Room 1208, Chongshan Hotel.
Captain Xue stood at the window looking out over Yandu, smoking. Every so often he tugged down the collar of his T-shirt, sniffed himself, and nearly knocked himself out.
He had not originally intended to arrange a hookup, so he had skipped the entire date-night routine. These two days of business travel had left his body derailed and his soul almost out of it. Showering, changing clothes, putting on a face mask, blow-drying his hair, all those dating steps had been omitted. Of course, he never used face masks anyway.
He checked the time on his watch and decided to take a combat shower.
In the army and police academy, a so-called combat shower meant a pack of men sprinting into the bathhouse at hundred-meter speed, stripping off uniform, shoes, and socks while still moving, rinsing away sweat and mud under the shower, flashing soap over the body at lightning speed, and washing it off just as quickly. If you could not finish in five minutes, you went outside with foam still on your head. If you could not get dressed in time, you lined up bare-assed. Captain Xue’s shower speed had been trained accordingly. Five minutes, done.
But five minutes had clearly not passed when his sharp hearing caught the hotel-room door opening outside. Someone had come in.
Captain Xue reacted instantly and snatched a large bath towel.
“Ge?” Liang Youhui’s voice approached the bathroom with his footsteps. He still respected the possible power of batons, handcuffs, and whips enough not to go completely wild. He knocked with exaggerated respectability before daring to crack the door and peek inside.
In Young Master Liang’s field of vision stood a Xue Qian completely covered in soap bubbles, a bath towel wrapped around his hips, hair and face dripping wildly. In his left hand he held a bar of soap. In his right, a handgun for self-defense.
Young Master Liang waved. “Heh, Ge.”
Xue Qian: “How do you have a key card?”
Liang Youhui grinned. “Tipped the front desk.”
With years of operational experience behind him, Captain Xue was not going to blush or explode over a scene like this. He calmly flicked the muzzle toward the door. “Go wait outside.”
Young Master Liang’s gaze traveled repeatedly between the actual firearm in Captain Xue’s right hand and the very different ‘gun’ he was imagining beneath the bath towel. After several tortured rounds of internal struggle, he obediently closed the door. “Ge, I’ll wait outside. Hurry up… I bought you a few new outfits. I think they’ll really show off your build…”
Xue Qian rinsed off the soap. Once he was clean, he could no longer tolerate putting his sweat-soaked dirty clothes back on. Gritting his teeth, he pushed one arm through the crack in the door. “Hey. What clothes did you buy me? Hand me something to wear!”
…
Captain Xue emerged carrying the dampness of the shower, wrapped in a designer T-shirt and jeans. He looked exceptionally handsome and well built.
He paced through the room in his usual cool, careless tone. “Yo. What else did you buy? Too much money, not enough brains.”
Coldness was only suppressed warmth. Indifference was only a cover for constant worry.
The sofa was piled with gaudy shopping bags printed with the names of luxury malls and designer stores Captain Xue never had time to visit. To him, this belonged to another unreal, glittering world entirely, full of red wine, cigars, and the moans and flirtations of polished men and women. Its bright, frivolous reflections and bubbles seemed ready to shatter at a touch. None of it had anything to do with him. In fact, he deliberately avoided that kind of life. His own existence really was rather colorless, with a streak of stubbornness, vanity, and aloof pride.
Liang Youhui happily pulled a bottle of red wine from one bag, then produced an elegant round cake box and set it on the table.
Xue Qian genuinely froze. “Why did you buy a cake?”
His head was clear enough. Today was not his birthday.
“It’s my birthday today!” Young Master Liang said with great seriousness, widening those peach-blossom eyes.
Xue Qian: “…”
Xue Qian lowered his gaze to study the carpet and silently swore, Oh, fuck me. At the same time he rubbed his nose hard. “Oh. Is it? I forgot.”
Xue Qian knew the date. He was a police officer, after all, and had once invited Young Master Liang to the station as a suspect for tea. Liang Youhui’s birth date, family background, education, work history, and every other file had been investigated down to the last thread. He knew all of it. He had simply completely forgotten that today was Young Master Liang’s birthday.
Regret and guilt flooded Captain Xue’s face. He hurriedly chewed up and swallowed the earlier jab about having more money than brains. He made a sincere self-criticism. “Work’s scrambled my head lately. I’m really sorry. I didn’t even buy you a present.”
Liang Youhui was clearly disappointed too. The clear light in his eyes dimmed beneath a hazy film. He had thought his Brother Xue had deliberately chosen this day to ask him over.
But seeing the normally insufferable Officer Xue hanging his head and apologizing was a once-in-a-century chance to take advantage. Liang Youhui immediately blew the trumpet of flattery. “Ge, inviting me here is the present. Aren’t you basically one big mobile gift package that breathes?”
Xue Qian eased the atmosphere. “Gemini, huh? All fucking fickle.”
Liang Youhui did not care. “Sagittarius is especially fickle too, but Sagittarius always ends up conquered by Gemini!”
The handsome Sagittarius Captain Xue cracked a grin. No subject was too ordinary for this kid to climb straight up the pole. Every bit of his limited brainpower seemed dedicated to things like this. For the first time in his life, Xue Qian personally waited on Young Master Liang. He uncorked the wine, then found a knife to cut the cake. When he opened the box, he almost sprayed saliva all over Liang Youhui’s head and face, nearly ruining that glittery hair gel that only needed a little starlight to turn dazzling.
Xue Qian: “What the hell kind of cake is this?!”
The birthday cake was both traditional and a complete violation of tradition. At first glance it was an unbearably old-fashioned longevity-peach cake, the sort normally bought only for people over sixty. What young person would eat something this corny? Yet Young Master Liang had obviously bribed the bakery into making a custom version for the two of them. A molded police cap had been added on top of the longevity peach.
The police cap covered the upper part of the peach perfectly, leaving only a section of white blushing pink beneath it. Half hidden, half revealed, the peach showed two seductive curves that shamelessly outlined the shape of a perfect pair of buttocks.
To put it more plainly and crudely, the whole thing looked like a police cap sitting on a huge white ass.
Liang Youhui broke first and laughed shamelessly. Little lover’s tricks like this came naturally to him. He had deliberately ordered the ridiculous thing to amuse the cold-faced Yasha.
Xue Qian stared at the cake and burst out laughing. Filthy thing.
He had never in his life met such a shameless living treasure whose sole purpose seemed to be making people laugh. Right now he wanted to bite Young Master Liang’s ass and grant the brat his wish so none of that effort went to waste.
Xue Qian cut the cake. Magnanimously, he gave the police-cap section to Liang Youhui while taking a large piece of the longevity peach for himself and biting deeply into it. The young master ate the “police cap.” The police officer ate the “peach.”
They stood at the window looking over the glittering night city. The distant overpasses looked like toy blocks stacked together, making a person worry that the gorgeous lights wrapped in evening color might shatter at a touch and reveal themselves as nothing more than a dream. They raised their glasses. Young Master Liang said “CHEERS” in English. Xue Qian answered, “Cheese.”
The two sat on the sofa eating cake, drinking wine, teasing each other, and talking nonsense. It had been a long time since either had enjoyed something this peaceful, comfortable, and easy.
Between people, there were some ties nobody could escape.
Xue Qian casually asked, “What does your mother do?”
Liang Youhui held the remaining half bottle of wine and drank as he talked. “Before my dad got rich, my mom worked in sales for a foreign-trade clothing company in Yandu. She spent every day running between upstream factories and downstream suppliers, earning hard commission money. Later, Technician Liang evolved step by step into Chairman Liang, and my mom transformed from a saleswoman into a self-created-brand fashion designer. Now she specializes in clothes for rich ladies in the circle and thinks she’s pretty good at it! Truth is, my mom can’t make clothes at all. She lets the designers and tailors she hires do everything, and she just hangs up the sign saying ‘Chairman Liang’s Wife.’ People in the same circle, Ge, you know how it works. Everybody praises everybody else and licks each other’s stinking feet until shit, piss, and farts all smell delicious. Buying Mrs. Liang’s brand is basically the same as giving my dad holiday gifts and currying favor. Money has to circulate between partners. Honestly, the clothes my mom ‘designs’ are so ugly even my dad and I can’t stand them.”
Liang Youhui had very attractive eyes, black and white sharply defined. His wide European-style double eyelids were stained red with wine, the corners touched by peach-blossom color.
Xue Qian realized Young Master Liang was not stupid at all. He understood every worldly principle and could read human relationships perfectly well. Xue asked with concern, “What are you doing for yourself now? You can’t spend your whole life idle and eating through the family fortune. If one day your old man can’t keep being your private bank and ATM, how are you going to live?”
Liang Youhui confessed, “I’m learning to do business now. Borrowing chickens to lay eggs and using money to make money is still the easiest way. The uncles are willing to guide me for my dad’s sake. More important, my monthly spending budget is way lower now! Look at me, Ge. I don’t go out fooling around anymore. My boyfriend doesn’t ask me for houses or cars. I buy him one bottle of wine and one cake and he complains I have too much money and not enough brains. What do I even have left to spend money on?”
Xue Qian smiled in satisfaction and reached over to ruffle the boy’s hair. His hand came away covered in sticky white styling mousse. Annoyed, he wiped it all across Liang Youhui’s face and clothes. “What disgusting crap did you put in your hair? Fucking impossible to pet!”
“Ge, I can take plenty of stroking.” Liang Youhui threw him a peach-blossom glance and smiled.
“Save your stroking for later!” Officer Xue deliberately avoided such an obvious sexual invitation.
Xue Qian said meaningfully, “Suppose one day you don’t have that rainbow-gourd Bentley to drive. Could you get used to it?”
Liang Youhui could not have cared less. “Then I’ll ride in a police car every day.”
The deeper the conversation went, the deeper Xue Qian himself sank. The soft-and-hard interrogation routine he had designed in advance could not be used at all. Liang Youhui’s gaze was clear and entirely unguarded. Xue Qian kept pacing circles around the trap he had designed, nearly wrapping himself inside it until the cocoon closed around him.
He flexed his finger joints and abruptly asked, “That day Guo Zhaobin was shot dead in the hotel your family owns across from Splendid Imperial Court. Do you know who did it?”
…
This kind of professional criminal-investigation tactic usually began with a cloud of meaningless family chatter, using relationships and affection like anesthetic to lull an opponent’s vigilance and will. Once the suspect relaxed enough to open his mouth, the interrogator suddenly threw out the key question like a killing move and caught him completely unprepared.
“Ge, I really don’t know who did it. I didn’t even dare go outside to look that day. I faint at blood. I faint when hospitals give me injections or IVs!” Liang Youhui had been afraid Brother Xue would start questioning him again. The smile vanished abruptly from his lips and uncertainty entered his heart.
Xue Qian’s face took on the hard gleam of a cold weapon. Expressionless, he asked, “Does your father employ anyone skilled with a sniper rifle?”
Liang Youhui answered nervously, “I’ve never seen anyone like that.”
Xue Qian sat with imposing ease, one arm stretched along the sofa back, chin slightly lowered as he stared Young Master Liang down. “The shooter fired from the roof of an office building one hundred eighty meters away, then escaped quickly. I checked the surveillance footage and studied the suspected shooter’s outline and build. It’s the same person who took a cold shot at me at the railway station. Remember that game console you gave me?… So who is the shooter? Have you ever seen somebody like that? Has he already fled abroad, or is he hiding somewhere in the city?!”
Captain Xue fired the questions like a string of bullets straight into Young Master Liang’s face.
“…Ge.” Liang Youhui looked innocent and miserable. “At least I gave you that ‘life-saving treasure.’ Can the ‘life-saving treasure’ cancel this out?”
“Liang Tong has only one son. Someday your entire family business and fortune will fall into your hands. You expect me to believe he does all these things and you know nothing? Who are you trying to fool?!” Xue Qian fired again without mercy.
“…” Liang Youhui froze, helpless and unable to speak. The alcohol vanished from his system in an instant, leaving his mind blank.
Xue Qian had not even revealed the other half of the evidence. Hospital surveillance had captured the back of the suspect who tried to assassinate You Jinglian. It was the same person. In other words, this agile hired killer had first nearly killed Xue Qian and Chen Jin at Fanjiang Railway Station while trying to seize evidence, then flown back to Linwan overnight to finish off You Jinglian in the hospital, and finally sniped Guo Zhaobin on Chaobei Avenue in Yandu. The string of acts was vicious and brazen. Whoever commanded him despised the police and deliberately challenged the limit of what the law could tolerate.
Xue Qian felt sick inside. The taste of cake still lingered in his mouth.
If Chairman Liang had truly planned these things, if this killer was a weapon Liang Tong had raised for years and controlled from afar, then Youhui, your father must also want me dead, right?
The person who came into my home to issue a challenge and leave a threatening note was your father too, wasn’t it?
The distance between the two men suddenly stretched wide.
They had been like two pieces of land slowly drifting together under the pull of the earth’s magnetic field. Just as they finally found a chance to touch, the ground beneath them convulsed, the poles reversed, and the world changed around them. Those two floating continents were forced apart, dragged farther and farther away by a field too powerful to resist.
Liang Youhui looked at Xue Qian in confusion and murmured, “Officer Xue, you’ve been suspecting my father this whole time? He wouldn’t do those things. Our family just does business. At most you’ll discover some problem with our companies. There can’t be anything else! Officer Xue, to be honest, my dad really is rich. He already has this much money. There’s no reason for him to break the law or take risks doing terrible things!”
Xue Qian had many things he could not tell Young Master Liang outright. Based on the evidence already verified, the Liang commercial empire really did have problems. It was not merely joining forces with Guo Zhaobin’s Yaoguang Group, helping him shift and extract funds, obtain enormous bank loans with nothing behind them, then transfer the money elsewhere and profit privately. Liang Tong’s own path from ordinary man to astonishing wealth over the past decade was strange. As a self-made businessman riding the wave of the era, Boss Liang repeatedly produced uncanny first moves in Yandu’s turbulent commercial wars, somehow getting ahead every time in battles of acquisition and seizure. He left rival bosses behind not because he was merely lucky, but because he stood on a higher “step” than everyone else.
What that “step” meant hardly needed explanation.
Xue Qian had imagined many ways to deal with Chairman Liang. He had thought of asking Liang Youhui to help him secretly enter his father’s corporate headquarters and home so Xue could gather criminal evidence.
He had considered using Liang Youhui to place tracking and listening devices in Liang Tong’s home, private car, and office. He believed he had enough sexual charm in bed to make Young Master Liang surrender both body and mind until he could no longer leave him.
He had even thought of simply taking Liang Youhui back to Linwan and hiding him somewhere secret. Xue would never directly harm him, but if Liang Tong’s precious only son had been kidnapped, the father might be forced to confess and surrender.
All those chaotic thoughts tangled inside his mind, then suddenly scattered in disgrace, leaving wreckage everywhere. Captain Xue himself would have to clean it up while exhausted. He simply could not bear to do any of it. It was too fucking awful.
Xue Qian tipped his head back and sighed. “Hah… today is your birthday.”
…
That was when Captain Xue received Mr. Yan’s crucial report. The timing could not have been better.
A few sentences over the phone lit up his mind. After a brief shock, the pieces rapidly fell into order and even the surrounding air seemed clearer.
Yan Xiaodao sent a concise message that went straight to the key point: 【Zhang Tingqiang is using the alias Gu Yaoting. High-level male host, backed by powerful people. Officer Lu stumbled into a deadly secret and was silenced. Investigate Gu Yaoting and the Zhao family behind him.】
Xue Qian leaned against the living-room wall and knocked his forehead against the cold hard surface three times, suddenly completely awake.
He lowered his head and stared at the phone for a long time. Sour, sweet, bitter, salty, every possible taste rose together in his throat. He had spent the entire evening terrified that Mr. Yan’s informant would report: Liang Tong did every fucking thing. Arrest him and close the case.
Red seeped around Xue Qian’s brows and eye sockets.
“Ge.” Liang Youhui rose from the sofa. His carefully styled hair and clothing looked absurdly out of place in the oppressive room, making him seem even more helpless.
Xue Qian looked up at him, then suddenly crossed the room in several long strides and tossed his phone onto the sofa.
He caught Liang Youhui’s face in both hands and kissed him hard.
“I’m sorry…” The words drifted from Xue Qian’s mouth as he captured the other man’s lips.
Yan Xiaodao’s single message had by no means cleared Liang Tong of much suspicion, but under Young Master Liang’s wounded white-rabbit gaze, Xue Qian felt deeply guilty and truly wanted to comfort him. This was a simple person who brought him happiness, yet Xue kept making him sad. Xue was cruel. Xue was an asshole. He sucked Liang Youhui’s upper lip, slipped his tongue between his teeth, and when he entered deeply, the fragrance of red wine and the sweetness of cake filled every sensation.
Liang Youhui felt as though his lips were being sucked away and eaten.
He was normally incapable of melancholy and accustomed to joking through everything. Somehow Brother Xue’s red-rimmed eyes infected him. His own eyes reddened too. Who cried from a kiss? Maybe he was simply too excited. At last he had the man he liked in his arms. With two swollen goldfish eyes, Liang Youhui deepened the kiss in intoxication, refusing even to close his eyes, lingering over the hard, handsome face in front of him while his tongue chased Officer Xue’s throat and tongue root.
A hotel room was a romantic and dangerous place. It stripped reason of armor and made resistance unbearably difficult.
At some point Xue Qian’s T-shirt had been pulled off, exposing firm, beautiful muscle. The two men touched each other recklessly to release long-suppressed physical need, passion drawn tight as an arrow on the string. With the last scraps of reason remaining, Xue Qian suddenly grabbed Liang Youhui, who was ready to sprint one hundred meters toward the bed with him and drown together in the soft land of pleasure. “No. Here.”
Their bodies twisted together against the wall in an exaggerated embrace. Living-room light traced shadows along muscle and skin, hot and sensual. Neither knew who had loosened the belts first. Both men’s hands slipped inside clothing, urgently soothing the desire they had suppressed for too long. As sensation shot upward through Xue Qian’s nerves, his thoughts blurred. He could not even remember the last time he had felt this.
A wash of white mist seemed to rinse his emotions clean. It felt too good.
They kissed again. Liang Youhui’s eyes shone with pleasure and triumph. “Ge, you’re really big.”
Xue Qian’s face remained as hard as ever, with only the fine feeling at his eyes and mouth betraying him. “You like it?”
Liang Youhui’s entire expression seemed to fall freely into infatuation. “I love it… Ge, you’re amazing. Really amazing…”
Xue Qian kneaded Young Master Liang’s backside with his rough hand, then suddenly slid two fingers into the tempting entrance between those round white peach cheeks. The touch made Liang Youhui shudder violently, convinced that tonight he was finally going to be taken apart by the police baton.
Without even looking, Xue Qian’s fingers found the tempting spot at the back entrance. Biting at the corner of Young Master Liang’s mouth, he said, “A diamond-studded ass. Keep it for me. Nobody else touches it.”
Liang Youhui looked at him pitifully. “I’ve been saving it for you forever. It’s practically gone cold.”
Xue Qian’s love-struck brain and case-solving brain ran at the same time. Thinking about Yan Xiaodao’s message left a sour taste in him. He suddenly interrogated, “Do you know Lord Ting? Gu Yaoting. Know him? Are you close?”
Liang Youhui was still burning all over. He stalled for one beat and failed to answer.
A little white rabbit facing an experienced old fox only had to stumble once to expose the truth. Xue Qian’s face went cold. “Your father told you not to talk.”
Chairman Liang really had warned his son never to mention “Lord Ting” to anyone, saying the man had nothing to do with him anyway.
“Ge…” Caught between his father and the man he loved, Liang Youhui pleaded with his eyes for Officer Xue to stop questioning him.
“One question. Have you ever played with Lord Ting?… Slept with him?” Xue Qian narrowed his eyes at the suspect.
“No!” Liang Youhui reacted strongly this time.
“Really?” Xue Qian kneaded his backside harder. Because he liked him, liking had naturally spawned all the negative things too: jealousy, possessiveness, irritation, suspicion.
“Really. I’m not close to that man at all. There’s nothing between us!” Liang Youhui raised his right hand as if preparing to swear an oath, while inwardly cursing furiously: I’m a man who fell for you, Officer Xue. Is my taste really crude enough that I’d fall for Gu Yaoting? The guy’s pushing forty, okay? He isn’t even as handsome as you!
Xue Qian yanked the raised hand down. Spare me the useless oath.
“Youhui, when I finish investigating that case from beginning to end, I’ll come back for you.” Xue Qian explained softly. “Right now the investigation is active and our identities are sensitive. Some things can’t be done recklessly.”
Liang Youhui: “…”
Xue Qian promised solemnly, “Ge keeps his word. When the case is over, I’ll be with you.”