While Cao Mei had been in the detention center, she had had opportunities to hear what people outside were saying. Her legal aid lawyer would tell her what avenues to pursue to obtain a lighter sentence. Perhaps the seeds of her hatred for Chen Zheng had been planted as early as then.
Throughout her prison sentence, she behaved well and never displayed hostility toward the police. Only by doing so could she get out as soon as possible and confront Chen Zheng.
Chen Zheng could work all that out when he reviewed the case. What he could not understand was Cao Mei’s claim that her brother had begged him for help. There was nothing wrong with his memory. Cao Shou had absolutely never said that. Why, then, did Cao Mei believe he had? Who had told her?
A nurse administered a sedative, and Cao Mei lay on the bed like a corpse with no soul.
Chen Zheng approached and asked again, “Who told you Cao Shou begged me to save him?”
Cao Mei looked at him weakly, her eyes burning with hatred. Half a minute passed before she said through clenched teeth, “I saw it myself! Are you still going to deny it?”
“How could you have seen it?” Chen Zheng asked. “When Cao Shou set the fire, you were near the exit. You were among the first to be rescued. By the time he died, you’d already been taken to the hospital. How could you have seen anything? Where did you see it?”
“I…” Cao Mei was suddenly speechless, but within seconds her agitation grew worse. “I saw it! Don’t try to fool me! My brother cries in the fire every day! For a promotion, for the praise of those people, you deliberately left him to die! To all of you, he was a trafficker who deserved to burn. Stop trying to make yourself sound noble! You were just giving those people what they wanted! You became a captain, hahahaha! You’ve had such a good life, but remember this: everything you have now was bought with my brother’s life!”
Her words had no logic to them. She believed every word of the public outcry back then and had concentrated all her hatred on Chen Zheng. Her accusations were baseless, but that did not mean they could not hurt the person she was attacking.
Ming Han strode into the ward and pulled Chen Zheng outside.
Chen Zheng drank half a bottle of water and shook his head. “I’m fine. But I suspect someone has been deliberately influencing her. She says she saw Cao Shou asking me to save him. Was that a hallucination? Something she dreamed? Just like Tang Xiaowan, she’s been controlled by Black Mark.”
By then, the detailed identification report on the drug Kong Bing had brought back from the old building was ready. It really was Black Mark. Cao Mei was very likely another person influenced by the Azure Sky Cult.
According to the doctor, Cao Mei’s brain tumor did not pose an immediate threat to her life, but it pressed on her nerves and frequently caused intense pain. The drug she took could briefly remove her sensation of pain while also inducing hallucinations. Toxicology suggested she had begun using Black Mark around July of the previous year.
“For more than ten years, Cao Mei has lived with her hatred of me. Her goal was to get out and take revenge,” Chen Zheng said, calmer than anyone. He could almost picture her life before and after her release. “She once thought that as long as she made it to the end of her sentence, everything would be all right. But by then she was seriously ill, with a brain tumor and kidney disease. Every single day was filled with pain.”
“Revenge? She no longer had the energy for it. She was in Luping County, where she and Cao Shou once lived. Living expenses are low there, and she was barely hanging on. Then someone from the Azure Sky Cult came to her. They didn’t have to say anything. All they had to do was give her medicine that made the pain stop. She didn’t need to know what it was. Once she took it, she stopped hurting. At last she could start planning her revenge.”
“So the drug also made her ‘see’ Cao Shou begging you for help?” Ming Han asked.
“Most likely. But it was really a projection of her subconscious. The public outcry convinced her back then that we deliberately left Cao Shou to die. She couldn’t accept that he chose death, either. To her, Cao Shou was her only family, the only person in the world who cared about her. They depended on each other for years. How could he bear to abandon her? Those words were already in her mind. The drug brought them out and made her believe they were real.”
Now the Azure Sky Cult was baring its fangs. There had to be some connection between it and Heaven-Measuring Ruler. Tang Xiaowan, another Azure Sky Cult believer, had nearly run Liang Yueze over and killed Ming Han with an explosion. Now Cao Mei, also a believer, had tried to burn Chen Zheng alive.
The Azure Sky Cult and Heaven-Measuring Ruler seemed to be aboard the same boat, yet appeared to be rowing in different directions. That contradiction matched the signs of internal division the police had already detected within Heaven-Measuring Ruler.
Chen Zheng did not intend to give Cao Mei any more time. However pitiable the woman was, he would make her reveal more information.
Cao Mei’s headache flared again, and her kidney disease had left her utterly exhausted. The drugs the hospital gave her were nowhere near as effective as Black Mark, relieving her pain only slightly. She writhed on the bed, tears streaming down her face.
Chen Zheng held up an evidence bag containing Black Mark. “Who gave you these?”
Cao Mei shrieked and tried to snatch it. Chen Zheng stepped back. “What’s your relationship with the Azure Sky Cult?”
She sobbed incoherently, her mind in disarray. “Mr. Jin, save me! Mr. Jin, save me!”
Mr. Jin again?
“Who is Mr. Jin?” Chen Zheng asked.
Cao Mei beat at her temples. “Mr. Jin… is the Lord. Medicine… give me medicine… please… I’ll do anything you say…”
From her broken cries, Chen Zheng managed to piece together what had happened after her release.
Racked with illness, she had essentially abandoned any thoughts of revenge, intending to spend the rest of her life in Luping County. But in July of the previous year, a man called Mr. Jin entered her life, supplied her with Black Mark, and recruited her into the Azure Sky Cult. Under its influence, she was no longer tormented by pain and even believed her brain tumor had disappeared.
She was profoundly grateful to Mr. Jin and utterly devoted to the Azure Sky Cult. Then Mr. Jin asked whether there was anything she wanted to do with her life. She remembered Cao Shou, who had died in the flames, and those police officers who had “left him to die.” The fire of revenge she thought had gone out blazed up again.
Mr. Jin was pleased. He told her the man she was looking for, Chen Zheng, had left Luocheng and was now in Zhuquan City. If she wanted revenge, she should make her own plans carefully.
Thrilled, she went to Zhuquan with the Black Mark Mr. Jin left her. At first, however, she had no idea what to do. Mr. Jin told her there was an unused Western-style building outside the city and asked, “Does that remind you of anything?”
How could it not? Cao Shou had died in a Western-style building!
She visited the place and wandered through it as though stepping back into a rusted past. She lifted the basement hatch and stroked the iron bars one by one, dreaming of the day she could burn Chen Zheng alive there.
She had a great deal of work to do, and preparing the flammable materials was an important part of it. She had waited so many years that a little longer hardly mattered. Yet when her preparations were almost complete, she discovered that another man was always at Chen Zheng’s side. She racked her brains but could not work out how to lure Chen Zheng there.
Then something even more bewildering happened: Chen Zheng left Zhuquan City!
Had all her work been for nothing? Should she follow him to Luocheng? Or Nanshan City?
Her medication ran out, and the pain dragged her back to reality. This time it was not Mr. Jin who came but a subordinate, bringing more medicine and telling her not to worry. Chen Zheng would return sooner or later.
She stayed alone in the old building, enduring the first winter after her release in the bitter cold. Then another message came from the Azure Sky Cult: Chen Zheng was back.
Zhuquan had been unsettled lately. A leader at the research institute had been murdered, and people were talking. Some said the man had not been a good person at all. Others said a criminal who had been brought to justice was taking revenge on him.
Either possibility encouraged Cao Mei enormously. A police officer had been murdered! So killing police was that easy! And this man was Chen Zheng’s superior!
She could do it too. Bin Fa’s fate would be Chen Zheng’s future!
Better still, Chen Zheng really had returned. It was practically a manifestation of the Azure Sky God. The god was helping her!
She concealed herself near Bin Fa’s home and learned that several homes in Xingfu Village were unoccupied. From one of them she had a clear view of his house. She watched Chen Zheng there, like a ravenous beast savoring images of how she would kill him.
“So the Azure Sky Cult guided you toward killing me?” Chen Zheng asked.
Cao Mei froze, then burst into wild laughter. “Nobody guided me! I’m the one who wants to kill you!”
As Chen Zheng tried to extract more information, the “time bomb” inside Cao Mei’s head suddenly ruptured. The doctors did everything they could to save her, but her condition remained critical.
Reviewing the chain of events, Chen Zheng said, “The Azure Sky Cult controlled Tang Xiaowan and Cao Mei the same way, but for different purposes. It used Cao Mei against me. I’m the person she hates most in the world. The cult scarcely had to preach to her; it only needed to provide enough Black Mark, and she’d find a way to attack me herself. The Azure Sky Cult and Cao Mei wanted me dead. Killer A only wanted to threaten me. Those two sides were at odds over how to deal with me.”
Ming Han told him about Liang Yueze’s investment in Huyun Tea Factory, the creation of Nanfeng Pharmaceuticals, and, in particular, the six missing teenagers. After thinking it over, Chen Zheng asked, “Old Tang has already sent people to Junan?”
“Yes, but they haven’t got very far with the investigation.”
Chen Zheng checked the time. “We know Junan well. We should go there ourselves.”
Cao Mei was not yet out of danger. The doctor explained that although the drug she took had relieved her pain, the relief was superficial. It had stimulated further growth and deterioration of the tumor. Even if they managed to save her now, there was a high probability she would remain in a vegetative state.
When Kong Bing learned Chen Zheng would be leaving temporarily, he gave him a hearty pat on the back. “Teacher Chen, I promise you the situation in Zhuquan can’t possibly get any worse than it already is.”
“The research institute has lost the person holding it together,” Chen Zheng said. “Xu Chuan is still young. Please look after him for me.”
Kong Bing smiled. “Don’t worry. Everyone grows through storms. Xu Chuan will too.”
On March 2, Chen Zheng and Ming Han arrived in Junan City again and met Wen Wu at municipal headquarters, where he had arrived earlier. Li Shu hurried over. “Teacher Chen! Bird! I didn’t expect to see you again so soon.”
The investigations into the string of cases at Weimo Mountain Resort were basically finished, but the Criminal Investigation Detachment was hardly resting easy. The investigation into the disappearances at Huyun Tea Factory had been reopened, and the lingering questions surrounding Gu Qiang’s case were once again under discussion. Li Shu had lost a noticeable amount of weight since Chen Zheng last saw him.
Wen Wu had already spoken to Li Shu. The Mobile Unit had mainly come to investigate Huyun Tea Factory and Nanfeng Pharmaceuticals under the pretext of looking into Yunquan Group’s role in the factory’s restructuring.
Li Shu was immediately enthusiastic. Whatever the Mobile Unit’s real purpose, the opening of an investigation would help local police pursue the disappearance case. He and Wen Wu had visited Nanfeng Pharmaceuticals the previous day. Most businesses had a fresh start after the new year, but the pharmaceutical company looked desolate. Its main gate was shut, with only a side entrance open and hardly any workers in sight. To Li Shu, a local who knew the company, it was very strange.
“What’s happened at the factory?” Chen Zheng asked.
“They say business is bad and the workers are all scrambling to find another way to earn a living. Just like the tea factory back then.” Li Shu recalled that more than ten years earlier Huyun Tea Factory had followed consumer demand and launched several health and wellness teas. Advertising was not as regulated then as it was now. The factory had publicly claimed its teas worked like medicine and that drinking plenty could prevent and even cure diseases. Middle-aged and elderly customers rushed to buy them, storing elaborately packaged gift sets of wellness tea in their homes. Huyun Tea Factory made a fortune.
Before long, however, pharmaceutical companies and hospitals began objecting. Some stubborn elderly patients preferred drinking tea to taking medicine or visiting doctors even when seriously ill, claiming that medicine prescribed by doctors was poison.
Many younger people spoke out against the tea factory too, using experiments and expert interviews to show that even the healthiest tea could not replace medicine.
The factory was summoned for talks and sheepishly took down advertisements that, by later standards, were wholly noncompliant. Among middle-aged and elderly customers, however, the reputation of its wellness teas had become deeply entrenched. They instinctively distrusted medicine and loved drinking tea.
That was precisely the opportunity from which Nanfeng Pharmaceuticals emerged.
Huyun Tea Factory faced pressure to change as market competition intensified. Some managers realized restructuring alone could not save it. They would have to add a new business on top of the existing one.
That new business was pharmaceuticals.
Naturally, the proposal met fierce resistance at first. Making tea and making medicine were entirely different enterprises. Pharmaceutical development required enormous research funding and the right direction. Starting a drug factory might not save Huyun; it might hasten its destruction.
“Who says a pharmaceutical company has to produce life-saving medicine?” Deputy Factory Director Wu Mo argued. “Look how many of our old customers are waiting for us to make health supplements! We’ve got experience producing health teas. We’d just be turning the same approach into supplements. What’s so difficult about that? If we don’t enter pharmaceuticals, all we’ll ever sell is health tea. If we don’t take our share of this enormous supplements market, someone else will!”
Wu Mo persuaded a faction of the workforce, mostly middle managers at the tea factory who had led the old advertising campaigns. They had been deeply frustrated by the official reprimand and had long wanted to break free of the factory’s limitations. His proposal lit a fire under them.
The period when Huyun Tea Factory was restructuring toward Nanfeng Pharmaceuticals was also the heyday of health supplements. Even ordinary salaried families stretched themselves to buy expensive products they could barely afford, and willingly promoted them to others. For a time, the saying “One pill is better than ten pieces of fruit” was everywhere.
At first, Nanfeng used the influence health tea already enjoyed among older consumers, enthusiastically advertising that its new pharmaceutical division had developed health products combining the familiar aroma of tea with medicinal benefits. Old customers bought in eagerly, easing Huyun Tea Factory’s urgent financial crisis.
Before long, Nanfeng Pharmaceuticals separated entirely from Huyun Tea Factory. Its business expanded beyond the older market to middle-aged adults, young people, and adolescents, with weight-loss products, brain-health supplements, and medicated cosmetics among its major categories.
But Nanfeng had “Pharmaceuticals” in its name for a reason. It also had genuine licensed drug-production lines. After importing technology from abroad and obtaining permits, it could manufacture several medications for cancer treatment and the relief of end-stage pain. A number of hospitals in Han Province had business partnerships with it.
“The reason it’s doing badly now is mainly that the boom in health supplements has ended,” Li Shu explained. “In the old days, people knew very little about them. They believed advertisements and thought the more expensive something was, the more they needed to buy it. If their neighbors had bought some and they hadn’t, they’d lose face. These days, apart from a small group of devotees, most people won’t spend money on supplements anymore. The company has lost its biggest source of profit. And it has no capacity to develop other medicines on its own; it can only import technology. It’s hardly surprising that things have ended up this way.”
With a basic understanding of Nanfeng Pharmaceuticals, Chen Zheng decided to visit it personally. He and Ming Han had discussed a possibility on the way: Liang Yueze’s investment in Nanfeng did not make sense. He had cited his grandfather’s friendship with Huyun Tea Factory, but that was an unconvincing excuse. Even if Liang Yueze felt obliged to help, he should have helped the tea factory rather than the pharmaceutical business. Yet in fact, Yunquan Group’s money had revived Nanfeng Pharmaceuticals.
Liang Yueze was a businessman, and he must have had an objective. Why invest in a drug company whose business had nothing to do with Yunquan Group? Was he trying to profit from the factory? Or was his goal something that could never stand the light of day?
Detectives had a sharper instinct than ordinary people. A pharmaceutical factory could make more than medicine. It could also manufacture illegal drugs.
The possibility chilled Chen Zheng to the bone. Liang Yueze had never truly put the Jinsi Island case behind him. He had only been lying low, waiting for his chance. Huo Yewei’s case might be connected to him. He knew Heaven-Measuring Ruler existed. He had told Chen Zheng countless lies because Chen Zheng was a police officer, while Liang Yueze had already stepped onto the opposite side of the law in pursuit of revenge.
Even so, Chen Zheng did not want to believe Liang Yueze had become involved in drugs. What role could they possibly play in his revenge?
He was so engrossed in thought that he stared straight ahead without noticing the car had reached Nanfeng Pharmaceuticals. Suddenly a warm palm covered the back of his hand. He snapped back to himself and found Ming Han holding it.
Ming Han tilted his head and tapped the back of Chen Zheng’s hand with his fingers. “What are you thinking about so hard? You’ve even clenched your hands into fists.”
Chen Zheng looked down and found it oddly funny. His right hand was still balled tightly into a fist, but the left, held in Ming Han’s hand, had relaxed naturally.
“That thing we talked about on the road.” Chen Zheng opened the car door. “Come on. Let’s meet whoever’s in charge here.”
Although Nanfeng Pharmaceuticals had shut down several production lines, the company as a whole was still operating. The gatekeeper stopped Chen Zheng and Ming Han. Even after examining their identification and investigation permit, he refused to let them in. “Wait here. I have to ask my superior.”
Ming Han studied the gatekeeper. He was exceptionally tall and broad, and Ming Han suspected that beneath the bulky gatekeeper’s uniform was a powerfully built body. The other gatekeepers were much the same. Perhaps they were not ordinary gatekeepers at all, but highly paid security guards.
Ming Han glanced at Chen Zheng, who gave a slight nod. A company of this kind would not usually employ guards like these. Even if it did, they would protect senior executives, not stand in groups at the gate.
Nanfeng Pharmaceuticals was growing more suspicious by the minute.
Neither man used his police status to force his way past the gatekeeper. They waited quietly, Chen Zheng staring straight ahead while Ming Han gave the surroundings only a casual glance.
Some ten minutes later, a secretary-like man hurried over, smooth and courteous. “Officer Chen, Officer Ming, I’m so sorry to have kept you waiting! We had a meeting today and it held us up a little. This way, please, this way!”
He introduced himself as Du Hui, Wu Mo’s secretary. “President Wu is away on business and won’t be back anytime soon. I’m terribly sorry. Whatever you need to investigate, tell me and I’ll do everything I can to assist.”
The most impressive part of Nanfeng Pharmaceuticals was its administration building, with the production workshops behind it. Du Hui took them to the top floor and opened Wu Mo’s office. Smiling, he said, “Since President Wu isn’t here, how about we talk outside?”
By “outside,” he did not mean the corridor. He meant his own office. “Anywhere’s fine,” Chen Zheng said. “What’s keeping President Wu busy?”
Du Hui quickly brewed tea and sighed. “Trying to survive, what else? These past few years have been hard on everybody.”
Before Chen Zheng could ask anything, Du Hui began complaining. He was an old Huyun Tea Factory employee. When the factory faced its crisis, he had followed Wu Mo without hesitation. He had enjoyed the golden age of health supplements, and watching Nanfeng Pharmaceuticals decline in recent years pained him.
“Consumers don’t fall for the old tricks anymore. Tell someone a product is good for them, that it contains vitamins, and they’ll pull a whole bag of fruit out and ask whether you can beat that price!” Du Hui shook his head as he spoke. As supplements had declined, genuine pharmaceuticals had become much more important. That was why Wu Mo and the other executives were traveling everywhere, expanding their distribution channels and seeking deeper cooperation with research institutions in hopes of transforming the business once again.
It all sounded plausible enough, but Chen Zheng had no intention of letting Du Hui steer the conversation. “I thought President Wu had gone to Luocheng.”
Du Hui stared. “Huh?”
“Isn’t Yunquan Group in Luocheng?” Chen Zheng asked. “Given Nanfeng’s present situation, working toward change is one option. Another would be to ask Yunquan Group to invest again.”
Du Hui lowered his gaze. “Those are matters for the leadership to consider. I’m just a secretary who handles the day-to-day work.”
“But you know about Yunquan Group’s investment back then, don’t you?” Chen Zheng asked.
Du Hui opened his mouth. Chen Zheng thought he was about to deny it, but after a brief pause the man nodded. “I’ve heard about it. It made a huge difference to us. Without the money President Wu brought in, we’d have struggled to pull through. But I was a nobody back then. I really don’t know how President Wu negotiated with Yunquan Group.”
“Surely people talked about it privately? Yunquan Group was such a huge company. Nanfeng Pharmaceuticals had found itself a powerful backer, that sort of thing?”
Du Hui shook his head. “We didn’t have time, Officer Chen. To tell you the truth, back then we were staking everything on one last gamble. If it failed, we’d all go our separate ways and find another living. We were busy every day. The moment the money arrived, we started the production lines. The sales department didn’t have a moment’s rest either. After more than half a year of that, the company finally found its footing. As I remember it, nobody was still talking about Yunquan Group’s emergency investment by then.”