Huang Li had been born into a family completely different from Wu Junqian’s, but when it came to the love she received from her parents, Huang Li never believed she had received any less. When she was little, both her parents were factory workers and worked diligently. Huang Li learned at a young age to stand on a stool and cook meals. She never resented it. Instead, she thought cooking was something joyful.
When she played house with the neighborhood children, she always played the hardworking mother, using stones, leaves, and flowers to arrange an enormous table full of imaginary delicacies. When their teacher asked what everyone dreamed of becoming, the other children’s answers were grand and distant. Hers was the most practical: she wanted to become a cook. Some of the children even laughed at her.
She remembered being in third grade when her parents took her to Luocheng to visit relatives. It was her first time in the bustling provincial capital. In the display window of a dessert shop, she saw rows of dazzling cakes, the kind she had only ever seen on television. Compared with them, the cakes in Zhuquan City looked ugly as little country bumpkins.
Seeing how much she loved them, her mother bought her a slice. Huang Li carefully took one bite and felt as though sweetness had wrapped around her entire body. She was so happy she could barely speak. The cake was expensive. When her mother offered to buy another slice to take home, Huang Li restrained herself again and again and refused. But on the train home, she clutched her mother’s hand and said, “Mom, I don’t want to be a cook anymore when I grow up. I want to make cakes. I want to be a pastry chef!”
Her mother smiled and stroked her hair. “All right. When our Lili becomes a pastry chef, your dad and I will have more cake than we can ever finish.”
Time never stopped moving forward. The old factory closed, her parents lost their jobs, and a new round of struggling for a living began. Huang Li grew up and was no longer the little girl who had cried because a cake tasted so good. But her plans for the future never changed. She still wanted to become a pastry chef.
For a family like hers, that was not an especially easy dream. Learning pastry was unlike learning to stir-fry food or cook noodles. It required considerable money up front, and she needed to study under an experienced master. Zhuquan City was relatively undeveloped and did not have the opportunities available in Luocheng. Huang Li understood very clearly that if she chose another path, life would be much easier for the whole family, and her parents would not need to work so hard. She tried changing her ambition, but after working an ordinary job for half a year, she still could not give up the dream she had held since childhood.
Her mother understood. She took out the money she had painstakingly saved and told Huang Li not to worry about the family. “Your dad and I are still healthy. We can still work. Why do we earn money if not so you can live a good life? Don’t worry about us. Do what you want, as long as it’s an honest path. Your father and I will support you.”
Huang Li was grateful for her parents’ understanding and open-mindedness and resolved to make something of herself. She apprenticed in famous pastry shops in Luocheng and other developed cities. Once she had finished learning her craft, she returned home and rented a storefront near the family home. At last, she had a pastry shop of her own.
But dreams rarely illuminated reality as often as reality tore dreams apart. Zhuquan City had only a few chain cake shops and the cake shops attached to hotels. When people needed a cake, they almost always chose one of those established businesses. Once the initial support from relatives and neighbors faded, Huang Li’s little shop gradually became deserted.
Her experience outside the city taught her that an independent shop needed marketing, publicity, an online following. Understanding that was one thing. Actually doing it was another. She had no spare money whatsoever for promotion.
She accepted reality but still wanted to hold on a little longer. She began making flaky pastries and pillow cakes sold by weight for ordinary customers. Business gradually picked up, but it was still a drop in the bucket and brought in very little money. Then, at this difficult moment, her mother was diagnosed with cancer. For the Huang family, it was a bolt from the blue.
By the time the cancer was discovered, it was already late-stage, and her mother did not have much time left. Huang Li struggled to keep the shop running while caring for her mother, losing so much weight that she became frighteningly thin. One day, her mother suddenly said, “Do you remember when you were little and we took you to Luocheng? You said you wanted to become a pastry chef when you grew up and make so much cake your dad and I could never finish it. We went to the aquarium too. You loved the red coral most. You said it looked like fire…”
Her mother was already confused much of the time and forgot what she had said almost as soon as the words left her mouth. Huang Li held back her tears and created a new cake, the one that would later become Weiming’s signature Deep-Sea Flame. She placed it before her mother, who smiled as happily as a child. Not long after the three of them shared the cake, her mother passed away. Misfortune followed misfortune. Soon after her mother’s death, her father collapsed from a cerebral infarction brought on by prolonged grief and years of overwork. He held on for a little more than three months before passing away too.
From then on, Huang Li had no relatives left in the world. All she had was a pastry shop that might collapse at any moment and the cake she had created for her mother.
The debts from treating her parents had to be repaid, and keeping the pastry shop open required more money. Just when Huang Li was physically and mentally exhausted and could see nothing but emptiness ahead of her, Wu Junqian appeared. Huang Li knew of this rich young woman and knew about Weiming. Wu Junqian had returned from overseas and was said to have studied under a famous pastry master. Before Weiming had even properly opened, its promotional campaign was already everywhere. Huang Li envied her and could not help thinking how wonderful it would be if she had been born into a family like Wu Junqian’s.
Wu Junqian had conducted thorough market research before approaching Huang Li with a proposal to acquire her shop. She told Huang Li that Weiming had its eye on the Silu Street area. If Huang refused to transfer the shop and the products she had created, once Weiming opened nearby, the few customers Huang still had would disappear as well.
Reality had beaten Huang Li down enough times that she fully believed her. The terms Wu Junqian offered seemed exceedingly generous, and Huang would still be able to work at Weiming afterward. She could simply make pastries and no longer have to worry about how to run a business.
The one thing she hesitated over was the cake she had made for her mother. She did not want to transfer that to Wu Junqian too, but Wu was determined to have it. If Huang refused, everything would simply return to where it had begun.
In the end, Huang Li compromised. She asked only that the cake’s packaging be themed around commemorating her mother. Wu Junqian agreed readily. Yet when Deep-Sea Flame appeared as Weiming’s signature cake, it had become a blessing Wu Junqian had created for her own mother.
For a long time, Huang Li could not accept it. She felt deceived by Wu Junqian and instinctively began resisting her at every turn. Because of the confidentiality clause in the transfer agreement, Huang could not reveal the true story behind Deep-Sea Flame. The love she had given her mother had been stolen by Wu Junqian.
Deep-Sea Flame became Weiming’s most popular cake, while the conflict between Huang Li and Wu Junqian deepened. Huang knew Wu envied her, but was Huang herself not equally envious of Wu Junqian?
From the beginning of this year, Weiming’s reputation grew larger and larger. Wu Junqian did not often appear at the flagship store, but whenever she did, she would find fault with Huang Li, sometimes subtly and sometimes openly. Their poor relationship was obvious to many of the employees.
In July, Wu Junqian planned a line of Chinese-inspired pastries. The marketing department held meetings every day, while the pastry chefs worked overtime. Huang Li believed she had done everything required of her, but Wu Junqian remained dissatisfied with her work. In front of the other pastry chefs, she criticized Huang’s portion of the line for not matching the theme and ordered her to revise it as soon as possible. In private, she brought up Deep-Sea Flame with a thin smile. “When I hired you, it wasn’t only because of Deep-Sea Flame. It was because of your talent. I expected you to keep creating classic products for me. Otherwise, why wouldn’t I simply have bought Deep-Sea Flame? Why employ you too? I didn’t expect your creativity to dry up so quickly. Or is it that without intense emotional stimulation, you can’t produce anything worthwhile?”
Wu Junqian walked away after saying this, but Huang Li remained alone in the store until deep into the night. Those words seemed to drag her into an abyss. She needed intense emotion before she could make a popular cake. What was the emotional stimulus behind Deep-Sea Flame? Her mother was dying! Was she drawing nourishment from her mother’s life? Her mother’s death had created Deep-Sea Flame, and then Wu Junqian had brazenly taken the work that should have belonged to her.
At that moment, Huang Li’s hatred for herself and for Wu Junqian reached its peak, along with her weariness toward life. She no longer wanted to remain in a world that had taken everyone she loved, but before ending her own life, she wanted Wu Junqian to die first.
Using a rat problem in the storeroom as an excuse, Huang Li bought a powerful homemade poison from an older man she knew from the old factory. She practiced repeatedly until she could mix the substance into a cake without any obvious change in color or smell. Once everything was ready, she told Wu Junqian that she had developed a new item for the Chinese-style line and asked her to come by when she had time.
At noon on July 27, Wu Junqian came to the flagship store. When she saw the new cake, her face lit up, and she repeatedly praised Huang Li’s extraordinary talent.
That was simply the kind of person Wu Junqian was. When she criticized someone, she held nothing back, and when she praised them, she was equally generous. For one moment, Huang Li wavered. Did she really want to kill Wu Junqian? Setting aside what Wu had done with Deep-Sea Flame, Wu Junqian was, like Huang herself, a pastry chef who genuinely loved baking.
After tasting the new product, Wu Junqian took Huang Li by the hand and brought her into the office. “Sister Huang, actually… I want to apologize to you.”
Huang Li stared. “Apologize?”
Wu Junqian sighed. “I have to admit I’ve always been jealous of your talent. You probably noticed a long time ago. I bought Deep-Sea Flame because I genuinely loved it. The moment I saw it, it dazzled me. At first, my mindset was good. You became my colleague, and we worked together to make Weiming better. You had Deep-Sea Flame, but one day I would have a masterpiece of my own too. We had four signature cakes. I created the other three. But only Deep-Sea Flame became a real signature. The customers chose with their money. I lost.”
Huang Li remained silent, looking toward the packaged cake beside them.
Wu Junqian continued, “So I couldn’t stop myself from finding fault with you. Whenever I could prove you had done something badly, it was like… like I’d found some kind of balance. That’s how I’ve numbed myself for more than a year. I… I’m a petty person, like the evil queen in Snow White.”
Huang Li instinctively wanted to say something. Her lips parted, but nothing came out.
Wu Junqian shook her head. “You don’t have to comfort me. I know exactly what kind of person I am. After we argued over the new products last time, I thought about it a lot. Wherever I’m wrong, I’ll try to change. It may take time. Sister Huang, can you be patient with me?”
At that moment, a powerful revulsion surged through Huang Li. They were both adults. Why should you get to do something wrong and then openly ask someone else to be understanding? Just because you were born with a silver spoon, because everyone helped you and loved you, you didn’t have to pay a price for any attempt or mistake you made?
Wu Junqian’s final words did not move Huang Li at all. Instead, Huang felt an unbearable sense of condescension beneath them. Of course only someone who possessed everything could say something like that, as if the whole world ought to revolve around “Princess Wu.”
After a moment, Huang Li smiled. “Boss Wu, why say that? You’re my employer. The last batch of products wasn’t good enough, and you had every right to point it out. Otherwise, once we released them, wouldn’t the customers judge us instead?”
“I was afraid I hurt you. You’re the best pastry chef Weiming has.”
“Thank you.” Huang Li picked up the bag containing the cake. “There’s another one here. I made a different flavor. Take it home and try it.”
Wu Junqian’s eyes filled with delight. “One just for me? Wonderful!”
Huang Li walked Wu Junqian out of the store. Wu got into her luxury car and gave Huang a playful wink. Huang smiled and waved. But once the car disappeared into traffic, the smile on her face seemed to freeze solid.
That day, Huang Li completed her work as usual. After clocking out, she remained in the baking room for a while and silently said goodbye to the “old companions” that had accompanied her for so long, then returned to her aging apartment.
She did not sleep all night. She expected the police to arrive at dawn to arrest her. Wu Junqian had looked delighted with the cake Huang made. She would surely eat it once she got home and die there. The police would come, see what happened, easily discover the cake had been tampered with, and then trace the poison back to Huang Li.
But daylight came, and everything remained normal.
Her phone rang. Huang Li thought, Here it is.
But it was merely an employee asking, “Sister Huang, aren’t you coming to work today?”
Huang rushed to the flagship store. Nothing was unusual. No one was even talking about Wu Junqian. Huang could not understand it. If Wu had discovered something wrong with the cake and had not eaten it, she should have come looking for Huang to demand an explanation.
Huang checked the work-group messages. None of the other branches had mentioned Wu Junqian either. On the evening of the twenty-ninth, Huang finally noticed something strange. Wu Junqian did not appear on that night’s livestream. Huang disliked her, but the one thing she genuinely admired was Wu’s dedication to work. Wu Junqian would never miss a livestream for no reason. Viewers in the comments were already asking where she was. The host looked awkward and said Boss Wu had something to take care of that day.
Huang could see the host was nervous. This supposed “something came up” clearly had not been communicated in advance.
On the thirtieth, the Wu family reported Wu Junqian missing.
Huang Li was shocked. How could Wu Junqian simply disappear? She should have eaten the cake and died either in her car or at home. Huang carefully followed the police investigation and the Wu family’s reactions. The police searched Wu Junqian’s home but found no trace of Huang’s cake. She also heard that Wu had gone to Huandie Fengzhou and that the police had questioned several young people.
The investigation raced in a direction Huang could not understand. She was merely an employee and was asked a few routine questions. No one suspected her. No one had seen her cake. Wu Junqian’s disappearance seemed to have nothing whatsoever to do with anything Huang had done.
But during that period, one incident made Huang Li believe retribution had found her.
She loved cats and dogs, and she especially pitied strays. There was a small park near Silu Street where many stray cats lived. Huang often carried some food in her bag and fed any cats that came begging. Several orange cats and black cats were familiar with her and would run over whenever they saw her.
She had once considered adopting them, but ultimately decided she could not bear responsibility for so many lives and gave up the idea.
Wu Junqian’s disappearance left Huang too distracted to think about Little Orange or Little Black. Several days later, when she finally returned to the park with food, no matter how she called, none of them came.
A woman walking in the park knew Huang often fed the cats and sighed. “Don’t bother looking. Someone poisoned them.”
Huang’s ears rang. “What?”
The woman wiped the corners of her eyes and said it had happened several days earlier. A sanitation worker cleaning in the morning had found the bodies of several cats. Someone who abused cats had poisoned them. It was pitiful.
Huang returned home in a daze and vomited until there was nothing left. She had no idea who could have been cruel enough to do such a thing, but she could not stop herself from seeing it as retribution. She had wanted to poison Wu Junqian, and that malicious desire had rebounded onto the stray cats she cared for.
Huang almost killed herself that very day, but something in her insisted she had to wait for the truth. Where exactly had Wu Junqian gone? Had something happened to her? If Huang never learned the answer, even death would bring no peace.
Not long ago, the truth she had waited for finally arrived. Wu Junqian had died on Xuebu Mountain. Police also said her death had occurred not long after her disappearance. Cold sweat poured over Huang Li. After a period of confusion, her mind produced an explanation she could accept.
Her poisoned cake had killed Wu Junqian. Someone knew what Huang had done and helped clean up afterward, burying Wu Junqian on Xuebu Mountain where the body was unlikely ever to be found.
After hearing this, Chen Zheng said, “But Wu Junqian never ate the cake.”
Huang Li stared at him. “But she died! Right after I gave it to her!”
Chen Zheng shook his head. “The forensic pathologists conducted a comprehensive examination of the body. She wasn’t poisoned. Her cause of death was a fractured cervical spine. Someone struck her in the neck with a blunt object.”
Huang Li’s eyes widened. She could not process what she had heard.
Once she had calmed slightly, Chen Zheng continued, “Wu Junqian’s death had no direct connection to your cake. But you believed you knew how she died, so you went to say goodbye to your parents and tried to end your own life?”
Huang Li’s eyes reddened. She nodded faintly.
“What I don’t understand is why you returned to Weiming to delete the surveillance footage. And after I spoke with you, your emotional state changed almost immediately and you decided to kill yourself. Logically, whether the cameras had recorded you doing anything should no longer have mattered.”
Huang Li looked at him again. Several minutes later, it was as though she finally lowered the burden she had been carrying. “Because the questions you asked made me suddenly realize that whoever helped me dispose of the body was probably one of our employees.” She let out a long breath. “But now it seems none of the girls at the store had anything to do with it. All right. I’ll tell you everything.”
After closing that night, Huang Li had sat alone in the store thinking for a long time. When the first group of detectives arrived earlier and told her Wu Junqian’s body had been found on Xuebu Mountain, Huang immediately thought someone had helped her. She simply could not imagine who. Then Chen Zheng and Ming Han arrived. Their questions reminded her that besides Huang herself, plenty of Weiming’s employees had been scolded by Wu Junqian over the years. Those young women also resented Wu. Maybe none of them had dared act directly as Huang had, but if one of them knew Huang intended to poison Wu Junqian, perhaps she had helped.
Who else would bury the body?
Other than one of the girls at the store, Huang could think of no one.
She thought, I’ll take all of this on myself. I killed Wu Junqian. Once I’m dead, the grudge between Wu Junqian and me will be settled, and it won’t have anything to do with anyone else. Before going to say goodbye to her parents, she therefore returned to the store and deleted all the surveillance footage. She did not know who had helped her, but the police might identify that person through the recordings. Protecting the child who had helped her was the last thing Huang believed she could do.
Huang wiped away her tears. “It’s best there wasn’t an ‘accomplice.’ It wouldn’t have been worth it. It really wouldn’t.”
Chen Zheng closed the hospital-room door and looked up to find Ming Han standing there.
Ming Han said, “Bro, why didn’t you tell her the other truth?”
“Which one?”
By then they had reached the elevator. Ming Han said, “The cats. I only listened from outside the room and I understood what happened. Don’t tell me you didn’t.”
Chen Zheng frowned. “She can find out when we formally record her statement later. She only just woke up. Why provoke her now?”
Ming Han nodded. “Fair.”
The elevator arrived. There were other people inside, so Ming Han said nothing more. Once they reached the ground-floor entrance, he asked, “What next?”
Chen Zheng said, “If that ‘other truth’ is what we think it is, the cameras around Huang Li’s home, Silu Street, and the little park might show us something.”
Because the area around Huang Li’s home was an old neighborhood whose planning had never caught up, there were very few cameras. Chen Zheng had already checked the footage once, but that search concerned Huang Li’s movements on the night before her disappearance. This time, what they needed was footage from July.
The officer was confused. “What are we looking for that far back?”
“Didn’t that little park have an incident where cats were poisoned in late July? Did anyone check surveillance then?”
The officer explained that they knew about it and had looked at the cameras. But since the dead animals were stray cats and no owner came forward asking for accountability, the matter had eventually gone nowhere.
Chen Zheng understood. Under those circumstances, no one would have examined the footage in detail.
Fortunately, not too much time had passed, and some recordings were still available. The officer did not know what Chen Zheng was looking for and tactfully stepped aside. Ming Han came to stand beside Chen Zheng, and the two watched together.
At 9:20 p.m. on July 27, a woman passed beneath one of the cameras while repeatedly looking around. Chen Zheng immediately paused the footage and slowed it down.
It was Wu Junqian.
Ming Han pointed at the screen. “What she’s carrying, is that the cake Huang Li gave her?”
Chen Zheng nodded. “Fu Bo said that on the twenty-seventh at Huandie, Wu Junqian was carrying a cake box.”
The video continued. When Wu Junqian appeared near the same camera again, the bag containing the cake was gone. The camera captured the smug, malicious smile on her face.
Chen Zheng leaned back and exchanged a look with Ming Han.
Wu Junqian had walked down the road leading directly toward the small park. She had carried a poisoned cake there and returned half an hour later empty-handed. That very night, the stray cats Huang Li regularly fed were poisoned. What had happened was already perfectly clear.
“Huang Li thought too simply. With Wu Junqian’s sensitivity to pastry, of course she could tell something was wrong with the cake,” Chen Zheng said. “So she turned Huang Li’s own poison against her and used it to kill the stray cats Huang cared about.”
“But how did she know Huang Li fed strays?” Ming Han asked. “Not only that, she knew exactly which stray cats Huang Li fed.”
Chen Zheng pulled up footage from before the twenty-seventh. Little of it remained, but Wu Junqian appeared there too. She looked completely different from the polished woman seen on livestreams, dressed like someone following another person. Needless to say, she was definitely following Huang Li.
“Because while Huang Li was thinking about getting rid of her, Wu Junqian probably had similar thoughts about Huang Li,” Chen Zheng said. “And while following her, she happened to notice exactly which cats Huang regularly fed.”
“After poisoning those cats, she encountered the real killer.” Ming Han rubbed his chin. “Huandie wasn’t the last place she appeared. This was.”