Under the bright lights, Zeng Hong’s face was deathly pale, every wrinkle on display. She looked like a cracked statue that might shatter at any moment.
Chen Zheng placed a photograph of Mei Rui in front of her. She jolted and turned her face away, refusing to look.
“How did she die?” Chen Zheng asked.
“It wasn’t me!” Zeng Hong blurted instinctively. “She killed herself!”
“Fine. She killed herself,” Chen Zheng said. “Then how did she do it? You and the Mei family were neighbors. Do you remember the details of that day?”
Zeng Hong trembled, repeating that she had nothing to do with Mei Rui’s suicide.
“Then Gong Xiaoyang and Lu Feng had something to do with it?” Chen Zheng said. “That’s why Mei Feng killed them. You and those two were close friends for years. Did they ever tell you anything about the Mei family?”
Zeng Hong finally couldn’t bear it. “Does Mei Feng want to kill all of us?”
“Why?” Chen Zheng asked.
“That’s what Zhou Xia said! He just hasn’t found the chance yet!”
“I don’t even know exactly what happened back then,” Chen Zheng said. “How am I supposed to answer you?”
“I… I…” Zeng Hong began to cry, then haltingly told the tragedy that had stretched from the children’s disappearances to the present day.
Zeng Hong had once had a harmonious family. Her daughter Xu Xinxin did well at school and had a cheerful personality, the family’s precious little treasure. She and her husband often imagined their daughter’s future and had agreed to send her abroad to study. They regularly sought overtime shifts and scrimped on everything. When their daughter was at school, they ate nothing but steamed buns and pickles. Outsiders thought their life was hard, but to them, a little hardship now would buy sweetness later.
Their daughter’s disappearance smashed that future apart. At first, Zeng Hong raced about searching every day as though driven by a stimulant. Zhou Xia came to find her and said the families of missing children had to unite and focus their efforts. If they found even one child, there would be hope for the rest.
Remembering those days, Zeng Hong’s eyes shone with tears. She said she’d genuinely believed there was hope then. They were a united group, willing to risk everything to find the children. Zhou Xia, Mei Feng, and Li Ping had been particularly active, selling whatever they could. Following them felt like being swept into a great current.
Later, no more children disappeared from the tea factory. Nanfeng Pharmaceutical Factory also got going, and the workers’ livelihoods stabilized again. They gradually stopped worrying about their own children going missing and withdrew their help one by one, looking at the bereaved families with pity instead.
Zeng Hong even overheard a woman who used to be her friend tell a child, “Don’t go hanging around Auntie Zeng. Something bad might happen!”
She froze. What did she mean, something bad?
The woman said, “Auntie Zeng lost her child. It’s pitiful, but frightening too. Who knows if she’ll grab you so her own child has someone to keep her company?”
It was like a thunderbolt. Their eyes met, and the woman awkwardly dragged her child away. Zeng Hong couldn’t understand it. Her daughter was gone. It was bad enough that these people no longer wanted to help, but why say such vicious things? How could she possibly kidnap someone else’s child? What did other people’s children have to do with her?
She didn’t find an answer to the question until Mei Feng and Li Ping brought Mei Rui home.
As leads about the missing children dwindled, the mutual-aid group’s meetings became little more than opportunities to comfort one another, with scant practical benefit. Zeng Hong and Zhou Xia had both divorced. Hu Changquan had left, while Gong Xiaoyang, Lu Feng, and Wang Wanjian had all become bachelors. At the tea factory they were treated as monsters. Supervisors and colleagues pitied them but feared them too, convinced they had gone mad and particularly worried they might hurt other people’s children. The group members understood that. They barely spoke to anyone outside, shrinking into the small cocoon of their mutual-aid group.
Mei Feng and Li Ping hadn’t attended gatherings in a long while. Once, Gong Xiaoyang said he’d heard the couple might have been searching for Mei Rui on their own. Zhou Xia scoffed that they were fools not to use the strength of the group. How could two people find a child?
But a month later, Mei Rui actually came home!
The news caused an uproar at the tea factory. Workers flocked to the Mei home to congratulate them, and the couple joyfully bought sweets to hand out. If anyone at the factory wasn’t happy, it was Zeng Hong and the other four people in their group.
Zeng Hong said she couldn’t properly describe her feelings then. A voice inside her kept screaming, Why did Mei Rui come back? Why wasn’t it my Xinxin?
For a moment, she even felt hatred rising. Only then did she understand she didn’t really want the other children to be found; she only wanted her own daughter back. She was indeed hostile toward other people’s children. No wonder the worker had said those terrible things that day.
She shut herself inside the house, but Zhou Xia and Gong Xiaoyang came to her door. Furious, Zhou Xia said, “What are you still doing here? Come on! We’re going to see Old Mei!”
“I’m tired. I don’t want to go.” What Zeng Hong really meant was that she didn’t want to congratulate him.
“Who’s talking about congratulations?” Zhou Xia said. “We’re going to ask where they found Mei Rui! Don’t you want Xu Xinxin to come home?”
Zeng Hong immediately grew excited. The mutual-aid group gathered at the Mei home. Mei Feng and Li Ping brought out sweets for the visitors, but Mei Rui stayed shut in her room. The atmosphere was strained. Zhou Xia made a few polite remarks at first, but soon lost patience. “Old Mei, this isn’t right! You found Xiao Rui, but you won’t even tell us where? Didn’t we agree to look for our children together?”
“Zhou Xia, hear me out,” Mei Feng sighed. “I’m not trying to hide it from you. The lead I got was only about Xiao Rui. What use would it have been to tell you? If you’d gone all that way for nothing, wouldn’t you have been even more disappointed?”
Gong Xiaoyang had a short temper. “Then where did you find Mei Rui? Bring her out and let her tell us!”
Once someone started shouting, the others joined in. Even normally timid Zeng Hong rushed to Mei Rui’s door and pounded on it. “Xiao Rui! Xiao Rui, it’s Auntie Zeng! Did you see our Xinxin?”
Mei Feng hurried over to pull her away, and Li Ping even called the police. By the time officers arrived, the people inside were fighting. Everyone was taken to the station to give statements. The officers knew they’d all lost children, and after learning what had happened, they repeatedly explained that the Mei family had cooperated with the local police investigation and that the other missing children weren’t there.
They refused to believe it and insisted on going to Gezi Town themselves. For reasons no one knew, the Mei family wouldn’t go back. Zeng Hong followed the others to Gezi Town and even visited Yuanshu Township before finally giving up hope.
But a tremendous feeling of unfairness consumed her, along with Zhou Xia and the others. They went to the Mei home whenever they liked and insisted on speaking to Mei Rui. Gradually, a rumor spread around the tea factory: Mei Rui had been raped.
Zeng Hong swore she hadn’t started that rumor. Chen Zheng asked, “Do you know who did?”
Through her tears, Zeng Hong said, “It… it might have been Zhou Xia or Gong Xiaoyang. Those two have the biggest mouths.”
Although Mei Rui had returned home, she was profoundly traumatized. The greatest pressure came from the very uncles and aunties who had once searched for her alongside her parents. The more they’d once longed for her return, the more they now wished she’d died somewhere out there.
Of the three fathers still looking for their children, Wang Wanjian was the only one alive. His account was broadly consistent with Zeng Hong’s, but he knew more about Gong Xiaoyang and Lu Feng.
“What happened to Mei Rui was our fault, all of us. We were fools. We deserve to die!”
According to Wang Wanjian, Gong Xiaoyang didn’t trust the police and believed Mei Rui must know where their own children were. He told Wang and Lu Feng that the children had all disappeared around the same time, so why was Mei Rui the only one to return? She must have sold out the other children to the criminals. And why did the Mei family keep stopping them from investigating? Because they’d been paid off by the criminals, of course!
Lu Feng believed him immediately. The two staked out the Mei family’s building, deliberately standing below Mei Rui’s window and shouting their own children’s names. Wang Wanjian refused to take part and was mocked for it.
On the day Mei Rui jumped from the building, Gong Xiaoyang and Lu Feng had been nearby. Wang Wanjian suspected they might have had a chance to call for help. Even if the police couldn’t arrive in time, perhaps neighbors could have piled quilts on the ground. But the two said nothing, simply watching from a distance as Mei Rui went over the edge.
Once, while drunk, Gong Xiaoyang let slip how conflicted he’d felt. On the one hand, Mei Rui was a child he’d watched grow up, and her death saddened him. On the other, he felt relieved. None of their children had come back anymore. Everything was back where it had started.
“Who suggested the gathering at Weimo Mountain Resort?” Chen Zheng asked.
Wang Wanjian thought for a moment and said it had been Zhou Xia. Since Mei Rui’s death, the mutual-aid group had scarcely done anything together. He’d been surprised when Zhou Xia suggested reuniting over New Year, but he went along with it.
Meanwhile, the task force wasn’t making much progress in its search for Mei Feng. He might already have left Junan City. After Mei Rui’s death, Mei Feng and Li Ping stayed at the tea factory for only a little over a month. The workers didn’t know where they’d gone, but Li Shu found that they’d returned to Li Ping’s hometown, Anyi Town.
Li Shu led a team to the small town not far from Junan City and learned that less than six months later, Li Ping had suffered a mental breakdown. She ran into the street and was struck and killed by a speeding light truck. After arranging his wife’s funeral, Mei Feng disappeared.
Li Shu visited the old building where Mei Feng had lived. It was a corridor-style apartment block awaiting redevelopment, four stories high, with about twenty households per floor. Fewer than a third of the apartments were occupied now.
Neighbors said Li Ping had lived there with her parents before she married. She’d even brought her daughter back for visits. They’d been such a happy family, and Old Mei had been reliable. Who could have imagined they’d all end up ruined?
A thick layer of dust covered the house. No one had been there for at least two years. Mei Feng’s disappearance had been decisive. While his wife was alive, they could still comfort each other’s wounds. With her gone, perhaps revenge was the only meaning left in his life.
The task force retrieved the traffic accident report. Surveillance footage and witnesses showed that the light-truck driver hadn’t struck Li Ping intentionally. She had rushed out of an alley, and the driver braked hard, but the tragedy couldn’t be prevented. Investigators confirmed he’d never known Li Ping or Mei Feng and that their lives had never intersected.
Li Shu went to see the driver. The accident had destroyed his life too. The law had treated him fairly, but society hadn’t. People pointed at him behind his back, calling him a murderer, and he lost his job.
With a bitter smile, he said he’d initially felt it was terribly unfair. Why did something like that have to happen to him? He’d never done anything bad in his life. Why had misfortune sought him out?
Then he’d seen Mei Feng and learned the family’s story. Mei Feng hadn’t blamed him. Like someone whom fate had beaten beyond recognition, he’d merely shaken his head in helplessness.
Gradually, the driver understood that he had no choice but to make his peace with it. What else could he do? He no longer drove and worked hauling goods, muddling through one day at a time. He said with certainty that Mei Feng had never come looking for trouble and had never appeared in his life again.
Investigators found a cemetery agreement in Li Ping’s home. At the listed address, they found Mei Rui’s and Li Ping’s graves. It was a family burial plot. The central grave held Mei Rui and her little daughter, with Li Ping beside them. The empty space was what Mei Feng had reserved for himself.
When the couple buried Mei Rui, they’d already decided to join her here one day, though Mei Feng probably hadn’t imagined Li Ping would leave him so soon.
Li Shu kept watch in Anyi Town, but Mei Feng seemed to know the police would be waiting and never appeared.
Back in Junan City, Zhou Xia came to under the effects of medication. On seeing Chen Zheng, she instinctively hunched her shoulders.
“Zeng Hong and the others have more or less told us everything,” Chen Zheng said. “What about you? Anything you want to say?”
Zhou Xia’s voice shook. “Mei… Mei Feng still hasn’t been caught?”
“We’re working on it, but we need your cooperation. Wang Wanjian said you hardly met up anymore, and that you organized this gathering. Is that right?”
Zhou Xia opened her mouth, then sat speechless for a moment. “What happened to Mei Rui affected us deeply too.”
Zhou Xia had once considered everyone in the mutual-aid group part of her family. They’d persevered in searching for their children despite outsiders’ contempt and lack of understanding. Mei Rui’s return caused the first crack, but the remaining members, apart from the Mei couple, drew even closer together. After Mei Rui jumped to her death, the group all but fell apart.
When Zhou Xia heard that Lu Feng and Gong Xiaoyang had been standing below the building as Mei Rui jumped, she asked what they’d said to her. The two hemmed and hawed, claiming they’d said nothing and had only watched from a distance. Gong Xiaoyang even shouted at her, “If we’d said something that drove her to jump, do you think Mei Feng would’ve let us off?”
The tea factory became a strange place after that unexpected death. Everyone avoided the mutual-aid group, and Zhou Xia overheard people saying they’d driven Mei Rui to suicide. She felt terribly wronged. What did it have to do with her?
Yet alone late at night, she admitted to herself that perhaps Mei Rui’s death really did have something to do with her. She was the one who led the crowd to the Mei home and caused a scene. She’d known perfectly well her child wasn’t in Gezi Town but insisted the Mei family was hiding the truth, because believing that made her feel a little better.
We drove Mei Rui to her death. For a long time, every member of the group thought the same thing, so they stopped organizing gatherings. Even after the Mei couple had long since left the factory, the others could never go back to how they were. The crack had become an abyss and swallowed them.
Time moved on, and their guilt and pain gradually faded. Late last year, Zhou Xia wondered whether they should get together for New Year. They were all getting old, and the years spent searching for their children had turned them into outsiders in society, shunned even by relatives. Only the other members of the group could understand them.
She brought up the idea to Zeng Hong, who agreed but didn’t know where they could spend the holiday. Zhou Xia said she’d figure it out and asked Zeng Hong to persuade Gong Xiaoyang and the others.
They hadn’t met for so long, and everyone had plenty to say, so they quickly fixed a date. People of their generation liked farmstay inns, where they could stay for a couple of days and cook for themselves if they didn’t like the local food. But rooms were hard to find at year’s end, and every farmstay Zhou Xia contacted was full.
Just as she was fretting over a location, she unexpectedly won a prize: a stay at a guesthouse in Weimo Mountain Resort. She immediately called to verify it, and the person on the line said rooms had been reserved for the winners. They only needed to show up.
She shared the good news, and everyone felt lucky. They’d visited Junan Lake before but had never stayed at Weimo Mountain Resort. Its rates were high, and they wouldn’t have dreamed of paying out of their own pockets.
Before leaving, Zhou Xia carefully tidied herself up. Seeing her aging, haggard reflection, she sighed. She’d once been the beauty of the factory and had still taken good care of herself in her forties. But losing her child shattered her. She had no time left to dress up, always fierce, unkempt, and disdainful of anything that distracted her from searching.
By now, deep down, she understood her child might never be found. It had been so long since she’d had a proper New Year. This time, why not set aside the burden and enjoy the holiday?
The others seemed to feel the same. Throughout the journey, they tacitly avoided talking about their children, joking and sharing amusing stories instead. At the guesthouse, Zeng Hong looked ill at ease. Zhou Xia often watched short videos in which younger people complained about rude middle-aged and elderly people. Subconsciously, she wanted to prove that being a mother who’d lost a child made her no different from other people her age. So she deliberately grew loud and boisterous, as though that would make her look indestructible…
The moment Chen Zheng heard about the prize, his suspicion stirred. “How did you win it?”
Zhou Xia froze. “When I was buying… wintersweet blossoms.”
She’d loved wintersweet when she was young and bought it every winter. At first her daughter Yan Ping thought the blossoms plain compared with roses, but their delicate fragrance could fill a room for the entire winter.
Later Yan Ping grew to love wintersweet too, even buying it with her allowance. The blossoms became a kind of tradition between mother and daughter. After Yan Ping vanished, Zhou Xia kept buying them, hoping that one day her daughter would come home and recognize the familiar floral scent as soon as she entered.
In recent years many wintersweet sellers were young, and some adorned the branches with little dolls. Zhou Xia disliked those decorations, but one stall caught her attention. The vendor was a woman wearing a mask and hat. Zhou Xia couldn’t see her face, but sensed she was young.
The woman explained that her blossoms were part of a promotion with Weimo Mountain Resort. Buying a bundle entitled the customer to enter a prize draw, with a chance to win a free guesthouse stay. Zhou Xia had planned to buy wintersweet anyway, so she bought two bundles and entered twice. She won on the second draw.
“How exactly did you enter?” Chen Zheng asked. “Let me see your payment records!”
Zhou Xia grew flustered and gestured with both hands. There’d been a box filled with several plastic balls, she said. Whatever you pulled out was your result. As for payment, the vendor had said she needed cash to buy some farm produce afterward, so Zhou Xia paid in cash.
“W-was it a trap?” Zhou Xia’s nerves surged. “Was it all Mei Feng’s plan? He lured us to Junan Lake to kill us? Did he arrange for that woman to be there?”
Chen Zheng considered it. Zhou Xia’s group had wanted a farmstay but couldn’t book anywhere. A free room at a guesthouse would have been irresistible. On the surface, it looked as though Zhou Xia had first proposed the gathering. But what if Mei Feng had planned things before she did? Perhaps he hadn’t predicted she’d organize a New Year reunion at all; perhaps he’d intended to attract her with the prize.
Zhou Xia wouldn’t pass up a stroke of luck like that. With no family left to reunite with, she had only the members of the mutual-aid group. She would surely invite them to Weimo Mountain Resort, giving him exactly the opportunity he needed.
The question was: who was the woman helping Mei Feng?
An imagined trace of fragrance seemed to drift toward Chen Zheng. He recalled the masses of wintersweet he’d seen at “lake,” and Liu Xun’s face rose in his mind.
Liu Xun had helped Mei Feng get his job at the fish farms, but the two appeared to have no deeper connection. Why would she go so far for him?
Earlier, when investigating “lake” in connection with Huo Yewei’s case, the police had discovered that Liu Xun had nearly lost the chance to secure its land. She’d fallen out with her parents, and a developer was involved. She’d sought legal assistance and persuaded the developer to compromise before the dispute went to court. How else could a young woman on her own have stood up to them?
Legal assistance…
Yongshen Law Firm? Zhu Yi?!
Chen Zheng worked out the dates. When the forests west of Junan Lake were being redeveloped, Zhu Yi hadn’t yet interned at Yongshen. She’d still been a student. But as a gifted student at Han Province University of Political Science and Law, she could well have used what she knew to help Liu Xun. Did Liu Xun know what later happened to her? If so, she might have joined forces with Mei Feng.
Chen Zheng immediately drove to Weimo Mountain Resort and visited the visitor management office. According to their records, the resort hadn’t run any promotion with a flower seller. However, individual guesthouses often organized their own promotions. Perhaps Shanshui House really had partnered with a wintersweet vendor.
He went to Shanshui House. Its owner was equally astonished and denied holding a prize draw. But a female receptionist seemed to remember something. She looked at the owner, hesitating. “Xiao Li, if you know something, speak up!” the owner urged. “Now’s not the time to keep quiet!”
Nervously, Xiao Li said that once, while on duty, she’d heard Xiao Dong take a phone call mentioning a prize draw. At the time, Xiao Dong had been unusually eager to answer calls and hardly ever left the front desk. She’d also handled the check-in for Zhou Xia’s group.
“Where’s Xiao Dong?” Chen Zheng asked.
He’d visited Shanshui House several times since the incident but hadn’t seen anyone called Xiao Dong.
The owner’s face darkened. Xiao Dong had already resigned. When they checked the date, it was January 16, immediately after she’d checked in Zhou Xia’s group.
Chen Zheng shared the lead with the task force immediately. Investigators found that Xiao Dong wasn’t from Han Province and spent long periods backpacking around the country. She’d taken the front-desk job at Shanshui House simply to rest up and save travel money, leaving again as soon as she’d accumulated enough. That very day, she’d flown to Country L in Southeast Asia.
They weren’t going to locate her quickly. Chen Zheng suspected someone had exploited her to secure rooms at Shanshui House. She got money, and they got the rooms. Apart from Xiao Dong, no one at the guesthouse, not even its owner, knew Zhou Xia’s group had won a prize.
“Who did Xiao Dong spend the most time with?” Chen Zheng asked.
Neither the receptionist nor the owner could remember offhand.
Chen Zheng named Liu Xun directly. “How close was she to Liu Xun from ‘lake’?”
The owner started. “I saw them together once!”