The vendors with stalls selling boxed meals and meat buns had apparently failed to squeeze any cash out of two penniless-looking customers, Chen Jin and Xue Qian. Dissatisfied, they shot the pair resentful looks while banging grease-blackened spatulas against their pans. These merchants, permanently stationed at the railway station, prowled with shifty intersecting gazes in search of gullible prey, and in doing so happened to conceal several pairs of far more malicious eyes hidden deeper in the corners.
At precisely that moment, Captain Xue’s WeChat notification sounded.
He had neglected to mute his phone. For some inexplicable reason, the notification tone cut through the noisy station with startling clarity, immediately alarming the already jumpy bird. Chen Jin turned and looked at Xue Qian with sudden agitation.
Xue Qian casually shifted his gaze elsewhere and looked down at the message.
Some enormous adorable creature was practically panting like a puppy through the screen: 【Brother Xue, did you get the toy I sent last time? Let’s eat together when you’re free!】
Across the invisible waves, Xue Qian could practically feel the force of someone licking the screen, as though saliva had been smeared all over his face.
The shameless creature immediately sent another one: 【I know you’re busy with work every single day. I’m free though, so I can come find you!】
Every sentence had to end with some chirpy particle, an endless string of “ah, la, ma, ba” that made Xue Qian shudder. Captain Xue habitually fired verbal bullets at people whenever he opened his mouth. But when those bullets curved around, acquired sugar coatings, and came flying back at him, he found the experience deeply unnatural and disgustingly sweet.
Ding ding dong dong. The noises kept coming. Captain Xue hurriedly muted every function on the phone and cursed inwardly, That little idiot can drag me down from five provinces away. Are you done yet? You almost scared off my suspect!
The person harassing him every few days by phone or message was naturally Young Master Liang. Liang Youhui had found every possible excuse to ask him to dinner, and not merely once or twice. His determination was formidable, his efforts relentless, channeling powerful energy toward Xue Qian day after day without giving up. Recently he had even changed tactics and deepened the campaign, carrying late-night dim sum packed from Cantonese restaurants straight into Xue Qian’s office to harass him in person.
“Did I summon you? Did I ask you to cooperate with an investigation?” Xue Qian would put on an arrogant face and point toward the door. “Go back where you came from. Go home and wait until you’re summoned!”
Unfortunately, Xue Qian’s fake reserve could not withstand the uncultured appetites of his underlings. The instant they smelled expensive late-night food, they forgot who their captain was. The whole squad surged forward as though prepared to step on Captain Xue’s spine to reach the two towers of takeout in Young Master Liang’s hands. Blunt-spoken Deputy Captain Fang declared, “Captain Xue, this is where you fail to understand the times. Keep the food first, then throw the man out!”
A few days earlier, Liang Youhui had even sent him the newest handheld game console, ordered directly from a flagship store overseas and delivered to his office. The entire room of loose-tongued cops had immediately erupted, delighted to stir up trouble…
Xue Qian was no innocent cucumber who knew nothing of relationships. He had been around long enough to understand people perfectly well. Besides, Captain Xue had always been confident, conceited, and ferociously narcissistic, with absolute faith in his masculine appeal both in and out of bed. His ex had cheated because the ex had poor taste and wandering eyes, not because Captain Xue was insufficiently manly or unable to keep a boyfriend. His dignity on this point was nonnegotiable. Xue Qian stared silently at his phone, his mood becoming strangely complicated: That brat Liang… you’re trying to pursue me, aren’t you?
Big enough ambition. Fat enough nerve. Did you hit your head?
You seriously think we’re suitable?
Didn’t your rich father teach you not to casually harass police officers? We each eat from our own bowl. We don’t belong to the same circle or live the same kind of life. If there’s no official business, stop getting tangled up with me.
When Xue Qian had nothing to do and his mouth itched, he could flirt casually and toss filthy jokes at the other man without thinking, but the sudden realization that Liang Youhui, son of one of the wealthiest men in Yandu, might actually be pursuing him struck a very different nerve: this was not someone he could safely tease without consequences, and with both their identities sensitive, he needed to avoid impropriety.
After hesitating, Xue Qian sent back a few dismissive words: 【Out of town. Busy.】
Then he added: 【Young Master, if you’re bored and want someone to play with, find somebody else.】
The words carried two meanings. At the mature and flourishing age of thirty-one, Xue Qian believed some things between two men did not need to be spelled out. His polite rejection of both invitation and flirtation ought to have been perfectly clear.
After getting inexplicably tugged around by the thread Liang Youhui had tied to him, Captain Xue lifted his eyes again and immediately noticed something wrong ahead.
Years of frontline work had given him an instinct for predicting how situations would move, and when the ticket-checking line in front of him suddenly lost its steady rhythm, the middle of the queue seemed to refract at a strange angle before people abruptly veered away at one point like a cup of multicolored dice scattered across the floor, with the particular die Xue Qian was watching bouncing away from its assigned track as though preparing to escape.
Chen Jin was burdened with too many thoughts and was both sensitive and suspicious. When he looked at the unfamiliar Xue Qian’s face and build, he inexplicably felt that the man’s intimidating aura resembled Mr. Yan from the hospital the night before. Put sunglasses on them and they could practically pass for twins.
There really was some resemblance. Otherwise, why would the famously promiscuous Young Master Liang Youhui have been reckless enough to fall for Captain Xue of all people at first sight and remain obsessed afterward? Because Xue Qian’s appearance and aura resembled Yan Xiaodao’s.
Chen Jin abruptly broke away from the queue.
Within Xue Qian’s field of vision, several people in different nearby lines suddenly began moving in the same direction as Chen Jin.
Xue Qian understood instantly. His feet shot forward like an arrow released from the string. Without hesitation, he cut through the crowd, hawklike eyes locked firmly on the back of his target’s head. He had carried out surveillance and interception operations like this a hundred times in his life. Sharp-eyed and quick-handed, he silently reached through a gap and seized Chen Jin by the elbow with one large hand.
Captain Xue’s iron claw locked on and refused to loosen. Chen Jin spun around in shock and found himself staring directly into Xue Qian’s cold face.
Chen Jin startled and tried violently to wrench free while clutching his backpack.
“Come with me. I’m a cop.”
“Don’t look back. Someone behind you is watching. You may be in danger.”
Xue Qian used only those two sentences, delivered in a low, steady voice, to stop Chen Jin’s panicked attempt to break free. The sheer force of that calming presence dragged Chen Jin’s steps along with him until the boy was almost stumbling as Xue Qian hauled him away.
They moved at the full running speed characteristic of Captain Xue, breaking through the encirclement and fleeing the scene. The sudden atmosphere of danger all around them sent the restless factors in Student Chen’s blood leaping wildly. Without even realizing it, he clung to Captain Xue and sought protection from the man’s strength.
The railway station was packed with every sort of person and complicated lines of sight. It was equally well suited for fleeing and for making a move. Strange faces surrounded them, some cold and pale, some dark and furtive.
Another brutal hand, hard as an iron claw, suddenly grabbed Chen Jin’s backpack from behind. Chen Jin cried out, “Ah!”
Chen Jin himself was worth nothing. Who cared where an insignificant weed like him went, or whether he lived or died? What someone wanted was his bag. Perhaps out of curiosity, perhaps out of guilty fear, somebody was desperate to know exactly what was hidden inside that backpack, something important enough to make the young man flee south alone and in such haste.
Chen Jin trapped the backpack beneath his armpit and fought wildly for it, kicking and punching without technique. In a fight, the vicious cast of his brows and eyes emerged, strongly resembling his biological father. When it mattered, he showed no mercy. Xue Qian struck with far greater force. One heavy punch collided in midair with the robber’s nose and mouth, instantly producing a fountain of blood and splitting the man’s lip open.
……
Ling He’s lean figure threaded quickly through the crowd and reached the ticketing hall first. Mr. Yan and Assistant Mao were still tangled up at security because of items they were carrying that did not meet regulations.
Ling He rose onto his toes for a higher view and immediately spotted Xue Qian in the distance, trapped among the crowd with an exceptionally grave expression.
Xue Qian had one hand pressed over Chen Jin’s head to protect him as he rapidly searched for an exit. One distant glance was enough for Ling He to grasp the situation. The person he wanted had fallen into Captain Xue’s hands.
The mantis stalked the cicada, but apparently more than one oriole had followed behind. Every party had converged inside the station waiting hall.
Elio’s Notes: “The mantis stalks the cicada, unaware of the oriole behind it” is a Chinese proverb for one schemer focusing on prey while failing to notice another party waiting to take advantage of both.
A sharp knife flashed viciously between bodies and slashed without warning toward the strap of Chen Jin’s backpack.
A blade had no eyes and naturally did not recognize that it was charging directly at the true Yasha. Two shifty-eyed men trying to seize the goods attacked Captain Xue from left and right. Heat flared around Xue Qian’s eyes. One precisely aimed kick knocked the wrist of one attacker aside, but the other man’s knife sliced through his undershirt and cut his arm.
The two small-time thieves were mediocre fighters, barely qualified to kneel and kowtow at Captain Xue’s feet, but desperate criminals with nothing to lose did not care about rules and slashed or stabbed recklessly, while Xue Qian had every reason to restrain himself and could only retreat and defend, pressed awkwardly from side to side.
The surrounding crowd watched with a vivid assortment of expressions. No one intended to help, and no one even bothered to move aside and make room for them to escape.
Xue Qian cursed through clenched teeth. A criminal-investigation captain naturally carried a gun, but he could not simply fire at will. Every bullet was accounted for, and firing even one meant writing a report to his superiors afterward. What a pain in the ass. If he pulled the weapon from the holster hidden beneath his clothes and sprayed bullets around, he could easily hit one of these ignorant spectators. Wearing the uniform was the hardest job these days. When criminals injured a cop, the public stood around watching. But if Captain Xue lost his temper and hurt a petty thief, he would make the social-news headlines on every major portal by evening, probably caught on video and cursed bloody by thousands.
Xue Qian’s hearing was sharp. Beneath the reverberating roar of the station, a faint mechanical movement sent a ripple across his eardrum. It was the tiny sound of a trigger mechanism being engaged.
Chen Jin, inexperienced and completely unprepared, was still fighting the petty thief with ferocious energy.
Xue Qian reacted without hesitation. He launched himself forward and shoved Chen Jin violently away, throwing his witness clear of the target zone that experience and sound had mapped instantly inside his mind.
Still having no idea what was happening, Chen Jin stumbled hard into the corner. The gun fired.
Blood burst out, staining Chen Jin’s dull, pale eyes with sudden red and shocking him into complete stillness. He shouted.
Ling He and Yan Xiaodao heard the gunshot at the same time. Order collapsed inside the waiting hall, and the spectators finally scattered en masse.
Ling He had no time. He chose a shortcut, and his shortcut was brutally direct. One foot landed on the backrest of a row of waiting seats. Balancing there, he sprang over two more rows with remarkable agility. He continued straight across the tops of the seat backs like a tightrope walker and, when his balance slipped, did not hesitate to step on the shoulder of a useless gawking spectator for leverage.
The impact drove Xue Qian against the wall. He clutched his lower abdomen while protecting the vital areas of his head and chest, yet still remembered to look back at his witness.
Instead, he watched Ling He sprint past him without so much as glancing his way. Ling He had a perfectly clear destination: Chen Jin’s backpack, lying on the floor.
What the fuck, that scheming bastard Ling! Captain Xue was so furious he wanted to spring up from the ground, but a spiraling, sharp pain radiated from the bleeding place in his abdomen.
As Ling He grabbed the bag, one of the fallen thieves still refused to give up. Ling He planted his foot on the man’s ankle. It was one of the simplest downward stomps in karate. The thief heard a horrifying splintering sound from his own ankle and screamed in pain.
Even limping, Yan Xiaodao still moved with effortless flair. He had a knife in his hand but no intention of cutting anyone. Lunging forward, he slammed the hilt hard into the hollow behind the second thief’s knee. The movement was small but enough to strip the man of all momentum. Yan Xiaodao then rolled smoothly forward and came back to his feet in front of Xue Qian without a scratch. Bending down with concern, he asked, “Captain Xue, are you all right?”
Station police and security guards finally came running from every direction, arriving with perfect lateness just in time to arrest the two petty thieves and clean up the aftermath.
“You really do have a knife on you? …Mr. Yan, how the hell did you get through security?!” Sweat beaded across Xue Qian’s forehead, but he refused to soften. Even now he remembered his law-enforcement responsibilities.
Xue Qian lowered his head to inspect the wound and frowned with an expression halfway between laughter and tears.
From the cheap nylon waist bag whose threads had been burned apart by the shot, he pulled out the handheld game console with its shattered screen.
A bullet had punched through the waist bag and struck directly against the edge of the console’s metal casing, burning a black hole through it and cracking the screen into a mosaic of fragments. By the time the bullet reached his body, almost all its force had been spent. It merely gouged a patch of flesh near his groin and drew a mess of blood without injuring a single organ.
Station personnel quickly recognized the two bag thieves. They were local lowlifes who had haunted the railway station for years and visited the neighborhood police station so often it was practically like calling on relatives. Their names had long been logged.
Only an hour earlier, outside the station entrance, the pair had accepted five hundred yuan from someone who hired them to rob Chen Jin’s backpack, promising another twenty-five hundred after the job. Xue Qian cursed them on the spot. “Pig brains! Somebody gives you money and you just do it? Are you missing part of your fucking heads? If somebody paid you to carry a bomb for them, would you do that too?!”
For three thousand yuan, they probably really could find idiots willing to carry a bomb for somebody.
The two fools had taken the money without knowing anything behind the job. When they discovered that they had attacked an out-of-province criminal-investigation captain and an important police witness, earning themselves at least several years behind bars, terror hit them so hard they practically pissed themselves. Inside the police car, they kowtowed and wailed that they had been wronged.
The person who paid them had already vanished into the sea of people along with the spectators scattering from the waiting hall. Surveillance footage showed only a heavily disguised and extremely blurred figure. Captain Xue ground his back teeth. Whoever it was had terrifying nerve, hiding in the shadows and actually firing a shot at him.
The methods were outrageously brazen.
Xue Qian usually worked cases in plain clothes. At the time, he assumed the other side must not have known who he was. Otherwise, would they really have dared?
Chen Jin sat silently against the wall, apparently shaken deeply. His body seemed nailed in place. In any event, he made no further attempt to run.
Xue Qian covered his wound and stood up on his own, immediately grabbing Ling He. “Mr. Ling, trying to cut in and steal my prize? That’s not very honorable, is it?”
“You’re clearly the one who cut in.” Every subtle expression on Ling He’s face ultimately condensed into a slight tug at the corner of his mouth. He refused to give an inch. “Then shall we split it fifty-fifty, Officer Xue?”
Yan Xiaodao ignored the two men haggling through verbal combat and, dragging one injured foot, crouched in front of Chen Jin. “Student Chen, if you truly know something and remember anything from back then, tell Officer Xue the truth; he’s a good cop, and he can protect you.”
Chen Jin bit brutally into the corner of his lower lip, then raised his head and swept his gaze over the faces surrounding him. His eyes passed Yan Xiaodao and Xue Qian before finally stopping on Ling He. Only then did he release his teeth. “Mr. Ling… I remember hearing that surname before. I have a little impression of it. That Boss Ling… was he the one who hacked my father to death?”
Ling He frowned and immediately rejected it. “No. You’ve got it wrong. The Boss Ling you’re talking about did not hack your father to death. But if you remember hearing about a Boss Ling, then the person who did kill Chen Jiu may have had countless social ties and connections to that Boss Ling back then. Right?”