Chen Zheng followed Xiao Wen into a special elevator. Liang Yueze was waiting for him in a room with an entire wall of floor-to-ceiling windows. When the door opened, Liang Yueze was pouring tea into cups.
Xiao Wen closed the door, leaving Chen Zheng and Liang Yueze alone. Chen Zheng took in the furnishings like a guest visiting for the first time. It seemed to be a lounge. There was no desk, only a long counter. The space was large, and the view was expansive. The weather was good today. From the windows, the whole bustle of Luocheng spread out below.
“You’ve even got a place like this,” Chen Zheng said. “It’s different from the executive reception room I imagined.”
“It’s not really a reception room. Just somewhere to empty my mind when I’m tired.” Liang Yueze invited Chen Zheng to sit. The long counter ran parallel to the windows. Sitting on the side facing the glass, one could drink tea and stare outside.
A plane crossed the clear sky, leaving a neat contrail behind. Chen Zheng watched it. After a while, the trail dispersed and lost its sharp outline.
“You still like looking at clouds,” Liang Yueze said over his tea. “I do too. But things aren’t like they were when we were children. There’s not much time to stare at the sky anymore.”
As he spoke, another plane flew past.
“This is a busy flight path,” Chen Zheng said.
“It is. From this room, you can see a plane almost any time you look up.” After a moment, Liang Yueze turned toward him. “When was the last time we watched planes together?”
Chen Zheng thought for a moment. “Before the college entrance exams? You skipped school and dragged me into skipping with you.”
Liang Yueze looked astonished. “I did something like that? How immoral of me.”
Chen Zheng remembered those years. When they were young, every time he went back to Suiguang City, he would play with Liang Yueze. The Liang family estate was huge, with mountains and lakes. Liang Yueze would lead him and the other children romping through the hills. When they were tired, they lay on the lawn watching the sky and counting passing planes until the sun made their eyes water.
After watching so many planes, Liang Yueze spent a period of time wanting to become an airline captain, and he insisted that Chen Zheng should be a flight attendant. “Then we’d be partners.”
Chen Zheng rolled his eyes. “Why don’t you become a flight attendant?”
“Because flight attendants have to put up with people,” Liang Yueze declared shamelessly. “I can’t stand being pushed around, so it’d be better for you to do it.”
Liang Yueze changed his ambitions whenever he pleased, but Chen Zheng loved lying in the sun on the Liang family lawn. Over time, he too grew fond of counting planes and watching contrails. After he started secondary school, he would get distracted for a moment whenever a plane passed overhead.
Liang Yueze also attended secondary school in Luocheng, but not the same one as Chen Zheng. He went to one of those outrageously expensive private schools for wealthy students and often bragged to his classmates that one of his best friends was a top student in the advanced class at a prestigious public school.
Liang Yueze invited Chen Zheng over. Suspecting nothing, Chen Zheng went, only to be surrounded and gawked at by the rich kids as if he were a monkey. He never went back. Knowing he had been in the wrong, Liang Yueze began coming to see him instead. Chen Zheng’s school had strict security, but Liang Yueze bribed the gatekeeper and even had a fake student ID made. Chen Zheng was speechless with admiration.
The academic pressure was intense in their final year, but there were not many classes. Chen Zheng spent most of his time in the self-study room. Liang Yueze came too, though he read books for pleasure while Chen Zheng worked through practice problems. Liang Yueze watched the sky.
“You’ve got a flight path here,” Liang Yueze said. “We don’t have one at our school.”
“Then build yourself a building under a flight path someday,” Chen Zheng said.
A week before the entrance exams, Liang Yueze came to find Chen Zheng in the self-study room for the last time. Chen Zheng did not feel like doing practice problems that day either. The two of them looked out the window and spent the entire afternoon imagining the future.
Not one of those imagined futures looked like the present, in which two childhood companions were slowly heading toward opposite sides. Chen Zheng suddenly remembered the day last year when he had accompanied Liang Yueze to pay respects to the twins. After coming down the mountain, they had driven in different directions. The sky toward Suiguang was thick with dark clouds, while the road toward Zhuquan lay beneath a vast clear sky.
“What is this matter that involves me?” Liang Yueze asked. “If I need to report to the bureau, tell me in advance so I can rearrange my schedule.”
Chen Zheng looked at him. Perhaps after living through so many complicated experiences, Liang Yueze showed nothing but calm on his face, and his eyes carried a gracious tolerance.
“If you really had to come to the bureau, I wouldn’t be here chatting with you,” Chen Zheng said. “Yueze, when Xiaobin and Xiaoqing died, I wasn’t by your side. I couldn’t be there for you, and I’ve always regretted that.”
Liang Yueze looked startled, then smiled. “There was nothing you could do. You had your own life. Even my parents and my aunt couldn’t always stand beside me, let alone you. That’s how people are. We don’t share a single brain. Everyone has their own things to consider.”
“It must have been hard for you back then, pulling Yunquan back together single-handedly. Of all your childhood dreams, I don’t remember a single one that involved inheriting the family business,” Chen Zheng said.
Liang Yueze chuckled. “Zhengzheng, what are you really trying to say? Surely we don’t need to beat around the bush with each other.”
Chen Zheng held his gaze and asked after a moment, “Why were you so determined to carry Yunquan on your shoulders? Even the old master eventually gave up. The Liang Yueze I knew wouldn’t have made his own life so hard.”
The smile at Liang Yueze’s lips seemed to melt away. He turned to the window and narrowed his eyes in the sunlight. “Didn’t the Liang Yueze you knew disappear when he lost the people closest to him?”
Chen Zheng frowned.
“You, my parents, and my younger aunt can’t really understand how important Xiaobin and Xiaoqing were to me,” Liang Yueze said. “I watched them grow up. I was their older brother, but I feel I loved them even more than my parents did. They were like a part of me, the greatest gift Heaven had given this spoiled wastrel. When they were gone, I was no longer who I had been.”
Liang Yueze sighed. “I wanted an easier life too. Whether Yunquan Group survived really made no difference to me. But if I kept going, I could feel that they were still here. There was no one by my side, yet they were with me.”
Chen Zheng found it difficult to keep asking questions. It had nothing to do with interrogation techniques; it was simply the emotional difficulty of doing so.
But he had come this far, and he had already broached the subject. He still had to ask what needed asking.
“Did you come into contact with anyone on Jinsi Island?” Chen Zheng asked as Liang Yueze looked at him in puzzlement. “For example, someone who promised to help Yunquan rise again.”
Liang Yueze’s expression changed, as though Chen Zheng had asked something he could neither understand nor answer. “You…” He paused for several seconds. “Are you suggesting I got mixed up in something?”
“Yueze, I can’t say I know the person you are now, but I believe I knew you before the tragedy,” Chen Zheng said. “I have no doubt that Xiaobin and Xiaoqing meant the world to you. But without outside help, the person you were back then would have found it very difficult to get where you are today.”
Liang Yueze gave a weary smile. “But isn’t that how life works? You’re forced forward one step at a time. Their spirits watched over me so I wouldn’t fall into utter ruin.”
Chen Zheng could clearly see that Liang Yueze was avoiding the question. “A case I’ve been investigating recently has some connection to what happened to Xiaobin and Xiaoqing.”
Liang Yueze’s voice tightened. “What case?”
“Do you know Bin Fa?”
Liang Yueze’s Adam’s apple moved slightly. “I think I’ve heard that name before.”
“He was my superior in Zhuquan, though I never mentioned him to you,” Chen Zheng said. “If you know him, you probably met him on Jinsi Island.”
Liang Yueze furrowed his brow, seemingly lost in thought.
“He used to be a detective in Suiguang City and was sent to Country M to assist the investigation back then. Do you remember him now?” Chen Zheng asked.
“Was that him? Captain Bin? What happened to him?”
“Did he seek you out, or did you seek him out?” Chen Zheng asked.
“I…” Liang Yueze sank into recollection. Those had been days without a glimmer of light. He could not accept that the people closest to him were gone. He had claimed to be pressing the police on Jinsi Island to investigate, but in truth he had lived like a walking corpse.
He hated every police officer, thinking them incompetent, corrupt, and hateful. When Country M’s police carried out a perfunctory investigation and labeled the murder an accident, he finally lost all patience and made a scene at the local police station. A man stopped him and told him the investigation was not over, promising to uncover the truth.
That man was Bin Fa.
When Liang Yueze learned who Bin Fa was, he shoved him away and vented his anger on him. “Investigate? How are you going to investigate? You’re all in it together! Someone murdered my brother and sister! Can’t you even see that?”
Bin Fa’s eyes were angry but resolute as he answered calmly, “I’m not like them. I’m a police officer from Hua Country!”
Liang Yueze had scoffed.
Before leaving Jinsi Island, he met Bin Fa several more times. Bin Fa was indeed investigating, but how much could one foreigner accomplish? Bin Fa returned home before Liang Yueze, apparently recalled by his superiors. Liang Yueze’s heart sank. He had known all along that things would end that way.
“You never met again after that?” Chen Zheng asked.
“No. After I came home, I thought things through. Truth or no truth, it wasn’t so important anymore. I had to keep Yunquan standing. If even I collapsed, the Liang family would really be finished.”
“Bin Fa kept investigating until he was no longer suited to work as a frontline detective and was transferred to the research institute,” Chen Zheng said.
“Is that so,” Liang Yueze said quietly.
“He’s missing now. With the other possibilities ruled out, the reason for his disappearance is very likely connected to that old case,” Chen Zheng continued.
Shock appeared on Liang Yueze’s face. “He found the truth?”
Chen Zheng studied his eyes, then shook his head after a moment. “I don’t know whether he found the truth.”
A storm of emotion surged through Liang Yueze, leaving him speechless for a time.
“But I’ve reconstructed most of the truth from the leads we have,” Chen Zheng said, looking at the stunned Liang Yueze. “That’s why I came today. Yueze, what is your connection to Heaven-Measuring Ruler?”
Liang Yueze stared at him without speaking. At length he forced out a question. “Who killed Xiaobin and Xiaoqing?”
“Answer my question first.”
Liang Yueze strode forward, his voice urgent. “Was it this Heaven-Measuring Ruler you just mentioned? Was it? Who are they?”
Chen Zheng pushed away the hand Liang Yueze had seized his collar with. “You’ve never heard that name before?”
“I haven’t!” Liang Yueze shouted. “Chen Zheng, what exactly are you saying? Are you playing with me? You know perfectly well what happened back then is a thorn in my heart! You have leads, but instead of telling me, you come here to interrogate me. What, you suspect me?”
Seeing the bloodshot redness rising in Liang Yueze’s eyes, Chen Zheng had no choice but to say, “I’m sorry.”
“What are you sorry for?” Liang Yueze shook his head. “If you really are sorry, then tell me what you’ve found!”
“We can’t disclose leads freely during an active investigation,” Chen Zheng said.
“So you came here to test me? Heaven-Measuring Ruler? Is that what they’re called? Did this person kill Xiaobin and Xiaoqing?”
Liang Yueze’s anger and grief were real. Chen Zheng could scarcely detect any sign of pretense. He sighed and prepared to leave. Liang Yueze blocked the door. “Explain yourself!”
“When necessary, someone will come to see you. But not now.” As Chen Zheng spoke those cold words, a trace of guilt rose in him.
Sure enough, disappointment entered Liang Yueze’s eyes. “Zhengzheng, I never thought there would come a day when you stood against me over Xiaobin and Xiaoqing.”
Chen Zheng watched him for a moment. Without offering another explanation, he went out into the corridor.
Liang Yueze remained at the doorway, watching Chen Zheng leave. Sunlight surged through the floor-to-ceiling windows behind him. He looked as though he might evaporate into all that brightness.
On a side street not far from Yunquan Group, Ming Han watched in the rearview mirror as Chen Zheng walked quickly toward him.
As soon as Chen Zheng got into the car, Ming Han handed him the hot coffee he had just bought. “Here. Warm your hands.”
Chen Zheng accepted it and held it between his palms. The chill seeping out from deep inside him eased a little. He turned to look at Ming Han in silence for a while, then suddenly let his mind go blank, thinking of nothing at all.
Ming Han tilted his head a little at Chen Zheng’s unusually dazed gaze, then smiled and waved a hand. “What’s got you so mesmerized?”
Chen Zheng drew a deep breath, recovering from the suffocating tension of confronting Liang Yueze, and offered the answer Ming Han wanted to hear. “A handsome bird showing off his feathers.”
Ming Han’s eyebrows shot up. “Really? How handsome?”
Chen Zheng brought his thumb and forefinger together to show a tiny distance.
“That’s all?” Ming Han demanded.
Chen Zheng simply took out his phone and switched on the camera. Ming Han’s face immediately filled the screen.
Ming Han deliberately covered his face and laughed with mock modesty.
After finishing the coffee, Chen Zheng grew serious again. “Liang Yueze knows about Heaven-Measuring Ruler, but he covered it with anger and disappointment. I’ve alerted him today.”
“It was bound to happen eventually,” Ming Han said. “We couldn’t pretend not to know forever.”
“But his connection to Heaven-Measuring Ruler may be more complicated than we thought. He knows we’re investigating him now. We’ll have to be more cautious with what we do next.”
The car rolled steadily along. Chen Zheng let out a faint sigh.
Ming Han glanced to his right. “Bro, what is it?”
Chen Zheng pressed the corners of his eyes. “If Liang Yueze is connected to Heaven-Measuring Ruler, did he know all along that Han Qu was undercover there? Could what happened to Han Qu this time be connected to him too?”
Ming Han considered that for a moment. “Hard to say. It depends how deep the connection runs. If he and Yunquan Group are only one of Heaven-Measuring Ruler’s clients, he’d have no way of knowing Han Qu was inside, let alone that he was undercover.”
“Something about it seems contradictory to me,” Chen Zheng said.
“What?”
“Han Qu spent all that time in Heaven-Measuring Ruler, but none of the intelligence he sent back mentioned Yunquan Group. If Liang Yueze were an ordinary client, the secrecy wouldn’t be so tight. Han Qu should have uncovered him.”
Ming Han frowned. “Either Liang Yueze really has nothing to do with Heaven-Measuring Ruler, or the connection is deeper than we can imagine? If that’s true, wasn’t Han Qu walking straight into a trap from the very beginning?”
Chen Zheng rubbed his face twice. “Keep an eye on Liang Yueze for a while and see what moves he makes.”
Just as the Mobile Unit’s attention was gradually converging on Yunquan Group, something happened in Zhuquan City.
The psychology research institute in Chenshui Bay had always been peaceful. Its old buildings and streets seemed destined to be forgotten in the current of time. Early on February thirteenth, Old Wu, the gatekeeper, took his usual crumbs of steamed bun to feed the birds near the back gate, only to see a sack lying beside the wall.
Old Wu had been a police officer before retiring. Though he had spent half his life rooted to a grassroots police station, he had also attended murder scenes. The sight immediately set off alarm bells in his head. He approached cautiously and opened a gap in the sack. When he saw a bloodless hand inside, he sucked in a breath.
Kong Bing had not even reached the Beiye Sub-bureau when a call came. Xu Chuan’s voice was thick with tears. “Captain Kong! Captain Kong, come quickly! Director Bin… someone murdered him!”
Kong Bing froze. Bin Fa? Dead?
He had spent this whole period searching for Bin Fa by every means he could think of, without a break since returning from Suiguang. He had even stationed officers near Bin Fa’s home. How could Bin Fa’s body suddenly have been dumped by the back gate of the institute?
Kong Bing immediately alerted the sub-bureau’s crime scene examiner and forensic pathologist and rushed over. The local police station had already set up a cordon. The body’s head protruded from the sack. It was a face Kong Bing knew well.
The dead man really was the missing Bin Fa.
Kong Bing slowly crouched. His heart was in turmoil. Bin Fa’s face was bluish white, and there was a black bullet hole in his forehead. He looked to have been dead for at least three days. The weapon was a gun, and that fact alone showed his death was no simple matter. This was the psychology research institute, the place where Bin Fa had worked. The police had been searching for him recently, even going as far as Suiguang City. Whoever was hiding in the shadows must have known.
And despite knowing that, the killer had deliberately brought Bin Fa’s body here days after killing him. This was unmistakably a provocation, a cruel mockery of the police!
One of Bin Fa’s eyes was closed; the other remained half open, its surface long since clouded. It was as though he had waited with his last strength for his colleagues to find him. Kong Bing expelled a heavy breath and surveyed his surroundings.
Before the Beiye Sub-bureau moved to its new building, Kong Bing had worked here for a long time and knew every corner. The institute’s front gate faced a busy street, while the back gate was quiet, opening onto a cluster of old houses that were almost entirely unoccupied but had not yet been demolished. Few people used the street behind the institute. Some of the newer officers did not even know there was a back gate.
A sound of crying came from behind him. Kong Bing turned back and saw Xu Chuan wiping his tears. He went over, intending to say something, but when Xu Chuan looked up, Kong Bing saw fierce anger and frustration in the young man’s eyes.
“I wasted time!” Xu Chuan choked out. “When I first noticed Director Bin was missing, I should’ve been on guard! If I’d launched a full investigation then, he wouldn’t have died!”
“It’s not your fault.” Kong Bing shook his head. “Director Bin must have had his own concerns. He deliberately avoided us.”
“But…”
“No buts. Your job now is to keep the institute steady. My job is to catch the killer,” Kong Bing said calmly. “You can see this isn’t a simple case. It may be connected to the case Teacher Chen is investigating. Before he arrives, we need to find as many leads as possible.”
Xu Chuan stopped crying. “I understand!”
Chen Zheng could not hide his shock when he received the news. He left immediately for Zhuquan City, while Ming Han continued his assignment watching Liang Yueze.
Bin Fa’s body lay on the autopsy table at the Beiye Sub-bureau. Chen Zheng knew he had once been Suiguang City’s finest detective, but by the time they worked together, Bin Fa had already been the institute director who drank tea and read the papers. Chen Zheng had found it difficult to connect Director Bin with Captain Bin. Now, looking at the old scars covering this body, he finally seemed to glimpse the man who had once charged into frontline investigations.
The autopsy report placed Bin Fa’s death on February tenth. In addition to the gunshot wound to his forehead, there were severe restraint injuries on his body. He had suffered greatly before he was killed. The weapon was suspected to be a Greywave-14, a firearm common overseas. After death, his body was laid flat. Together with the institute’s surveillance footage, the evidence indicated that he had been dumped at the back gate at three in the morning on the thirteenth.
The surveillance footage showed a tall, strongly built man dressed in black, his face wrapped so thoroughly that his features were invisible. No vehicle appeared on the recording, but one must have been parked nearby. The sub-bureau was checking cameras farther away in hopes of locating a suspicious vehicle.
Bin Fa’s parents had already died, and he had long lost touch with his relatives. At the institute, everyone knew him only as an approachable superior, while his old colleagues in Suiguang’s criminal investigation unit had gradually drifted away. Looking at the eye Bin Fa could not close, Chen Zheng was overcome by immense sorrow.
Here was a man whose obsession with the truth had isolated him from everyone else. He had probably still been struggling to uncover the truth in the last moments of his life. Had he disappeared because he had found a lead and then failed while following it? No. Perhaps he had not failed. Perhaps he had already found what he wanted. But he had been silenced before he could pass the truth along.
Three days later, the killer had delivered his corpse back, not just anywhere, but right in front of the police.
Was this a warning to the police? Stop investigating, or you will meet the same fate.
Later, an examiner compared a set of footprints collected at the back gate with those of the killer in the Huo Yewei case. The shoe size and walking habits were consistent, but the tread patterns differed.
Chen Zheng relayed the situation in Zhuquan City to the Mobile Unit. Lu Hejing said thoughtfully, “It’s the same killer. Is this man Heaven-Measuring Ruler’s assassin for important assignments? He doesn’t care about leaving traces behind, because he knows we’ll have trouble finding him.”
For now, they called this person “Killer A.”
“From what we know now, Bin Fa probably knew long ago that Heaven-Measuring Ruler was behind the Jinsi Island case,” Chen Zheng said. “The fact they only silenced him now must have something to do with our recent actions.”
But the more Chen Zheng thought about it, the more intense a sense of contradiction he felt. At Weimo Mountain Resort, Killer A had killed Huo Xiling’s only son, though Huo Xiling had benefited from the Jinsi Island case. Now Killer A had killed Bin Fa, who had investigated that same case. The two dead men had ties to opposing sides of the Jinsi Island case, yet both had fallen to Killer A.
“I suspect Heaven-Measuring Ruler is carrying out an operation against the police,” Lu Hejing said grimly. “Perhaps what happened to Han Qu, or our decision to stop sitting still, provoked them, and now they’ve started attacking police officers. Chen Zheng, be careful of everything while you’re in Zhuquan.”
Chen Zheng was startled. His younger uncle rarely said anything openly concerned about him. What was going on?
“Director Lu, has something new happened on your end?” Chen Zheng asked after thinking a moment.
Lu Hejing said nothing.
“Uncle,” Chen Zheng said.
Lu Hejing sighed and finally admitted, “Old Tang and I both have the feeling someone’s following us.”
Chen Zheng became alert. “Who? Did the cameras catch them?”
“No. We can’t find anyone either.”
Chen Zheng understood. It was instinct, the sense for danger born from the experience and vigilance of veteran detectives.
“Then…” For a moment Chen Zheng did not know what to say. “Then you both be careful too.”
After ending the call, Chen Zheng looked at a tree outside the Beiye Sub-bureau. When he first came here because of a case last year, its leaves had been turning yellow, shifting from the vigor of summer toward the barrenness of autumn and winter. Now fresh green growth was sprouting from its branches, full of life.
Yet the police officers who had thrown themselves against evil were confronting danger on every side. They kept saying “be careful,” but sometimes care made no difference. Bin Fa must have been careful too. And sometimes they were destined to take risks, to go and meet danger head-on.
Chen Zheng informed Bin Fa’s former wife, Ms. Gu. She was quiet on the phone for a long time before asking in a trembling voice, “Is… is anyone going to arrange his funeral?”
“We can’t hold one yet,” Chen Zheng said. “We have to wait until the case is over.”
“Then… when the time comes, please let me know. We were husband and wife once. I’ll see him off on his final journey.”
Chen Zheng intended to visit Bin Fa’s home again. When he had gone there last, Bin Fa was only missing. Now that his murder was confirmed, the approach and direction of the scene examination needed to change.
But on the way there, perhaps because of Lu Hejing’s warning over the phone, Chen Zheng faintly sensed a gaze following him from somewhere.
It was dusk. Daylight was fading, darkness rising from every part of the city. Artificial lights outlined shadows, and truth and illusion seemed to mingle like ink.
Relatively speaking, Zhuquan was a fairly peaceful small city. Even though last year’s cursed-doll case had thrown its schools into panic, after the Lunar New Year things had largely returned to how they were before.
Yet Chen Zheng felt that unseen gaze like a knife pressed against his back. Whenever he turned, the knife vanished without a trace, as though mocking his suspicion.