Yan Xiaodao met Miss Su in a private room at a club in Linwan.
After getting into a taxi, he sent Mr. Ling a message first and asked forgiveness afterward: 【I’m going to ask Su Qing about a lead. I’ll be back soon. Don’t worry and come looking for me.】
He knew his hometown far too well and deliberately chose a quiet, secluded place. Unlike clubs such as Yurun Paradise or Splendid Imperial Court, this was a clean establishment. No chickens were raised and no eggs were laid. It was simply a place for ascetic guests who preferred tea, conversation, scenery, and watching fish. A refreshing fragrance filled the club, while lamplight and lotus blossoms trembled together in the pond.
Yan Xiaodao sat cross-legged on one side of a low woven-bamboo table and began pouring tea for the young woman, only for Su Qing to smoothly take the tea set and cups from him. She handled such small tasks with practiced elegance, her expression intelligent and serene.
She was exactly the sort of refined, literary hostess guests in the current scene liked best. The vulgar, voluptuous internet-celebrity type had gone out of fashion. Women who looked as fresh as lotus blossoms rising from clear water and could also display learning and talent were more popular now. These days no profession was easy. Even work like this demanded university diplomas and certificates proving one artistic skill after another.
Su Qing smiled beautifully. “I finished 1587, A Year of No Significance. Xiaodao, recommend a few more books to me?”
Yan Xiaodao said, “How would I know what books are fashionable lately?”
Su Qing said, “The sort you usually enjoy. Men are interested in those things. If I learn more, I’ll have more to talk about with them.”
Yan Xiaodao casually reeled off a pile of books, including The Cambridge History of China, South China Sea Strategy, Six Hundred Years of Jinmen Urban History, and a biography of Steve Jobs.
After the small talk, Yan Xiaodao came directly to the point. “Su Qing, I only need to ask you one very important thing. Three years ago, on April nineteenth, were you at Splendid Imperial Court?”
After asking, he himself felt the question was asking too much. Dragging someone out of nowhere and demanding a story from one particular day three years ago, who could possibly remember?
Sure enough, Miss Su frowned politely. “Three years ago? How could I remember that?”
Su Qing was not a formally contracted hostess under Chairman Liang. She worked independently and had considerable seniority in the scene. Wealthy guests in Yandu sometimes specifically requested her at Splendid Imperial Court, or the club would “borrow” her for annual banquets and receptions to strengthen the lineup, paying her an additional appearance fee. Unwilling to give up, Yan Xiaodao tried to reconstruct how many times he himself had met Miss Su that year and where each meeting had happened, digging scraps of broken, limited memory out of his own head in hopes of guiding hers.
Su Qing poured more tea for Xiaodao. Ripples from the cup trembled across her eyes. A blurred reflection slid through the water and her hand froze in midair.
Yan Xiaodao caught it immediately. “What did you remember?”
Su Qing looked up in confusion. “April nineteenth? I remember now… I really was at Splendid Imperial Court that day. It was the birthday of one of my sisters, a woman surnamed Huang. Miss Huang was a contracted resident hostess there. She invited several of us who were close to celebrate with her. I bought her a cake and jewelry. That was the day.”
Yan Xiaodao released one breath only to draw in another. “A few women celebrating a birthday. Did you see anyone suspicious that night? Especially an unfamiliar male guest who didn’t seem to fit the atmosphere of a pleasure club?”
Su Qing understood at once and began rewinding her memories one step at a time. “The lobby was noisy and crowded, full of male guests and their companions. I really can’t remember everyone who came through. We hid upstairs in a private room where it was quieter, drinking and singing karaoke. Later, Lord Ting from Splendid Imperial Court found our room. He insisted on coming in and forcing us to drink with him…”
The hot tea seemed to burn Yan Xiaodao from the tip of his tongue straight into his chest, yet cold spread across his back. “What Lord Ting? Which Lord Ting?!”
Su Qing explained slowly, “A high-end male host in the scene. He wasn’t a resident host at Splendid Imperial Court either. His identity was mysterious. Everyone just called him that.”
“A male host?” Yan Xiaodao was genuinely shocked. “Was his real name Zhang Tingqiang?”
Embarrassment appeared in Su Qing’s delicate eyes. “Xiaodao, his surname isn’t Zhang. His name is Gu Yaoting. I’ve heard people call him Young Master Gu or Lord Ting.”
Whatever name he used, surnames and given names could be changed. Some people could even deny their ancestral tablets, clan lineage, and entire past. But a face always retained traces of the parents who had created it. Yan Xiaodao immediately produced an old photograph and pointed to a younger man with a gleaming shaved head, a massive build, and a hard, cold expression. “This is a photograph from more than ten years ago. Is it him?”
Su Qing looked astonished. She picked up the photograph and studied it for a full five minutes, growing visibly uneasy. “Xiaodao, is there something wrong with this man? Is he a criminal?… I think it is him.”
Miss Su suddenly took a pen from her pearl handbag and began sketching directly on the wooden tea tray.
She was skilled at drawing, having studied formally under a teacher in Yandu. Guests with status and taste were particularly fond of women with talents like that. With only a few strokes, she captured the man’s spirit. The face and features matched the photograph closely, but the air was older, more seasoned. The most striking difference was that the conspicuous bald head had become a ponytail.
It was not an ordinary ponytail either. This Young Master Gu, or rather Uncle Gu, had strong, sharp features, a thick neck, and a huge build. Every strand of hair on his head looked stiff as wire, sticking out at angles before being gathered into a short ponytail jutting from the back of his skull. An aggressively intimidating presence seemed to seep directly from the grain of the wooden tray.
Yan Xiaodao could tell the portrait Su Qing had drawn and the man in the photograph were the same person. The savage shaved head had merely been replaced by a stylish, flamboyant hairstyle, while his crude birth name had been erased and exchanged for a slightly more cultured alias.
One thing still confused Yan Xiaodao. “This man should be around forty. At his age, he works as a male host?”
Ripples passed through Su Qing’s beautiful eyes and she smiled faintly. “People in our line can be sixty and still be called Miss or Young Master while standing on the street. As long as we haven’t married out and escaped the cage, we’ll always be Misses and Young Masters.”
Faced with Miss Su’s water-soft gaze, Yan Xiaodao abruptly had nothing to say.
…
At that moment, Yan Xiaodao’s emotions were overwhelmed by what he had learned. He had always imagined that the police target was some murderous outlaw who had seized the stolen money and fled far away, then, like Qi Baoshan, transformed himself into a wealthy local magnate, or like You Jinglian, reinvented himself as a powerful official. Even the least successful of them, the timid and reserved Driver Tan, had managed to become a deputy bureau director in county government.
The world was vast, everyone had different ambitions, and the path of events always exceeded expectation. This Lord Ting had changed his face and name, becoming Gu Yaoting and moving for years through the pleasure grounds of Yandu high society. No wonder the police had struggled to trace him. Nobody would have imagined looking there.
Yan Xiaodao asked Su Qing solemnly, “Think carefully again. What exactly did Young Master Gu do that day? Whom did he meet?”
Su Qing’s expression turned grave. “If he appeared at Splendid Imperial Court, somebody must have specifically booked him. Otherwise he wouldn’t have gone there.”
Yan Xiaodao seized the key point. “Who booked him? Who did he go to meet?”
Su Qing frowned. “That man has enormous influence and broad connections among wealthy masters and madams. Rumor even says he’s a ‘son-in-law’ of the Zhao family. I don’t know whether that’s true.”
Even Yan Xiaodao found that difficult to believe. The Zhao family’s status reached back three generations through famous, respected figures. Lord Ting’s appetite was enormous. A son-in-law?
Back then, Su Qing and several familiar women had been chatting together in the private room when Young Master Gu walked in, planted himself across the sofa with the swagger of a warlord, took up enough space for three people, and made two of the women sit on his thighs while they drank and sang with him.
Su Qing disliked Gu Yaoting’s usual domineering arrogance. Using the excuse of fixing her makeup, she quietly slipped away, unwilling to let the man touch her.
She had not personally seen what Gu Yaoting did later that night.
If she had, perhaps she would have been the one who died.
An alarm sounded from the security system on the upper floors. Someone unfamiliar had apparently entered the VIP rooms upstairs. Bodyguards from every floor mobilized, their expressions tense. Su Qing later did hear fragments of gossip saying an unknown man had somehow obtained an encrypted key card, gone upstairs to spy, and enraged Lord Ting and the guest. The matter had ended badly.
Yan Xiaodao pressed anxiously, “Who was the stranger who entered the private room? And who was Gu Yaoting meeting? Could it have been those elders of the Zhao family?”
With nothing left to lose, Yan Xiaodao produced a photograph of a young man in police uniform. “Did you see this man that day? Was he the man who went upstairs?”
Su Qing thought for a long time, mentally scanning the faces of every male guest she had seen at Splendid Imperial Court over the years. In the end she shook her head apologetically. She truly could not recognize Officer Lu from the photograph.
Although Miss Su’s memory broke off at the final step, Yan Xiaodao’s urgent imagination was more than capable of leaping recklessly to a conclusion. Lu Haocheng had been killed because of this. Officer Lu had entered a VIP room at Splendid Imperial Court that day and witnessed Gu Yaoting with an important guest in a private, intimate situation.
Yan Xiaodao did not believe for one second that Officer Lu had happened to wander past or accidentally gone to the wrong floor. A principled criminal-investigation captain who entered a place like that had to be investigating a case and looking for clues or evidence. He had infiltrated the den alone in plain clothes, witnessed something never meant for outsiders, and brought death upon himself.
“That may really be what happened. You know what those people are like. They play very hard, things ordinary people would find unbearable to look at…” Su Qing agreed with Xiaodao’s line of thought. “People have died from it too, but afterward everything gets ‘cleaned up’ so well that nobody ever comes to investigate the truth. If the people involved, whether the one inflicting pain or receiving it, are public figures with status and reputation, then any record of such a scene becomes an absolutely secret scandal!”
Disgraced before the public, destroyed by public opinion, just as Young Master You had once lost his life. Certain crimes truly could not be allowed into the light.
Su Qing clearly had more she wanted to say, but repeatedly stopped herself. She still cared about dignity in front of Yan Xiaodao and kept softening the details with euphemisms. Yet Yan could read between the fragments of her account and imagine the leering, distorted faces, group scenes like demons dancing together, ugly props stained with blood, human beings reduced to toys and abused at will, and floors and walls slick with blood inside glittering palaces…
Su Qing’s expression became heavy and pained. She could no longer continue. These were the so-called sexual games rumored to take place inside Splendid Imperial Court. Very few people had seen them firsthand, but many had heard stories. If the people participating, whether aggressors or recipients, were prominent public figures, the matter would become a scandal guarded as a state secret.
So the simplest, most plausible explanation, in Yan Xiaodao’s view, was that Gu Yaoting or someone behind him had ordered Guo Zhaobin to find an opportunity to kill Officer Lu, and now the Guo-family attack dog who had helped the tiger commit evil had himself been silenced by its master.
Blood seemed to splash across the small room where the killing had happened. The red stain grew and grew until it filled Yan Xiaodao’s vision.
He had not made this trip for nothing. Miss Su was not a registered artist on Splendid Imperial Court’s books. When police investigated the club after the April twenty-second murder, they had been blinded by the bewildering array of stage names on the hosts’ registers and had somehow missed an observant, sharp-minded informant like her. The handful of insiders under Boss Liang who knew anything had long since been threatened into silence. After so many years, who could still tell the truth?
When Yan Xiaodao tried to stand, dizziness and weakness washed through him. Su Qing caught his arm. “Xiaodao, are you ill?”
Yan Xiaodao forced himself upright and waved her off. “Too much hot tea. My temperature’s a little high.”
Su Qing could see he had a fever. “I’ll take you back?”
Yan Xiaodao breathed faintly. “No. Don’t.”
Su Qing held both of Yan Xiaodao’s hands without letting go. The gesture plainly carried lingering affection. Yet she also understood that Xiaodao’s choice to meet her in such a pure, secluded place, almost like a Buddhist hall emptied of worldly desire, was his tactful way of stopping their relationship at the boundary of innocent old friends.
“Thank you.” Yan Xiaodao paused, then added, “And I’m sorry.”
Yan Xiaodao had not wanted to do what Xue Qian asked. In the end, he had indeed used the young woman’s old feelings for him, and he felt guilty.
Su Qing’s eyes smiled but her voice was sad. “Xiaodao, we’ve known each other for eight years. You’ve only known the new person for a few months. If… if I hadn’t spent my life smiling in pleasure houses, if I were a respectable woman, would you have married me?”
“It has nothing to do with any of that. I never cared.” Yan Xiaodao answered with complete sincerity. “I liked him from the first moment I saw him. Even now, I’m afraid I still don’t know his real name or identity. Who cares whether he’s respectable? However vicious or poisonous he is, I still like him.”
Tears streamed down Su Qing’s face. With the solemnity of a farewell ritual, she kissed the tiny mole on the tip of Xiaodao’s nose, then turned and left.
To love someone however vicious or poisonous they were, that had to be infatuation sunk all the way into the heart. How could anyone else squeeze even one finger into the space between them?
Yan Xiaodao stubbornly refused Miss Su’s offer to escort him and regretted it almost immediately. Holding the doorframe, dizzy and weak, he could barely take a step. Every joint in his body screamed with soreness. He silently mocked himself. The old gentleman really did need several maids to carry his sedan chair. At this rate he might have to sleep inside this club’s little Buddhist sanctuary tonight.
His phone rang. He looked down at the message and immediately recognized Mr. Ling’s furious tone: 【The very vicious and poisonous man is coming to pick you up and take you home!】
One message made Mr. Yan’s legs stop feeling weak.
His spine snapped upright in the darkness. He even glanced instinctively toward the window, wondering whether jumping out might be possible. Ling He was obviously suppressing his anger. He had not threatened to throw Yan’s bedding into the street. He was actually coming to collect this severely ill patient who could barely walk.
At the same time, Yan found something strange. Ling He always managed to track his movements at exactly the right moment, almost as though Yan had a remote-control device implanted in him, or Ling could even hear his conversation with Su Qing.
Yan Xiaodao had just raised the phone to call back when a tall figure suddenly filled his vision.
One hand hooked behind his neck while the other pressed against his chest and pushed him back into the private room. Ling He kicked the door shut neatly with his heel.
Moist air from the lotus pond and the scent of grass drifted through the room, mingling with the delicate fragrance of tea.
Yan Xiaodao had no strength to resist. His body looked powerful, but his muscles were weak and soft with illness. He slowly collapsed onto the woven bamboo couch, where Ling He followed him down, straddled him, and pinned all four limbs.
Yan Xiaodao coaxed softly, “Stop messing around. I came here for serious business. Su Qing knows something about Officer Lu’s case.”
“I know you came for serious business. I’m still unhappy!” Ling He’s clothes were damp with sweat, suggesting he had raced all the way here. Even the sweat seemed to carry a sharp, sour trace of jealousy.
Only a few hours earlier I was holding you so gently.
I’m still unhappy.
Yan Xiaodao did not know whether to laugh or cry. An unusually profound realization rose in him: This bear cub needs a parent to discipline him properly.
Ling He abruptly reached between his legs with one hand. Yan Xiaodao flinched from the sudden pain but made no sound.
That hand stayed between his thighs, pressing slowly backward along the line of his buttocks, tormenting the vulnerable place and proclaiming Mr. Ling’s ownership. The increasingly practiced touch soon had the feverish man breathing hard and shuddering. Yan Xiaodao could not move and simply lay there while Ling He’s fingers coaxed the flesh beneath his trousers into a swollen outline.
Yan Xiaodao neither stopped him nor prepared to resist. Tonight’s business could be settled tonight. What was it, three rounds in and three rounds out? Lord Yan’s body could take it. Otherwise Ling He might save the debt up and settle the whole account later.
Ling He stared at Xiaodao until he forcibly drove the anger out through the top of his own head.
He bent down and quickly kissed the handsome, prominent shape at the center of Xiaodao’s underwear through the fabric, then immediately put his clothes back in order. He had originally wanted to threaten, I’ll fuck you until you can’t get out of bed. Then he realized the man was burning with fever, barely conscious and unable to focus his eyes. He already could not get out of bed. How could Ling possibly bear to torment him further?
They had been abstinent for the past week. They would not do it tonight.
His own wife still had to be cherished in the palm of his hand. Mr. Ling understood that principle. Jealousy could be swallowed.
Ling He fetched several cold towels and used them to cool Xiaodao physically.
They lay side by side on the couch, waiting for Captain Xue to send someone from the evidence section to collect the recorded statement and Miss Su’s sketch. Yan Xiaodao told Ling He everything he had learned that night.
Ling He agreed with his inference. “Gu Yaoting chose the cleverest shortcut. He sold himself to serve powerful people and used that path to soar upward in a single step. Officer Lu discovered the secret, perhaps along with other criminal facts, and was silenced.”
Yan Xiaodao found it difficult to believe. “Someone who survives by selling his body and attaching himself to power is just a male prostitute. How could he possibly have enough influence to murder people and set fires without restraint, even kill a criminal-investigation officer? Who gave him that kind of nerve?”
“A single rider through the red dust to make the imperial consort smile. Bao Si had beacon fires lit to amuse her. Those were only two beautiful fools without much sense. Young Master Gu is at least a little smarter than that. Why couldn’t he do whatever he wanted? When an imperial favorite holds the ruler’s affection, that favorite stands above ten thousand others and can hold court officials’ lives and deaths in hand. Relying on sovereign favor to act outside the law. Isn’t that exactly what Gu Yaoting is?” Ling He realized the comparison was not especially precise, but the meaning was close enough.
Yan Xiaodao shook his head. “I can’t imagine anyone having that kind of taste. A thug like him, face full of brute flesh…”
Ling He did not agree. His gaze traveled once over Yan Xiaodao from head to toe, though he kept the comparison to himself.
In Ling He’s eyes, Xiaodao was perfect: handsome, fit, and absolutely not a brute with a face full of flesh.
Ling He laid out his reasoning for Yan Xiaodao in neat layers. “Once Young Master Gu acquired a powerful backer, he gained both the nerve and the ability to treat human life like grass. Old acquaintances and old events that might expose his past could be toyed with in his palm and killed off whenever he was finished with them. No wonder Master Qi, Lord You, and Tan Shao’an all feared Gu Yaoting, kept their mouths shut, and avoided the truth whenever possible.
“We can imagine it this way. If Guo Zhaobin was a lackey raised under some powerful patron as a weapon for violence, Liang Tong was the lackey responsible for collecting money and watching the establishment, while Gu Yaoting was the lackey who massaged shoulders, pounded backs, and warmed beds for wealthy and powerful guests.”
So the Zhao estate had raised three dogs. These three hounds ordinarily got along well, each handling a different part of the operation while serving as shields for one another, concealing each other’s identities and avoiding any investigation that might expose them. Every so often, one of the monsters’ splendid, polished heads surfaced from the darkness. Beneath the water, however, lay a rotting corpse too foul to describe.
Yan Xiaodao suddenly understood the role Lord Ting, and even Liang Tong, might occupy in the larger game. “I originally thought that nouveau riche Guo Zhaobin was a thug raised directly by Liang Tong. Now it looks like Guo Zhaobin might not have answered to Liang Tong at all. Chairman Liang may not have been directly involved in Officer Lu’s murder.”
If men like “Young Master Gu” and the circle’s wealthy patrons used Splendid Imperial Court as the hidden bridge connecting them while indulging in drunken excess, then the immensely rich Boss Liang had provided the giant vat in which all that filth could collect. It was his pledge of loyalty to those who rented out power for profit. One day, however, he would inevitably be burned by the fire he helped feed.
Ling He stroked Xiaodao’s fever-hot cheek and mocked, “You can relax a little about that Young Master Liang of yours. His biological father hasn’t had it easy either. He looks infinitely glamorous on the surface, but behind the scenes he’s probably been ‘Liang Xi’er,’ oppressed by ‘Zhao Shiren’ for years, waiting for you and Captain Xue to liberate him.”
Elio’s Notes: Ling is parodying The White-Haired Girl: its villain Huang Shiren is a predatory landlord, while Xi’er is the young woman he persecutes. He swaps in the Zhao and Liang surnames to mock the power relationship.
Yan Xiaodao did not care about the Liang family. He cared about his Young Master Ling.
Yan Xiaodao said softly, “Xiao He, you tore open the old case without caring what it cost you, followed this trail through a thousand hardships until it exposed Liang Tong and Gu Yaoting. So what you want to tear open is this entire filthy ‘circle.’ Gu Yaoting cannot be the only person inside it who willingly sank that low. There must be others too. Many of them are innocent. They didn’t fall willingly. They were forced and treated inhumanly. Mai Yunliang, Lu Yilun, and… others…”
Who else? Yan Xiaodao could not say it.
With the enemy before him and the truth of old hatred striking him full in the face through bloodlight, Ling He still remained calm, his expression and emotions hard as stone. “So the rain in Linwan Cemetery was rain meant for me. It was what Officer Lu wanted to say to me.”