Before dawn the next morning, before Kuanzi had even returned with his bucketful of breakfast after morning training, Qi Baoshan called Yan Xiaodao over to “pay his morning respects.”
“Pay his morning respects” was only a joke. Father and son had maintained this habit for many years. Whenever Master Qi was in a good mood and the spring weather looked pleasant, he would summon Xiaodao to his shaded residence in the city to amuse himself with crickets, gossip, and idly shoot the breeze. On the phone Qi Baoshan told him, “Don’t eat breakfast. Come eat here. I’ll cook for you myself.”
But during such a troubled spring, a meeting this early in the morning felt neither here nor there. Yan Xiaodao suspected his godfather definitely had not invited him over to play with crickets or mahjong and was probably going to reopen yesterday’s matter.
Before leaving, he quietly went down to the basement. Ling He lay on the damp bedding against the wall.
Ling He faced the wall, burying his entire expression in shadow, one hand resting across his abdomen. Yan Xiaodao suspected he was already awake but knew he would not speak to him. Yan leaned over and kissed one temple, easing a little of the longing in his own heart, then squeezed Ling He’s wrist before leaving.
Morning sunlight filtered through the branches along the tree-lined road and painted mottled patterns across Yan Xiaodao’s face as he approached the little white house.
The courtyard was extremely quiet. The dripping Guanyin fountain continued dripping as usual. The myna bird saw a familiar visitor and, just as it had for years, called his name in its low local accent: “Maaaster Daaao~~~”
When Qi Baoshan and Yan Xiaodao met, both were old jianghu hands, experienced and practiced. They tried not to mention yesterday’s unpleasantness. A slight nod, one quiet “Godfather” from Xiaodao, and the matter was considered over. What else could they do?
Qi Baoshan signaled with his eyes for Yan to sit in the rosewood armchair beside the table. Then he deliberately walked over, lifted Yan’s coat and shirt layer by layer, and inspected the wound underneath.
“I put medicine on it. It’s fine,” Yan Xiaodao said.
“I knew it had to be fine. You only stuck the tip in about the size of a fingernail. You were just waving the knife around to scare me!” Qi Baoshan said disdainfully.
His godfather was giving him a way down from the stage. Yan Xiaodao lowered his eyes and smiled awkwardly. Both understood perfectly well.
“You knew I couldn’t bear to see you hurt, huh? In this world, fathers are always the ones worrying about their sons. When has a son ever worried about his old man? Every family’s the same. Unfilial brat.” Qi Baoshan sat in the armchair on the other side of the Eight Immortals table. Two jade walnuts clicked as he rolled them from his left hand to his right, half teasing and half scolding Xiaodao.
“Your son worries about his godfather too. I won’t do that again.” Yan Xiaodao apologized quietly.
Qi Baoshan also seemed deliberately intent on repairing their relationship today. He personally rinsed the tea set and brewed tea for Yan. When Yan reached to help, Qi pushed his hand away. “Your hands are too rough. You don’t know how.”
As if asking casually, Qi Baoshan suddenly said, “Before that Mai kid got into trouble, did you meet him?”
Yan Xiaodao paused slightly. “…Mm. We happened to meet that evening.”
Qi Baoshan: “What did you talk about?”
Yan Xiaodao: “Nothing special.”
Qi Baoshan looked at him from beneath lowered lids, carefully examining his expression. Yan Xiaodao began calculating as well. How did Godfather know? Qi must also have informants scattered inside the police department. It certainly was not Xue Qian, but Qi Baoshan had probably learned the contents of Yan’s statement at the station.
Qi Baoshan was clearly suspicious and pressed him. “Really nothing special? Xiaodao, don’t hide things from me. Did he show you anything? Give you anything?”
Yan Xiaodao’s heart genuinely skipped.
Qi Baoshan displayed no threatening expression. His complete lack of expression was more intimidating than any obvious threat. One hand toyed with an exquisite bone-china teacup while the other tapped lightly against the table. The meaning was obvious: With your little bit of experience, don’t even try hiding it.
Yan Xiaodao actually had the item with him. He had intended to stop by another authorized imported-brand watch store while he was in the city.
Unwillingly, without saying a word, he took the elegant blue box from his briefcase.
For the better part of the next half day, Yan Xiaodao sat beside the rosewood table and watched his godfather dismantle the watch!
Qi Baoshan had clearly reached exactly the same conclusion as his godson. He too suspected the Swiss watch concealed something. Mai Yunliang had just happened to give Yan Xiaodao a watch on the very night he died. There had to be some hidden purpose behind it! Master Qi maintained a grave, seasoned expression as though facing a formidable enemy, leaning over the desk and carefully prying open the case with several fine-pointed tools.
Yan Xiaodao had never realized his godfather possessed such skills. Presumably Qi had picked up all kinds of trades while working to survive in his youth. He also liked tinkering with old mechanical objects from the Republican era in his residence and collected antiques, so he knew a little about watch repair.
Yan Xiaodao’s nerves rose and fell wildly. His gaze practically drilled into the tableful of tiny parts no larger than pins. He was terrified his godfather might uncover whatever secret Mai Yunliang had truly hidden inside—something perhaps unsuitable for any outsider to know. He still remembered Mai Yunliang’s repeated warning: “You must keep it yourself. Don’t give it to anyone else.”
Qi Baoshan put on a pair of gold-rimmed reading glasses and bent his head with intense concentration, holding the watch in his right hand while turning a miniature screwdriver with his left….
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He dismantled the entire watch completely. By the end, even the back of Master Qi’s pale moon-white silk jacket was damp with sweat. The conclusion: nothing. He found absolutely nothing.
That conclusion made Yan Xiaodao secretly release an enormous breath. The secret had not been exposed before a third party, so he had not betrayed Mr. Mai. Yet he still had not cracked the watch and had still failed to fulfill Mr. Mai’s final request.
Qi Baoshan, forehead covered in sweat, finally gave up. He reassembled the watch and, equally unwillingly, handed the box back to Xiaodao.
Yan Xiaodao explained almost as if brainwashing his godfather, “So it really is just an ordinary watch.”
Qi Baoshan helplessly pointed at him. “You little brat. Somehow all these romantic troubles just keep finding you!”
Yan Xiaodao: “…There really was nothing like that.”
Qi Baoshan shook his head and still could not stop himself from warning him. “Xiaodao, I know what kind of man you are. You value loyalty, and you think too much. Whatever happens, you keep it inside and refuse to tell me. But this time your godfather is only going to remind you once: whatever that young man surnamed Mai told you back then, do not get involved.”
Do not get involved.
“Do you understand what I mean, Xiaodao? Your godfather has lived twenty years longer than you. I’m sincerely telling you this for your own good. Some things should not be asked about and cannot be touched. Mr. Mai is dead now. He has disappeared from this world. Burn him a basin of paper offerings every Qingming and you’ll have fulfilled your duty as a friend. Draw a red line for yourself. This is something you cannot manage and cannot carry on your shoulders. Do not touch it!”
Yan Xiaodao nodded softly. “I understand.”
Qi Baoshan relaxed. The gloom dispersed and the sky seemed to clear. Only then did he remember his godson still had not eaten, so he went into the kitchen to prepare a late breakfast. Yan Xiaodao genuinely could not cook, so he did not bother pretending by following into the kitchen and rolling up his sleeves. Anything he cooked was practically inedible. Even the two dogs in his house despised his cooking. Master Bear himself refused to eat it!
Qi Baoshan was an excellent cook. Even when eating noodles, he was particular about having hand-rolled noodles. Master Qi prepared a pot of local homestyle noodles with thick gravy, finely chopping daylily buds, wood-ear mushrooms, cabbage, and fried tofu puffs before simmering them together. He peeled a whole strainerful of large prawns, chopped them, and tossed them into the gravy, added a few drops of soy sauce for color, then thickened the whole pot with starch…. The aroma was irresistible. Wealthy bosses did not necessarily enjoy hiring maids and chefs. Qi Baoshan liked to prepare food for himself at home as a kind of art of living, and he often found other people’s cooking inferior.
The only kitchen help Yan Xiaodao could offer was peeling prawn shells, but he could personally demolish more than half the pot of noodles. He had loved his godfather’s noodles since childhood.
Qi Baoshan also showed off his knife skills by slicing a plate of razor-clam meat and tossing it cold with shredded cucumber, a refreshing seaside specialty.
Every so often, Master Qi raised his hand and offered Yan a piece of razor clam. Yan leaned forward toward his hand and almost took it directly with his mouth before ultimately reaching up and taking it with his fingers instead. In the past, he would have eaten directly from Qi’s hand.
Qi Baoshan did not say anything or react. Yet at that moment his heart turned cold. In the end, a layer now existed between them, a taboo and estrangement that might never be repaired. He had raised this son for more than ten years, and now it felt as though he had raised him for someone else, almost ready to hand him over. Qi truly resented it. Still, he considered himself a decent gentleman in certain respects, especially when it came to Xiaodao. He had treated him with absolute benevolence and never intended to force him. He had even planned to leave his estate to Xiaodao when he was finally nailed inside his coffin. In this respect, nobody could find a single fault with Qi Baoshan.
Yan Xiaodao stood lazily against the kitchen doorframe with both hands in his pockets, idly watching his godfather slice cucumber.
The man was using his left hand.
Qi Baoshan was left-handed.
Yan Xiaodao had always known that. Master Qi generally ate, wrote, and shook hands with important people using his right hand. Only when wielding a kitchen knife, or doing delicate work requiring total concentration—such as dismantling the Swiss watch just now—did his natural left-handed habit reveal itself. That was something he had never been able to change.
That same day, Captain Xue, who was always extraordinarily efficient and handled investigations like military campaigns, invited Young Master You Haodong into the small conference room at the police station.
He received the same treatment as Mr. Yan: tea and cigarettes, no iron chair inside an interrogation room. But nobody was being spared. Every important person had to be put through the process once.
News that Young Master You had gone to the municipal bureau for “tea” quickly reached every well-informed person in their circles. Many privately remarked that this was essentially a signal flare trailing orange-red smoke fired directly at the You family. Captain Xue was only the vanguard representative of the municipal yamen. Anything he dared do had certainly received authorization or guidance from higher levels. Something was about to happen to the You family. Even Xue Qian was no longer afraid and had openly begun putting pressure on the You family’s son. Who would have dared before?
You Haodong really had engaged in sexual activity with Mai Yunliang that night. The ring and biological traces corroborated it. Arrogant though Young Master You was, even he had no choice but to admit the truth before Captain Xue with an ashen face. Young Master You had always looked down on cops like Xue Qian, people who ran around stirring up trouble and lighting fires everywhere, impervious to both bribes and threats, and therefore extremely irritating. He had no private friendship with Xue whatsoever; whenever they encountered each other, both kept cold expressions and could not even be bothered to offer the other a cigarette. Who knew whether Young Master You now sincerely regretted leaving himself no room to maneuver in ordinary times, and wondered why he had never made an effort to cultivate the famously unbribable male Yaksha of the law-enforcement yamen.
But You Haodong remained confident that this would not implicate him. Xue Qian was merely looking for trouble.
Yes, he had fucked Mai Yunliang. So what? He had not committed murder or arson. There was no blood on his hands. Mai Yunliang’s death had nothing to do with him.
Captain Xue understood as well that You Haodong was not the person who killed Mai Yunliang. An affair between men in bed was not enough to touch the deeply rooted Young Master You. Taking another step back, even if You Haodong had been the murderer, whether he could actually be convicted was probably not something a minor local police bureau or procuratorate could decide by itself. Too many high-level interests and political relationships were tangled into the matter. Ultimately, it came down to which side—the suspect or the victim—had the thicker arms and stronger thighs behind them.
Mai Yunliang seemed destined to have died for nothing.
The only people who genuinely wanted to seek justice for Mr. Mai were unexpectedly Xue Qian inside the police system and Yan Xiaodao outside it, together with countless devoted mourners and followers online who had never met him. Mai Yunliang had been glamorous while alive, a priceless money tree and flower of the demimonde. The moment he died, however, his management company discarded him like worn-out shoes and refused to mention him again, terrified that the scandal might contaminate the other cats and dogs under their banner. How could anyone lift the lid on secret scandals among officials and wealthy elites and expose the ugly truth beneath?
Mai Yunliang’s own family was no help either. His mother, already past fifty yet still lingering in entertainment districts, refusing honest work, fond of pleasure and gambling, appeared before the media microphones wearing a savage expression of righteous indignation, her ruined makeup twisted from crying. In the end, what she wanted was compensation money. For years, she had relied on the money her son earned selling his body to repay her gambling debts. Now the ATM had suddenly gone dead without warning. Who was going to support her for the rest of her life?
The “father” field in Mai Yunliang’s records was completely blank and impossible to trace. His biological father would certainly never step forward now to cry injustice for him. He would hide as far away as possible.
And so young masters like Jian Mingjue and You Haodong, who had become entangled in the case, would ultimately do no more than spend money to eliminate the disaster: pay Mr. Mai’s funeral expenses, settle the hole left by his mother’s gambling debts, and give the old woman enough to keep her mouth shut. Very soon, nobody in their circles would mention the name again.
Captain Xue carried righteous anger and resentment in his heart. Even as a man inside the system there were things he was powerless to change, but dragging these men into the station and questioning every one of them was still a warning shot. These spoiled sons of wealthy and powerful families, accustomed to arrogance and looking down on everyone, ought at least to understand that above social law there was still a moral red line and a bottom line worth fearing.
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The broad outline of the case seemed to have emerged, yet many details remained maddeningly unclear. Why had Mai Yunliang happened to choose a hotel frequently visited by Young Master You? Who had deliberately or accidentally damaged so much surveillance footage? Who had lured Mai into the room reserved by Young Master Liang and switched Zhao Qifeng’s electronic key? And who exactly had called Ms. Zhao and tricked her into going to the scene?… If nobody intended to investigate further, it was still possible to cobble together a vague explanation for the public. Keyboard warriors would never know the baffling details underneath.
But apparently someone did not want the case to end with a roar and a whimper.
The turning point happened precisely at noon on the day Young Master You was invited to the criminal-investigation team for tea. It was almost as if the two sides had arranged it in advance, waiting specifically until twelve sharp, when nearly every company and government office had entered its lunch break and students were pouring out of classrooms toward cafeterias.
The internet exploded again.
Captain Xue had just watched Young Master You leave the conference room with a face blackened by bad luck when a young officer grabbed him with a horrified expression and whispered, “Captain Xue, someone leaked something online again. This time several video platforms blew up at once. I-I clicked one open quietly. It’s surnamed You and Mai Yunliang… doing that. Someone filmed it!”
Even Xue Qian found that hard to believe. Someone had filmed them that night? And dared release it?
The criminal-investigation office erupted instantly. Everyone grabbed the nearest computer and searched for the videos, staring in shock. Someone forgot to lower the volume, and harsh wet sounds and rough panting burst from the speakers, making several people nauseous. A straightforward man like Deputy Captain Fang, whose temperament and orientation were both uncompromisingly conventional, was so disgusted he slammed down the keyboard and stopped watching. He could not even eat his boxed lunch afterward.
Nearly everyone learned the news at the same time.
An aluminum basin scraped completely clean sat on the table before Yan Xiaodao while his godfather was still eating slowly. Yan had slipped into the kitchen and scraped the last spoonful of gravy from the iron pot. Before he could step back out, the two lines of his gaze focused on his phone screen and abruptly froze in total shock….
Young Master You had barely left the station himself and was sitting inside his private car stewing in anger when one frantic phone call after another began detonating through his phone. “Brother Dong, y-you need to look online. That thing… it looks like somebody filmed you….”
The sex video arrived like a sudden seismic shock across the internet, flooding everything in sight. Its shaking, blurry yet sensationally obscene images smashed into everyone’s field of attention and burned themselves into collective memory, leaving nowhere to hide.
Captain Xue probably could not immediately tell where the video had been filmed.
Yan Xiaodao recognized it at a glance.
He had stayed at this hotel before. The room layout was nearly identical, but the key clue was the elaborate mahogany carving at the headboard in the South Seas island style: a heron standing long-necked in the water. It was the national bird of Yilu Island and could be seen everywhere there.
The heron stood aloof from the world, its posture tranquil and elegant, indifferent to mundane affairs. It silently watched the violently entangled bodies on the bed and the groans filling the room, its gaze seeming full of compassion and forgiveness.
The victim pinned beneath in a kneeling position trembled painfully under the assault. His face had been blurred, yet during such an extraordinary period, many people could identify Mai Yunliang from the sweat-dampened contours of his chest and abdomen, the small marks on his arms, even the shape of his fingers clawing at the bedsheets.
The assailant had not been blurred at all. It was as though the entire purpose was to expose every ugly act to the world, to display all the brutality and viciousness normally hidden from public sight nakedly before the camera and use an invisible method to strip a man’s skin from his bones and tear out his heart and liver.
The situation had become enormous. Xue Qian angrily hurled a stack of documents across the room into the whiteboard. The papers knocked crooked a large crimson silk banner hanging on the wall, signed “Liang Group.” As sheets scattered through the air like heavenly flowers, Xue Qian cursed, “Who the fuck did this?!” Cyber-police units immediately sprang into action in every direction, censoring and deleting the video in an attempt to keep the damage within controllable limits.
Several major video platforms hurriedly issued statements distancing themselves from responsibility: We absolutely did not publish this video. Our websites were hacked this morning!
But it was too late. Numerous third-rate and illegal sites immediately reposted it. In an age when everyone was adept with technology, explosive gossip capable of generating such traffic and national attention could not be stopped. The more something was forbidden to circulate, the more relentlessly the soft tentacles of social media penetrated every corner and crevice of the virtual world with the cruelest fragments of private life….
The cyber unit quietly reported to Captain Xue that the hack appeared to originate from overseas addresses.
That already exceeded the reach of Captain Xue’s two arms and his jurisdiction. Xue Qian chewed a cigarette butt to pieces between his teeth. He believed his judgment had been correct: if they could trace the person behind the video dump, they would likely discover who had been secretly turning the roulette wheel and manipulating so many details of the case—setting up the room, obscuring surveillance footage, fabricating the call, then switching the key.
Looking at it now, the online trajectory of the entire affair had followed a discernible path from beginning to end. Every move had been carefully planned and synchronized with the police investigation, as though an invisible whip were driving each group of involved figures into the open, stripping away their skin and faces before subjecting these morally corrupt drowning dogs to merciless public condemnation.
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Red wine splashed across the bed, one drop, then another, falling to the floor like the bright-red blood of an innocent victim, stinging and burning every pale eye that saw it, testing the limits of conscience and crushing the burden-bearing membrane across the chest.
Yan Xiaodao found an excuse to leave Master Qi’s house. One hand braced against the roof of his vehicle as he bent slightly at the waist, struggling to breathe. He had closed the video before finishing it the first time. Once he saw what they had done with the bottle of Burgundy, he genuinely could not keep watching, knowing he was powerless to prevent the entire thing from exploding and spreading.
The sacred tolling of church bells echoed through his mind, along with the penetrating voices of the choir washing clean the souls of ordinary mortals, rinsing away the blood-red mass in his heart until everything became perfectly clear.
He remembered every “joke” Ling He had spoken before the Heavenly Father and the pastor. How cruel those words now sounded.
“Those demons who deliberately hurt me, humiliated me, and bullied me—I’ll make them destroy themselves one by one and turn to ash in wildfire. At the gambling table, they shouted over each other and bid on me, surrounding me with mocking, contemptuous faces while tearing apart and trampling my dignity. I will never forgive them.”
Everyone entangled in the case had been a tile at that spectacular mahjong table in the Yilu Island casino: the now-dead Mai Yunliang, Jian Mingjue, You Haodong, and Yan Xiaodao himself. Even Young Master Liang, who had only stood around watching the spectacle, had to be counted, along with Ms. Zhao, who for reasons still unknown had been dragged into it. Certain scumbags drowning in evil truly had been publicly ruined through the very obscenity they had always been most practiced at. They had fallen in precisely the world of debauchery they navigated with such ease. It was an appropriate end, and they had no grounds to complain.
Yan Xiaodao still remembered Ling He sweeping him with those seductive eyes and asking in return, “How do you know I don’t have evidence that You Haodong paid for Mai Yunliang?”
And now everyone had been shown that evidence—in this fashion.
Yan Xiaodao felt his ordinarily hard heart trembling. Some things crossed his bottom line and were impossible for him to accept, even when Ling He was involved.
Was this your masterpiece?
Do you hate these scumbags so much—so much that you needed to use methods like this, completely disregarding the last shred of dignity Mai Yunliang had left after death?
How deep does that hatred run? How many people’s reputations do you mean to destroy?
Was it really only because of that absurd gambling game where they treated you as a stake? Absolutely not.
Mr. Ling, the hatred buried inside you is nowhere near as simple as the spectacle you’re putting on suggests.
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At the city’s routine semi-monthly meeting, one particular leader who should originally have sat on the platform making an important speech and assigning work called in sick. It was already the third time in three months that he had used illness as an excuse. The excuse was nearly worn through. Judging by the situation, the man truly appeared terminally ill—and not far from being removed from office.
The atmosphere at the meeting was strange. One senior leader lost his place halfway through his remarks, clearly distracted. Below, the bolder attendees exchanged knowing looks; the timid ones silently drank tea or lowered their heads and pretended to take notes. Whenever someone left the dealer’s seat, someone else would naturally be waiting to take it. What wonderful news that was.
Nobody voluntarily mentioned the words “Secretary You.” Everyone kept silent to avoid saying something they should not. The endless foot-binding-cloth of a meeting needed to hurry up and finish. They were all waiting to break into groups of three or five afterward and privately gossip about that astonishing video.
Secretary You held a small family banquet at his private residence that noon and invited acquaintances from both political and social circles for drinks. In reality, he was trying to cultivate connections and ask people to help him through the crisis.
Not a single invited guest appeared. Every one excused themselves with official business or illness.
Who would come at a time like this? Naturally nobody wanted to show their face. The list included Bao Zhengwei from the law-enforcement yamen and the Night Yaksha of law enforcement, Xue Qian, both of whom found excuses not to attend.
You Jinglian’s hand trembled as he hurled an exquisite purple-gold teapot against the wall, smashing it to pieces. Tea splashed across and ruined a famous painting worth tens of millions.
The people who filled your halls and added flowers to brocade when you were powerful and prosperous would absolutely not come bearing charcoal through the snow once you lost that power. If they refrained from stepping on you while you were down, they were already showing consideration for old bonds between colleagues. You Jinglian had spent decades immersed in politics. Nobody understood that better than he did.
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