Little Zhong was nowhere near as superstitious as Old Zhong. If his elders hadn’t insisted on hiring a feng shui master, he would never have bothered with any of this. Paying his respects to gods and Buddhas now and then was one thing, but using human beings to anchor a property’s feng shui was something he didn’t even dare contemplate.
The “master” spoke with absolute certainty. The hotel’s previous owner had probably sold it because he had accumulated so much bad karma that he could no longer keep it suppressed. He had found the Zhong family to take the problem off his hands. Old Zhong’s stroke, too, was the work of those people who had died unjustly.
Terrified, Little Zhong asked what they were supposed to do. The Zhong family hadn’t killed those people or buried them. Why should they have to bear the consequences? Little Zhong could think of two solutions: call the police and have the bodies dug up, or simply sell the hotel and accept the loss.
But the “master” said neither would work. The Zhong family were now the masters of those wronged spirits. They had no choice but to continue making offerings to them. Under no circumstances could they go against the arrangement.
“Then what am I supposed to do?” Little Zhong was almost in tears.
The “master” said he could perform a ritual to appease the spirits.
Naturally, that would cost extra.
Little Zhong suspected the “master” might be a fraud, but he felt he had no choice but to comply. Once he calmed down, he realized reporting the bodies to the police was out of the question. If they really dug them up, Hutian Hotel would be finished. No matter how wealthy the Zhong family was, they could never fill a hole that big.
Little Zhong hated Ruan Xingjie with a passion, but the man had fled overseas long ago, beyond his reach. Fortunately, after the “master” performed his ritual, Old Zhong’s condition really did stabilize, and the hotel continued operating normally. Little Zhong eventually made peace with it, treating the payment as the price of averting disaster.
“When that business at Weimo Mountain Resort happened, I was scared half to death. I nearly ran away right then!” Once Little Zhong had confessed, he grew much calmer, even complaining to Chen Zheng. “Weren’t you searching the western district? I kept worrying about when you’d get around to us in the east.”
Chen Zheng asked, “Do you know where the bodies are buried? And who is this ‘master’ you’re talking about?”
Little Zhong stammered. “He… he’s no ordinary man. He showed me roughly where they are.”
By then, the Junan police had Hutian Hotel under their control, but the hotel was enormous. Without a specific location for the remains, excavation would be difficult.
“Let’s go,” Chen Zheng said immediately. “We’re going to Hutian Hotel. Now.”
Little Zhong’s legs had gone weak. “D-do I have to come too?”
“If we solve the case, you’ll be credited with providing the lead,” Chen Zheng said.
Whether he wanted to or not, Little Zhong had to go. A sensible man knew better than to invite trouble, so he followed Chen Zheng. As soon as they reached the hotel, he began pointing. “The ‘master’ said it was somewhere around here, all the way over to there.”
Chen Zheng studied the area he indicated. It was a plot on the north side of the hotel, directly beneath the main building. Excavating there would effectively destroy the entire structure.
Little Zhong looked miserable. “Now that someone’s reported it, what can I do? I wanted to dig it up years ago. If I hadn’t still been losing money on the purchase, I would have done it then.”
“So you’ve more or less made your money back now?” Chen Zheng asked.
Little Zhong admitted that the hotel had recovered its costs. If the main building had to be dug up, so be it. At worst, he would tell the public it was being extensively renovated and upgraded.
You couldn’t simply start digging under a building whenever you liked. Li Zhi contacted the fire service to devise a plan. Meanwhile, Chen Zheng kept talking with Little Zhong, chiefly hoping to draw out the “master’s” identity. Little Zhong knew next to nothing.
Chen Zheng didn’t believe in feng shui. Every trade had its own mysteries, and finding this “master” on such short notice would be no easy task. Was the “master” connected to the intelligence the Mobile Unit had recently received? Going further, was he connected to Han Qu? And if not, how had Han Qu learned there were six bodies beneath Hutian Hotel?
Excavation formally began on the evening of March 7. Brilliant floodlights turned the site as bright as day, yet beneath all that light, an eerie and sinister past gradually began to emerge.
A little after ten, they found the first coffin used to anchor the feng shui. It was covered in talismans and seals that had no business appearing in the modern age. Then came a second, a third… In the early hours of the eighth, three more coffins were excavated from the opposite side. They stood in neat rows beneath the powerful floodlights. The wood had rotted, and the mottled stains covering it looked like blood and tears of resentment that had seeped out from within.
For all his doubts, Little Zhong still held feng shui in fearful respect. From the moment the first coffin was unearthed, he kept saying he felt cold, trembling uncontrollably. By now, he was so terrified that he’d retreated into a police car.
Chen Zheng felt cold too, but his chill came from the stories behind those bones, from the cruelty of the human heart. Together with the forensic pathologists and trace-evidence technicians, he opened the coffins. The bodies had long since decomposed, their clothing discolored until it was almost indistinguishable from the remains.
Chen Zheng paused beside one set of bones and suddenly thought of Hu Changquan, who had died in the nursing-home explosion. Old Hu had never found his son. In the end, he’d been exploited by the vicious Zhao Zhi and torn apart at the center of the blast. Could Old Hu’s child be lying here? They should never have been reunited this way.
The remains were wrapped and loaded into police vehicles. Little Zhong couldn’t bring himself to look even once. He stood with his back to the vehicles, and only opened his eyes after the sound of their engines had faded.
It was bound to be a sleepless night at the Junan Municipal Public Security Bureau. The bodies had been reduced to skeletons, and determining the cause of death was now secondary. The urgent task was to identify them. The bureau had preserved DNA samples from all the missing children of Huyun Tea Factory. As dawn approached, they identified the last set of remains.
They were Yan Ping, daughter of Zhou Xia; Xu Xinxin, daughter of Zeng Hong; Gong Yu, son of Gong Xiaoyang; Lu Xiwei, daughter of Lu Feng; Wang Shixun, son of Wang Wanjian; and Hu Mingyu, son of Hu Changquan.
Zhou Xia and Zeng Hong stumbled into the bureau, with Wang Wanjian following behind them, trembling so badly that he could scarcely walk. In the morgue, their children were unrecognizable, and the companions who had searched alongside them had themselves dwindled almost to nothing. At an age when they should have been enjoying the company of children and grandchildren, they finally received the truth eight years too late.
Zhou Xia collapsed headfirst to the floor and could not get back up.
The forensic pathologists established that the six victims had been placed in the coffins shortly after death. Drug residues were detected inside them. Their deaths had most likely been caused by large quantities of drugs injected over a short period.
The conclusion was as shocking as it was chilling. All six had been in the flower of youth, their lives bright as the rising sun. After they disappeared, police had carried out extensive inquiries and searches, yet found no trace of them. All along, while the police and their families were desperately looking, they had already died from drug exposure.
The truth was beginning to take shape. Before their disappearance, Huyun Tea Factory had fallen on hard times. Wu Mo and several other managers had tried to spin off Nanfeng Pharmaceuticals to rescue the business. Zhou Xia had once supported Wu Mo, but Yan Ping, a daughter who had always been her mother’s little sweetheart, had tried to stop her from joining Nanfeng.
Not long afterward, Yan Ping and the other five disappeared. It looked like human trafficking, but why would traffickers abduct boys and girls who were almost adults? Why had the abductions all occurred in one short period, with no more children disappearing either before or after it?
Yunquan Group’s investment in Nanfeng Pharmaceuticals was highly suspicious. Nanfeng’s involvement in drug manufacturing was now a fact. Only the timing remained uncertain: had they begun making drugs eight years ago, or three years ago?
If Nanfeng hadn’t been making drugs eight years earlier, where had the drugs injected into Yan Ping and the others come from? Why had these poor children suffered such a fate? They had been tortured with drugs in life, then used to anchor feng shui in death.
“They discovered Wu Mo and Nanfeng Pharmaceuticals’ secret.” Chen Zheng frowned and tapped the table lightly with his fist. “That’s why they were silenced.”
A heavy atmosphere hung over the Junan bureau. Even a veteran officer like Li Zhi found this truth difficult to accept. It was too cruel, too dark.
“Captain Chen,” Li Zhi called after Chen Zheng.
“Director Li, have the drug residues analyzed further and compared with what’s currently being produced at Nanfeng Pharmaceuticals,” Chen Zheng said. “I’m going to see Du Hui.”
Du Hui and Nanfeng’s senior management were being held for questioning, with no way to know what was happening outside. When Chen Zheng appeared before him, Du Hui grew so nervous that he started sweating before a word had been said.
“Last time, I asked whether you knew where those missing children had gone,” Chen Zheng said. “Now I’ll ask again. Do you know why they disappeared?”
“W-weren’t they abducted by traffickers?” Du Hui stammered. “H-have you found them?”
Chen Zheng gave a cold laugh. “What sort of traffickers would have money to inject their victims with drugs?”
Du Hui’s eyes flew wide open. He sat motionless, like a moss-covered mountain of stone.
“What’s wrong?” Chen Zheng asked. “Didn’t think we’d get this far?”
“N-no, that’s not…” Du Hui came back to himself, lowered his head, and kept fidgeting with his hands. “I-I didn’t mean that.”
“Already lost your head?” Chen Zheng asked. “Then why don’t you guess what I’ll ask next?”
Sweat poured off Du Hui. “Officer Chen, I don’t know! Injected with drugs? Were they taking drugs? H-how could that be possible?”
Chen Zheng said, “Secretary Du, you’ve worked for Wu Mo all these years. He was silenced, yet you’re still alive, which suggests you’re a clever man. Why have you suddenly stopped being clever? Come on, let’s go through this. Nanfeng Pharmaceuticals was caught making illegal drugs. You knew about it, and you participated. There’s no escaping legal punishment now.”
Du Hui swallowed and instinctively tried to argue, but Chen Zheng raised a hand, signaling him to listen.
“At a time like this, instead of cooperating and giving us more leads, you still want to cover for Wu Mo, who’s already been killed? Are you an idiot? Is he going to come back from the dead and take the blame for you? He was the one in charge at Nanfeng. As his secretary, you were the man who handled his dirty work. You ought to know about everything he did. If you don’t talk now, it may be too late.”
Du Hui opened his mouth, still wavering.
“I’ll tell you the truth,” Chen Zheng continued. “We’ve found those six missing children. I underestimated how vicious Wu Mo was. He didn’t just kill them. He had their bodies used to anchor a hotel’s feng shui.”
Du Hui began breathing rapidly. The truth was practically written across his face. He clawed repeatedly at his thighs, his face as white as paper. “Boss Wu… Wu Mo said… he said they’d found out. If they didn’t die, we’d… we’d all be finished!”
Chen Zheng nodded. “So Nanfeng Pharmaceuticals really was making drugs from the moment it was founded?”
Du Hui sank heavily against the back of his chair, panting like an ox. “I was only a secretary! If I hadn’t done what they told me, I’d have been the one to die!”
Eight years earlier, when Huyun Tea Factory was going through one crisis after another, Wu Mo and a group of younger managers had planned a transformation. Du Hui had already been one of Wu Mo’s subordinates, so of course he followed him. Most people at the tea factory had little faith in the pharmaceutical venture, believing Wu Mo was digging his own grave. But somehow, he’d secured investment from Yunquan Group. People’s opinions began to change. Some now thought he was capable, far more so than the old-fashioned leaders still running the tea factory.
At first, Du Hui was relieved he’d made the right choice. Before long, however, he discovered that Wu Mo seemed to have more in mind than saving the tea factory. The pharmaceutical plant appeared to be concealing another business. Wu Mo noticed his suspicions and didn’t bother hiding the truth. He said the plant was developing a special drug that would bring in enormous profits.
A special drug? Du Hui didn’t immediately understand, so Wu Mo took him to see the workshop, which was still under construction. One look was enough. Du Hui fell to the ground in terror and tried to scramble away.
But security guards carrying guns blocked his escape. Behind him came Wu Mo’s laughter. “Little Du, I trained you myself. You don’t think I’d hurt you, do you? Your child’s elementary school fees aren’t cheap, are they? Your wife stays home full-time. What would they do if they lost you?”
Du Hui’s head rang, and his mind went blank. Sitting on the ground, he watched Wu Mo advance step by step. That familiar smile had turned cold and alien. A guard pressed a gun to his head. Du Hui understood that he’d boarded a criminal ship and would never be allowed off.
Wu Mo gave him a ridiculous title: workshop director. His job was to make occasional inspection rounds and hand finished goods to whoever came to collect them. The money and raw materials never passed through his hands.
He became frighteningly numb. Wu Mo opened an overseas account for him and promised that one day, if he didn’t want to carry on, he could retire abroad and live out his years in comfort.
Day after day, Du Hui clung desperately to the hope that he’d get away with it, while Wu Mo continued promising the workers at Huyun Tea Factory a rosy future. During that time, something happened that neither he nor Wu Mo had anticipated.
The Nanfeng Pharmaceuticals site was still being built. The drug workshop was tucked away at the very back, and the guards patrolled dressed as construction workers. Even if an ordinary worker wandered in, they wouldn’t necessarily realize what was being produced in the workshop.
Then one day, a boy wandered into the area. One of the guards nearly shot him, but Du Hui recognized the boy and hurriedly intervened. He was Gong Yu, Gong Xiaoyang’s foolish son, a well-known simpleton at the factory. Even if they sat him inside the workshop to watch everything, he’d only grin stupidly without a care in the world.
If Gong Yu disappeared inside the workshop, that would be the real problem. Du Hui and the guards pretended not to see him. Gong Yu wandered around twice, grew bored, and left on his own.
Du Hui breathed a sigh of relief, assuming that was the end of it. But a week later, in the middle of the night, uninvited visitors turned up at the workshop again. This time it wasn’t just one boy, but a whole group.
Gong Yu, Hu Mingyu, Yan Ping, and Xu Xinxin.
Du Hui could no longer sit still. Gong Yu might be a fool, but Hu Mingyu and Yan Ping certainly weren’t. Both were extremely bright and studied science. Why would they sneak into the workshop at this hour? Had Gong Yu discovered something wrong last time and recruited Yan Ping and the others to help him?
Before any guard could act, Du Hui had already seized a gun with trembling hands. The truth was right in front of him. These children had discovered the pharmaceutical plant’s secret. They couldn’t be allowed to leave.
But a hand settled on Du Hui’s shoulder. He turned. It was Wu Mo. Nearly beside himself with nerves, he stammered, “B-Boss Wu, I… this was my mistake…”
“It’s fine.” Wu Mo, on the other hand, was extraordinarily relaxed. “Don’t do anything here. Let them go home tonight. I’ll think of a way to deal with them later.”
The four didn’t enter the workshop. They talked among themselves for a while before Hu Mingyu led them away, and the night returned to its former stillness.
Du Hui, however, couldn’t regain his peace of mind. What would those children tell their parents? Would Yan Ping and Hu Mingyu tell their teachers? What was he supposed to do?
To Du Hui’s surprise, the following days passed without incident.
Wu Mo increased security around the workshop and arranged for the four children to be followed. They appeared to be planning something, frequently meeting two other youngsters, Lu Xiwei and Wang Shixun.
Of the six, Wu Mo watched Yan Ping most closely. Her family situation was unusual: Zhou Xia and Old Yan thought highly of the pharmaceutical plant and had already decided to work there. What would Yan Ping tell them?
Wu Mo didn’t dare wait any longer. He temporarily shut down the workshop and moved all the drugs elsewhere, then had Yan Ping and the others imprisoned separately, staging their disappearances as abductions from different locations. Around that time, something happened in Wu Mo’s favor: Mei Rui, the Mei family’s daughter, also disappeared. It was almost as if someone were playing along with his plan.
Each family called the police, and the investigation began. During that period, Wu Mo didn’t kill a single one of the children. He was watching to see whether the six had told their parents or teachers. They hadn’t. The police never received a single lead involving drugs.
That also proved that Yan Ping and the others hadn’t lied.
The six were imprisoned outside the city, at one of Wu Mo’s group’s bases not far from Junan Lake. Wu Mo subjected them to brutal interrogation, even injecting them with drugs and threatening to kill their families unless they revealed who else knew. Not even Hu Mingyu, the bravest of them, could withstand the torment. He wept and begged for mercy.
From what they said, Du Hui pieced together the truth. Gong Yu, whom the workers considered an idiot, wasn’t one at all. Far from being stupid, he was remarkably intelligent. He’d spent years pretending to be slow simply to avoid studying things he wasn’t interested in. What did interest him was chemistry.
Gong Xiaoyang was the kind of factory worker who had little ability but loved to boast. He went around telling anyone who would listen that Wu Mo would never get the pharmaceutical plant running, that he only wanted to make one last pile of money before fleeing, and that anyone who followed him would wind up losing even the severance payments they were owed by the tea factory.
Gong Yu didn’t think much of his father, but he too found Wu Mo’s pharmaceutical venture suspicious. What kind of medicine was it producing? He was sensitive to the subject and quick-witted enough to think of one possibility. And because everyone thought he was a fool, no one would suspect anything if he wandered around a construction site out of curiosity. So he’d gone to the site, found the workshop, and spotted waste materials discarded outside it, awaiting disposal.
Wu Mo was making drugs! Gong Yu was frightened and excited at once. Before anyone could discover him, he hurried away and told Hu Mingyu. Hu Mingyu was one of the few people who knew Gong Yu wasn’t stupid. They lived one floor apart in the same building, and Gong Yu often ate at Hu’s home. Hu Mingyu’s father, Hu Changquan, was a splendid cook, especially when it came to stir-fried river snails.
Hu Mingyu was a highly principled, levelheaded boy. He wanted Wu Mo’s criminal gang caught in one sweep, but the two of them couldn’t do it alone. Gong Yu said, “What about Yan Ping? You’re close to her. Could she help us?”
Hu Mingyu recruited Yan Ping. At first she didn’t understand what was going on and brought along her best friend, Xu Xinxin. The four decided to investigate the workshop once more and establish for certain that Wu Mo was producing drugs before deciding what to do next.
On their way back from the workshop, something unexpected happened. They ran into Wang Shixun and Lu Xiwei. Wang Shixun liked Xu Xinxin, and Lu Xiwei liked Hu Mingyu. When they noticed the four acting furtively, they’d followed them.
With no choice left, Hu Mingyu told Wang Shixun and Lu Xiwei what they were doing. The two newcomers were shocked, but youthful courage and enthusiasm proved contagious. On the spot, they decided to do their part in eliminating a menace like Wu Mo.
Hu Mingyu and Yan Ping led their little group. They didn’t think it was time to report to the police, because none of them knew whether Wu Mo had accomplices within the force. If they went to the police rashly, they might be silenced.
Hu Mingyu said they couldn’t let anyone else in on the secret. They had to keep it even from their families, for their families’ own protection. Every one of them swore never to reveal what they knew.
After that, the six began acting independently, hoping to obtain decisive evidence and take it directly to the police in the provincial capital, Luocheng.
But before they could truly put their plan into action, they became Wu Mo’s prisoners. Wu Mo didn’t execute them immediately. Instead, he tortured them with drugs. Xu Xinxin was the first to die, followed by Lu Xiwei. Gong Yu was the last to close his eyes. Du Hui heard him say, “I’m sorry.”
He was apologizing to his companions. He had drawn them into a darkness from which none of them would ever see the light again.
The missing-children investigation eventually went nowhere. Zhou Xia and the others formed a mutual-aid group, while Nanfeng Pharmaceuticals established itself as a functioning business.
“Why were their bodies used to anchor the feng shui?” Chen Zheng asked. “What exactly was the relationship between Nanfeng Pharmaceuticals and Ruan Xingjie?”
Du Hui’s eyes lost focus, and he trembled without realizing it. “I-I really don’t know. Wu Mo never told me everything. He made me watch over the bodies, but… but they’d started to stink! If we didn’t cremate them soon, there would be trouble!”
While guarding the bodies, Du Hui’s nerves had grown increasingly fragile. Then one day, Wu Mo appeared in the mortuary with a stranger. It was Ruan Xingjie. A feng shui practitioner followed him, studying the bodies with obvious interest. Wu Mo and Ruan Xingjie talked for a while, then the bodies were placed in coffins Ruan had brought. Du Hui breathed a long sigh of relief and asked Wu Mo where the man would take them.
Wu Mo smiled and pointed toward Junan Lake. “Know where they’re building a hotel? Boss Ruan is from Southeast Asia. He believes in that sort of thing. He’s taking them to secure the feng shui.”
Du Hui said excitedly, “Once they’re sealed underground, no one will ever find them, right?”
“Of course,” Wu Mo said. “So relax. That business is behind us now.”
Chen Zheng asked, “So Ruan Xingjie knew enough about your business for Wu Mo to trust him with the bodies. Were you selling your drugs to Ruan Xingjie?”
“I really don’t know,” Du Hui said. It was only his own guess that Ruan Xingjie was one of Wu Mo’s customers. Ruan was from Southeast Asia, after all, where he had plenty of distribution channels. But Wu Mo had never admitted it, and Du Hui had been so careful, so constantly afraid of making one wrong move, that he never dared ask about anything Wu Mo didn’t volunteer.
What surprised him was that the workshop hadn’t operated for long. Half a year later, Wu Mo unexpectedly decided to quit the drug trade.