Because of the drug’s distinctive characteristics, the Mobile Unit provisionally named it “Black Mark.” Tang Xiaoli contacted other provincial and municipal police departments to share detailed information, and an investigation into the substance gradually got underway. Chen Zheng and Ming Han, however, were still mired in the Weimo Mountain Resort case and could barely pull themselves away.
Acting on Shu Jun’s leads, Ming Han returned to Luocheng on the afternoon of the twenty-second. The Huo family’s Weihai Technology was based there. Huo Xiling had been overseas when Huo Yewei was murdered, but according to Shu Jun, her illegitimate children would benefit from his death, and, by extension, so would Huo Xiling. The Huo family had to be investigated.
But the first person Ming Han wanted to see was neither Huo Xiling nor her alleged illegitimate children. It was Huo Yewei’s father, Huo Yancheng.
Huo Yancheng held a nominal position at Weihai Technology but never actually worked. In broad daylight, Ming Han found him at a hotel with his arm around a woman. Apparently the Huo family selected sons-in-law for their looks, not their character. Huo Yancheng was already in his fifties, yet the handsome contours of his younger self were still visible. He had deep-set eyes and a high, straight nose. The woman beside him was in her twenties, and the pair were flirting without a care for who might see.
Only when Ming Han approached and showed his identification did Huo Yancheng send the woman away. He looked Ming Han over. “The Huo family’s business has nothing to do with me. You’ve come to the wrong person.”
“I haven’t even said what I’m investigating, and you already know it doesn’t concern you?”
Huo Yancheng sat down and lit a cigarette. “If it’s to do with the Huo family, it’s nothing to do with me.”
“Even the murder of your son?”
Huo Yancheng’s hand stopped.
“The news is full of reports about Huo Yewei,” Ming Han said. “Don’t tell me you haven’t seen any of them.”
Huo Yancheng frowned, shadows shifting in his deep eyes. Ming Han couldn’t tell whether what stirred there was grief or something else.
After a moment, Huo Yancheng extinguished his cigarette in the ashtray. “He may be my son, but he never acknowledged me as his father. I’m just a tool the Huo family acquired. If you’re asking whether I know how he died or whom he offended, I really don’t.”
“What do you mean, a tool the Huo family acquired?”
Huo Yancheng laughed bitterly. “You’ve managed to track me down here, and you still don’t know Huo isn’t my original surname?”
“I’ve heard a little about that,” Ming Han said. “But I’m curious. You never divorced Huo Xiyun, yet you’re openly fooling around with women outside. Doesn’t the Huo family object?”
“Huo Xiyun?” Confusion passed over Huo Yancheng’s face as if he could barely remember the name. Several seconds later, he nodded. “Ah, you mean the third Huo sister. She died years ago.”
His tone was extraordinarily strange. Even if he’d married into the Huo family and felt little affection for Huo Xiyun, she’d still been his wife in name. Treating her as practically a stranger was absurd.
“You really didn’t care about your wife,” Ming Han remarked.
Huo Yancheng’s mouth twitched. Suddenly he laughed and leaned back in his chair. “Is that what Huo Xiling told you?”
Ming Han had not yet met Huo Xiling, but he went along with it. “You disagree?”
When Huo Yancheng stopped laughing, the light seemed to drain from his eyes. “Then let me tell you a secret. Huo Yewei wasn’t my child with Huo Xiyun.”
“Whose child was he?”
“Huo Xiling’s!” Huo Yancheng’s face contorted. “Mine and Huo Xiling’s! Huo Xiyun was only her cover!”
Huo Yancheng had sobered up. He reclined in his luxurious chair, staring blankly at the ceiling with a desolate smile. Yet when he laughed aloud, the sound caught in his throat as though he were about to cry.
To Ming Han, the man resembled a prisoner trapped for years in a cage of money and beautiful women. Outwardly he still lived in splendor, but inside he had long since rotted away.
Huo Yancheng began his story. His birth family, the Xies, had been a link in Weihai Technology’s business network. As the Huos rose, the Xies enjoyed a share of the profits. Huo Yancheng grew up in comfort. His parents took his education seriously and sent him abroad at an early age. He wasn’t much interested in the family business, hoping instead to enter the fashion industry. His parents originally supported that ambition. But Huo Xiling’s actions changed his life.
That year he was studying in Country F, wearing his hair long and cultivating an artistic, elegant air. His father told him that a senior member of the Huo family would be attending a conference in Country F and that it would be wise for him to make a good impression.
Although he had no desire to inherit the family enterprise, he had no objection to helping his father with such a simple favor. Learning that the visitor was Huo Xiling, the second daughter of a collateral branch of the Huos, he carefully arranged her itinerary.
Huo Xiling arrived, and he joined the Huo entourage. He thought he’d fulfilled his father’s request perfectly. But perhaps he’d done it too perfectly. Huo Xiling began looking at him with an expression he couldn’t understand.
Huo Xiling wasn’t beautiful. Without her status as a Huo heiress, she would have been an ordinary-looking woman. Xie Yancheng, on the other hand, was considered handsome even in fashion circles. He had no interest in her and could never have imagined that one day he’d be forced to change his name to Huo Yancheng and have a child with her.
After Huo Xiling returned home, Xie Yancheng resumed his life abroad. A year later his parents summoned him home, saying there was something important to discuss. He had never doubted them. Yet the moment he returned, he was taken to the Huo residence. There he found his parents, their faces strained with misery, Huo Xiling holding her chin high, and the rather young girl beside her: Huo Xiyun, the family’s third daughter.
“Dad? Mom?” he asked in confusion. “What exactly did you want to discuss?”
His father stepped forward, his brows drawn tightly together. “Yancheng, from now on, you’ll be a member of the Huo family.”
He couldn’t absorb the words. Looking from one suddenly unfamiliar face to the next, he finally fixed his gaze on Huo Xiling. “President Huo, you…”
Huo Xiling smiled. “Uncle Xie and Auntie Xie have agreed that you’ll marry into the Huo family. You’ll be my brother-in-law from now on.”
The words struck like lightning. “What? What are you saying? I don’t even know her!”
Huo Xiyun turned her head impatiently. “As if I know you.”
He instinctively lunged at Huo Xiyun, who looked the most vulnerable, and gripped her shoulders. “What are you trying to do? Let me go home!”
Huo Xiyun shrieked in terror. The next instant, a bodyguard struck him heavily on the back of the neck, and everything went black.
He woke in an unfamiliar room. As soon as his mother saw he was conscious, she came over. She had always lived in comfort, but now her face was drawn with worry. He wanted to lose his temper, yet couldn’t bring himself to shout at his haggard mother.
“Mom, tell me why Dad did this. I’ve never even met Huo Xiyun! Why should I marry her? Why do I have to change my surname to Huo?”
His mother began to cry. “Don’t blame your father. We had no choice.”
Over the previous two years, Weihai Technology had changed its business direction, and the Xie family had gradually become less important. One word from the Huos could cut the Xies out entirely. His father had tried everything, pleading with executives at Weihai Technology while looking for alternative partners. But the family’s business was so closely tied to Weihai that finding another path was all but impossible.
His parents had even contemplated retiring. After decades of work, they had accumulated more than enough wealth. But they owned a factory employing countless conscientious workers. If the factory closed, what would become of them?
Then Huo Xiling approached them. Father Xie was astonished. He’d been pleading for help at Weihai Technology, but senior executives who’d once been on friendly terms with him now refused to see him. And Huo Xiling had come of her own accord! He was overjoyed, thinking a solution had arrived. But her condition was that Xie Yancheng marry into the Huo family.
“Uncle Xie, you know our family is from a collateral branch. We don’t have a single capable man among us. My little sister Xiyun has taken an interest in your Yancheng. Once he marries into our family, we’ll be relatives. How could I possibly ignore my relatives’ troubles?”
Father Xie was horrified and nearly rejected her on the spot. Xie Yancheng was his only son. How could he allow him to marry into someone else’s family?
“There’s no rush. Take your time considering it.” Huo Xiling gave him three months. During those months, under Weihai Technology’s pressure, the Xie factory deteriorated day by day. Between the workers’ incomprehension and the bleak future, Father Xie was exhausted and fell seriously ill.
Huo Xiling returned and asked whether he’d decided. If so, he could summon Xie Yancheng home. The Huo family would treat their live-in son-in-law well, and the Xie factory would be put back on its feet.
“So you sold me?” Xie Yancheng raged. Freedom had been the one thing he sought. If he couldn’t even decide whom to marry, what was the point of living?
But he was powerless against them. Under Huo Xiling’s threats and his parents’ appeals to pity, he finally yielded. He abandoned everything in Country F and became Huo Yancheng. He still couldn’t understand why Huo Xiyun had chosen him. She was cold toward him, nothing like someone desperate to force him into marriage. For months after the wedding, they barely lived together.
Huo Xiling, however, occasionally appeared to remind him of the “rules.” He could not leave the house without permission. He had to cut off all his former relationships with women. Even visits to his parents needed her approval. As for work, he didn’t need a job. He should simply stay home as a caged canary.
Caged canary was Huo Xiling’s own phrase. He could scarcely believe he’d become a woman’s kept bird.
But worse shocks lay ahead. One day, Huo Xiling came again and demanded that he sleep with her as a husband would. He thought he’d misheard. Huo Xiyun was leaning against the door, laughing coldly. “What, did you actually think I was the one who wanted you?”
That day, he learned the truth.
When Huo Xiling was in Country F, she had noticed how attentively he’d waited on her. More precisely, she’d taken an interest in his excellent genes. She wanted not only a man to marry into the family but an outstanding heir. She was confident in her own intelligence, so the father had to be extraordinarily handsome. He had precisely the looks and height she wanted, and the Xie family was easy to control.
There were three daughters in Huo Xiling’s branch. The eldest already had a husband who’d married into the family. Huo Xiling wanted a child of her own blood, but didn’t want to marry, so she used her younger sister Huo Xiyun as a substitute.
Huo Xiyun was young and interested only in enjoying herself. With a husband in name, she would never have to worry about marriage again. And that husband couldn’t control her. She and Huo Xiling quickly reached an agreement.
Huo Yancheng was nothing more than a tool for producing children.
Before long, Huo Xiling became pregnant and gave birth to Huo Yewei. Officially he was Huo Xiyun’s child, but Huo Xiyun had no intention of looking after a baby, so the responsibility fell to Huo Yancheng.
At first Huo Yancheng cared for Huo Yewei dutifully. He had accepted reality. The Xie family factory recovered, Huo Yewei was healthy and adorable, and Huo Yancheng would never need to worry about money. Seen that way, perhaps he ought to thank Huo Xiling.
But as time passed, the loss of freedom became unbearable, and the baby’s crying tormented him. He could no longer bear to see Huo Yewei. He left the child to the nanny and descended into self-indulgence.
Huo Xiyun sank into the same life. After several years of marriage, the sham husband and wife finally found something in common. One night, after drinking too much, Huo Xiyun confessed that she didn’t want to live like this either. But she couldn’t escape. She seemed to have been born merely to serve as a tool in her second sister’s struggle for power. They came from a collateral branch and were women, making it difficult to challenge the men of the main branch. But Huo Xiling refused to accept her lot and was determined to rule the Huo family.
In Huo Xiyun’s words, Huo Xiling was terrifying, lacking ordinary human feelings and willing to do anything to achieve her goals. One day she would control all of Weihai Technology. Anyone who might stand in her way would be eliminated.
“Do you know why our eldest sister emigrated?” Huo Xiyun asked hazily. “Because she saw through it long ago. Huo Xiling saw her as a threat. If she hadn’t escaped, Huo Xiling would’ve gone after her.”
Huo Xiyun looked as though she were mourning someone else’s fate because she sensed her own. “My turn is coming. She won’t spare me…”
Seeing Huo Xiyun like this, Huo Yancheng felt a stab of pity and shared suffering. Her outrageous behavior had been a disguise. She needed Huo Xiling to overlook her. She too wanted genuine love, but when Huo Xiling demanded she marry and raise a child in her place, she could not refuse.
Huo Yancheng began doing everything he could to protect and encourage her, naively imagining they might support each other and lead a decent life. For a while, Huo Xiyun stopped going out to fool around, and Huo Yancheng cared properly for his son. They gradually became a harmonious family of three.
But that sounded Huo Xiyun’s death knell.
“How could I have known that the one thing Huo Xiling couldn’t tolerate was the three of us being happy? If we became a real family, whose child would the boy be?” Huo Yancheng’s face twisted into a savage grin. “All three of us had to remain her tools. She controlled us all. The moment we came together, she had to destroy that balance.”
The husband who’d married in couldn’t be killed, because he still had uses. The son was even more indispensable. So the person who could disappear was the younger sister. The Huo family had plenty of daughters, Huo Xiyun was the least accomplished, and she’d already fulfilled her purpose in the marriage arrangement. Nobody would care if she vanished.
Huo Yancheng still remembered that summer. Huo Xiyun said she was going to a banquet with Huo Xiling. She left and never returned. The Huo family announced that Huo Xiyun was ill and needed rest. Even her husband in name wasn’t allowed to see her.
A month later, Huo Xiling announced that Huo Xiyun had died of illness. She handed Huo Yancheng an exquisite urn and smiled at him. He knew it was an unspoken warning.
Huo Xiyun’s strange death hardly caused a ripple even within the Huo family, much less outside it. Huo Yancheng knew he would never escape Huo Xiling’s control and abandoned himself again. Meanwhile Huo Yewei grew older. Sometimes Huo Yancheng remembered he had a son and visited him.
As the heir Huo Xiling kept hidden, Huo Yewei had every need met and required nothing from his useless father. When Huo Yewei was small, he’d been very attached to him and often asked why his mother wasn’t around. Faced with those innocent eyes, Huo Yancheng felt unable to breathe.
When Huo Yewei grew up, he understood that his father had married into the Huo family, had no career, and enjoyed luxury only through Huo Xiyun. He began looking down on his father and refused to acknowledge him. Huo Xiling was an accomplished actress, never revealing that she was Huo Yewei’s actual mother.
Whenever she appeared before Huo Yewei, she was especially harsh. When he defied her, she deliberately encouraged him to challenge her further. She was delighted to see that he had spirit, unlike Huo Yancheng.
Huo Yewei entered entertainment partly because he genuinely loved music and partly because Huo Xiling orchestrated it behind the scenes for Weihai Technology’s benefit. Over the years, Huo Yancheng gradually slipped from her attention. She no longer watched him. He lived a dissipated life, dating countless young models, and she didn’t care.
Huo Yancheng suddenly burst into laughter. “It’s over! It’s all over! That woman planned for years and kept Yewei’s identity hidden. Wasn’t it all so she’d have a pure-blooded heir? Well, now Yewei’s gone too!”
His eyes bloodshot, Huo Yancheng broke down in tears. “My poor Yewei! Investigate Huo Xiling! This is her punishment! Why wasn’t it her who died? Why my Yewei?”
As Huo Yancheng lost control of his emotions, Ming Han waited for him to settle and considered the avalanche of new leads.
Huo Yewei was Huo Xiling’s son? If so, the earlier theory that she had him killed for the sake of her illegitimate children would have to be reconsidered from the ground up.
Huo Xiling was exceptionally calculating. She had planned ahead and hidden her intended successor before beginning her struggle with other Huos for power. She hadn’t even married, using her sister as a stand-in. When she discovered that her sister and Huo Yancheng were growing close, and that Huo Xiyun might take Huo Yewei from her, she’d ruthlessly disposed of her sister.
She pushed Huo Yewei into entertainment and made him a tool of Weihai Technology. Rumors spread that they were at odds and that she mistreated him, yet those appearances served her purposes. Nobody would guess that Huo Yewei was her son. If everything went smoothly, only when she grew old would she reveal the truth and let him inherit everything.
But Huo Yewei had been murdered now. Was someone trying to break Huo Xiling by killing him? And how could that person have learned the family’s secret?
“Who else knew Huo Yewei was Huo Xiling’s child?” Ming Han asked.
Huo Yancheng sat on the floor and shook his head numbly. “If you don’t want people to know, don’t do it in the first place… Someone like Huo Xiling, willing to kill her own sister… who knows how much blood she has on her hands? Hahaha. Serves her right…”
Ming Han placed Huo Yancheng under the supervision of colleagues from the Mobile Unit and went to Weihai Technology. Security stopped him. After waiting more than half an hour, he was finally admitted to the president’s office. The woman who ruled the Huo family’s business looked solemn and exhausted, dressed entirely in black. After hearing Huo Yancheng’s story, Ming Han found himself seeing her as a mother grieving her murdered son.
“Officer Ming, I don’t have much time,” Huo Xiling began, plainly signaling that he should leave.
“If you’re so busy, you could have turned me away downstairs.” Ming Han sat without ceremony and watched her brows slowly knit. “You let me up because you’re uneasy yourself.”
“I hope you’ll do everything you can to investigate Huo Yewei’s death,” she said.
“What were you so busy with overseas, President Huo?”
“Does that have anything to do with the case?”
“I’m curious, that’s all. Huo Yewei was only your nephew, and you sent people to the crime scene immediately. Why hurry back yourself?” Ming Han asked. “Of course, if your business overseas wasn’t important, it would make sense to come back and see your nephew one last time. His body is in Junan City. Do you want to visit?”
Huo Xiling betrayed nothing. “That won’t be necessary.”
Ming Han nodded. “I’ve met Huo Yewei’s father.”
The corner of her mouth twitched. “You don’t need to report that to me.”
“What would be worth reporting, then?” Ming Han smiled. “That he told me Huo Yewei is actually your son?”
Huo Xiling shot to her feet, her gaze sharp with suspicion and threat.
“Don’t be nervous, President Huo. If he hadn’t told me something so important, I’d be more inclined to investigate you as a suspect,” Ming Han said. “That reaction just made his account more credible.”
“Me? A suspect?”
“Huo Yewei was a male descendant of your Huo family. You’re unmarried, but there are rumors you have illegitimate children. Eliminating Huo Yewei as an obstacle for their sake would fit your usual way of doing things, wouldn’t it? Just as you made your sister Huo Xiyun die of illness years ago.”
Huo Xiling sneered. “Huo Xiyun died of a disease. You’re welcome to examine her medical records.”
“You deny killing her, but not that Huo Yewei was your son? Then, President Huo, we’ll need to conduct a DNA comparison. You’ll cooperate, won’t you?”
Huo Xiling studied him for a long time. Perhaps realizing she couldn’t refuse the police request, she finally nodded.
“Who might have killed Huo Yewei?” Ming Han asked. “Do you have any idea?”
She remained silent for a long while. “I don’t know. I came back as soon as I heard, because I want the murderer found too.”
Ming Han returned to the Mobile Unit with Huo Xiling’s biological sample and compared her DNA to Huo Yewei’s. They were indeed mother and son. He pictured Huo Xiling. She had spent so long as chairwoman of Weihai Technology that she rarely showed her emotions, but Ming Han sensed that when he’d asked who might have killed Huo Yewei, a particular answer had occurred to her, one she refused to share.
The Huo family, Weihai Technology, and even the Xie family all needed further investigation.
Chen Zheng contacted Li Zhi and had only just finished describing the situation in Gezi Town. Before Li Zhi could even arrange to send officers there, major news arrived from Weimo Mountain Resort. A search team had found a body near Junan Lake.