In the space of just a few days, the police launched one hard-hitting arrest after another against witnesses and suspects. In the end, all they had to show for it was Tan Shao’an, a peripheral figure whose culpability was comparatively minor. Of the other two men, one was dead and the other missing.
After Qi Baoshan jumped into the sea, he vanished without a trace. No one saw him alive, and no body was found.
Guo Zhaobin had now become a corpse frozen stiff in a refrigerated drawer. Before long, this heap of contemptible rotten flesh would be reduced to ash. Autopsy traces, together with renewed questioning of accomplices who had already been convicted three years earlier, confirmed that Yan Xiaodao’s eyes had identified the man with perfect accuracy: Guo Zhaobin was the direct killer of Officer Lu Haocheng. Guo had carried out the job himself. All twenty-two shots had been fired by him. Heaven’s net was vast and let nothing escape. This blood-soaked front-line thug, guilty of every imaginable evil, had finally been silenced by his own people with a sniper bullet. His head had burst like the flesh of a smashed watermelon. It was an ending he deserved.
Inside the Yandu Municipal Bureau building, the pressure in the air was so low it seemed difficult to breathe. Even the papers spread across desks looked faintly damp, stuck together so tightly that not even a corner would lift.
Officers moved carefully through the corridors, exchanging scraps of information and gossip through glances and whispered conversations. From beneath the tightly closed meeting-room door leaked an atmosphere of oppressive tension. It spread through the hallway like an infection, leaving everyone anxious, every gaze fixed on the progress of the questioning inside.
The imposing visitor who had arrived at the meeting room today was none other than Chairman Liang, the richest man in Yandu and a name already placed on the joint task force’s investigation list.
Liang Tong sat in a padded chair with a backrest, looking exactly as he did at board meetings or business negotiations, eyelids half lowered, every movement concise and controlled. His face seemed carved from a single piece of fine, expensive stone, sharp cuts forming the hollows of his cheeks while a cool sheen lay over his skin.
He had tremendous presence, yet always seemed to lack warmth or human feeling. That was the impression Liang Tong left on people.
Across the large round table sat several leaders from the joint task force, all at least bureau level. Bao Zhengwei was among them.
In Xue Qian’s words, Bureau Chief, you haven’t had it easy either. Those big shots in Yandu’s officialdom are arrogant as hell. They look down on clerks from poor little places like ours. Even when it’s a joint case, they won’t give us a seat at the table or any right to speak. For a rare grand occasion like this, you actually sharpened your head enough to squeeze yourself into a chair. Not easy.
Neither side came in with swords drawn. Everyone present was a person of status. Some were even private acquaintances and might have sat in the same club only a few months earlier, drinking with their shirts open and visiting prostitutes. Now that the two camps faced each other across the table, the opening consisted entirely of false warmth and polite small talk. One of the leaders offered Liang Tong a box of premium cigarettes. Liang Tong declined politely, then took an even more expensive box of cigars from his elegant leather case. The foreign brand was unknown to everyone present. He handed cigars around the table.
Liang Tong observed courtesy without becoming ingratiating. When he offered the cigars, his backside never even left the chair. He sat there as steady as Mount Tai, every inch the grand figure.
This was only assistance with an investigation, and the questioning began inside a seemingly casual conversation lined with hidden needles. The lead interviewer asked, “Mr. Liang, let’s talk about the shooting on Chaobei Avenue a few days ago. Guo Zhaobin. You knew him?”
Liang Tong replied, “Of course. He was the boss of Yaoguang Group here in Yandu. We crossed paths often.”
The interviewer asked, “When the police were pursuing him that day, he fled into your Splendid Imperial Court club. Were you aware of that?”
Liang Tong said, “Splendid Imperial Court is a club in which my group holds shares. I don’t directly manage it. I handle too much business, so the club is run by the people below me and I only visit occasionally. I wasn’t even there at the time. I had no idea Guo Zhaobin had run onto my property.”
The interviewer reminded him, “Guo Zhaobin escaped directly from your office and then appeared immediately afterward inside the Liang family hotel across the street. In other words, how did Guo Zhaobin know there was a secret passage inside your office?”
A faintly indifferent, helpless smile crossed Liang Tong’s face. “I underestimated Guo Zhaobin and trusted the wrong man. He kept a private guest room at Splendid Imperial Court and was one of our regular customers. I never imagined he was that sort of person. There’s a passage hidden in my office that leads downstairs. I built it in case the building ever caught fire so the owner could escape. I didn’t expect Guo Zhaobin to discover it. That boy was clever. He used me, and when something went wrong, he dumped the blame on my head!”
“A private fire escape for the boss? What a load of fucking bullshit. That old fox came prepared, all right. Not a drop leaks anywhere.”
“Tch. He wiped himself clean. So the surname-Guo idiot rabbit panicked and ran into the wrong burrow, accidentally crawling into Chairman Liang’s luxury rabbit hole. Chairman Liang is a rich and powerful rabbit who eats grass, not meat. Never hurts anyone. Completely innocent.”
The front-line officers assigned to the joint task force were all criminal-investigation captains who did the hard physical work, yet none had the rank to sit at the questioning table. They had crowded into the room next door instead, collectively watching Chairman Liang’s seasoned performance on a large surveillance screen.
Xue Qian stood alone at the farthest point in the room, biting down on the filter of his cigarette. From that distance, it was easier to study the face on-screen that resembled Liang Youhui so closely.
They truly were father and son. Their features and facial structure shared at least seven or eight obvious similarities: both had long, narrow faces, double eyelids, high nose bridges, and good looks. But their temperaments could not have been more different. The father was a red-eyed rabbit concealing malicious intentions, treating everyone with an icy stay the hell away from me. The son was an innocent, harmless, silly little white rabbit whose whole face radiated please fuck me, please sleep with me.
The lead interviewer asked, “When Guo Zhaobin was surrounded by police inside the Liang family hotel across from Splendid Imperial Court, he was suddenly killed by a sniper. Who did it?”
Liang Tong remained perfectly composed, without the slightest tremor. “You’re asking the wrong person. I don’t know. A matter involving a human life is more responsibility than I could bear. I’m an ordinary businessman. I focus on making money. I absolutely do not deal in killing people.”
The interviewer asked, “But we checked the call records from that day. Guo Zhaobin made several calls before he died, and two of them were to your number, Mr. Liang.”
Liang Tong had never lit the cigar in his hand. From time to time he lifted it beneath his nose and breathed in its enticing aroma. Now he rolled it lightly between his fingers. “Yes. Boss Guo wanted me to save him, to pull strings for him. I spent more than ten minutes advising him to turn himself in as soon as possible. When you make a mistake, you should report yourself to the police, explain the situation clearly, and seek lenient treatment under the law. Why run to me?”
With one skillful sentence he reversed right and wrong, transforming an accomplice in a criminal case into an upright pillar of the business world.
The meeting room fell into deadlock, its atmosphere heavy and dull.
Bureau Chief Bao had not spoken before this. He had sat silently listening, privately dissatisfied with the soft, superficial questioning. In the stagnant air, he suddenly drove in a killer move that caught his opponent unprepared. “Do you know Lu Haocheng?”
A faint gleam flashed beneath Liang Tong’s eyelids. He shook his head stiffly. “Never heard of him. I don’t know him.”
“Are you certain?” Bao Zhengwei frowned slightly and said in a low voice, “Three years ago, the suspect Guo Zhaobin murdered an officer named Lu Haocheng. Three days before Lu was killed, he happened to visit your Splendid Imperial Court. Why did Guo Zhaobin murder Officer Lu? Did it have anything to do with you? Was Guo Zhaobin working for you?”
After answering every question fluently for the previous hour, Liang Tong stalled for the first time that day. His Adam’s apple jerked. The other officials looked surprised as well. None of them had known about this link.
“Oh?” Liang Tong raised his eyelids, revealing a pair of shrewd, slightly protruding eyes. “Officer Lu went there?… This Officer Lu was a man, wasn’t he? Something like that, cough, isn’t really suitable to discuss openly. After all, my club has an excellent reputation for the quality of its hosts. Everyone in business understands. Plenty of civil servants can’t resist temptation and sneak over to have some fun. Officer Lu had good taste. Maybe some beautiful hostess caught his eye? But I genuinely did not know the officer.”
Angry curses exploded inside the surveillance room next door. The place erupted.
Xue Qian bit straight through the filter of his cigarette. “F*** your mother!”
To shake off suspicion in the Guo Zhaobin case, Liang Tong did not hesitate to expose the ugly truth that his club illegally facilitated prostitution, effectively admitting with his own mouth that Splendid Imperial Court was a brothel. At the same time, he casually dumped the accusation of buying sex onto Lu Haocheng. In any event, both suspect and victim were now dead. Dead men could not testify.
When the case first occurred three years earlier, the police had investigated Officer Lu’s movements. But the surveillance footage inside Splendid Imperial Court from that exact day had conveniently been erased, leaving no evidence. The inquiry had then petered out under interference from certain forces outside the case…
Yet by an extraordinary coincidence, three years later Guo Zhaobin’s corpse had also ended up near Splendid Imperial Court, within two hundred meters.
Bao Zhengwei calmly told Liang Tong, “Since Officer Lu may have gone to your establishment for entertainment, please ask carefully. Which host did he see? What was the person’s name? What happened? Who witnessed it? We need to establish the entire sequence of events.”
Finally, Bureau Chief Bao pressed Liang Tong with one last sentence. “Tell us frankly whatever you know. Stop covering for the people behind you. Is it worth staking your reputation of many years and your entire family fortune on them?”
The cold, rock-carved face of Liang Tong visibly twitched twice, as though the stubborn stone were finally about to crack and shed fragments.
Before the tea-party atmosphere next door had fully dispersed, Xue Qian flung himself out of the room. He had no desire to keep looking at Chairman Liang’s face. Even the shape of the man’s mouth when he spoke made Xue’s throat uncomfortable.
Liang Tong put away his sandalwood cigar case and calmly shook hands with the officials.
Bureau Chief Bao deliberately walked around the round table and passed close behind him, asking in a voice only the two of them could hear, “You know that young man surnamed Ling, don’t you? Ling He.”
Liang Tong’s right hand was cold and stiff inside Bao’s grasp, but his expression did not move. “I don’t know him.”
Bao Zhengwei had been bluffing with that question, but Liang Tong definitely knew something.
A black executive car waited outside the municipal bureau with a driver and bodyguards. Chairman Liang had taken a turn through the government office and emerged completely unharmed, leaving behind a roomful of furious curses.
When Bureau Chief Bao came out, his face was dark as a storm cloud. Even he, rarely, let out a curse. Bao Zhengwei told Xue Qian, “That man is formidable, but he has weaknesses. His greatest weakness is how little concern he shows when we repeatedly mention Guo Zhaobin’s death and even Lu Haocheng’s. He’s too indifferent, too calm, too prepared. He knew in advance Guo Zhaobin would be silenced. He even knew about Haocheng’s case. He also knows exactly what purpose Ling He came here for. There must be a connection behind all this.”
The elevator in Liang Tong’s office ran from the eighth floor straight to the underground garage, then continued beneath the street and into the Liang family hotel. A little investigation showed the police that the secret passage had been rebuilt from an abandoned subway access tunnel. Digging and tunneling like this was obviously illegal construction that endangered public safety. What if Chaobei Avenue collapsed? But rich, powerful people dared to dig anyway. Urban management officers could control street hawkers and peddlers, but not Chairman Liang.
To draw Guo Zhaobin out of Splendid Imperial Court, Liang Tong had exposed the hidden elevator entrance behind his office bookcase. The mole tunnel had originally been prepared for himself, but that beast Guo had nearly ruined the entire game. In a crisis this severe, they had still chosen to let Guo Zhaobin die on Liang property. Just how important had Guo Zhaobin been?
Strip away the fancy packaging and Guo Zhaobin was simply an oddity who had transformed himself from a peasant into a titan of capital. Without knowing the truth, one might mistake his story for inspirational proof that a man could challenge a rigid class order. But there were no real inspirational tales in the capital market. Men had to be willing to kneel. Women had to be willing to sleep with people. The pie of profit inside the circle was only so large. If you wanted a slice, what mattered was whether the thigh you clung to was thick enough and whether someone was willing to toss you a few crumbs.
Why would a rural entrepreneur with no obvious connection to the matter murder Officer Lu? Someone had to have ordered him to commit that bloody crime for some reason.
…
Xue Qian sat in a police car, turning the matter over and over until a way to pull the firewood from beneath the cauldron and break the deadlock occurred to him. He made a call. “Mr. Yan, I know you’ve been feeling terrible lately. If it weren’t about my senior brother’s case, I wouldn’t ask you for help lightly.”
Yan Xiaodao really did sound unwell. His voice was hoarse, as though he were suffering from a severe cold. “Go ahead.”
Xue Qian said, “Three days before Officer Lu was killed, on April nineteenth three years ago, he went to Splendid Imperial Court. We don’t know what he was investigating or whom important he met there. The surveillance is all gone and we can’t get anything useful from questioning people… I know you’re acquainted with some people there. For example, the woman who was with you that day. I saw the two of you together on the footage.”
“People I used to know. I don’t associate with them anymore.” Yan Xiaodao instinctively wanted to refuse a proposal like this. “Captain Xue, that would mean using an old emotional relationship. It isn’t appropriate.”
Xue Qian blurted, “But women are easiest for you to talk to!”
Yan Xiaodao abruptly changed direction. “Captain Xue, actually there’s a very convenient, easy-to-talk-to ‘informant’ right beside you. Why don’t you ask that person? He might have been there on April nineteenth three years ago too. He may have seen something.”
Xue Qian was silent for a long moment, then said irritably, “And that somehow wouldn’t count as me exploiting an emotional relationship?! I’m not asking him.”
Only after hanging up did Xue Qian reflect that he had been too irritable. Why take it out on Yan Xiaodao? Right now he was the naive little fool whose true feelings were obvious to any outsider.
One arm hanging from the car window, he smoked continuously until four or five cigarette butts had gathered on the ground beside the door. In the end, he dialed Young Master Liang. “Youhui. I’m in Yandu these two days. Chongshan Hotel, room 1208. Can we meet tonight? I’ll wait for you.”
…
The rather unwell Mr. Yan was temporarily staying at one of Mr. Ling’s discreet hideouts in Linwan New District.
After ending Captain Xue’s call, he let himself sink face-up into the soft bedding again. Every so often, a violent chill tore through his body. The temperature inside and outside him seemed completely different, separated by only a fragile layer of skin. The waves of warmth within reach all around him only made him feel colder.
Yan Xiaodao had a fever. A high fever that had lasted two days. No matter how powerful and sturdy a body was, it was not forged from steel and iron. He was still flesh and blood, with a heart and feelings. After such a long stretch of upheaval and psychological torment, his body finally gave out.
The timing of his illness was almost fortunate. He also had reason to be grateful Ling He had not sent him home that day. With Ling’s keen perception and selfish concern, where exactly was Yan Xiaodao supposed to go? Back to his godfather’s old residence? Back to the seaside villa to see his foster mother, forcing her to face her son in this devastated, barely controlled state and learn the truth in a rush? Neither was a good choice.
So that day Ling He’s car had carried him along the winding coastal road to a base no outsider knew about. Morning and evening, one could sit there watching the tide rise and fall beneath a breathtaking line where sea met sky.
The outside of the building was dilapidated and neglected. Inside it was empty and desolate, its walls covered in distinctive graffiti murals full of strange charm. Ling He had rented the factory-building-turned-studio for very little money from a group of bankrupt artists. He was currently almost as broke as those artistic youths himself. Dead weeds filled the courtyard, dotted with stubborn lilies of the valley, while peeling patterns on the exterior walls gave the place a decadent, artistic mood.
The abandoned factory did not even have proper room partitions. It was worse than the shared basements used by migrant workers in Yandu. Ling He lived with everyone else in one enormous room, separated only by cloth curtains.
Yan Xiaodao had been too dazed at the time to notice how obvious Ling He’s financial hardship had become.
Yan lay with his eyes closed and, through the slit of his lashes, saw a tall, slender figure approach carrying a familiar scent.
Ling He parted his burning lips with the tip of his tongue and firmly pushed a cold thermometer into his mouth.
“Don’t kiss me. I’m full of germs,” Yan Xiaodao muttered.
“Then give me half.” Ling He stroked his forehead and neck and actually pried his mouth open again, catching a thread of saliva between their lips as if sharing the taste. He had a temperament just as reckless and half-crazy.
Even Yan Xiaodao’s saliva felt hot and spicy.
The thermometer read 39.8 degrees Celsius. The illness had struck like a mountain collapsing.
Ling He said, “Should we go to the hospital?”
Yan Xiaodao covered his bloodshot eyes with one arm. “No.”
“You’re just going to endure it like this?” Ling He frowned. “Do you think you’re made of iron?”
Yan Xiaodao said, “I’m not sick. My heart hurts.”
He almost never became ill. This rare fever seemed to drain away every reserve of strength he had accumulated over the past several years. Even his cheeks had quietly hollowed.
Ling He appeared and disappeared between the gaps in his lashes several times, wetting towels with cool water to bring his temperature down, though the old-fashioned physical cooling was only a drop in the bucket and accomplished little. Yan remained caught in a miserable cycle of chills and burning heat.
In his anxiety, Ling He looked around and immediately became offended by the factory’s windows. The western sun was about to move directly across Yan’s bed.
Ling He raised one hand and pointed at someone whose bed was separated from theirs by only a curtain. “Zhixiu, help me hang a curtain over that window. The sun’s hitting Mr. Yan.”
Mao Zhixiu opened a pair of sleepy eyes from her bed and looked at the huge window, nearly two stories tall. “That high? You’d need a cat to climb up there!”
Ling He said, “Brother Xiu, aren’t you a cat?”
Mao Zhixiu snorted. “Boss, you’d better raise a real cat.”
Ling He could tell Captain Mao was deliberately putting on airs. He had no choice but to move his noble person over to her bed, pinch the little bun on the immortal maiden’s head, knead her arm, then sit down and massage her shoulders and pound her back.
“Hey, lower, lower… yes, there, right there.” Mao Zhixiu lay comfortably on her stomach and pointed directions. “Ow, my back can’t handle these hard boards. A little higher. Put some strength into your hands!”
Ling He nearly lost his temper. “Why don’t you ask Huizhen to massage you? She’s better at it than I am!”
Mao Zhixiu slanted a bright, lively gaze out of the pillow. “Boss, if I didn’t make you do it, how would I get any entertainment out of you?”
Yan Xiaodao could no longer hold it in and burst out laughing.
Thoroughly annoyed, Ling He reached down and pinched the immortal maiden’s pert backside. Mao Zhixiu clapped both hands over herself and hurriedly cried for help. “Mr. Yaaaan!”
Yan Xiaodao laughed low and deep. “You two keep acting. Doesn’t bother me!”
“Lazy evil cat!” Ling He cursed. Inwardly, he silently confirmed once again that he was a man with a partner now. It really was no longer appropriate for him to fool around so casually with Zhixiu in that genderless, boundaryless way.
Miss Mao had accomplished her goal of adding fuel to the couple’s fire. Her entire face crinkled with satisfaction. She rose from the bed and went to hang the curtain.
That round of joking eased Yan Xiaodao’s feverish misery a little. It did not hurt quite as much anymore. He knew Ling He was genuinely worried about him.
Ling He fed Xiaodao a bowl of fine noodles with a poached egg, gave him another dose of fever medicine, then drew the bed curtain completely shut.
Ling He lay on his side and wrapped the trembling man in his arms. He stripped off Xiaodao’s pajama top and trousers with efficient movements, then removed his own clothes and covered them both with a thin towel blanket.
The huge room was shared by many people, after all. Around them came small rustles and quiet voices. With only one curtain between them and everyone else, even Yan Xiaodao was surprised Ling He would treat him like this…
Their bodies fitted together, skin against skin. Yan Xiaodao’s feverish, shivering body was suddenly wrapped in warmth without the smallest gap. He could feel two hands constantly stroking him, a chest pressed close to his, Ling He determinedly trying to transfer heat into him.
Mr. Ling normally did not undress this quickly even when they were having sex. Yan Xiaodao frowned despite himself. “Keep touching me and I’m going to get hard.”
A moment later Yan Xiaodao said, “I’m really hard.”
Ling He mocked him. “You can still get hard at 39.8 degrees. You really aren’t sick.”
Yan Xiaodao said, “You’re completely naked. If I didn’t get hard, wouldn’t that mean something was wrong with me?”
A faint light appeared at the corner of Ling He’s mouth. He delivered his diagnosis with certainty. “Nothing is wrong with you.”
It felt as though they had not been this intimate in a very long time. The more Yan’s heart was being tormented, the more he craved the rare gentleness of the person beside him. He turned onto his side, buried his face in Ling He’s shoulder, rubbed silently against him, then pulled one of Ling He’s hands down to the hard, trembling erection between his legs. The posture had clearly been learned from Lord Bear. Every night that dog rolled around inside his kennel begging his mate for affection in exactly the same shameless way.
Master Ling reclined and looked Yan Xiaodao over while stroking him. He lifted one corner of the blanket and, completely on instinct, bent toward him.
The unexpected movement startled Yan where he lay on his back. The muscles in his legs instantly locked. His head was already dizzy and fogged by fever, and now his mind burned into a blank. He thought Ling He was going to do that for him.
Ling He’s movement as he bent down was fluid and natural. It was simply the kind of thing lovers did when affection carried them there, with no reason to feel ashamed or awkward. Xiaodao had once done the same tender thing for him. The sight was too much for Yan Xiaodao to withstand. His body reacted before thought could intervene, hips jerking upward as his erection pressed out sharply beneath his underwear.
Yan Xiaodao did not dare move. Partly he was weak, and partly because this seemed impossible. Maybe the fever was making him hallucinate.
The flushed head slipped free of its obstruction with a sudden movement. Ling He was very close. His pupils contracted like pinpoints, as if a sharp blade had struck his eyes, forcing a dark red tint into the pale green.
Ling He almost touched it with his mouth, then stopped himself abruptly and shifted his gaze aside.
Yan Xiaodao understood immediately. This was not going to work. Ling He looked as though he had broken through barrier after barrier and thrown himself toward a pit roaring with magma and flame, only to discover halfway across that he had jumped too early and could never clear it. He had made a rigid turn in midair and was now dropping straight toward the bottom.
“Your hand is enough.” Yan Xiaodao abruptly pulled Ling He back, hauling him out of the fire pit.
His heart ached a little as he said softly, “You don’t have to do that. Use your hand.”
Both their bodies were burning.
Ling He did not look especially tortured or dramatic. He simply lay against Yan’s thigh and muttered with lowered eyes, “You jumped into the sea for me. Can’t I jump over one little fire pit for you? What does that count for?”
Yan Xiaodao wondered whether the fever had made him hear things, or whether Mr. Ling could actually read minds.
He still covered himself with one hand and tucked the dangerous weapon back into its wrapping. “Stop messing around. No.” Ling He refused to give in and insisted on trying anyway. This back-and-forth of resistance and coaxing was new between them. Inside the bed curtain, they tugged quietly at each other until Ling He finally won. Lowering his head, he kissed Xiaodao through the thin layer of underwear.
Yan Xiaodao felt as if the fever were melting him. Heat flooded through his whole body, breaking outward in waves until he seemed to dissolve into molten iron.
Later, without telling Ling He, Yan Xiaodao still called Su Qing and arranged a time and place to meet that evening.
On the surface he had politely refused Captain Xue’s suggestion, but he could not truly let the matter go. Officer Lu’s movements before his murder and Splendid Imperial Court, that notorious palace of wine, flesh, and excess, formed an unclear connection. This was no longer merely about avenging Officer Lu and clearing his name. The surname Liang alone left Yan scratching at the walls of his mind.
That same night, Yan Xiaodao and Captain Xue separately arranged meetings with their respective informants. Two large hands moved in from opposite directions, quietly scraping away years of gray residue in search of the faint traces left behind by an unseen demon feeding on human blood.