Kong Bing immediately grew wary. “Did her conscience suddenly kick in? Or is she trying to lure us into a trap?”
Chen Zheng said, “Trap or not, we still have to go in.”
“First tell me roughly where she is.” Chen Zheng faced A-Li. She looked very much like A-Ping, but her expressions were far more vivid. “And what do you want in return?”
A-Li froze. “What do I want?”
“Nothing?” Chen Zheng said. “You’re offering information at a time like this. I can hardly assume you’ve suddenly decided to turn over a new leaf.”
The loathing for the police returned to A-Li’s face, and the look she shot Chen Zheng was venomous. Chen Zheng simply stood up. “If you don’t want to say, fine. I’ll wait until you do.”
A-Li panicked. “You don’t want to save that woman anymore?”
Chen Zheng looked back. “You’re the one asking something of me right now. Is this how you act when you need something from someone?”
A-Li ground her teeth. Just as the door was about to close, she shouted, “Stop right there! I… I want you to promise me one thing!”
Only then did Chen Zheng push the door open again. “Go on. Where is Yu Zhenxiao, and what do you want?”
Two police cars left Beiye Sub-bureau, followed by a Special Police support vehicle. A-Li sat in handcuffs, looking out the window at the busy, peaceful streets. Some of the hostility in her eyes actually faded. “Teacher Jiang said that girl might still be useful later, so she could not be killed as Liu Wenran had been. But keeping her in the city was risky, so he moved her to a village.”
The cars headed south. The village A-Li described was in Tonglou Town, which sat right on the edge of Zhuquan City. The town center was fairly lively, but the village was like most villages, quiet and sparsely populated.
A-Li explained that Jiang Luoqing had a place in the village that functioned like a safe house, a home he had bought cheaply from a farming family who had since moved elsewhere. Only Jiang Luoqing and A-Li knew that he had moved Yu Zhenxiao there. At first, Jiang Luoqing had not even wanted to tell her, but Yu Zhenxiao was still a living person. Even if she was only barely alive, she still needed food and water, and A-Li had been assigned to keep her alive.
Jiang Luoqing had told her, “You’re the only one I trust. Don’t disappoint me.”
Even among tools, some were easier to use than others. To Jiang Luoqing, A-Li was more useful than A-Ping or Qian Qibin. He had declared that if anything went wrong, A-Ping would be the first to betray him, while Qian Qibin was simply an idiot.
A-Li had carried out every task Jiang Luoqing gave her with painstaking care, and Yu Zhenxiao had caused her no trouble either. She had been quieter than a corpse.
The police cars had already entered Tonglou Town and were traveling along a rural road. Chen Zheng said, “You still haven’t told me what you want.”
Perhaps because of her nerves, A-Li’s voice gradually began to tremble. The closer they drew to the village, the more sweat appeared on her face. “I want… I want you to protect my younger sister.”
Chen Zheng said, “Your sister? A-Ping?”
A-Li nodded. “She’s the only family I have left. I can die. I’ve done a lot of terrible things, but she’s still young. She should get to live.”
The outlines of the village houses were already visible. At that moment, A-Li’s breathing grew faster and faster.
Chen Zheng asked, “What’s wrong?”
“I’m fine!” A-Li stared straight ahead. “We’re here, we’re here! That’s the place! Yu Zhenxiao is in there!”
Chen Zheng tapped the back of the driver’s seat, signaling him to slow down. A-Li said anxiously, “Why are you slowing down? Hurry! Don’t you want to save her?”
The building was already close. The village might have been desolate, but in broad daylight it was strange not to see a single villager anywhere. A-Li shouted, “You don’t believe me? Yu Zhenxiao is inside! If you don’t save her now, she’s going to die!”
The car had not stopped completely and was still moving toward their destination when Chen Zheng suddenly said, “You’re planning to use your life to save your sister. Otherwise, she would be the one dying here. Is that it?”
A-Li stared blankly for a moment, then abruptly understood. By then, the car had reached the gate of the little courtyard. Madness flared in A-Li’s eyes as she screamed out the window, “Ah—ah—ah—!”
It sounded almost like a signal to attack. Rustling burst from the trees, and danger seemed to surge toward them like a wave. But what came rushing out was only a flock of startled crows, a dense black mass sweeping overhead. After that brief commotion, silence returned to the surroundings, an eerie silence.
A-Li stared around her in shock, disbelief filling her eyes. After a moment, she murmured in an almost inaudible voice, “Why?”
The car door opened and Chen Zheng got out. The Special Police support vehicle behind them moved in as well, and a team of officers entered the courtyard.
At that moment, a figure emerged from the three-story house, holding up an unconscious man with one hand. “There’s a bomb inside.”
Everyone froze. Even Chen Zheng frowned. But Ming Han suddenly grinned and tossed the man onto the ground. “Already disarmed it! All clear, all clear!”
Chen Zheng let out a quiet breath. “Yu Zhenxiao?”
“Alive,” Ming Han said. “I haven’t gotten to her yet.”
A-Li stared at the scene before her as if she could not understand how any of this had happened. “You… you… how is that possible?”
Chen Zheng motioned for Ming Han to keep her under control while he went to check on Yu Zhenxiao. “You took your sister’s place as the bait. Unfortunately, you gave away what you were planning the moment you opened your mouth.”
A-Li’s eyes widened in horror. “You… you were using me?”
“We’ll talk about the rest when we get back,” Chen Zheng said.
A heavy sour, rotten stench filled the building. Leftover food lay piled on the floor, swarmed by flies. Yu Zhenxiao was half-reclining against the wall. There were no obvious injuries on her body, but she was barely hanging on. Half a meter away from her sat the bomb Ming Han had just disarmed.
Doctors had come with the Special Police support vehicle. Yu Zhenxiao was transferred to their vehicle while Chen Zheng stayed behind with the officers to search every corner of the house. In the police car, A-Li still seemed unable to believe she had failed, yet the tears streaming from her eyes appeared to release both lingering fear and relief.
After the search confirmed that no criminals or explosives remained hidden in the village, Chen Zheng high-fived Ming Han. “Good work. We couldn’t have done it without you.”
Ming Han shook his head and looked at the unconscious ambusher. “Shame we only caught this one.”
Time rewound to before A-Li offered to lead the police to Yu Zhenxiao. Chen Zheng and Ming Han had been standing in the corridor outside the interrogation room. Chen Zheng asked, “Why do you think they kept Yu Zhenxiao alive?”
Ming Han said, “She made the dolls. It looks like she still had some value to them. Unlike Liu Wenran.”
“Right. From our perspective, Yu Zhenxiao still has value to Hao Le, so if they dangle her in front of us as bait, there’s a good chance we’ll bite. Liu Wenran wouldn’t work.” Chen Zheng lifted a hand to his chin. “Now that most of their people have been arrested, the only move left is a last-ditch one: send someone to lure the police over and wipe us all out at once.”
Ming Han said, “Then the person luring the police would get caught in it too. So that’s why it has to be A-Li?”
“I’ll stall for time,” Chen Zheng said. “Get ready. The moment I get the location out of her, move.”
Ming Han smiled. “Leave it to me.”
Chen Zheng had learned the name Xiali Village in Tonglou Town from A-Li early on, but the sub-bureau appeared to remain still while Chen Zheng talked with her about how she had come to this point and how Yu Zhenxiao had been moved. During that time, Ming Han and an elite Special Police team had already entered the village without anyone noticing.
The criminals had prepared explosives and a sniper for the police, which meant someone had to be watching every move the police made. From their perspective, A-Li had not yet persuaded the police, and the police had done nothing. The people lying in wait in the village knew the operation would happen that day and believed the police were still some distance away. They had no idea a strike team had already come up behind them. The sniper spotted the “uninvited guests” at the last moment, but before he could react, Ming Han took him down with a single shot.
The Special Police then began evacuating the villagers while Ming Han located and disarmed the explosives. By the time A-Li, prepared to die along with everyone else, gave the signal in the village, no gunshot would answer and no bomb would explode.
By the time A-Li learned all of this, she was sitting in the interrogation room again. She was crying so hard she could barely breathe, yet through her sobs she managed to squeeze out, “Thank you.”
Chen Zheng raised an eyebrow. “Thank you?”
“I don’t want to die. I was just terrified A-Ping would choose a path that got her killed!” A-Li finally stopped hiding the truth. She and her younger sister A-Ping had been born in a small city in Han Province, the result of their mother selling her body. They had been abandoned from childhood and had no legal identities. Because one look at them made it obvious they were not from Hua Country, they were either bullied or exploited, stumbling their way into adulthood.
Three years earlier, Jiang Luoqing had found them and said he could give them a decent life. Even without legal identities, they could enjoy everything this land offered just like ordinary people.
To two girls who had spent more than a decade hiding and running, the temptation was enormous. Jiang Luoqing was also a teacher, clean-cut and respectable, nothing like the people who had hurt them. His only requirement was that they obey him alone, never ask about things they were not supposed to know, and never concern themselves with whether what they did was right or wrong.
What was justice? What was evil? Even charitable organizations had deceived them, so what was there about justice worth praising? They believed only in this older brother who gave them plenty of money and a place to live. Whatever he told them to do was justice.
In fact, before this year, Jiang Luoqing seemed merely to have been supporting them. He had never assigned them any tasks. A-Li’s first mission was to get close to Yu Zhenxiao and learn how the dolls were made. Then, after becoming close friends with Yu Zhenxiao, she was to follow Jiang Luoqing’s instructions and encourage Yu Zhenxiao to dredge up her hatred of Zhou Xi.
Everything went smoothly. Using Zhou Xi’s identity and the welfare home’s name, Yu Zhenxiao set up a stall at the mall and sold dolls. These dolls, said to grant students good luck on exams, quietly found their way into schools. Some people could not sense the malice embedded in them and only thought they were unusual; others were sensitive enough to feel uncomfortable the moment they saw one.
One day, Jiang Luoqing brought Yu Zhenxiao to Tushu Street, startling both A-Li and A-Ping. Jiang Luoqing said she was temporarily no longer useful. Their remaining job was simply to watch her, keep anyone from finding her, and keep her from dying.
Then a student disappeared from No. 10 Middle School, where Jiang Luoqing taught. A-Li knew that Jiang Luoqing was responsible for the killing of a student named Liu Wenran. That was the fuse that set everything off. Jiang Luoqing later moved Yu Zhenxiao to Tonglou Town. Both sisters knew about the place, but only A-Li knew Yu Zhenxiao was actually being held there.
The last time A-Li saw Jiang Luoqing was when he locked Lü Ou inside the tattoo shop. Jiang Luoqing looked terrible that day and gave the sisters one final task: if anything went wrong, lure the police to Tonglou Town.
She immediately understood why Yu Zhenxiao had not been killed. The girl could be turned into a deadly trap for the police.
A-Li hated the police and wanted absolutely nothing to do with them. When she saw A-Ping lead the police to the tattoo shop, she cursed like a madwoman. But after calming down at the sub-bureau, she realized something terrifying: A-Ping did not know where Yu Zhenxiao was, but she did know about the safe house in Tonglou Town. A-Ping might not realize it was a trap Jiang Luoqing had prepared for the police. If she led the police to Tonglou Town, everything would be over. Her sister would die there.
“So that’s why your attitude suddenly changed and you offered to take us to ‘save’ Yu Zhenxiao,” Chen Zheng said. “You were willing to trade your own life for A-Ping’s.”
After confessing, A-Li was no longer as aggressive as before. “The truth is, I hate her. If I’d been alone, maybe I wouldn’t have ended up like this. One person can survive somehow. I wouldn’t have met Jiang Luoqing either. I hate Jiang Luoqing too. But… she’s still my sister.”
“You didn’t have to choose death,” Chen Zheng said. “If you knew someone was lying in wait in Tonglou Town and that you would die there along with us, why didn’t you just tell me? Then both you and A-Ping could at least have been credited with providing important information.”
Fear flooded A-Li’s eyes. “Provide important information? And then what? Fight for a lighter sentence and get out early? Once we were released, would they let us live? We’d only die an even worse death! The moment A-Ping led you to that boy, I knew it was already too late. They’re going to retaliate against us!”
Chen Zheng remembered what A-Li had said in the car about protecting her sister. “Who are they?”
Tears streamed down A-Li’s face. “We really don’t know. Even Jiang Luoqing was only being used by them. If they can discard Jiang Luoqing, what are we to them? Only if I died and took dozens of you with me might they spare A-Ping because of my final contribution. Otherwise, everything would be over!”
When A-Ping learned that her sister had been willing to die for her, the eyes that always seemed veiled in mist brightened with tears. But neither she nor Qian Qibin, nor the white sniper most recently taken into police custody, could explain who stood behind Jiang Luoqing. The sniper did admit that he had killed Liu Wenran and hidden her body in a corpse pit in the barren hills to the south.
Kong Bing immediately led a team to the location the sniper had described, only to find two female bodies. One had already decomposed down to exposed bone and had been dead for more than half a year. The sniper seemed to have forgotten about her entirely. Only after seeing the photograph did he say he had killed that woman too. Her name was Zhao Yu. As for why she had to die, he said he did not know. He had simply been carrying out Jiang Luoqing’s orders.
At this point, all of the missing people had been found. Unfortunately, Liu Wenran and Zhao Yu had already lost their lives.
At the hospital, after treatment, neither Lü Ou nor Yu Zhenxiao was in life-threatening condition anymore. Before the police could even come to question him, Lü Ou was already demanding to see Chen Zheng.
Ming Han handed Lü Ou a peeled apple. “What’s the rush? Officer Chen is busy right now.”
Lü Ou looked ready to rip out his IV. “I have something important to tell him!”
Ming Han shoved him back onto the bed. “Tell me. I’m Officer Chen’s number-one spokesman.”
Lü Ou did not trust Ming Han very much and glared at him suspiciously. Ming Han laughed. “Kid, I had a hand in getting you rescued too. If you don’t want to tell me, forget it. I’m leaving.”
“Don’t go!” Lü Ou hurriedly said. “I… I keep feeling like I saw my mom while I was unconscious!”
“Why not say you saw your great-grandmother while you’re at it?”
“It really was my mom! I’m not joking!”
Ming Han’s expression turned serious. “Your mother?”
Lü Ou’s mother, Xu Hetang, had been missing for ten years without a trace. After Lü Ou disappeared, Chen Zheng had even pulled out the original records from Xu Hetang’s investigation and gone through them all again, but he still found no clues.
Lü Ou was so eager to explain that his words came out disorganized. “I didn’t see Jiang Luoqing himself, but I know it was him. When everything happened on Yeping Street that day, he wanted to take advantage of the chaos and get rid of me too. He seemed… especially wary of me.”
“Because he used to be a math genius, and you are too,” Ming Han said. “There’s a special magnetic field between you two.”
Lü Ou accepted that explanation and continued. After the late-night phone call ended, he never heard Jiang Luoqing’s voice again, much less saw him. A woman, A-Ping, came every day to check whether he was dead and inject him with drugs. At first he thought she was giving him narcotics and struggled as hard as he could. Later he realized the injections were probably only medication to keep him alive and sedatives. The woman did not want to feed him, and drugs were more convenient.
He tried to escape and tried to make noise, but nothing worked. In the darkness, his sense of time and space gradually dissolved, and his consciousness became more and more confused. It was then that he “saw” Xu Hetang.
But he could not remember why Xu Hetang had appeared or what she had said to him. His memory was extremely vague. After he regained consciousness, however, one vivid impression remained: he had seen his mother.
Lü Ou stared at Ming Han, desperate for the answer he wanted. Ming Han remained cautious. “Could you have dreamed about her?”
Lü Ou deflated slightly. A dream really was the most reasonable explanation. When someone was physically and psychologically fragile and facing extreme danger, it was perfectly ordinary to dream about the person they most wanted to see. All the more so when that person was the mother he had spent years searching for, the mother who could protect him.
Lü Ou scratched his hair. “But I keep feeling it wasn’t that simple. I can’t explain why.”
Ming Han said, “Then think about it. If your mother really came to see you, how would she know something had happened to you? How would she avoid Jiang Luoqing’s people? And if she saw you, why wouldn’t she save you?”
“I…” Lü Ou had no answer at all.
“Unless she has some connection to Jiang Luoqing and his people,” Ming Han said.
Goosebumps rose all over Lü Ou’s body. He blurted out, “Impossible!”
“Right, impossible.” Ming Han patted him on the head. “Stop thinking nonsense and get some rest. Once your Officer Chen finishes what he’s doing, he’ll come see you.”
After leaving the room, Ming Han’s brow gradually furrowed. The missing Xu Hetang had gone to see Lü Ou? It sounded utterly absurd. Ming Han had said it was impossible, but it still bothered him. Sometimes human intuition was strange. It was not necessarily the truth, but it could point toward the truth.
At Beiye Sub-bureau, a trace-evidence technician asked in confusion, “The traces from the tattoo shop?”
“Right,” Ming Han said. “Give me a copy of everything collected from the tattoo shop.”
The technician explained that the situation had been urgent at the time and many people had entered the tattoo shop. Trace collection had therefore been done later, and there were many footprints still being checked and sorted. Ming Han nodded and asked him to get the material to him as soon as possible.
Chen Zheng sat across from Hao Le. Neither of them spoke first. Failure had peeled away Hao Le’s mask piece by piece, exposing the ugly face beneath.
Chen Zheng suddenly said, “A-Li told me something interesting. She and A-Ping are your tools, and you are someone else’s tool. Do you know you’re a tool?”
Hao Le was not provoked. “You’re trying to get a rise out of me? Pointless.”
“What would I gain from provoking you?” Chen Zheng said. “I’m just a working stiff trying to do my job. If you refuse to say anything, I can’t clock out.”
Hao Le gave a muffled laugh. “You’re quite funny.”
“If you don’t want to talk about that, we can talk about something else. You have to give me something I can write down, or I can’t turn in my work.” Chen Zheng folded his arms and even crossed one leg over the other, looking more relaxed than Hao Le. “You endured and lay low for all these years because you wanted revenge on the classmates who caused you to fall off that cliff? That’s quite the revenge plan. They hurt you, so you decided to hurt every middle-school student?”
At that, Hao Le stopped laughing, his expression twisting as though he had swallowed a fly. “Revenge on who? Those pieces of scum? They’re worthy of that?”
“When I was investigating Feng Feng’s case, I had questions,” Chen Zheng said. “Wei Youtai really was the killer, but his revenge came on very suddenly, almost as though someone had been guiding him from behind the scenes without him realizing it. That person was you, wasn’t it? You used Wei Youtai to kill Feng Feng, then sent Wei Youtai himself to prison. The relay server Wei Youtai used for the anonymous calls that frightened Feng Feng and Ke Shuer was something you provided. And those coasters at Old Yin Noodle Shop were your handiwork too.”
Hao Le’s gaze gradually went still, like the surface of water.
Chen Zheng continued, “You used the coasters to draw our attention to Wu Lianshan, then killed Yin Gaoqiang to silence him because he knew too much. I’ve thought it over again and again. The only reason you would use us to take Wu Lianshan out was the attack she encountered on Xuebu Mountain. She witnessed something she herself couldn’t even make sense of, and that made her a liability to you. Your body disappeared. What she saw was you, alive.”
Hao Le suddenly burst into a string of shrill laughter. By the end, tears were running down his face. He lifted his cuffed hands and awkwardly wiped at the corner of one eye with the back of his hand, then looked up at Chen Zheng from beneath his brows. “Officer Chen, would you go to all that trouble to take revenge on ants?”
“In your eyes, Feng Feng and the others are just ants?” Chen Zheng said. “But according to those ‘ants,’ you had a miserable life. Feng Feng treated you like a slave. Whatever he told you to do, you did, and in the end you even fell off a cliff. If you hadn’t been lucky, would you still be alive now? Would you still be calling them ants?”
Hao Le clenched his fists, the veins standing out on the backs of his hands. The words came squeezed through his teeth. “I only let those ants taste the consequences they brought on themselves!”
“Really? I thought getting revenge on Feng Feng and Zeng Yan was your first priority.” Chen Zheng laughed softly. “And because simply killing them wasn’t enough to satisfy your hatred, you planned to target other innocent middle-school students too.”
Hao Le’s shoulders trembled as though he had suffered some enormous injustice. “You have a very vivid imagination.”
Chen Zheng curled the corner of his mouth. “You won’t tell me anything, but I still have work to finish. I’ll have to write the investigative report this way.”
Hao Le’s eyes were icy. “You’re trying to provoke me again.”
“If provoking you makes you tell me the truth, why wouldn’t I?” Chen Zheng said. “If you don’t want to talk, fine. Listen to me. Whenever I get something wrong, feel free to interrupt.”