbell. Kuanzi opened the door, obvious wariness in his eyes. “Officers, haven’t you already invited our Mr. Yan away?”
“Yes. We’re here to ask about Mr. Yan’s alibi on the night of the incident.” Deputy Captain Fang stepped straight into the living room without waiting for permission.
The only way to obtain reliable statements was to conduct surprise questioning while Yan Xiaodao was absent and had no opportunity whatsoever to coordinate false testimony beforehand. That was simply how Captain Xue handled cases; he was not singling Yan Xiaodao out. The deputy captain of the criminal-investigation team was named Fang Yuhui. Everywhere he went, he wore a baseball cap over his neat buzz cut. Deputy Captain Fang was dark-skinned and short, but his arms were lean and solid. One look told you he knew how to fight.
Yan’s younger brothers all stood in the living room on guard. Their boss was not home, so they had to protect the nest from being raided. Of course, they could not completely abandon the manners of hosts. Yang Xifeng handed every officer a cup of tea, after which the entire group stared like tigers while the cops sat on the sectional sofa sipping tea leaves. The scene was ridiculous.
Yang Xifeng answered without thinking. “We were all home that night. We can testify that Boss was sleeping at home.”
Deputy Captain Fang had the blunt temperament of a straightforward man, and his questions were just as direct. “Where did you sleep that night? Where did Mr. Yan sleep?”
Yang Xifeng said, “I slept in this room right here downstairs. Boss slept upstairs.”
Deputy Captain Fang said, “Exactly. You weren’t in the same room. So how can you testify that Mr. Yan spent the entire eight hours asleep in his room and never left this house?”
Kuanzi stared. “If he wasn’t sleeping, where else would he go? Our boss comes home to sleep every night! Officer, that’s just arguing for the sake of arguing.”
“People don’t die in Linwan New District every single night either.” Deputy Captain Fang’s naturally bronze face tightened in thought beneath his knotted black brows. “We’re only analyzing possibilities. Your Mr. Yan could have climbed down from the second floor and left the villa without any of you knowing. Correct?”
Kuanzi refused to concede. “This… Do we have to stare at him every single minute while he sleeps before we’re allowed to be witnesses?!”
A faint tap, tap had been coming from the wall connecting the basement and living room. Because the sound traveled up from the empty space below, it resembled distant, muffled rumbling, and nobody in the living room noticed it.
After the knocking continued for some time, the person below apparently could not endure it anymore. Gripping the cool, damp wall beside the staircase, he climbed upward one painful step at a time. Only then did sharp-eyed Yang Xifeng suddenly remember that there was still one very living person inside the house.
When Ling He’s face appeared behind the narrow little door, sweat had soaked his forehead and cheeks. The stairs were tight and difficult to climb, and his feet hurt viciously. At that crucial moment he cursed Yan Xiaodao from the inside out all over again. Fucking bastard.
Yang Xifeng immediately forgot everything else. “Mr. Ling, go back and rest first. The police came over looking for trouble again. They’re still in the living room!”
Ling He’s eyelids were thin, his gaze sharp and hooked. “What trouble? Trouble for your boss?”
Filled with indignation, Yang Xifeng lowered his voice and held a quick little conference with Mr. Ling. “They’re asking about the night Mr. Mai died. They insist Boss needs an alibi for every minute. Miss a single minute when nobody was watching him and they say it doesn’t count. This is fucking harassment!”
“Help me over there.” Ling He did not seem bothered at all. He gave a cold laugh and placed one hand on Yang’s shoulder. “What kind of witness do they want? Will I do?”
Deputy Captain Fang probably had never imagined that he would encounter someone this difficult inside the Yan residence today. In some respects, this man was even harder to chew through than the one sitting across the conference table from Captain Xue.
Ling He sat composedly in his usual spot on the sectional sofa. Fengfeng and Kuanzi did not even need to discuss it; they automatically took positions on either side behind Young Master Ling, becoming his personal bodyguards. Even Bear Two and Third Lady chose the perfect moment to dart over. One sprang onto the sofa and burrowed its head into Young Master Ling’s arm like a pampered pet, while the other sprawled imposingly at Ling He’s feet like a loyal hound.
That utterly overbearing display immediately made Deputy Captain Fang realize that this man was clearly the number-one figure holding the command seal in this house.
Ling He was not dressed particularly well. His shirt and trousers were stained with dust, and bandages were wrapped around his ankles. Yet he carried his own effortless elegance. His hair roots and temples had been damp with sweat from the climb; now he tied his wet hair back into a ponytail. Far from detracting from his handsome face, it gave his moist brows and eyes the hazy beauty of an ink-wash painting veiled by clouds and mist, mysterious and striking….
When Ling He smiled, the corners of his mouth curved slightly and his long, narrow eyes instantly tilted upward. The effect was both seductive and oppressive. Storm clouds seemed to churn in the darkness, bringing his entire face vividly to life. “Officer Fang, Mr. Yan and I were together that night. I can testify that he never went out.”
Deputy Captain Fang immediately sensed there was something here. “Oh… Mr. Ling, you two share a room?”
Ling He smiled beautifully and casually draped one arm along the sofa. “Of course. Mr. Yan and I slept in the same bed that night.”
Deputy Captain Fang lowered his eyes. When someone volunteered an implication this shamelessly intimate, it became rather difficult to keep questioning.
“What’s difficult about asking?” Ling He seemed to know exactly what the officers were thinking. His words had an edge, yet he made no attempt to conceal anything. “Please go back and tell Captain Xue that Yan Xiao is my man. Mr. Yan would never go looking for Mai Yunliang, and he certainly had no interest in spending the night with Mai Yunliang. He had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with that dead man. Tell Captain Xue to stop wasting his time and spend his precious investigative schedule checking the actual clients who were involved.
“Officer Fang, I was with Mr. Yan every single minute that night. Neither of us slept. Mr. Yan is the sort of man who doesn’t need sleep when he’s doing that. We did it all night…. He never left me.”
Deputy Captain Fang began feeling physically uncomfortable at that sentence. His drooping eyes flicked toward the officers who had come with him, while the subordinate taking notes found himself unable to keep writing. Inwardly, Deputy Captain Fang was cursing, Fuck, Xue screwed me again today. Why the hell did he send me to take this statement? This male demon has absolutely no filter. He should be dragged over to chat with that kinky pervert Xue Qian, whose tastes run the other way. Let the two of them have their little meeting of dragons. Maybe it’s exactly Captain Xue’s kind of entertainment. A normal man really doesn’t fucking need this kind of stimulation!
Ling He’s voice was soft and melodious, but his words were extraordinarily uninhibited. His personal dictionary had never contained words like reserved or ashamed. His palm continuously stroked the beautiful gray-white fur around Third Lady’s neck, the motion resembling the caresses exchanged between lovers. In truth, he was caressing someone from the bottom of his heart—the Mr. Yan who was absent from the room but tangled in every person’s thoughts.
For one instant, Ling He’s sore spot was struck as well. He was doing this deliberately.
He was describing the sexual fantasy in which he had immersed himself day and night recently. That night Yan Xiaodao had indeed been seized by desire and kissed him, held him, although the plot had collapsed halfway through and what followed had differed somewhat from the fantasy…. We were together the whole time. He never left me….
It was not even entirely a lie. Xiaodao truly had been beside him the entire night and had not left him for a single moment. He had existed inside Ling He’s mind and body, in every uncontrollable rise and fall of his physical fantasies.
The name “Mai Yunliang” had simply struck somewhere unpleasant, and Ling He needed to vent. The police coming to his door to investigate whether Yan Xiaodao had been involved with Mai Yunliang was itself an insult to the perfect man in Ling He’s heart. He felt sick merely hearing the two names linked together.
The unfortunate Captain Fang became the target against which Ling He vented his sharpened emotions that day, a dark cloud gathering over his head and making his face even darker. After all, the police truly had found no surveillance footage proving Yan Xiao had left home that night. Deputy Captain Fang rose quickly with a stern cop’s expression, apparently afraid that if he sat any longer the demonic miasma radiating from this little demon might cling to him. “That’ll be all. Thank you for clearing things up, Mr. Ling. We’ll contact you again if we have further questions.”
Ling He did not shift from his spot and immediately shot back, “Investigate carefully, Officer Fang. I’m afraid Captain Xue won’t be satisfied and will send you back another day looking for Mr. Yan’s biological evidence. Unfortunately, we used up the condoms and didn’t leave any for Captain Xue. I imagine any traces from sharing the bed are gone too. I’m terribly sorry to disappoint him.”
Ling He smiled after saying this and embraced the pampered pet in his arms, allowing Third Lady’s wet pink nose and tongue to brush his face. In silence, he imagined that the person touching noses with him was the one he loved, thought of, and longed for.
Fang Yuhui pulled his baseball cap lower and swept out of the Yan residence like a gust of wind without once looking back, firmly deciding that any future case involving this household could be personally considered and handled by Captain Xue himself. The demonic aura in this house reached straight to the heavens.
Ling He watched Deputy Captain Fang’s retreating back. His gaze passed over the people before him like moving scenery and leapt toward the distant world outside the window. That bastard Yan Xiaodao is mine to deal with. Anyone else wants to bully him or make trouble for him in front of me? Dream on. Even I can’t bear to do it.
*
Captain Xue’s effort had come up empty. Unwilling to accept defeat, he went straight to Bureau Chief Bao and flicked the statement open in front of him. “Chief, didn’t you brag that nobody’s a better judge of people than you? Were you right about Yan Xiao?”
Bao Zhengwei coughed and suppressed the fact that he actually knew perfectly well what was going on. “He wasn’t involved in the case. Was I wrong about that?”
Xue Qian curled his lip. “Hmph. Not involved for now. But he’s bent. Did you see that coming?”
Bureau Chief Bao: “…”
Watching this particular Yaksha sweep through the corridor with a document bag, hacking and slashing at everyone in his path, Bureau Chief Bao had a flash of inspiration and called after him, “Don’t tell me that’s why you keep inviting him over for tea whenever there’s nothing else to do? You’ve got that much free time?”
The perpetually arrogant Captain Xue nearly exploded. “The hell? I’m not interested in that type!”
Even between two men, like repelled like and opposites attracted. The ones drawn together were people with utterly different tempers and personalities whose minds could nevertheless match and admire one another—Xiaodao and Ling He, for example. People whose tempers were too similar usually could not get close at all, because neither could stand the sight of the other. Such was the relationship between Mr. Yan and Captain Xue at that moment.
Deputy Captain Fang had barely left the Yan villa when Mr. Yan was already almost home. Their timing missed by only a little.
While still on the road, Yan had intercepted Yang Xifeng’s phone report. Fengfeng was terrified his boss might learn the details too late, so over the phone he eagerly offered up every juicy detail and even embellished Mr. Ling’s already extraordinarily frank and uninhibited “testimony.”
That night, the clouds parted and the moon shone clear. Every thread of darkness obligingly withdrew at precisely that moment, leaving a washed-clean expanse of sky overhead. Beneath the cover of night, every intricate chamber of the heart seemed to have been read through completely.
It was not that they had ever been unable to read each other. There had simply been nowhere to go.
Yan Xiaodao could not even be bothered to press the electronic gate buzzer. He climbed the wall with his bare hands, vaulted the iron fence around the front yard, then took the steps leading to the house in long strides.
Only a few of his brothers were waiting in the brightly lit living room. Ling He was nowhere in sight. For a moment Yan Xiaodao was dazed, unsure whether he should go upstairs to look for him or downstairs. The uncertainty made his heart ache all over again, and he blamed himself. He had not taken proper care of that man.
Fearless Yang Xifeng pointed downstairs, immediately dying a worthy death beneath two looks from his boss sharp enough to slice him apart.
Yan Xiaodao rushed into the basement. Ling He remained sitting in the same place. The soft light spilling down the staircase painted faint halos across his face, sculpting the planes of his features in sharply divided light and shadow. He had clearly been waiting for Yan to come.
Both men’s eyes plainly showed how badly pain, conflict, and even the brief separation had tormented them.
Yan Xiaodao crouched in front of Ling He, bracing both elbows before him. Without realizing it, his ten fingers interlocked into the posture of prayer. In the past, he had never thought much of the way his adoptive mother knelt before Christ in such a posture, bowing and praying again and again. Only today did he understand that when a person truly desired and pleaded for something from the bottom of his heart, this was simply the body’s most natural expression of that sincere longing…. He truly wanted to lift the man before him into his hands.
He did not actually kneel on both knees. That much was unnecessary. With Yan Xiaodao’s stubbornly masculine temperament, he had never knelt to anyone and would never lower himself so far as to beg someone for anything.
Yan Xiaodao only wanted to ask one thing. “Ling He, you like me that much?
“You have me in your heart.
“You really… You really dared say those things to the police…. You….”
As if pulled by an overwhelmingly powerful magnetic force, Ling He bent forward. Before Yan Xiaodao could finish saying the important words, there was no need to give him any further opportunity to speak. Perhaps the two of them had never needed all that useless chatter at all. From the beginning, they had understood each other perfectly. Ling He reached down from above, wrapped an arm around his shoulders, and cupped his face. The light in their eyes touched the instant their gazes tangled, and that tiny spark, fragile as starlight, abruptly erupted into a dazzling burst of flame! The blaze roared to life in a heartbeat with unstoppable force, sweeping like wildfire across a barren plain.