Only then did Chen Zheng return to his earlier line of questioning. “Zhu Yi saved Mei Rui. She thought Mei Rui’s life would get back on track once she left Yuanshu Township, but she’d underestimated how cruel people could be. The backward, feudal village hadn’t ‘devoured’ Mei Rui. Instead, the old workers from the tea factory took her life.”
“She shouldn’t have been so kind,” Liu Xun said suddenly. “If she hadn’t saved Mei Rui, Mei Rui wouldn’t have died, and neither would Zhu Yi. There’s wisdom in the old saying about respecting other people’s fate.”
Liu Xun laughed softly. “You think I was helping Mei Feng? No. I was using him. I don’t like anyone in the Mei family. Mei Rui is dead, so I can’t hold her accountable, but Mei Feng is still alive.”
“Using him? You mean to kill the interns who went to Yuanshu Township back then?” Chen Zheng asked. “How did you learn what happened to Zhu Yi?”
Liu Xun hastily wiped the corners of her eyes before the tears could fall. Her voice was laden with regret. She still believed she’d once had an opportunity to save Zhu Yi.
Zhu Yi had helped many people. To Zhu Yi, perhaps Liu Xun hadn’t been anyone special. But to Liu Xun, Zhu Yi was a beacon illuminating the road ahead. On the day they’d reached an agreement with the developer, Liu Xun accompanied Zhu Yi to the train station. Zhu Yi embraced her and said she believed she’d succeed.
But success was never that simple. Settling with the developer was only the first step. From then on, Liu Xun lived from dawn until late at night with nothing on her mind but work. She devoted herself wholly to “lake,” with barely any time even for family. Its first product was a flop, and the company was on the brink of collapse. She was too ashamed to face Zhu Yi, yet she also wanted Zhu Yi to have the first bottle. She therefore went to Han Province University of Political Science and Law in person and met Zhu Yi, who was about to begin her internship.
Zhu Yi was delighted to receive the perfume and promised to treasure it. She also said Liu Xun shouldn’t have made the trip, because she was just about to go to Junan City herself.
Liu Xun was overjoyed, imagining she’d have plenty of chances to see Zhu Yi again. But after returning to Weimo Mountain Resort, she became even busier. She was responsible for product development as well as distribution and marketing, until she lost all sense of time. Two years ago, “lake” finally established a stable customer base. Only then did she have time to think about herself and the friends she’d neglected in her busyness.
Zhu Yi. A name that had grown distant came into focus again. Excited, Liu Xun selected one of “lake’s” new products to give her. In the early days she’d been disheveled and struggling, while in her imagination Zhu Yi had become a brilliant lawyer in a prestigious firm. Liu Xun had been embarrassed to present her struggling brand to such a woman. But now that she’d become a reasonably successful businesswoman, she could hold her head high. Zhu Yi had wished her success, and now she’d succeeded. She could finally meet her openly!
But Zhu Yi’s account had disappeared. Liu Xun couldn’t contact her. She vaguely remembered Zhu Yi mentioning Yongshen Law Firm during their last meeting, so she went there. She was told Zhu Yi had indeed interned at the firm but hadn’t lasted, and they didn’t know where she was now.
Liu Xun was astonished. Hadn’t lasted? How could that possibly describe Zhu Yi? Zhu Yi was the most determined person she’d ever known!
An ominous thought rose in her mind. Something had happened to Zhu Yi.
She didn’t have the time or the skills to investigate what had happened, but compared to the past, she now had more than enough money. She could hire legitimate lawyers, or even an illicit private investigator. The lawyers found nothing. Not long afterward, though, a private investigator told her that Zhu Yi had been killed by ignorant men in Gezi Town and the fellow interns she’d trusted so wholeheartedly.
Liu Xun couldn’t believe it. Zhu Yi was dead? Betrayed and killed by her colleagues? Why? What had happened back then?
The private investigator showed her a video apparently filmed in a basement. It was dark and squalid. A man speaking in a local dialect had been tied up, pleading and sobbing. He insisted he hadn’t been the only one responsible for Zhu Yi’s death. He’d paid money. What was wrong with paying to sleep with a woman? Everyone did it! He’d even caught a “filthy disease” from it. Who was he supposed to complain to?
Liu Xun was horrified. The investigator explained that the villager in the video was one of the men who’d raped Zhu Yi. The person who’d sold her to them was Yi Lei, the man described as Zhu Yi’s husband in Yuanshu Township.
As for how Zhu Yi had come to be married into the village, that was another long, cruel story.
The investigator spoke slowly, showing Liu Xun photographs of Zhu Xiaodi, Dong Jing, Zhang Pin, Li Ren, Si Wei, and Du Ying, one after another. “Zhu Yi wanted to change Yuanshu Township, but these people took advantage of her kindness. Each gave her a push, driving her toward an abyss she could never escape. In the end, she might still have been saved, but not one of them reached out a hand.”
The investigator produced photographs of Mei Rui and her family. “This girl was the one Zhu Yi rescued. Her first, and her last. But Mei Rui was killed too. If Zhu Yi hadn’t met with disaster and had been able to come back from Yuanshu Township to keep her company, she wouldn’t have become so desperate that she jumped off a building.”
The investigator tapped Mei Feng’s face in the photograph and sighed. “He’s a pitiful father.”
“If Zhu Yi hadn’t tried to save her, she wouldn’t have died either, would she?” Liu Xun said suddenly.
The investigator looked taken aback. “You wouldn’t be wrong to put it that way.”
Liu Xun forced herself to regain her composure. “What should I do?”
The investigator shrugged. “I’m only a detective. I give you as much information as you pay me for.”
Liu Xun frowned. “What exactly are you trying to say?”
The investigator tilted her chin toward Mei Rui’s family photograph. “He’s different from you. Zhu Yi was your benefactor, but a benefactor isn’t irreplaceable. Mei Rui was his daughter, and he’s lost everything. If he comes looking for you someday, you could try helping him. But don’t make the same mistake as Zhu Yi and expect nothing in return. If you help him take revenge, you can demand something for yourself too.”
At the time, Liu Xun was too confused to digest the woman’s words. But as time passed, she began to understand. When Mei Feng appeared before her carrying a bottle of “lake” perfume, she knew her opportunity had arrived.
“I was the one who planned things for Mei Feng. I never got to repay Zhu Yi, and I resented Mei Rui too, so I felt no guilt about using Mei Feng.” Liu Xun had grown very calm. Her unpainted face was as still as Junan Lake on a windless day. “I secured the suite at Shanshui House. I also pretended to sell wintersweet and made it look as though Zhou Xia had won a prize. Mei Feng promised that once he’d taken his revenge, he’d find a way to kill that group of interns.”
Chen Zheng had already noticed glaring contradictions in Liu Xun’s account. At this point, he couldn’t help interrupting. “You didn’t know Zhu Xiaodi and the others would be staying at Shanshui House too?”
Liu Xun shook her head. “I didn’t know at first. But when I asked Xiao Dong to reserve the room, I saw the booking list.”
“So you thought it was your opportunity?”
“What else?” Liu Xun grew agitated. “They were coming of their own accord. It saved Mei Feng the trouble!”
“Who was the private investigator you hired?” Chen Zheng asked.
Liu Xun hesitated and fell silent.
“You can’t tell me who it was?”
She frowned. “I know private investigation isn’t legal. I don’t want to implicate her.”
“Have you considered that the investigator you described might not have come across your commission by chance?”
“What do you mean?”
“Which law firm did you go to?” Chen Zheng asked.
Liu Xun hesitated. “Yongshen. It’s the most famous firm in Junan City.”
“If even Yongshen’s lawyers couldn’t find anything, how did this investigator manage so much?” Chen Zheng pressed. “Who is she? What’s her name?”
Liu Xun swallowed. “I… I only know her surname is Ou. I called her Ms. Ou.”
“Contact details?”
“I deleted them in front of her at our last meeting. I knew what she was doing wasn’t legal. I was already grateful she’d helped me.”
“So I take it you never transferred money either?”
“I paid cash.” Liu Xun became increasingly panicked. “Are you saying she might have been using me?”
“Do you remember what she looked like?” Chen Zheng asked.
The harder Liu Xun tried to describe her, the blurrier the remembered face became. All she could recall was an elegant woman with graceful mannerisms, a strong perfume scent from a luxury brand, long wavy hair, and oversized sunglasses at every meeting. She’d never seen the woman’s eyes clearly.
“How did you find her?” Chen Zheng asked after thinking for a moment.
“I didn’t find her!” Liu Xun explained that initially she’d only wanted an ordinary lawyer. But the lawyer couldn’t do anything. They’d met in a café near the law firm; after the lawyer left, she sat despondently on a sofa, gazing out of the window.
Ms. Ou had appeared then and offered to take the case, on the condition that Liu Xun consult no other lawyers and tell no one. Having lost faith in the lawyers, Liu Xun readily agreed.
Before ending the interrogation, Chen Zheng confirmed once more. “You and Mei Feng didn’t kill Dong Jing? You only led Zhu Xiaodi to Mei Feng?”
Liu Xun nodded repeatedly. “There wasn’t time to do anything to the others. I never expected… I never expected…”
That night, her only remaining family member had come to harm too.
“Ms. Ou.” Chen Zheng tried to picture this mysterious woman. She couldn’t possibly be a simple private investigator. She might be the person pulling the strings behind this whole series of murders. She might already have singled out Liu Xun when Liu Xun first visited Yongshen Law Firm looking for Zhu Yi.
She knew what had happened among the interns, as well as Zhu Yi’s ordeal. She’d even used illegal methods to force a villager in Jianya Township to confess to raping Zhu Yi. Liu Xun and Mei Feng had arranged to bring the mutual-aid group to Shanshui House, but the appearance of Zhu Xiaodi and the other interns had been unexpected to them. Had Ms. Ou influenced that meeting too?
A figure suddenly appeared in Chen Zheng’s mind: an elegant, beautiful woman. He Mei.
It was He Mei’s wedding that had reunited the former interns after so many years in Junan City, making the New Year gathering possible.
Her appearance and bearing matched Liu Xun’s description. And as Zhu Yi’s former mentor, she was actually the person most likely to have noticed something was wrong. Liu Xun had gone to Yongshen looking for information about Zhu Yi and had later hired a lawyer from the firm. He Mei could easily have learned Liu Xun’s intentions. Had she then posed as the private investigator Ms. Ou, approached Liu Xun, and told her the truth?
Chen Zheng carefully recalled his last meeting with He Mei. This beautiful lawyer was no mere ornament. She’d been caught up in the Gu Qiang case but was now flourishing in legal circles. If she was Ms. Ou, why involve herself?
Chen Zheng played a video for Liu Xun. It showed He Mei, the elegant, beautiful lawyer, getting out of a car and removing her sunglasses.
“Isn’t that Ms. Ou?” Liu Xun exclaimed in surprise.
“Are you sure this is your private investigator?”
Liu Xun watched a while longer and nodded. “That’s exactly how she looks with sunglasses on, and how she walks! I remember it so clearly. I couldn’t be mistaken! You found her?”
“It really is her,” Chen Zheng murmured.
At Yongshen Law Firm, He Mei walked gracefully toward Chen Zheng. “Officer Chen. We meet again. Have you solved the case?”
“Almost,” Chen Zheng said with a smile. “I think we’re just missing Lawyer He’s statement.”
He Mei raised an eyebrow. “Me? Surely you’re joking, Officer Chen.”
“Is business at Yongshen Law Firm not particularly busy?” Chen Zheng asked suddenly.
“How could it not be? What law firm isn’t busy? If my assistant hadn’t told me the police were here, I’d still be in a meeting.”
“Then how do you have time to moonlight as a private investigator?”
He Mei’s smile faltered, and the look in her eyes changed slightly.
“It seems you use the name Ms. Ou when you work as a private investigator,” Chen Zheng said. “And you even poach clients from Yongshen’s own lawyers.”
He Mei laughed and pushed open a door. “Come in, Officer Chen. Let’s talk inside.”
But Chen Zheng remained in the doorway. She turned back, apparently puzzled. “Hm?”
“Actually, I’ve come to invite you to the municipal bureau,” Chen Zheng said. He nodded toward the room. “You don’t think the corridor is suitable for talking. I don’t think that room is suitable either. We have an important statement to take, after all.”
The smile slowly disappeared from He Mei’s face. After a moment, she shut the door again. “All right. I’ll go have some tea with you.”
News that the police had taken He Mei away set tongues wagging throughout the firm. Most famous lawyers carried some hidden shadows and had enemies eager to bring them down, but He Mei didn’t seem to have offended anyone. Younger lawyers watched her departing back, exchanging baffled looks.
In the municipal bureau interview room, a camera pointed at He Mei. Even here she paid attention to her appearance, straightening her collar.
“Is private investigation your side business?” Chen Zheng asked.
“You’re joking, Officer Chen. As I said, my real work takes up virtually all my time.”
“Then why make time for the owner of ‘lake’? Surely it wasn’t because she paid particularly well?”
He Mei paused. “Because, as a woman, I felt she deserved to know the truth.”
“Why her?”
He Mei raised an eyebrow. “Because in all these years, Liu Xun is the only person who came to Yongshen asking where Zhu Yi had gone. She’s Zhu Yi’s friend.”
“The only one?”
“Yes. The only one. Such an outstanding young woman simply vanishes from the world, and the only person who cares about her is Liu Xun, someone who wasn’t even part of her daily life. Isn’t that laughable?”
Chen Zheng didn’t find it laughable, and there was nothing in He Mei’s expression suggesting amusement.
“How did you know about the connection between Liu Xun and Zhu Yi? Did she tell you?”
“Half and half,” He Mei said. “Liu Xun stormed into the law firm wanting to see Zhu Yi. The receptionist didn’t even know there’d once been an intern here called Zhu Yi. She asked a newly hired lawyer to help find her, but come on. How was he supposed to manage that?”
He Mei had supervised that lawyer several times when he was an intern. She asked him about Liu Xun’s request and knew he couldn’t help. After one of their meetings, she therefore approached Liu Xun herself, pretending to be a private investigator.
Liu Xun had lost faith in lawyers and pinned her hopes on He Mei, telling her a great deal about her connection with Zhu Yi. He Mei, in turn, showed Liu Xun a video she’d secretly taken while questioning a villager named A-Xiu.
Liu Xun was impulsive. He Mei suggested that if she had the opportunity someday, she could help Mei Rui’s father.
He Mei’s account matched Liu Xun’s statement. She spoke with remarkable candor, without the slightest evasiveness in her eyes.
“So you knew for a long time that something had happened to Zhu Yi, and you knew all the details?” Chen Zheng asked. “Why deny it when I came to see you last time?”
He Mei smiled. “The fewer complications, the better, Officer Chen. I’m a very busy woman.”
“Too busy for everything except being Liu Xun’s private detective?”
He Mei glanced down slightly, seemingly unconcerned at having her lie exposed. “Private investigation is illegal. I only ever did it that once.”
“What interests me more is when you realized something had happened to Zhu Yi. You didn’t seem to care much about your interns. Why deliberately investigate her disappearance?”
He Mei fell silent, then gave a bitter smile. “That’s a long story.”
He Mei had never wanted to supervise interns. To her, foolish, naïve, conceited trainees were parasites feeding off established lawyers. But she’d been assigned the responsibility and had no choice but to grit her teeth and do it.
Of the seven interns that year, Zhu Xiaodi had connections and occupied one of the permanent job slots even before arriving. She didn’t need to worry about him. In fact, she rather liked well-connected interns, because they usually knew their place and didn’t scramble to stand out. The most troublesome were the ones without connections, desperate to stay. Human impatience, greed, and cruelty were on full display in them.
Like Li Ren and Du Ying, for example.
They were her least favorite interns. Du Ying had good grades but serious weaknesses in temperament and couldn’t respond well on the spot. Li Ren’s grades weren’t as strong as Du Ying’s, and his naked ambition was written all over his face.
As for Dong Jing, Si Wei, and Zhang Pin, Dong Jing was passable, though his heart wasn’t in the work. Zhang Pin was so incompetent He Mei couldn’t imagine how he’d got past HR; he’d inevitably be eliminated. Si Wei was interesting, a girl studying law just to land herself a big-shot lawyer. She played innocent and adorable, believing her motives were deeply concealed, but He Mei found every glance and gesture laughably childish.
Only Zhu Yi truly interested her. Zhu Yi was undoubtedly the best intern, impossible to overlook in educational background, grades, or performance. She even seemed to possess an ease and calm that shouldn’t have belonged to someone in her circumstances. He Mei herself felt comfortable around her.
Zhu Yi had grown up in a welfare home. By rights, she might have been expected to be as anxious and hesitant as Li Ren or Du Ying, but instead she was a fire burning freely, one even He Mei couldn’t help envying.
Gu Qiang had noticed Zhu Yi too. Gu Qiang’s character was poor and his private life filthy, but he was extremely capable professionally and had a remarkable eye for talent. He’d singled out Zhu Yi early. If nothing went wrong, she’d work under He Mei after graduation, a win for both of them. Zhu Yi would have a powerful backer in Gu Qiang, while He Mei would gain a talented young assistant.
He Mei had never imagined Zhu Yi would stay in Yuanshu Township because of a legal-aid project.
“I wasn’t lying last time,” He Mei said helplessly. “When I went looking for Zhu Yi, I really was furious. I didn’t know about her plan. I was too angry to understand what was happening.”
Not one of the interns had revealed the truth about Zhu Yi remaining in Yuanshu Township. Li Ren and Zhu Xiaodi said they weren’t close to her and seldom spoke with her, so they didn’t know what she was thinking. Si Wei and Du Ying claimed Zhu Yi had fallen in love with the supposedly honest villager Yi Lei, become blinded by romance, and refused to listen to their advice.
The firm had been extremely busy then. Dong Jing and the others left one after another. When He Mei finally found time to visit Zhu Yi, the young woman put on a display of loving domestic happiness with Yi Lei, infuriating He Mei so much that she turned and left.
“When did you realize Zhu Yi had only been acting?” Chen Zheng asked.
“After Gu Qiang’s scandal, I think. My career and the firm both went through a low point. We nearly went under. With so much time on my hands, I began turning over things I’d never figured out.”
At the time, He Mei couldn’t even leave her home, let alone report to work at Yongshen. Independent media and angry netizens besieged her house, calling her Gu Qiang’s mistress and blaming her for his other misdeeds too.
She temporarily left Junan City, traveling to clear her head. When her car reached the vicinity of Gezi Town, Zhu Yi suddenly came to mind. The girl she’d valued most had been missing for a long time.
The more He Mei thought, the stranger it seemed. How could Zhu Yi be someone blinded by love? She could only have been pretending. She must have had a reason.
He Mei stayed in Gezi Town. It wasn’t a tourist destination, and no one recognized her. She spent her mornings shopping for groceries and her afternoons drinking tea and listening to local gossip. She learned that the area was terribly backward, that women had little status, and that many villages traded their daughters for wives for their sons. Some even had a custom of buying women.
He Mei again pictured Zhu Yi on Yi Lei’s arm, and the returned interns’ guarded silence. An idea occurred to her. Could Zhu Yi have pretended to marry Yi Lei to infiltrate the village and rescue the women in Yuanshu Township? Had she made arrangements with the others to support her?
They would have needed to fool every villager, including Yi Lei, so perhaps when He Mei visited, Zhu Yi deliberately acted stubborn and unreachable.
But then why had there been no news of Zhu Yi afterward? Why had all the interns left Yongshen too?
After working alongside Gu Qiang for so long, He Mei had seen plenty of darkness and had learned to judge human motives from the most cynical angle. An ominous suspicion took root: something terrible had happened to Zhu Yi, and her so-called colleagues had abandoned her.
He Mei had studied painting as a student. Posing as an artist, she drove through villages near Gezi Town, deliberately avoiding Yuanshu Township because she feared Yi Lei would recognize her. In Jianya Township, she hired local women to model for her and paid them generously. From them, she learned something horrifying: a woman had once been imprisoned by her husband in a basement and forced to sell sex. She’d contracted a disease and infected several men.
The women looked at the victim with contempt. They said she’d apparently come from a city and had no respect for the duties of a wife. She’d already borne a child but still slept around. She’d deserved what happened to her!
There wasn’t a hint of sympathy for the victim in their voices. Instead, they resented her for making other men sick and patted their chests in relief that their own husbands hadn’t caught the illness.
He Mei felt sick, and her painting went badly. She asked where the woman was now and what her name had been. The villagers said she’d already died of illness. They didn’t know her name, only that she was from Yuanshu Township.