默读/Silent Reading by Priest - Book 3

 
Translated by E. Danglars at edanglarstranslations.com. For
comments, questions, and corrections, e-mail
edanglarstranslations@gmail.com.
 

1
CHAPTER 59 - Reading Aloud (2)
 
When Luo Wenzhou left the interrogation room, he felt he was
somewhat delirious. The lengthy and strenuous process of
interrogation was a sort of torment for both parties, especially when
faced with a suspect with Xu Wenchao’s psychological quality. Not
giving the other party a chance to catch a breath in fact meant having
no time to catch a breath yourself.
 
While those rushing around outside were still seeking all kinds of
evidence, the interrogator and the interrogated had to read between
the lines of each other’s expressions for involuntarily betrayed traces
of information to mutually deceive and mutually judge—
 
How much evidence do they actually have? How much did Su
Luozhan actually say?
 
Where did he just contradict himself? Which of his words could be
true, which of his words are dodges to get away from the major
topic?
 
Are they tricking me?
 
How can I trick him to get him to confess?
 
The least slackening, and Xu Wenchao would immediately have
seized the opportunity to quibble and retract. It was hopeless to think
of substituting another interrogator.
 
Everything from Luo Wenzhou’s neck up had basically shut down.
Wholly relying on muscle memory, he mechanically navigated to his
office.
 
Qu Tong’s parents had heard the news and rushed off to Binhai
without listening to any counsel to the contrary. Only Guo Heng was

2
left.
 
Luo Wenzhou saw his back and thought that Guo Heng was sleeping.
He instinctively lightened his steps and picked up a uniform jacket
someone had tossed nearby. He was about to drape it over him when
Guo Heng suddenly looked up.
 
The wrinkles around his eyes extended in complex twists and turns
from the bridge of his nose to his temples, like the cracks in parched
earth. In his eyes, their slightly yellowed whites shot through with
blood vessels, there wasn’t a trace of sleep.
 
The previously bustling office of the Criminal Investigation Team was
utterly silent. The people were either still busy elsewhere, or else they
hadn’t been able to stand it any longer and had gone to sleep. The
two men looked at each other wordlessly, the air seeming glued
together, thick and motionless; the wind of the most powerful air-
conditioning couldn’t have blown it away.
 
After a long time, Guo Heng spoke first with difficulty. “Your…your
leader surnamed Lu told me everything.”
 
Luo Wenzhou slowly pulled up a chair and sat down across from him.
 
“He didn’t give me too many specifics,” said Guo Heng. “He said you
were still verifying some details—can you tell me the particulars
now?”
 
Luo Wenzhou paused. “On that summer day twenty years ago, Guo
Fei by chance got acquainted with a girl who said she had come to
Lotus Mountain with her teacher. The girl was wearing a floral-
patterned dress and looked very pretty, but she seemed to have no
sense of direction at all. She asked her the way several times. One
day, when she got out of cram school, Guo Fei met the girl again. The
girl seemed very worried, claimed that the teacher she’d come with
was in the hospital, and she couldn’t find the way back to the hotel

3
alone. Guo Fei was a warm-hearted child. At the end of each term,
the teachers all commented that she was ‘willing to help others.’ To
this day the records are in the Lotus Mountain Elementary School’s
archives. She tried to explain the directions a few times, but the girl
still didn’t understand. It was only a little detour, anyway, she
thought. She’d only be a few minutes late. So she decided to
personally take the girl where she wanted to go…”
 
From the first time he had mentioned the name of “Guo Fei,” Guo
Heng had been shaking uncontrollably. His turbid tears rolled from
the corners of his eyes, redirected by row after row of wrinkles to the
white hair at his temples.
 
At this point, Luo Wenzhou stopped for a moment and put his hand
on Guo Heng’s shoulder. Put together, the skinny shoulders and the
heaving chest looked like a slimy and old-fashioned broken-down
bellows.
 
Guo Heng took a difficult breath. “Talk. Keep talking.”
 
“That girl—she was Su Xiaolan. She tricked Guo Fei into taking a
drink that had been drugged. She left her in the hotel, waiting for the
killer Wu Guangchuan to get out of the hospital. Wu Guangchuan
used his poor health as an excuse to get away from the rest of his
team and take one of the company cars. After murdering Guo Fei, Wu
Guangchuan hid her in the trunk of the car and left Lotus Mountain.
Su Xiaolan took Guo Fei’s pencil box.” Though he knew, judging from
Su Xiaolan’s diary, the uniformity of the method of the crimes, and
other facts, that the one who’d murdered Guo Fei must in fact have
been Su Xiaolan, Luo Wenzhou used his seemingly objective tone to
lightly twist the facts. “Su Xiaolan had a twisted relationship with the
killer that made her very jealous of the victim. In the middle of their
offense, an altercation occurred between Su Xiaolan and the killer
because of this. She furiously got out of the car, ran down that slope
you discovered, saw the public phone next to the waste transfer

4
station, and suddenly thought of a means of relief—to call you and
let you hear that scream, and also to let your hear the pencil box.”
 
“Why would she… Why…”
 
“Because she was jealous that Guo Fei had parents like you, had a
happy home, had grown up into a little girl ten thousand times better
than her, had things she wouldn’t possess even after living another
twenty years.”
 
At his tone, Guo Heng looked at Luo Wenzhou and for a time couldn’t
speak.
 
“Uncle Guo, you didn’t kill the wrong person then. You were only…
too kind-hearted. You didn’t suspect the other person in that house at
all,” Luo Wenzhou said quietly. “But because you killed Wu
Guangchuan in front of her, Su Xiaolan was intimidated. She knew
for the first time that doing these things would call down retribution.
Her life afterwards was painful and deformed, and the frequency of
her crimes was greatly reduced. You virtually saved quite a few
potential victims—over a hundred at least.”
 
But Guo Heng covered his eyes, unable to speak for tears.
 
“Uncle Guo…” said Luo Wenzhou.
 
“Don’t say it.” Guo Heng absently waved a hand at him. “Don’t
trouble yourself to find pleasant-sounding words to comfort me.
Thank you.”
 
Because he’d rashly stabbed Wu Guangchuan back then and scared
Su Xiaolan out of using the same method to torment the victims’
relatives, even making her alter her methods, the records of those
murdered little girls had afterwards vanished among numerous other
missing children, only coming to light once more fully twenty years
late.

5
 
Guo Heng had been impulsive and easily angered, but he wasn’t at all
stupid. He could pick out this type of obviously flawed lie.
 
“So where is my Feifei now?”
 
“Su Hui, the principal offender from back then, didn’t participate in
that case. So our conjecture is that Guo Fei must be along the
national road that led from Lotus Mountain to the city at the time.”
 
“Can you…can you still find her? Are you still looking?”
 
“We can find her,” said Luo Wenzhou. “A person can’t be made to
vanish just like that. She must still be hidden somewhere. There are
always traces. Even if we can’t find her for a time, there will still be
hope. Even if others forget, I’ll remember. Set your mind at ease.”
 
Guo Heng left the City Bureau by the first rays of another morning.
Luo Wenzhou watched him go until he was out of sight. He didn’t
know what would happen to Guo Heng now, but whether he was
sixty, seventy, or eighty, a person still had to live, still had to keep
going through his days, still had to turn his eyes forward.
 
Perhaps Luo Wenzhou was only consoling himself, but he thought
that Guo Heng’s back had seemed a little straighter.
 
Luo Wenzhou, dragging heavy steps, returned to his office and half-
collapsed into his chair. He let out a long breath, then felt he seemed
to have forgotten something. He looked up and saw a cup of already
cool coffee set out on his desk.
 
Right, he’d made Fei Du wait for him!
 
But clearly Young Master Fei couldn’t wait in the bureau for him all
night. He must have left long ago.
 

6
As Luo Wenzhou picked up the cup of coffee in confusion and looked
it up and down, a hand reached out from beside him and lifted the
cup. Then, a dim thread of Mu Xiang cologne entered his nose from
the cuff of this person’s sleeve. Luo Wenzhou subconsciously breathed
in, his nose going a little dry.
 
Fei Du had once again crawled out of some expensive hotel. He’d
changed his clothes. Under Luo Wenzhou’s confused gaze, he put the
breakfast and coffee packed up by the hotel on the table.
 
Luo Wenzhou subconsciously said, “You really must have nothing
better to do. Every day you stay at a hotel instead of going home.
Does your company run the place?”
 
“You could say that,” Fei Du answered matter-of-factly. “I own 60% of
the interest.”
 
Luo Wenzhou: “…”
 
Big bosses who flaunted their wealth in front of the salaried class on
purpose were all assholes.
 
“Didn’t you tell me to wait for you because you had some things you
wanted to say to me?”
 
“Oh, right.” Luo Wenzhou opened the coffee and drank a big
mouthful, attempting to use the coffee to find his lost brain. “I
wanted to tell you…”
 
What had he been going to say?
 
Luo Wenzhou stopped, finding in wonder that there was a temporary
break in his memory. However he rifled through it, he still came up
empty. He couldn’t remember a single punctuation mark,
experiencing an early symptom of Alzheimer’s.
 

7
Fei Du’s white shirt was starting to look a little dazzling, almost
giving him double vision.
 
“To tell you…”
 
Fei Du watched him babble some words as if talking in his sleep.
Then he tilted sideways following the back of the chair; he had
actually fallen asleep like that. Fei Du deftly propped up the coffee
still in Luo Wenzhou’s hand, lightly rescuing the cup that had almost
fallen to the floor. Then he arranged Luo Wenzhou’s hand in a
comfortable position.
 
The man was frowning faintly. He looked very wan, his eyelids folded
into three layers and his ordinarily very clean-shaven chin covered in
stubble, oddly giving him something of the dejected “uncle” feeling.
His face looked as if it had thinned out. After working nonstop for
forty-eight hours, even an immortal would be dispirited. Of course his
face wouldn’t look very good. But somehow his usual air of a glib-
tongued young lordling had disappeared, and something more
profound and substantial had been left behind in its wake.
 
Fei Du turned and leaned on his desk, reaching out two fingers to lift
Luo Wenzhou’s chin. For a moment he gently scrutinized his face, like
a collector of antiques scrutinizing and fondling a piece of Ru official
ware1. After a moment, he stood up straight and sighed soundlessly,
admitting that he had been moved by this face.
 
Lang Qiao, dragging her steps like a dead dog, had just rolled back in
from outside. She’d thought she could sleep soundly lying down in
the middle of the road, but when she raised her head and
unfortunately encountered this scene, all the drowsiness filling her
head was startled out of existence. She felt that all the “domineering
director-general” pornographic novels she’d read in her life were
blowing past before her eyes with a whistle. Standing dumbstruck in
the doorway, the policewoman became a stiff corpse.

8
 
The “domineering director-general” harboring evil intentions wasn’t
in the least flustered. He turned his head, blinked at her, and gave
her an unusually thought-provoking smile. He pointed at the big bag
of food next to him, indicating that she should help herself. Then he
picked up the coffee Luo Wenzhou had just drunk and sipped it,
floating out.
 
The light of the rising sun stabbed Tao Ran’s eyes so he couldn’t quite
open them. His colleagues who had rushed over to assist took over
for him, and he went to rest. He carelessly shook the soil off of
himself and got into a random car. Just then, his phone vibrated. A
photograph came from Chang Ning of herself with Chenchen in her
arms, tightly clinging to her big sister’s clothes but still struggling to
smile at the camera.
 
“The doctor said Chenchen’s injuries were all light and she could
leave the hospital. My aunt says we have to thank all of you. Another
day, could I ask you and your colleagues to come over for a meal?”
 
For the first time, Tao Ran didn’t immediately respond to the
goddess’s message. Holding his phone, he fell asleep.
 
Fei Du took a taxi back to his office. Before the workday had started,
he signed the documents he’d promised Assistant Miao he would
attend to, then sat alone for a while in a tastefully decorated office.
 
This was the old President Fei’s office from before. At the door was a
waiting room with a liquor cabinet concealed in the wall. Next to it
was a large bookcase that reached the ceiling. The upper half was a
collection of all kinds of only extant copies, sheepskin rolls, silks, and
even bamboo slips, everything you could want. The lower half
displayed the watch collection of the office’s previous master.
 
The other wall was a display case entirely covered in glass, hung full
of ancient weaponry. Among them was a broadsword that was said to

9
have been carried by an ancient emperor. The grip was elegant; after
all these years, the blade was still bright as snow. Under the cold light
of the display case, it looked as though it were about to break out of
the case to eat flesh and drink blood.
 
Between the couches was a stand 1.4 meters tall, round, displaying
around its edges all kinds of currency no longer in circulation,
surrounding a small display in the center where the works of three
successive winners of a certain international jewelry design
competition were arranged—only three years. Before the fourth
year’s could be put there, the collector himself had gone to lie in the
seaside sanatorium like a corpse.
 
Everyone, on first arriving to his office, would be shocked by the
small-scale museum in the waiting room. If a person lingered there
for long, money, authority, ambition, and desire would be ready to
simply pour out of all his pores.
 
The office, meanwhile, was half separated from and half connected to
the waiting room, linked by a passage wide enough for only one
person to pass through. There was a clever curve to the passage that
prevented the light from the office from getting in. On two sides, the
office had small windows for ventilation, while in back was a huge
floor-to-ceiling window from which one could clearly look down on
half of Yan City, the flow of traffic slowly lining up and the
pedestrians as small as ants all visible at a glance.
 
Fei Du stood and took a not especially thick folder from a locked
filing cabinet. In the folder were some contracts, financial statements,
and explanations of changes in major assets. It was a collaboration
undertaken in the conglomerate’s name with a “Guangyao Fund.”
When his father had reigned, he’d collaborated with this fund and
made a fixed contribution to its subsidiary public interest fund.
 
The contract term had already expired and the collaboration had
naturally come to an end; the other party had shown no signs of

10
wanting to renew the contract.
 
And lying quietly at the bottom of the pile of documents was a project
plan for “Binhai Marine Resources Recreational Holy Land—Making a
Chinese Maldives” that had requested an investment from them. Back
then, his father, who had laid down the law for the board of directors,
had refused with the reason of “capital investment comparatively
large, no mature profit model,” and it had then come to nothing.
 
“Binhai…” Fei Du heavily traced a line on it with the cap of his pen.
 
The three great principles of disposing of a body—
 
First, the place where the body is disposed of is absolutely safe. No
one outside of your control will come to dig it up, and no one will
discover the secret under the earth.
 
Second, a place where you could hide the body among ordinary
corpses, so anyone who found it wouldn’t call the police.
 
Third, even if they did call the police, the police would have no way
of determining the identity of the deceased.
 
The third principle had been usable twenty years earlier, but today,
with the development of all kinds of criminal investigation forensic
technologies, it basically couldn’t be realized. So given Xu Wenchao’s
IQ, he would definitely adhere to the first two.
 
Why would he choose Binhai?
 
If he threw the bodies off the coast, there would be a great risk of
them being fished up. To throw them further out, however, would
require a means of getting out to sea, and it couldn’t be done in all
seasons. There would have to be some bodies that could only be
buried on dry land.
 

11
There was nothing in the origins or experiences of Xu Wenchao and
the three generations of the Su family to show that they had any
connection to the city of Binhai. So what reason had made Xu
Wenchao choose it? Could it just have been the freelance
photographer happening to think that the scenery was beautiful and
untouched?
 
A week later, with the collaboration of the police in both places, the
dust at last settled on this unusually complicated, unusually lengthy,
unusually sensational major case.—Under all kinds of coercion and
cajolery, the pianist from the racetrack had finally identified one of
the other four men in the photographs. They’d had a very strict
system of enrollment. They had to have someone introduce them. At
first, they only had permission to take the little girl Su Luozhan out to
eat. They had to spend a great deal of money and maintain a
relationship for a very long time before they were permitted to
become “senior members.”
 
As the “members” mutually identified each other, it was like picking a
radish out of the ground and getting a whole string—including those
who weren’t in the photographs, “old members” who had already
withdrawn from the transactions. Among them there was actually no
lack of respectable-seeming successful personages; there was quite a
sensation when the police came to their doors.
 
Closely according with the line of thought Fei Du had supplied, Guo
Fei’s body was found in a wild graveyard in a village along the
national road from Lotus Mountain to the city. The people who lived
there said that, before they’d practiced cremation, the place had been
specially used to bury the bodies of those who had died violent
deaths or who had died young. The place had many superstitious
legends, and usually no one dared to approach. Back then there had
been a villager who’d gotten drunk and mistakenly wandered in. He’d
happened to discover a burial mound that shouldn’t have been there,
gotten scared out of his wits, and spread a good number of ghost
stories.

12
 
Unfortunately, due to the taboo, no one had gone to check.
 
The news, evidence collection, public charges… The follow-up work
was non-stop. When it came to an end, Luo Wenzhou suddenly
realized that it was already the middle of September.
 
On the first day he resumed a life of normal working hours, he hadn’t
yet had time to celebrate when he saw a little sports car stopped at
the gates, with a familiar scoundrel standing next to it, smiling as he
watched a traffic cop hand out a ticket.
 

13
CHAPTER 60 - Macbeth I
 
Before Luo Wenzhou could react, Lang Qiao, walking behind him,
sucked in a big breath.
 
These last few weeks, Lang Qiao had often remembered Fei Du’s
secretive look before he’d left that day. Each day on the way to and
from work she’d let her imagination fly; she had already gone
through a string of labels like “seizing by force” and “sadomasochistic
love,” visualizing a soul-stirring erotic television drama—only there
had been too much stress at work lately, so she hadn’t had time to
leak any “spoilers” to Luo Wenzhou, one of the main characters.
 
An autumn rain shower had passed a few days before. Comrade Lang
Qiao was so startled by Fei Du’s sudden appearance that she stepped
into a pool of water at the gates and nearly fell flat on her face,
flailing her limbs and clinging onto the wall.
 
Hearing the movement, Luo Wenzhou turned to look at her. First, this
damn gay guy jeered at her pose. Then he said, “Why are you
wearing high heels to work? None of us can see you unless we’re
looking down. We all know you’re short.”
 
Lang Qiao: “…”
 
She rolled her eyes and straightened out her heel with difficulty,
firmly biting back the warning she’d been about to give him. She
thought, Well, it’s his funeral.
 
Formerly, Fei Du had worked during the day and fooled around at
night. He’d come to harass Tao Ran from time to time, but mostly
only to present some new toy as a gift. He hadn’t reported to the
public security bureau every day for no reason. Luo Wenzhou had
frequently worried about him before, although that had been while
he’d still been little; since Fei Du had grown into a 360 degree

14
scoundrel without a blindspot, there’d been nothing worth worrying
about.
 
The city was always active, and everyone was running around toiling;
there was also the rush of traffic and the sea of people to separate
them. It wasn’t unusual for ordinary friends not to see each other for
a few months.
 
But not much more than a month after the last time President Fei had
come running to the City Bureau to “send some comfort,” Luo
Wenzhou suddenly had a strange feeling, as if he hadn’t seen him in a
very long time.
 
Fei Du’s car was as flashy as before, but he himself seemed much
more in line with conventional norms.
 
He wasn’t wearing glasses. There was an earpiece hanging loosely
from one of his ears. His cotton shirt had for once been buttoned up
to just below the top collar button, and, in an extremely rare
occurrence, he was wearing jeans. His hair had been casually pushed
back, displaying his clear, handsome brow. It was as if something had
washed his whole soul clean. All traces of that air of the scum of the
literati were gone. At a glance, he looked like a slightly rebellious but
not over-the-line arts student.
 
Hands in his pockets, Luo Wenzhou strolled over in front of Fei Du,
internally cursing in spite of himself—
 
There were innumerable types of male beauty in the world, and Luo
Wenzhou was interested in a fairly broad range of them. He could
appreciate the Western aesthetic, full to bursting with masculine
hormones and brimming with force; he could also appreciate the
traditional aesthetic, clear as the moon, gentle as jade…as long as
they didn’t display Fei Du’s revolting behavior, he wouldn’t turn any
of them down.
 

15
President Fei was of the type he found most unendurable, simply a
cobra in human shape. He was immaculately groomed; it was
impossible to tell whether he was telling the truth or shamming; he
had so many eyes trained on the world that getting close to him
could make you feel a touch of trypophobia. There was a sharp and
intense feeling of invasiveness about him; if you didn’t want to be
manipulated by him, you would have to keep your nerves
subconsciously strained. Never mind appreciation, Luo Wenzhou’s
head hurt at the thought of him.
 
But the style he was attracted to at first sight was a clean and
straightforward, somewhat distinctive one; add in some good looks,
and it basically hit him dead-center in his most vulnerable point—for
example, the way Fei Du looked right now.
 
Fei Du was young, after all. When he retracted his venomous fangs,
he could conjure up a look of brimming youthfulness, mixing the true
with the false.
 
Luo Wenzhou waved a hand, dismissing the little traffic cop from the
department next door. He patted the roof of Fei Du’s car and pointed
to the commercial building across the street. “Turn right and there’s a
shopping center, didn’t you see? That’s where the nearest parking lot
is. Outside of special circumstances, the public’s cars can’t randomly
park at a public security bureau’s gates. You need a parking permit.”
 
Fei Du gave him a wholly unclouded smile. “How do I get a parking
permit?”
 
“We don’t sell long-term parking permits wholesale or retail. First,
you have to be City Bureau personnel. If you can’t manage that, you
have to be the family member of City Bureau personnel.” Luo
Wenzhou, not turning a hair, lowered his eyes, giving his stimulated
eyeballs a break. “You want a parking permit just for opening your
mouth. Do you have the status, President Fei? A few days after

16
getting your cast taken off, you’re driving around raising hell all over
the place—what are you doing here now?”
 
Without answering, Fei Du asked, “You didn’t drive today?”
 
“I lent my car to a colleague to use to go on a date,” said Luo
Wenzhou.
 
Fei Du narrowed his eyes and opened the car door. “Perfect. Do you
want to get in?”
 
Luo Wenzhou: “…”
 
This movement of Fei Du’s stirred up a light wind. Luo Wenzhou
found to his surprise that he hadn’t sprayed on any cologne today;
the smell that came from him was a mixture of the detergent from his
shirt and some shaving lotion. It was clear and clean, like an autumn
breeze washed by cool rain.
 
This joker had to be doing it on purpose.
 
Luo Wenzhou’s mind was alert, but his limbs rebelled against his
brain, taking the initiative to get into the car.
 
Fei Du very gracefully shut the car door for him and was just walking
around to the other side when he saw a “wimpy kid” with a
dilapidated briefcase on his back run out of the City Bureau and look
all around; it was Tao Ran.
 
Fei Du stopped in the middle of opening the car door and called to
him. “Ge.”
 
“Hey!” Tao Ran grabbed at his hair and walked over to him. His
observations were very sloppy; he didn’t notice anything different
between Fei Du’s getup today and his usual one. “This crowd! They
realized they didn’t need to work overtime today, and in the time it

17
took me to go to the bathroom, they all ran off, apart from the officer
on duty.—What are you doing here?”
 
“I came by to do something,” said Fei Du.
 
“Oh, okay,” Tao Ran said carelessly, not even asking what he was
doing. “I was just going to call you. Chang Ning says that Chenchen’s
parents want to find a time to invite everyone over to eat. Will you
go?”
 
Fei Du let out a long “oh.”
 
“What?” said Tao Ran.
 
“Go to Chenchen’s house—when the time comes, we’ll be responsible
for chatting with the parents, turning their gazes away, and you’ll be
responsible for helping Chang Ning-jie clean up and prepare food?”
Fei Du lazily leaned against the roof of the car. “Or you could urge
them to prepare a bit of wine, pour a bit into everyone, then have
Chang Ning responsible for seeing each one off while you drive the
car. The best thing would be for us third wheels to vanish as soon as
we walked out the door. Then you can conveniently take her to enjoy
the night breeze, see a movie or something.”
 
Tao Ran hadn’t thought so much about it originally. Having Fei Du’s
brief description to light the path ahead, he sparkled all over; he felt
uncomfortable speaking and only stood there with a captivated smile.
 
Just then, the car window facing Tao Ran rolled down and Luo
Wenzhou irritably said to him, “Enough, I get the gist of this meal. I’ll
pass it on to our comrades tomorrow. Could I trouble you not to
stand by the side of the road torturing the single dogs? Mind our
image!”
 
Tao Ran had never expected that he would one day see Luo Wenzhou
in Fei Du’s car. He gave a tremendous start. Like a sleepwalker, he

18
looked at Luo Wenzhou, then looked at Fei Du; he went back and
forth three times, suspecting that his mind was somewhat clouded.
He then gave a subconscious “oh,” rubbed his eyes, and obediently
left.
 
When he’d walked fully fifty meters away, Deputy-Captain Tao’s
lengthy reflex arc finally finished running its course and his brain
reacted as if he’d had an electric shock—wait, was that Luo Wenzhou
in Fei Du’s car just now?
 
Luo Wenzhou, male, interested in men.
 
Fei Du, male, interested in…humans!
 
Tao Ran swiftly turned his head back, his neck cracking in protest.
The little sports car that had been parked at the curb just now had
cheerfully driven out into the road, converging with the immense
flow of traffic; there wasn’t a sign of it.
 
“A hallucination,” Tao Ran concluded, making a great show of
nodding earnestly as he walked stiffly away.
 
“Turn left at the intersection up ahead. They’re repairing the road,
you can’t get through,” Luo Wenzhou directed dully, as if he really
was just hitching a ride home. He had asked once why Fei Du had
come; the little asshole, deliberately mystifying, hadn’t answered. Luo
Wenzhou simply hadn’t asked again, waiting with perfect composure
for him to issue a reply.
 
But Fei Du calmly drove him all the way home without talking any
nonsense. “We’re here.”
 
Luo Wenzhou: “…”
 
Wait… Was that it? Now what?
 

19
“We’re really here. I just wanted to drive you while I was on my way.”
Fei Du very acutely picked up some bewilderment from his gaze. A
very Fei Du smile hovered around the corners of his lips.
 
As soon as he smiled, the “youthful sun” image he’d maintained the
whole way vanished in an instant. Under the painted face were the
same familiar formula and same familiar flavor. Fei Du ambiguously
lowered his voice and drew close to Luo Wenzhou’s ear. “Or were you
hoping I had some other intentions, Captain Luo?”
 
This was one of a playboy’s customary moves: now distant and now
close, reconnoitering while not crossing a line, giving no reason,
enigmatically dropping a lure and running away. Anyone who
couldn’t resist the curiosity and chased after to investigate would be
marching step by step to his tempo.
 
Luo Wenzhou was a kindred spirit; he knew all the moves perfectly
well—though this was the first time anyone had used them on him.
He couldn’t pronounce a judgment or ask a question. The sharp rise
and gentle fall of this provocation had left his heart and mind full of
wild animals; at the same time, he didn’t know whether to laugh or
cry.
 
With a breath Luo Wenzhou forced down the fur and talons
scratching at the pit of his stomach and presented a move of standing
his ground. After a pause, he simply opened the door and patted the
car. “Nice car, though it’s a waste when you can’t drive fast in the city.
Thanks, see you.”
 
Then Luo Wenzhou very naturally got out of the car, pretending that
nothing had happened, and went home to feed his cat without a look
back.
 
Fei Du sat in the car watching his back until Luo Wenzhou had gone
into the building. Then he slowly started the car.
 

20
“You’re welcome,” he said to himself. “See you tomorrow.”
 
The next day, Captain Luo returned to his old profession of delivering
take-out, swaggering into the office. As soon as he opened the door,
he saw a few colleagues moving desks.
 
“What’s going on?”
 
“Director Ceng just came by and said we have a new colleague
reporting today,” Tao Ran said, showing his head. “We’re getting a
place for them to sit.”
 
“Oh, right, I remember now.” Luo Wenzhou put breakfast on the table
and indicated that they should all help themselves. “I’ve been so busy
I’d forgotten. I got the transfer order before, is he reporting today?—
You all know him, it’s that Little Glasses from the Flower Market
District Sub-Bureau. While the investigation into Wang Hongliang
was ongoing, he was suspended and also under investigation. The
investigation just ended. He seems like a pretty clear thinker and a
good worker, so I simply wrote up and had him transferred over.”
 
Tao Ran stared. “It’s Xiao Haiyang?”
 
Before Luo Wenzhou could answer, someone stuck their head in
through the office’s door. “Captain Luo, Director Ceng wants you to
come over!”
 
Luo Wenzhou gave an affirmative, grabbed a portable package of tofu
curd, stuck in the straw as wide as his thumb and stirred twice,
drinking as he walked. By the time he got to Director Ceng’s office,
he’d drunk the one-time-use cup dry.
 
Luo Wenzhou was a lazy worm. To save a few steps, he took aim at a
hallway trashcan two meters away and made an easy “free throw”;
the plastic cup went sailing into the basket.
 

21
He hadn’t yet celebrated his own perfect shot when the door of the
office next to him opened from inside.
 
Ceng Guangling pushed at his glasses and looked at Luo Wenzhou
coldly. “It’s a true waste of your talents that you didn’t go into the
NBA.”
 
Director Ceng had originally been a forensics expert. Later, because
old Director Zhang had valued his eternal professionalism and
accuracy, he’d forced him into a management position, giving him an
assortment of things to attend to one after another. One day he’d
make him responsible for presiding over a party member conference,
the next he’d make him produce official documents, and the day after
that he’d have him take a hand in administering human resources,
racking his brain to arrange all kinds of “practice” for him. With all
this practice, Director Ceng didn’t want to live anymore, thinking
every day of handing in his resignation, growing increasingly icy.
 
When Luo Wenzhou had first been transferred to the City Bureau, he
had often gone to crime scenes with Director Ceng. Ceng Guangling’s
disposition was strict; he couldn’t stand the sort of little troublemaker
Luo Wenzhou had been back then. Luo Wenzhou got told off by him
nearly every day and had long ago cultivated a face of impenetrable
diamond to present to him. Wholly unconcerned, he went into
Director Ceng’s office with a cheeky grin. “That’s true. It’s all because
my heart is devoted to serving the people that I could stand to give
up an annual salary of ten million US dollars. I deserve to have my
praises sung.—I hear we have an old acquaint…”
 
Before he could pronounce the “ance,” Luo Wenzhou froze.
 
There were two people in Ceng Guangling’s office. One was the
expected Xiao Haiyang. Seeing him come in, Xiao Haiyang very
properly stood up and greeted him. “Captain Luo.”
 
As for the individual next to him, he evidently wasn’t so proper.

22
 
“I really am an old acquaintance.” Fei Du’s gaze first made a circuit
from Luo Wenzhou’s chest to his knees; when he’d finished enjoying
the free show, he smiled as he took up Luo Wenzhou’s words. “I just
ate a meal at Captain Luo’s house last month.”
 
Ceng Guangling was one of the City Bureau’s elders. He’d watched
Luo Wenzhou grow from a spoiled child who didn’t understand shit
into the captain of the Criminal Investigation Team; even if he never
said it, he was still well aware of some annoying details about his
personal life. Hearing Fei Du’s words, Director Ceng immediately got
the wrong idea, fiercely rolled his eyes at Luo Wenzhou, and said
significantly, “Since we all know each other, let’s not waste words.—
Last year the City Bureau and Yan Security Uni’s graduate program
planned a collaborative research project, with Lao Zhang leading the
way. They wanted to use practical experience to get at some theories,
and to support their theories with practical experience. Take for
example this case we just had, the kidnapping and killing of young
girls that spanned twenty years—there’s a lot of research value there.
Yan Security Uni has already established a special research group.
Xiao Fei is our contact person.—Wenzhou may seem unreliable, but
he’s actually pretty good at keeping his private life separate from his
public life, right?”
 
Luo Wenzhou: “…”
 
What kind of an unreliable research group would choose this bit of
goods as a contact person! Had the alma mater’s other graduate
students all died off?
 
Ceng Guangling said, “Xiao Xiao, you just came. First, get to know
everyone. There are many young people on the Criminal
Investigation Team now, you’ll assimilate easily. Fei Du—”
 
Fei Du uncrossed his legs. Under Luo Wenzhou’s extremely pained
gaze, he gently and harmlessly called, “Teacher Ceng.”

23
 
“Hey, hey, no need to be so polite.” Ceng Guangling was evidently
pleased by this manner of address, a trace of a smile involuntarily
appearing on his icicle-like face. His voice warmed by at least three
degrees. “In fact, I did teach for two years. I suppose you could call
me your dashixiong. Your Lao Pan called me. If you need anything, go
ahead and bring it up. You can come to my office any time.”
 
First Luo Wenzhou was on the receiving end of a one-on-one talk
from Director Ceng; this middle-aged man’s gaze and suspicions had
strayed off into outer space. He raised entirely unreasonable
questions and criticisms against Luo Wenzhou’s personal integrity.
Then Luo Wenzhou got hauled off to Director Lu’s office for a
political awareness-raising meeting about this shitty research project.
By the time he dragged his weary steps back to the Criminal
Investigation Team, he suddenly found that it was no longer the
office he knew—
 

24
CHAPTER 61 - Macbeth II
 
Looking at his office, to which an extra desk had been added, Luo
Wenzhou leaned with one hand on the door and silently waited for
Tao Ran to explain.
 
“There’s really nowhere to fit another desk outside,” Tao Ran said
carefully from behind Luo Wenzhou. “But set your mind at ease. I just
asked Fei Du, and he said he’ll only be coming once or twice a week.
He won’t be here every day. Once this research project is over, they’ll
disperse. It won’t be very long, he’ll only be in here with you
temporarily for a few days…”
 
Luo Wenzhou’s gaze swept over the enormous air purifier in the
corner, then fell on the door—the space originally piled up with junk
had been cleaned up, and a fully-automatic coffee machine had been
placed there instead, along with a little refrigerator around a meter
high. The refrigerator was jammed full of cold beverages with the
scripts of all nations written on them. There was a note on the door
that read: “Help yourself, don’t be shy.”
 
This battle array really didn’t seem like “temporarily for a few days.”
 
Deputy-Captain Tao was rendered speechless. He gave a dry cough
and grabbed at the mess on his head, making it even wilder; if you’d
taken off his head, you could have used it as a steel wool scourer.
 
He squinted at Luo Wenzhou’s face and diffidently said, “Anyway,
when I saw you in his car yesterday, you two seemed to be getting on
pretty…”
 
Luo Wenzhou, his face expressionless, turned to stare fixedly at him.
 
“…well,” said Tao Ran.
 

25
Luo Wenzhou snorted.
 
Tao Ran held himself back for a while, but in the end he couldn’t
resist asking, “What’s going on with you two?”
 
“How do I know what he’s eaten wrong?” While there was no one in
the office during the midday break, Luo Wenzhou sighed and issued a
very pained complaint to Tao Ran. “He hasn’t been looking to pick a
fight recently. He’s been teasing me nonstop instead, the bastard.
Doesn’t he know my orientation is ‘unconventional?’”
 
Tao Ran: “…”
 
“Well?” said Luo Wenzhou. “If you have something to say, say it.”
 
“Well, you know, Fei Du, he…” Tao Ran struggled to find the right
wording. “I’ve always thought that children who grow up in those
rather complicated surroundings become worldly-wise when they’re
very young. They have a strong sense of propriety, especially in front
of girls. You sometimes get the feeling that all his sweet-talking is just
to make you happy, and he doesn’t mean anything else by it. He’s
extremely familiar with all kinds of hints and subtext. If he doesn’t
want to cross a line, then he’ll very carefully avoid it…”
 
Hearing this, Luo Wenzhou understood Tao Ran’s implication—either
the narcissistic self-love from his teenage years was metastasizing, or
Fei Du “wanted to cross a line.”
 
He didn’t respond, so Tao Ran could only mumble himself to a stop.
The two of them looked at each other helplessly for a moment. Luo
Wenzhou couldn’t tell what he was feeling. Tao Ran also had a
complicated expression of not knowing himself what he was saying.
 
Luo Wenzhou’s feelings for Fei Du had always been very complicated.
On the one hand, he really had been very concerned about him,
never able to resist looking after him a little. On the other hand, Fei

26
Du did often make him incandescently angry. They’d known each
other over seven years, and most of that time they’d been locked in a
head-on struggle. Outwardly, it sometimes had the look of well-
matched opponents who appreciated each other’s talents.
 
Whatever Fei Du did, Luo Wenzhou’s first reaction was always to
wonder what mischief he was up to now, but Tao Ran’s words had
opened a never-before opened door in his mind.
 
After a good while, Luo Wenzhou finally asked, “Where is Fei Du?”
 
“He took everyone out to eat,” said Tao Ran. “I waited here to go over
there with you, it’s that hotel right by the door…”
 
At this point, his words again came to an abrupt halt, because he’d
once again remembered the surpassingly sumptuous midnight snack
from a month before. Now he understood what had happened
without needing it to be said.
 
The City Bureau had handled two major cases in the last half year,
and Fei Du, under different guises, had participated in both. Yan
City’s City Bureau’s Criminal Investigation Team all knew him on
sight. But despite knowing him on sight, most of them still didn’t
know what he did. They only suddenly saw the light when they saw
him reserve three private rooms at the luxury hotel—this was a local
tyrant who’d come to make friends with them!
 
At the thought that as long as Fei Du was present, the officers on duty
could refuse grease, refuse fast food, refuse instant noodles, all of
“Captain China” Luo Wenzhou’s grunts revolted, even including Lang
Qiao, who’d “had a glimpse of the truth.”
 
From the other side of the private room’s door, Luo Wenzhou heard
Lang Qiao selling him with vim and vigor: “Are you leaving when the
project’s over? Will you come again afterwards? Why don’t you
simply come work with us when you graduate? You’re fated to be at

27
the City Bureau! We’ll leave the desk for you, Captain Luo definitely
won’t mind! He’s just a little sharp-tongued, but his temper’s actually
very good. He brings everyone breakfast every morning, and
sometimes he’ll cook up something special at home and bring it to
work to give everyone a little extra. His culinary skills are really…”
 
The person next to her poked at her shoulder.
 
Lang Qiao shook it off. “What?”
 
“What about Our Imperial Presence’s culinary skills?” said Luo
Wenzhou.
 
Lang Qiao’s spine stiffened, and she clutched at her throat, turning
her head with a crack. She was just in time to see Luo Wenzhou walk
through the door, looking at her with a fake smile. He warmly said,
“Eldest Princess, why don’t you go home and gather your things? Get
ready to be sent to North Korea for a political marriage.”
 
Lang Qiao turned pale with fright. “Imperial Father, your subject child
has erred!”
 
Luo Wenzhou looked up and squarely met Fei Du’s gaze. Fei Du was
once again perfectly playing the character of the rich kid, with his
usual eye-searing getup, the sight of which raised sparks of rage.
 
What Tao Ran had said was still going around and around on replay,
pressing on Luo Wenzhou’s arteries like a fishbone in the throat,
sticking so firmly that his blood pressure had gone up a few dozen
points.
 
He slowly walked up to the empty seat beside Fei Du. Ignoring the
person next to him as much as he could, he rolled up the sleeves of
his shirt and spoke, adopting a rare bureaucratic tone in front of his
colleagues. “First, I’ll pass along the gist of the meeting Director Lu
just held.—This plan of a collaborative project with Yan Security Uni

28
was first implemented many years ago. It was called the ‘Picture
Album Project’ at the time; it later fell through for certain reasons.
Last year Director Zhang was recalling past events and wrote to his
superiors a few times. Though he’s recently moved on, if this project
can get results, in the future it will supply a great deal of help to your
work. I hope you’ll all be able to actively cooperate.”
 
Luo Wenzhou was very rarely this solemn on private occasions; no
one dared to make a sound.
 
“It’ll be very strictly managed. The research group must follow all of
the bureau’s internal regulations in the process of requesting files.
They have to be signed out and recorded. Materials relating to details
of cases that haven’t been made public can’t be copied,
photographed, or removed from the City Bureau. Everyone at the
research group has to sign confidentiality agreements. That’s
discipline. Besides that—” Luo Wenzhou gave Fei Du a quick look. “I
hope our contact person will be able to restrain his easy-going style.
The City Bureau isn’t a school, and it isn’t your enterprise. You can’t
come and go as you please. I heard Director Ceng say you were
planning to come every Tuesday and Friday? Then on those two days
you’ll follow normal working hours. If you come late, leave early, or
want to change the times at the last minute, you’ll need to have a
proper reason and an excuse note. Does this pose any difficulties? If it
does, I recommend you switch to a different contact person.”
 
At first everyone had still been listening solemnly. By the middle of
Luo Wenzhou’s speech, the whole table full of Criminal Investigation
Team personnel was looking at him with hard-to-describe
expressions, not speaking, quietly watching this king of being “easy-
going” pretending to hold the high ground.
 
He hadn’t finished expressing himself from his high ground; he
thought about it, then said to Fei Du, “Besides that, our official
resources are limited. You’ve seen that. Ordinarily, only major cases
come up to the City Bureau’s Criminal Investigation Team. You may

29
run into all kinds of crime scenes. Blood and guts are commonplace.
If you see something horrifying…”
 
Lang Qiao, unable to resist, interrupted him: “Imperial Father, are you
going to eat?”
 
“…you still have to act as if it’s nothing, go back and eat your meals
normally.” Luo Wenzhou gave her a cold glance. “We only have the
law here. We aren’t prepared for emergency medical care. Comrades
who vomit or faint at the least whiff of blood are advised to
reconsider their choices.”
 
Without turning a hair, Fei Du answered, “Thank you for the
reminder, Captain Luo.”
 
Over the last half year, the swords-drawn-bows-bent atmosphere
between the two of them had turned into something full of turbulent
undercurrents, an increasing torment to others.
 
Tao Ran could only firmly interrupt Luo Wenzhou’s “education,”
stepping forward to mediate: “Oh, why haven’t I ever heard of this
‘Picture Album Project?’”
 
“It was over a decade ago. You hadn’t even gone to university yet.”
Luo Wenzhou gave him some face and let Fei Du off for the moment.
“Back then, the miraculous science of psychological profiling had just
come to our country from abroad. There were many unsuccessful
attempts.”
 
Xiao Haiyang, who was always rather silent, suddenly spoke. “Why
was it called to a halt?”
 
Luo Wenzhou paused in the middle of wiping his hands on a moist
towelette, then, as if nothing was the matter, said, “Our capabilities
hadn’t matured then. There was no practical value to it… Enough, go

30
ahead and eat, don’t overindulge and forget your duties. Aren’t you
going to work this afternoon?”
 
There were no meetings scheduled for the afternoon. Nor was there
any important work. Luo Wenzhou indifferently examined a
document about reinforced security procedures throughout the city
for National Day, making mental preparations not to have a moment’s
peace two days out of the week now that Fei Du had been added to
the office.
 
But Fei Du was unexpectedly quiet. He didn’t act up or talk nonsense.
He sat there peacefully going through some materials, a living person
not making as much noise at the air purifier next to him. The greatest
commotion his arrival caused was that all the colleagues
simultaneously shunned the instant coffee and lined up with their
cups to get the freshly ground stuff.
 
The air-purifier hummed; next to it there were only the small sounds
of fingers from time to time flipping a page. It was the sleepy period
of autumn. After nesting at his desk for a while, Luo Wenzhou
became increasingly drowsy, dozing over the dry official document.
When he woke, he found that Fei Du was in the same position as
before, but at some point a jacket had been draped over Luo
Wenzhou, and the window blowing towards his back had been
closed.
 
Luo Wenzhou stopped the falling jacket and looked over from behind
his computer—Fei Du really was very pleasing to the eye. Anyone
who had eyes had to admit it. Luo Wenzhou couldn’t resist once
again carefully recalling Tao Ran’s words, admitting that what Tao
Ran had said made sense.
 
Fei Du wasn’t a youth who didn’t understand the gravity of things;
nor was he Zhang Donglai, who’d sleep with any living creature. He
was well-acquainted with all the unspoken rules of society; where
others had only a vague concept about the word “ambiguity,” Fei Du

31
could split the different shades of ambiguity into a hundred parts and
bring each degree precisely into play.
 
Clearly knowing Luo Wenzhou was gay, if Fei Du had only been
joking, he wouldn’t have used this degree.
 
But…
 
Luo Wenzhou gently moved the mouse, dispelling the screensaver.
 
He also felt he shouldn’t be presuming too far.—Why would this
project choose Fei Du, who had just started his studies, as a contact
person? Had all the senior students died off? There had to be some
kind of strategy at work here; Luo Wenzhou wouldn’t have believed
otherwise even if you’d beaten him to death.
 
And Fei Du had started planning last year to enter Yan Security Uni.
He’d received his acceptance notice in April, and the frequency with
which he ran over to the City Bureau for all kinds of reasons had
increased ever since; he was already familiar with the whole Criminal
Investigation Team—even with the whole City Bureau.
 
Didn’t the graduate program choosing him as their contact person
also enter into these considerations?
 
This whole clear sequence of events and ideal course of action were
permeated with a sense of deliberate scheming.
 
Fei Du was like an attractive poisoned apple. Taking a bite would
clearly turn your guts, but smelling it still made your mouth
instinctively water.
 
Luo Wenzhou moved, slightly relaxing his spine, which he’d been
holding so straight it was about to stiffen in place. He strove to rein
in his lust, which was about to get out of control, remembering a
piece of information Fei Du had let slip—that article of his that had

32
reportedly been included in an academic text had been a study
concerning the victims in criminal cases… Why would it be on that
subject?
 
While Luo Wenzhou was spying on Fei Du from behind his computer,
Fei Du suddenly got up and went over to him.
 
Luo Wenzhou was startled, but he saw that Fei Du seemed not to
have noticed his gaze. He only went to the water cooler at the door,
not forgetting to bring over Luo Wenzhou’s cup, refilling it with
water.
 
Luo Wenzhou thanked him and was about to take the cup, but Fei Du
held onto it, his fingertips deliberately moving forward, touching Luo
Wenzhou.
 
Fei Du rested a hand on his desk, looking loftily down on Luo
Wenzhou. He leaned down and lowered his voice. “If you want to
look, Captain Luo, go ahead and look all you want. I don’t charge.”
 
Luo Wenzhou didn’t move. In the same sort of low voice, he said, “Is
it popular at your school right now to harass your superiors?”
 
Fei Du looked into Luo Wenzhou’s eyes with a certain carnivorous
expression for a while. Then he smiled, turned, and strolled back to
his temporary work station. “If you want to hang someone, you can
always find a pretext. If Captain Luo feels my presence is harassment,
there’s really nothing I can do.”
 
Luo Wenzhou got out his cigarettes, glanced at the air-purifier, then
stuck his cigarettes in his pocket and headed towards the restroom,
feeling that he’d really been pure of heart and free of desires for too
long.
 
Having somehow made it to the end of the workday, Luo Wenzhou
found that Fei Du showed no signs of leaving.

33
 
Luo Wenzhou picked up his keys and consciously or unconsciously
glanced at the document he was holding. He found that Fei Du was
reviewing Xu Wenchao’s confession; his gaze had been stopped on a
certain page for a long time.
 
Fei Du seemed to have eyes on the back of his head. Seeming to
understand his question from his steps, he slowly said, “Xu Wenchao
said that Guo Heng found him while he was in the process of
following Wu Guangchuan. After they spoke, Guo Heng had some
suspicions about Wu Guangchuan and Su Xiaolan’s relationship.
When he failed to get assistance from the police, Guo Heng began to
investigate Wu Guangchuan in private, and Xu Wenchao tailed him
for him.”
 
“Yes?” said Luo Wenzhou.
 
Fei Du leaned back lightly. “This seems a little strange to me.”
 
Luo Wenzhou put a hand on the back of his chair, reaching past Fei
Du’s shoulder to trace the words with his fingertip. “What’s strange
about it?”
 
“Guo Heng asked for Xu Wenchao’s help when he had no other
choice. We’ve tacitly acknowledged that Guo Heng divulged the
details of Guo Fei’s kidnapping to Xu Wenchao during this process.”
 
Luo Wenzhou said, “That’s what Guo Heng said himself.”
 
“It’s been over twenty years. Guo Heng wouldn’t necessarily clearly
recall what he’d said. But I’ve thought all along it was strange for him
to share details like the bells in the pencil box with Xu Wenchao.
 
“In the eyes of Guo Heng and the police back then, this detail had no
investigative value aside from proving that the phone call was
connected to Guo Fei’s disappearance. What’s more, it had caused

34
Guo Heng severe psychological trauma.—Imagine his psychological
state then. Under what circumstances would he talk about that
detail?”
 
Luo Wenzhou said, “For example, if someone asked, ‘How did you
know it was your daughter on the phone?’”
 
“‘How did you know it was your daughter on the phone.’” Fei Du
shook his head. “That sounds as though Xu Wenchao were verifying
the truth of what Guo Heng had said.”
 
Luo Wenzhou came around at once—only a person who knew
absolutely nothing would react to Guo Heng’s words by instinctively
trying to verify their truth.
 
Xu Wenchao meanwhile already knew about Wu Guangchuan and Su
Xiaolan’s twisted relationship, and he also knew that Su Xiaolan was
the chief culprit in the serial kidnappings. With all that clear as a
mirror in his heart, would he have acted like he knew absolutely
nothing so convincingly?
 
“If that’s the case, then Xu Wenchao is too frightening,” said Fei Du.
“But if it isn’t the case, why would Guo Heng talk about this detail on
his own initiative? Pouring out his heart? If you were Guo Heng, with
a child over ten years old and already entering middle age yourself,
would you pour out your heart to a boy twelve or thirteen years old?
 
“Su Luozhan said she only got the idea of imitating Su Xiaolan after
reading her diary, but I was just thinking about it carefully. In Su
Xiaolan’s diary, aside from describing her excitement when she called
the victims’ families, there was no mention of the detail about the
pencil box.” Fei Du tapped the desk with his finger. “So how did the
little girl know?”
 
Luo Wenzhou froze. Before he could follow this frightening line of
thought, the phone on his desk suddenly rang.

35
 
Luo Wenzhou picked it up.
 
“You haven’t left yet? Good,” said Director Lu. “This problem is a
rather thorny one, Wenzhou. See who’s still on duty and go over
there yourself to have a look.”
 

36
CHAPTER 62 - Macbeth III
 
“A car crash?” Luo Wenzhou asked in astonishment. “Why do you
need me for a car crash? Send the traffic police next door to deal
with it.”
 
Lu Youliang said, “Have you heard of Zhou Junmao?”
 
“Which Zhou Junmao?” Luo Wenzhou gave a start, feeling the radiant
afternoon light become turbulent. “Not that Zhou Junmao?”
 
Next to him, Fei Du paused. He silently raised his head.
 
Zhou Junmao was a famous overseas Chinese national, seventy-three
years old this year. He had been born in the East Daogou District on
the outskirts of Yan City and sojourned overseas when he was young.
Starting from nothing, he had worked hard dealing in building
materials, and had later built the Zhou Clan Conglomerate, an
enormous multinational enterprise. In recent years, as he’d gotten
older, he had perhaps begun to think of returning to his roots; the
core of the Zhou Clan’s investments had begun trending back to
China.
 
Zhou Junmao wasn’t an ordinary celebrity. He was low-key and lived
simply. He was very public-spirited; he had in particular made
outstanding contributions towards building up the infrastructure of
his hometown. He was responsible for half of all the prosperity in the
East Daogou District; there was a road there called “Junmao Road,”
the only road in the whole Yan City area named for a living person.
 
Half an hour ago, Zhou Junmao had been en route from the airport
to his Yan City residence when his car had met with a tailgating
truck. The rear of the car had been smashed in, and the old man
sitting in the backseat had died on the spot. The driver and the

37
bodyguard in the passenger’s seat had been seriously injured and
were receiving emergency care at the hospital.
 
This was a very bitter traffic accident; it could be imagined that there
would be a dramatic impact on the Zhou Clan’s stock once the news
got out.
 
And now, the Zhou family’s younger son, who happened to be in Yan
City, was maintaining that his father had been murdered and insisting
that the police handle it.
 
“Director Ceng has already gone over with the medical examiners.
We’ll go to the scene to have a look, say a word to the traffic police
team, then go to the Zhou house.” Luo Wenzhou was heading
towards the airport highway, taking along Lang Qiao, who’d been on
duty, Xiao Haiyang, who hadn’t felt comfortable leaving early on his
first day at work, and an extraneous Fei Du. “Relax, it won’t be
another month of working overtime. We don’t even know what’s
happened yet. Even if the car crash was deliberate, I figure the
economic crimes division will take the lead, and we’ll be assisting
them at most.”
 
Lang Qiao stretched out her head curiously. “President Fei, you know
so many rich people. Have you met Zhou Junmao?”
 
“I’ve met him, though I couldn’t really speak to him.” Fei Du, seeming
to have become a model student, still maintained his studious
attitude sitting in a car headed out to the field. “I’m more familiar
with his younger son—the same one who insisted on calling the
police.”
 
Lang Qiao looked down and started researching online. “Zhou
Junmao has two sons. The eldest is Zhou Huaijin… Oh, a youthful
talent. Went to all the famous schools, started helping manage his
family’s assets very young, stays abroad most of the year. The second
son is Zhou Huaixin. He’s a painter? Hey, President Fei, is this the one

38
you mean? How do you two know each other? Is it because you both
like art?”
 
“Oh, no,” Fei Du answered, “it’s because we’re both wastrels who
don’t do any honest work.”
 
Lang Qiao: “…”
 
There was no traffic heading out of the city on the airport highway,
and it wasn’t yet fully dark. They soon arrived at the scene.
 
Fei Du was about to get out of the car when Luo Wenzhou pushed
him back inside. First he started, and then he came around. His lips
moved slightly. He looked at Luo Wenzhou’s receding back like a
weasel that had been soothed by a chicken thigh; he didn’t display
happiness, only calmly sat waiting in the car.
 
Luo Wenzhou walked around the scene and found that the dead and
wounded had already been taken away and the scene had basically
been cleaned up. As long as you didn’t look very closely at the spot
circled by yellow tape, you could hardly find any traces of blood.
Only then did he beckon, letting Fei Du out of the car.
 
Fei Du followed him and said lightly into his ear, “Captain Luo, I’m
overwhelmed by the favor.”
 
“Overwhelmed just like that?” Luo Wenzhou glanced at him
steadfastly. “Your mental landscape must be very thrilling.—Lao Qiu,
where are you looking? Over here!”
 
The traffic policeman responsible for handling this accident was
surnamed Qiu; he was another acquaintance of Luo Wenzhou’s—the
world was full of Captain Luo’s acquaintances, covering all walks of
life.
 

39
Fei Du, looking on from the sidelines, thought that a person like Luo
Wenzhou must have grown up in very relaxed and open-minded
surroundings. After the experiences he had weathered and the
viciousness of the human heart he had known, becoming even more
astute and sensitive than his profession required, only through having
been doted on and cared for unreservedly in his youth could he have
maintained that bone-deep readiness to take the whole world into his
embrace.
 
Sometimes when you stood looking out into the street, watching the
people pass by, men and women, young and old, you’d feel that they
were all about the same. You’re wearing a button-down and pants,
and I’m also wearing a button-down and pants; you looked down and
saw that the old people jogging by the street and the golden-haired,
green-eyed foreigners were wearing the same brand of sneakers,
almost giving you an illusion that the whole world was one.
 
The people living in the sun couldn’t imagine the inescapable and
customary torment that the smiling and chatting buddy next to them
suffered, while a person deep in depression couldn’t understand that
the human figures rushing past them really weren’t forcing
themselves to smile.
 
Just like now, with him and Luo Wenzhou standing together; at first
glance, it seemed like they were from the same country.
 
The body often hid the truth so firmly that not a drop leaked out.
 
“If you want to know whether there’s some inside story to this, you’ll
have to investigate it. If you ask me, anyway, it looks like an accident
that the vehicle driving in back was completely responsible for.” The
traffic policeman Lao Qiu called them over to look at the surveillance
cameras. “This Bentley is Zhou Junmao’s car. It left the airport and
drove along normally. The chauffeur’s driving was pretty law-abiding,
there were no problems. The truck responsible for the accident came

40
on from the Beiyuan Bridge. We started numbering from the camera
at the Beiyuan exit. That’s Number One.”
 
Lao Qiu numbered and arranged the densely-packed cameras on the
highway, letting them see one after another. “There weren’t many
cars going in this direction on the airport highway. Starting at
Camera Number Four, the truck was driving in the same lane as the
Bentley. There were some other cars between the two vehicles that
each passed on ahead. By Camera Number 16, there was nothing
between the truck and the Bentley ahead of it, but the distance
between them was still pretty safe. Then, you see—”
 
While passing the eighteenth camera, the distance between the truck
and the Bentley ahead of it decreased noticeably. Looking closely, you
could see it very slowly gaining speed, as if the driver had forgotten
to stop applying pressure to the gas pedal.
 
Passing Camera Number 20, the speed camera showed the truck’s
speed approaching 140 kph, clearly over the limit. Then, as if the
truck driver had gone blind, at this speed the truck fiercely
approached the rear of the car ahead. The twenty-first camera had
completely caught the course of the collision. The crash was so
savage that, even having made mental preparations, seeing it still
made your heart give a thump.
 
“What about the driver of the responsible vehicle?” said Luo
Wenzhou.
 
“Dead before he reached the hospital,” said LaoQiu. “The driving
history showed he’d been driving that truck for ten hours already. A
clear case of an exhausted driver. If not for the deceased’s relative
kicking up a fuss saying it was murder, after watching this, my
personal feeling would be that this was in fact pretty simple. The
exhausted driver of the responsible vehicle fell asleep with his foot on
the gas pedal, so the vehicle kept accelerating, then bang!—it was all
over.”

41
 
“What kind of person was the driver?” asked Luo Wenzhou. “Did he
have a record?”
 
“The driver was called Dong Qian, forty-nine years old. He was a
long-distance truck driver. The person who just came to identify the
body was from his fleet. He said this Dong Qian was pretty well-
behaved and had been driving on this road close to ten years. He’d
never had an accident. Where do you get all these offenders with
records running around all over the place from? Anyway, he hardly
looks like the kind of person who’d have anything to do with a
Bentley. He’d just about measure up to a Xiali2.”Lao Qiu accepted a
cigarette from Luo Wenzhou. “Captain Luo, do you think this family
member is reliable of not? It’s not just some rich people trying to get
into the spotlight and on the news?”
 
Luo Wenzhou didn’t issue any rash conclusions, though when he saw
Zhou Huaixin with his own eyes, he found that the person who had
reported the case really didn’t seem very reliable.
 
Having seen Zhang Donglai and Zhou Huaixin, Luo Wenzhou was
forced to admit that among Yan City’s locally manufactured wastrels,
Fei Du’s style was comparatively normal.
 
Judging from the usual stature of grown men, Zhou Huaixin was
excessively “slender,” a veritable walking sesame stalk. His cheeks
were sunken in, making the alert criminal policemen almost suspect
he took drugs.
 
He was wearing a t-shirt with something or other scribbled on it, with
a Western-style vest over it that went down to his knees. The vest was
slit up to the waist, as if he had two curtains on his front and back.
There were seven or eight piercings along his right ear, hung full of
metal rings. He’d been wearing thick eyeliner that he’d already cried
off, leaving terrifying dark circles around his eyes.

42
 
On the wall behind Zhou Huaixin hung one of his own paintings. It
was an oil painting, fully three meters long, the colors very dismal.
 
Luo Wenzhou had very little sensitivity towards the arts. His level of
appreciation for works of fine art stopped at “the more realistic it is
the better.” Even so, on seeing this painting he had a sort of
unbearable sense of asphyxiation. The colors were gloomy and the
lines frenzied. At first glance it looked like an ordinary painting of a
storm, but looking closer you would find that there was a sun at the
top left corner of the canvas, and the rust-like dark red lines didn’t
represent the wind and rain; they were sunbeams.
 
Painted under the bloody sunbeams was a wide swath of reeds. All
the plants were drooping their heads left and right with a deathly
aura. A few human skeletons appeared among the reeds, looking out
of the canvas.
 
Staring at this painting too long would simply turn your stomach.
 
“I don’t quite follow your trends,” Luo Wenzhou said to Fei Du,
lowering his voice. “What thoughts and feelings is little Young Master
Zhou’s work meant to represent?”
 
Fei Du looked at it a couple of times. The color of the sunbeams must
have been too much like blood; he looked away a little
uncomfortably. “If I recall correctly, this painting was completed at a
seaside villa. Some famous fashion models sprawled on the beach to
model for him.”
 
Luo Wenzhou: “…”
 
It turned out that the subject of this painting was “beautiful faces
cover bones, all lust is empty.”
 

43
“His style really isn’t very charming. I’m not sure about others, but I
only bought some of his paintings on his dad’s account.” When he’d
finished speaking quietly, Fei Du saw Zhou Huaixin coming down the
stairs like a sack of bones, wiping away tears as he walked.
 
Fei Du, calling attention to himself, greeted, “Zhou-xiong, are you all
right?”
 
Seeing a familiar face, all the grievance in Zhou Huaixin’s heart
nearly came pouring out of his eye sockets. He falteringly called,
“Master Fei,” then, like an enormous swallow returning to the forest,
he threw himself into Fei Du’s arms.
 
A scent that greatly resembled talcum powder assaulted the senses,
winding thickly into a person’s nasal cavities, so choking that Luo
Wenzhou turned his head away and sneezed.
 
Charged at by Zhou Huaixin, Fei Du took half a step back and let him
lean on his tidy shoulder, but his hands hung at his sides, not making
any voluntary contact, simply displaying a trace of “gentlemanly”
grace. He said a few low words of consolation to Zhou Huaixin, then
let him lean on his arm, slowly leading Zhou Huaixin aside to sit
down.
 
Amid his sobs, Zhou Huaixin asked, “Why are you here?”
 
The whole story behind Fei Du’s presence here wasn’t very convenient
to explain. He simplified it, saying, “I’m getting a degree, with a
training program at the City Bureau.”
 
It was only then that Zhou Huaixin noticed that there were strangers
present. He bent and picked up a handful of tissues from a table. He
blew his nose and said, “Are you…the police? Master Fei, your h-
hobbies really are niche… No, this won’t do, my heart hurts, I have to
rest…”
 

44
Saying so, like a boneless mollusk, he very rudely rested in Fei Du’s
arms. Luo Wenzhou, smelling the “talcum powder scent,” oddly
thought that Zhou Huaixin was displeasing to the eye. He spoke in a
businesslike manner. “I hear that you insist on believing that Mr.
Zhou’s car crash wasn’t an accident. Could I ask what basis you have
to think that?”
 
Zhou Huaixin struggled to raise his swollen eyelids. “My dad
exercises every day. He just ran a marathon in spring. He couldn’t just
die like that, someone must have wanted to hurt him!”
 
Lang Qiao, taking notes, speechlessly put down her little notebook
and couldn’t resist putting in a word. “Young Mr. Zhou, I know you
may not be able to accept the facts for a time, but old Mr. Zhou died
in a traffic accident. Never mind a marathon, even an Iron Man
Triathlon can’t prevent against a car crash.”
 
Zhou Huaixin gave a choking sob as though he were dying, as if Lang
Qiao were a big-eyed witch persecuting a little princess.
 
Fei Du waved a hand at her, lowered his head and quietly said,
“Zhou-xiong, that can’t be taken as evidence.”
 
Zhou Huaixin howled and cried again. “You don’t believe me either?
My intuition is very accurate. When Dad goes out, he usually takes
that big car with the bulletproof glass, and today he happened to take
this one and something happened. Is that a coincidence? He just had
his seventy-third birthday last week. At the birthday dinner he said he
was planning to retire, he wanted to write his will, and to give part of
his shares to me and my big brother, and this week, he just came back
and then…”
 
At this point, Zhou Huaixin seemed to notice he’d let something slip.
He suddenly shut his mouth, buried his head against Fei Du like an
invalid, clutching his own chest and not making a sound.
 

45
“Old Mr. Zhou only has two sons. Even if he doesn’t write a will, in
the future, his assets will belong to you and your brother.” Luo
Wenzhou’s gaze poked Zhou Huaixin like a flash of lightning. “Why
do you think this would be a reason for someone to kill him? Young
Mr. Zhou, I know you’re upset, but since you’ve reported the case,
please treat it seriously. Can you sit up and talk?”
 
“I don’t know, I’m only concerned about painting, I don’t understand
these things at home. You have to go talk to my big brother. I called
him, anyway, and he’ll be here first thing tomorrow.” Zhou Huaixin
covered his face, avoiding Luo Wenzhou’s gaze. “A car is a such a big
murder weapon, much deadlier than a knife or a gun. The streets are
full of people legally carrying murder weapons, and if they kill
someone, can they just cover it up with ‘I didn’t mean it, it was an
accident?’ Don’t you people do your jobs?”
 
His words seemed unintentional, but those who heard them had their
own interpretations. Fei Du’s expression became duller on the spot.
 
Luo Wenzhou simply lifted Zhou Huaixin, pulling him off Fei Du.
“The driver of the responsible vehicle is already dead, young Mr.
Zhou. Are you hinting to us that someone wouldn’t stint to give up
his own life to kill your father?”
 
Zhou Huaixin looked at him gloomily through his dark eye circles.
“Officer, don’t you believe that money can buy a life?”
 
Luo Wenzhou and the others spent nearly an hour tangled up with
Zhou Huaixin without knowing whether he was really a moron or
whether he was deliberately acting helpless. Sometimes it was clear
that there was something he was holding himself back from saying,
as if he knew something but couldn’t tell others. Only when they
were about to leave did Zhou Huaixin stop Fei Du and say
indistinctly, “Have you heard the rumors?”
 

46
Fei Du gave Luo Wenzhou a look, then patted Zhou Huaixin’s
shoulder. “Don’t think about it.”
 
Zhou Huaixin was unwilling to let go. He quietly asked, “Can you
stay with me to wait for my big brother to come?”
 
Before Fei Du could answer, Luo Wenzhou was already answering for
him. “Don’t dawdle. You still need to write up a report tonight
—‘trainee.’”
 
Fei Du made a gesture towards Zhou Huaixin showing it was out of
his power to help, and was then pushed out the door by Luo
Wenzhou. “Hurry up.”
 
Fei Du stumbled a little, but he didn’t mind at all. Instead, he looked
down and laughed as Luo Wenzhou pushed and pulled him back to
the work car.
 
Lang Qiao, opening her big eyes wide, quietly asked, “President Fei, is
that snake demon Zhou-whatever interested in you?”
 
“He isn’t,” Fei Du answered just as quietly. “He’s just cold and lonely.”
 
With bitter hatred, Lang Qiao said, “You’re all rotten!”
 
Luo Wenzhou slammed the car door and separated the two of them.
He pointed to Lang Qiao and said, “If you had as much estrogen as
that one, you’d be able to get married.—Fei Du, what was it that
Zhou Huaixin kept dancing around?”
 
“The word on the street,” said Fei Du, carelessly sitting up straight, “is
that the noble and prestigious Mr. Zhou has an illegitimate son.”
 

47
CHAPTER 63 - Macbeth IV
 
“Why is it the word on the street?”
 
“Because I don’t especially believe it.” Fei Du reached out his legs and
stretched in the spacious passenger’s seat, causing a tear to appear in
his “good student” disguise, a very Fei Du carelessness showing its
head. “If there were such a person, the Zhou family would have
acknowledged him long ago. Anyway…”
 
Luo Wenzhou instinctively felt that what came after wouldn’t be
anything nice, and he was already prepared to interrupted him. But
Fei Du, as if suddenly remembering something, voluntarily cut
himself off.
 
Lang Qiao followed up uncomprehendingly, “Anyway what?”
 
“Anyway…the Venerable Zhou conducted himself rather properly in
recent years. Even if there had been some indiscretion in his youth, it
must have been only once. He’s done a great deal of public good over
the last few decades. It’s something like the return of the prodigal
son. His wife passed away many years ago, so there would be no one
to say anything about it. Nobody’s perfect. Doesn’t it seem even more
praiseworthy to have done wrong and then turned yourself around?”
Acting as if he were in deadly earnest, Fei Du said to Lang Qiao,
“Given the Venerable Zhou’s accomplishments, I don’t believe he had
any need to cover up his past.”
 
Lang Qiao nodded her head repeatedly at this, thinking that Fei Du
really wasn’t like the “domineering director-general” in pornographic
novels. He could be rated as a model of virtue for the age.
 
Luo Wenzhou gave Fei Du a faint glare of warning. He’d heard the
subtext hidden under his virtuous expressions—among their crowd of
rat bastards, illegitimate children meant nothing, especially at Zhou

48
Junmao’s level. Never mind that his wife had abdicated long ago;
even if she’d been living and firmly attached to the man, she still
couldn’t have done anything about him fathering any number of
illegitimate children.
 
“Although that’s an empty rumor, that doesn’t necessarily mean
there’s nothing to this.” Fei Du changed the subject, saying, “Zhou
Huaixin was making sense when he said that cars are a flagrant
murder weapon. Why don’t you look into the driver of the
responsible vehicle some more?”
 
As soon as he’d spoken, a phone call came from Xiao Haiyang.
 
Xiao Haiyang had been dispatched by Luo Wenzhou to understand
something of the responsible driver Dong Qian’s personal
circumstances from his colleagues.
 
Xiao Haiyang may or may not have had a driver’s license; anyway,
this Little Glasses perhaps didn’t know the meaning of putting on the
brakes. Luo Wenzhou felt that even the phone signal was palpitating
from the tornado-like speed of his speech. “Captain Luo, I’ve already
spoken with Dong Qian’s coworkers, the situation is about the same
as Lao Qiu said. There’s no referential value. So I took the initiative to
look into his bank account, assets, medical history, and family
background. Should I report?”
 
“…Specs, he’s already dead, and we aren’t in a rush. Come on, take a
deep breath and speak a little slower.” Luo Wenzhou felt like he was
having auditory hallucinations. “You’ve investigated so much in such
a short time? You’ve even gone through Dong Qian’s physicals?”
 
Xiao Haiyang said, “Dong Qian resided in this city. He was married.
His wife died. There were no old people at home. He was a widower
raising a daughter. The daughter is called Dong Xiaoqing, twenty-four
years old, unmarried, already graduated, works as an accountant at a
department store. There’s nothing unusual about the father or

49
daughter’s bank accounts or assets. All their expenditures basically
accord with their income and living standard. Dong Qian had no
unsavory habits and lived rather plainly. His income was pretty good.
The family had a six-figure sum in savings and owned a house. His
most recent physical exam showed he had somewhat elevated blood
pressure, cholesterol, and blood sugar, but all other indications were
normal.—Oh, right, Captain Luo, I also found a person at his
daughter’s place of work. Dong Xiaoqing’s colleagues confirm that she
hasn’t made any large expenditures lately, hasn’t found a boyfriend,
and hasn’t been ill. She’s also very emotionally stable.”
 
Luo Wenzhou had put him on speaker. All three people in the car
were shocked by Xiao Haiyang’s “eating grapes without spitting out
the skin” skill at pouring out words.
 
Lang Qiao whispered, “My goodness, how very…”
 
Xiao Haiyang gave a muddled “ah.” “Don’t we need to rule out the
possibility that he was a contract killer? I don’t think my train of
thought was wrong?”
 
Luo Wenzhou gestured at Lang Qiao, indicating that she shouldn’t
waste words and should learn something from the fellow. Then he
asked Xiao Haiyang, “According to what you’ve said, he had neither
young nor old dependents, the family had no debts, and they were
fairly well-off financially—so was it just chance that he was for once
doing a job with such a short timeframe and such a strenuous
assignment, or was it normal?”
 
Xiao Haiyang paused. “Well…”
 
“Haiyang, it’s in fact very common among long-haul truck drivers to
drive when exhausted. The old drivers all know how to doze a little
with their eyes open without their foot pressing on the gas pedal.”
Luo Wenzhou said very patiently, “Since Dong Qian has driven trucks
this many years without incident, and there’s been nothing unusual

50
about his health or emotions lately, why would such an accident
happen today? You want to find out whether he was a hired assassin
and use the method of exhaustion to eliminate every circumstance
you can imagine one by one. This isn’t a very rigorous method of
investigation, because there are things in this world you can’t
imagine. If possible, the best thing would be to find a cause for the
accident that’s supported by evidence.”
 
Xiao Haiyang hastily said, “All right, Captain Luo, I’ll go investigate
right now!”
 
“Wait, I was just saying that. We still haven’t determined that this was
murder. First, why don’t you…” Before Luo Wenzhou could finish
speaking, Xiao Haiyang had already energetically hung up the phone.
 
Luo Wenzhou: “…”
 
He thought he’d understood why Xiao Haiyang hadn’t been well-liked
at the Flower Market District Sub-Bureau. Aside from being especially
bad at conversation, this Little Glasses had just the sort of passion for
his work that made it seem like he was ready to seize the throne at
any time. In the eyes of Wang Hongliang and the others, he must
have been a tremendous hidden security risk. No wonder they hadn’t
thought at all of bringing him into their own circle.
 
The person who’d reported the case wasn’t being clear about it, all
the other individuals concerned were still hurrying towards Yan City,
and the medical examiners hadn’t yet reached any conclusions, either.
Aside from the hot-blooded Comrade Xiao Haiyang, running around
seeking the truth, the others had nothing to do. Luo Wenzhou
dropped Lang Qiao off on the way and drove back towards the City
Bureau with Fei Du, where each would change to his own car and go
to his own home.
 
Refreshing his phone, Fei Du found that the news about Zhou
Junmao was omnipresent. He scrolled through a couple of pages. “As

51
expected, someone at the Zhou family is on top of things.—If I call
people and tell them to short sell the Zhou Clan while the US markets
haven’t closed yet, would that be too kind-hearted?”
 
There was some traffic to make a U-turn at the intersection. Luo
Wenzhou gave him a doubtful look. “Are you talking about that Zhou
Huaixin?”
 
“The lead story says ‘Chairman of the Zhou Clan Conglomerate Mr.
Zhou Junmao has died in a car crash. The circumstances are
suspicious, and his second son has already called in the police.’” Fei
Du read the headline aloud with a trace of teasing. “What do you
think, just making trouble, right? With Zhou Junmao’s sort, even if he
died a natural death, everyone would still imagine a wealthy family
drama, let alone a real accident. Zhou Huaixin is one of the Venerable
Zhou’s heirs, and he just happens to be the only one currently in the
country. If he hadn’t come crying and howling to the police right
away to demand a thorough investigation, what role would he be cast
in by others? After all, everyone thought that Malcolm and Donalbain
had killed their benevolent father.”
 
The line of car headlights up ahead was like a dragon with its head
stretching away into the distance. Luo Wenzhou pretended not to
notice that these words were alluding to him. As if nothing were the
matter, he asked, “What was Zhou Huaixin and the Venerable Zhou’s
father-son relationship like?”
 
“An unworthy son, living outside of the mainstream, out of tune with
the whole Zhou Clan, with his decathlon-running big brother above
him to compare him with.” Fei Du shrugged. “What could it be like? If
you think about it, you’ll know there was considerable strain.”
 
“And what about you?” Luo Wenzhou asked quietly. “As far as I know,
you didn’t go out of line when you were a teenager, and you’re an
only child. Why was your relationship with your father strained?”
 

52
At first Fei Du froze. Then he turned to Luo Wenzhou and slyly
dodged the subject. “Hm? Is Captain Luo so interested in me? I’ve
heard that according to the unspoken social rules in our country,
people only ask after others’ family backgrounds when they regard
someone as a potential mate.”
 
As he spoke, he half-turned, leaning a little closer to Luo Wenzhou.
“Are you sure you want to know? I catch your drift, then.”
 
Just then the car in front of them shuffled forward. Luo Wenzhou
stepped on the gas and leapt forward, then put on the brakes,
sending Fei Du crashing back against the passenger’s seat.
 
“If you don’t want to talk about it, then don’t talk about it,” Luo
Wenzhou said dully. “Don’t give me any of that.”
 
Fei Du laughed, not speaking.
 
The two of them sat in mutual silence for a while. The stoplight at the
intersection went through a cycle, and the traffic in the U-turn lane
stopped again. They’d have to wait for the next opportunity. The
impatient drivers all around honked their horns one after another.
Occasionally someone would roll down a window and look out;
samples of all kinds of music leaked out of their cars.
 
The smile on Fei Du’s face gradually disappeared. Perhaps it was
because the night was thick, and perhaps it was because the densely
packed crowd had a particular feeling of loneliness. He suddenly
spoke: “I sometimes find that it can be very difficult for a person to
escape his parentage and the surroundings he grew up in.”
 
Luo Wenzhou looked at him.
 
“Thoughts, habits, disposition, manners, level of virtue, cultural
accomplishments… These things, which can be altered later, are like
the branches and leaves of plants. As long as you’re willing, you can

53
prune yourself into any direction.” Fei Du leaned back in his seat,
looking out into Yan City’s night sky with his eyes narrowed. “But the
deeper levels, the most essential things, are very hard to alter. The
things you encounter in the earliest surroundings of your childhood,
when you have no notions about the world, settle into your
unconscious mind. Traces of these things will be hidden in all the
abstract concepts you take in through your native language. You
won’t notice it yourself, but those things will shroud your whole life.”
 
At this point, it was as if Fei Du had exhausted his greatest efforts.
There was a door in his mind, a very thick door with its hinges
mottled with rust; even using all his strength, he could only open it
this little crack.
 
Luo Wenzhou waited patiently for a while, but he didn’t continue.
 
Fei Du said, “Captain Luo, could you lend me your hand?”
 
Following this advance notice, all the nerves in Luo Wenzhou’s entire
body instinctively collected in his right hand laying at his side. Then,
Fei Du very slowly and gently covered the back of his hand. His
fingers were long and slender, ice cold, but the palm of his hand was
warm. He didn’t press hard, leaving him the opportunity to draw
back at any time.
 
An indescribable feeling meandered up from Luo Wenzhou’s right
hand. The temperature in the car abruptly went up at least two
degrees. The muscles of Luo Wenzhou’s forearm instinctively tensed,
but he somehow didn’t pull back his hand. Fei Du bent his head,
carefully holding his hand, making Luo Wenzhou think of Luo Yiguo,
startled awake by some nightmare, running to his pillow in the
middle of the night.
 
Suddenly, the car behind them honked impatiently. Luo Wenzhou
gave a start and found that the light had already changed and there
was an empty space ahead of him, inviting others to cut in line.

54
 
Fei Du’s momentary fragile expression softly vanished in thin air like
steam. The ends of his peach blossom eyes turned up, and he quickly
bent his head and kissed the back of Luo Wenzhou’s hand, fingers
lightly brushing the most sensitive place on his palm. When Luo
Wenzhou immediately pulled his hand away, Fei Du blinked
innocently at him. “Goodness, I’m sorry. Captain Luo’s charms are
truly too powerful. I accidentally advanced a little too far.”
 
Luo Wenzhou: “…”
 
This joker really had seduction down to a military strategy.
 
Luo Wenzhou lost his temper. As he drove through the difficult
intersection, he said, “Fei Du, have I spoiled you too much?”
 
Fei Du considered his expression, felt that he’d gone overboard, and
thereupon shut his mouth, not pouring any more oil onto the fire. As
Luo Wenzhou irritably left the flow of traffic for the west entrance, he
held tightly to the handle of the car door as they dizzily flew back to
the City Bureau.
 
“We ‘normal people,’ proper or not, aren’t in the habit of getting it on
with our acquaintances.” Luo Wenzhou, his face slightly grim,
indicated that Fei Du should get out of the car. “If you’re hard up, go
find your picture-painting little skeleton of a drinking buddy.”
 
Then he shut the car door, turned, and left.
 
Fei Du sat alone in the service car among the unpleasant smelling
aromatherapy, sampling the discomfiture Luo Wenzhou had left
behind. He thought that the “taste” was unusually potent; he very
much wanted there to be a continuation.
 
Xiao Haiyang pushed up his glasses and jogged all the way to the
hospital, pulling out his ID as he ran, flashing it at a girl who seemed

55
to have lost her soul. “Are you Dong Xiaoqing? Hello, I’m…”
 
Dong Xiaoqing’s cold gaze interrupted him.
 
“The police?” Her eyes were red and her voice was thickly nasal. “I
know. Didn’t you also go to my job to investigate? What, you didn’t
find anything, so you came to interrogate me, too?”
 
Xiao Haiyang wasn’t very good at talking to people. He didn’t know
for a time how to respond. Flustered, he cleared his throat, then very
obnoxiously said, “I was only getting an understanding of the
circumstances…”
 
Dong Xiaoqing stared at him stubbornly.
 
Xiao Haiyang racked his guts and belly for an age, then very
unskillfully opened his mouth and asked, “Did Dong Qian ordinarily
take on this sort of difficult job? As far as I know, your family…”
 
“My family doesn’t have any high-interest loans, no one has an
incurable illness, and my dad wasn’t a gambling addict who couldn’t
pay his debts. We may have been poor, but we got on all right. We
didn’t need to kill someone for a bit of money!” Dong Xiaoqing
grabbed her phone; the popular topic was fermenting online, opening
its bloody maw towards the girl who was alone in the world. She
abruptly hurled the phone at Xiao Haiyang.
 
“My dad was in an accident. It was his fault, his responsibility. If
there’s money that needs to be paid to compensate, I’ll undertake to
pay it. If I don’t have enough, I can borrow it. Even if I have to work
back-breaking labor all my life, I’ll still return it. But you can’t slander
him like this out of nowhere! He’s dead, he has no mouth to speak for
himself. Must you dip your buns in human blood to eat them?”
 
Xiao Haiyang silently picked up Dong Xiaoqing’s phone, not quite
knowing what to say. “Well…”

56
 
“My mother died in a car crash. Because of that, he didn’t dare to
touch a car for a whole year before finally getting back behind the
wheel.” Dong Xiaoqing’s tears rolled down in a torrent as she glared
hatefully at Xiao Haiyang. “Now you’re saying that he crashed into
someone for money? How can you be like this? How can you people
be this bad?”
 

57
CHAPTER 64 - Macbeth V
 
What, can the devil speak true? - Macbeth
 
“Dong Xiaoqing says that Dong Qian always drove long-haul. This job
wasn’t just chance. Because Dong Xiaoqing’s mother died when she
was young, and he had to work to support his family, he didn’t have
time to look after the child and always had a guilty conscience about
her. He wanted to save some money for her to use as a dowry. People
who hire trucks only want high value. They monitor the drivers’ time
very closely. They even have to run to the bathroom when they’re on
the road. At some service stations, there are also thieves who make
off with trucks. A person driving on his own doesn’t dare to rest. It’s
normal to drive ten hours or more straight. As for why something
would go wrong this time, it must be an accident. Dong Qian recently
had a stay in the hospital because of an allergic reaction, and after he
got out, he had trouble sleeping for some reason. It’s very likely this
was brought about because of his health… Captain Luo, Dong Qian’s
wife died in a car crash. Because of that, he couldn’t drive a car for a
long time. Would a person like that deliberately hit someone?”
 
Luo Wenzhou listened to Xiao Haiyang’s report from start to finish.
Because he was afraid the hot-blooded criminal policeman Xiao Xiao
would go haring off again, he minded his mouth and didn’t give any
more helpful pointers. He only briefly indicated over the phone that
he’d gotten it and counseled Little Glasses to hurry home.
 
It seemed that the Venerable Zhou’s accident wasn’t some wealthy
family drama with a complex plot of hiring an assassin to seize
contested family assets. An illustrious family like the Zhous would
make it onto the news at the least sign of disturbance, with all the
conspiracy theorists making merry. Zhou Huaixin may have only been
using this as a pretext to make a fuss, get the cops over, manufacture
some part true and part false news, officially demonstrating his own
innocence to the police—what Fei Du had said made sense.

58
 
Fei Du had also said… Ah, Fei Du was a bastard. Luo Wenzhou’s chest
hurt at the thought of him.
 
With his chest hurting, he decided to heat up some leftovers. He was
just washing his hands when Luo Yiguo slinked in.
 
Master Cat had perhaps slept enough. It gave a tremendous stretch,
bending its shoulders, raising its back, twisting its butt. It gave a
rather cheerful, affectionate “meow,” sniffed around Luo Wenzhou’s
feet, narrowed its eyes, and rubbed itself against his pant leg.
 
Aside from when it wanted food, Luo Yiguo very rarely demanded
affection like this, fulfilling the proper duties of a cat. Luo Wenzhou
was very willing to give it face. Despite having just washed his hands,
he bent down to scratch the kitty’s chin.
 
A gleam passed through Luo Yiguo’s big, round eyes. Staring at the
exposed hand, its whole body drew back towards its hind legs; seeing
that the enemy had fallen for its trap, it jumped up and showed its
sharp teeth. This cat was always pestering him; there always had to
be some cunning trick. As a veteran litter box attendant, Luo
Wenzhou was familiar with all the preludes to members of the family
Felidae launching an attack. He’d been prepared and drew back his
hand, using the advantage of his superior height to make the damn
cat grab only empty air. Then he smacked Luo Yiguo’s forehead,
pressing it down to the floor. “I knew you were up to something!”
 
Since discovering that when its litter box attendant started wearing
thicker and thicker clothes it became more difficult to bite him, Luo
Yiguo had taught itself many hunting techniques. But the enemy was
crafty. He didn’t come home on time, and he wasn’t willing to submit
obediently to being bitten. Luo Yiguo was very unsatisfied. It
thrashed its tail, hissing at him, and was lifted by Luo Wenzhou with
one hand under its soft belly.
 

59
“What do you guys think you’re trying to do?” Luo Wenzhou irritably
grabbed the cat’s face. “Dad gives you good things to eat and drink,
draws an overdraft on his next lifetime’s supply of patience, and each
one of you just plots and schemes. Don’t you have consciences?
Good-for-nothings!”
 
Luo Yiguo yowled in protest.
 
Luo Wenzhou said, “Shut up, you howling sphere!”
 
The spherical Luo Yiguo was quickly contained, its tail drooping
listlessly. It guilelessly stretched out its four limbs to hug his arm.
 
Luo Wenzhou gave it a furious look, then, still cursing, poured out
some cat food. This cat remembered kindness and forgot
mistreatment; when there was food to eat, it forgot its enmity. It
jumped off of him, rolling, then rubbed against his hand, praising
heaven and earth, unilaterally restoring friendly relations between
them.
 
Luo Wenzhou: “…”
 
These capricious things had tormented him into exhaustion.
 
Luo Wenzhou sat down on the floor of his own home, feeling that his
right hand, which had received Fei Du’s harassment, was still faintly
burning. When he closed his eyes, he thought of that not-quite-
smiling face, the smile making his heart flutter; the uncontrollable
flutter made him rather irritable.
 
This bit of irritability at last climbed to its apex when he struggled
awake from a pleasant dream in the small hours of the morning to
find that a certain part of his body was behaving inharmoniously.
 
Before five in the morning, Luo Wenzhou sat at the head of his bed a
while, his mind full of a lawsuit, then tore away the quilt, got up, and

60
went to the bathroom to deal with himself, also washing his face with
cold water.
 
He leaned against the sink, his expression unclear, taking several
rough breaths. In a very impulsive clear-headed condition, he
thought, If that asshole Fei Du presumes to tease me again, I’m done
being polite. What’s the sense in being a “gentlemanly good person”
when this is the kind of frustration you get?
 
Suddenly, Luo Yiguo, lying at the head of his bed, rolled off with a
thump and ran over to the bathroom door.
 
Luo Wenzhou said, “What?”
 
Luo Yiguo turned and looked at him, waving its tail. The faint sound
of the Five Rings Song came from behind it. Luo Wenzhou froze and
thoroughly woke up—his phone, rolled up in his quilt, was ringing.
 
“Zhou Huaijin’s plane landed on time a little past two. He sent a text
home saying he’d taken a taxi and they didn’t need to meet him at
the airport. The roads were clear at that hour. Reasonably speaking,
he should have reached the Zhou residence in half an hour, forty
minutes at most, but they waited two whole hours without hearing
any word and called again. His phone was off!”
 
Luo Wenzhou strode through a field of police cars towards the Zhou
family residence, which was being honored by their presence for the
second time in twenty-four hours. “Isn’t Zhou Huaijin the eldest son
of the house, with a standard private car and standard bodyguard?
Why would he catch a taxi from the airport in the middle of the
night?”
 
As soon as he’d spoken, a voice that was asking for a spanking
unhurriedly cut in. “That’s the kind of person Zhou Huaijin is. His
style is usually very low-key, modest and polite. He’s good at looking
after people. While some people say he’s too gentle, doesn’t have any

61
courage, his reputation has always been of conducting himself very
well. Not disturbing his staff and bodyguards’ rest when he gets back
in the middle of the night is exactly what he would do.”
 
Luo Wenzhou looked up and saw Fei Du, neatly dressed, waiting at
the door of the Zhou residence. When he finished speaking, he
nodded to Luo Wenzhou. “Captain Luo.”
 
Both Fei Du’s greeting and his speech were calm and unperturbed, as
if the person who’d parted on bad terms with Luo Wenzhou the
evening before hadn’t been him.
 
Zhou Huaixin had cried himself into a clump of mud clinging to the
house’s couch, rolling around unwilling to get up. Before Luo
Wenzhou had come close, he heard his tearful complaints. “I told you
my dad was murdered! I told you, and you didn’t believe me, and
now my brother’s missing! If my whole family dies out, some people
are going to be pleased, aren’t they? And where are the police? The
police are all useless!”
 
Luo Wenzhou frowned.
 
Zhou Huaixin had already seen Fei Du next to him. He howled,
“Master Fei, I’m not talking about you… My brother… If my brother
dies, what am I supposed to do? Aren’t they going to eat me alive?
Oh… No, I can’t… M-m-my chest hurts… Give me my medicine…”
 
A housekeeper hastily trotted over, offering a bottle of vitamins
manufactured in some country or other. Fei Du took it and helped
him take the pills, appeasing Second Young Master Zhou’s fragile
little spirit.
 
The corner of Luo Wenzhou’s eye twitched. He noticed that Fei Du
had changed out of his studious disguise; he was wearing a fairly
formal shirt, and he had put on his glasses again. The shirt was

62
already a little creased; he clearly hadn’t just put it on after being
woken in the small hours of the morning.
 
All kinds of news was still wildly coming up on his phone; apparently
the stocks of all the subsidiary companies connected to the Zhou Clan
Conglomerate had tumbled; the overseas markets, roiling twenty-four
hours a day, had become a short-seller’s paradise. Looking at Fei Du’s
getup, it was obvious what he’d gone to do after leaving the City
Bureau. Still carrying the traces of the scent of a vested interest, he
was sitting there like a good person, comforting the distressed Zhou
Huaixin.
 
“Has his phone been located? Hurry! Block off the scene, don’t let any
personnel who aren’t concerned with this wander into the Zhou
house. It’s inadvisable to leak the information at this point.—Has Tao
Ran reached the airport? Have him get the security camera records
for the taxi stand first.” Luo Wenzhou walked over to Zhou Huaixin,
who was chewing vitamins. “Young Mr. Zhou, when was your
brother’s itinerary determined? Who knew the flight number?”
 
Zhou Huaixin clasped at his heart. “I contacted him yesterday after
dad died… Who knew? I guess anyone could have known, I’m not
really sure. The assistants at the company normally reserve his plane
tickets.”
 
Zhou Huaixin had just spoken when an immaculately dressed middle-
aged man rushed in. “Huaixin! Huaixin! I just heard and rushed over
from out of town. What’s going on? Why are there so many police?”
 
Hearing the newcomer’s voice, Zhou Huaixin, without taking time to
finish his vitamins, struggled to climb out of Fei Du’s arms. “Hu-dage,
my big brother’s gone missing!”
 
Fei Du coolly adjusted his collar and stood, nodding to the harassed
middle-aged man from a distance. He quietly introduced him to Luo
Wenzhou. “That’s Hu Zhenyu, one of the real powers in the Zhou

63
Clan’s domestic general headquarters. He went to university with
Zhou Huaijin. His position as one of the Party’s crown princes3 is
clear.”
 
Luo Wenzhou’s eyes involuntarily followed Fei Du’s hand as it pulled
at his collar, falling on the nape of his neck and his faintly visible
collarbones. Then he tore his gaze away and nodded carelessly,
turning to Xiao Haiyang next to him and saying, “Two generations of
the Zhou family have come to grief one after another. It can’t be a
coincidence. Dig a little deeper into Zhou Junmao’s car crash. You
can’t only listen to that young lady’s statement.”
 
Xiao Haiyang gave an affirmative and quickly ran off.
 
At this time, the first rays of the morning sun, unwilling to be
overlooked, were climbing over the horizon. Yan City, fairly calm
before, began to awaken, preparing to descend into a whole day of
clamor.
 
The call from Tao Ran came very quickly. “I’ve found the taxi. The
license number is Yan BXXXXX. The original driver was knocked out
and thrown out by the side of the road. He woke up on his own and
went to the hospital. Five minutes ago, he got the hospital’s
assistance to contact the local police station and report the case.
We’ve found the car, it’s…”
 
A technician raised his head. “Captain Luo, we’ve located Zhou
Huaijin’s phone!”
 
Luo Wenzhou looked up. The two people, one on the phone and the
other outside it, spoke, almost overlapping:
 
“By the shore of the Baisha River—”
 
“Near the Baisha waters!”

64
 
Zhou Huaixin’s eyes rolled up, and he fell onto Hu Zhenyu. He was
lifted onto the couch by a whole crowd of people and slowly came
around. He wailed, “Hu-dage, you don’t think my brother would let
them throw him in the river? I’m going to slaughter that bastard Yang
Bo! Where the hell has Zheng Kaifeng gone, why isn’t he here when
dad’s died…”
 
Halfway through, Hu Zhenyu’s expression altered. He gestured over
and over for Zhou Huaixin to shut his mouth, but he couldn’t control
this non-mainstream mental case at all. He began to sweat at once,
forcing out an appropriate smile towards the crowd of outsiders.
“Huaixin is young. With so many things happening at home, he can’t
quite take it. His emotions are a little out of control. You shouldn’t
listen to his nonsensical ravings.”
 
Hearing this, Zhou Huaixin sat up like a corpse coming to life. His
eyes were red. “I’m not raving! It must be that bastard, don’t think
you can keep me in the dark! That son-of-a-bitch has been planning
something for a long time, planning to kill my dad and my brother
and bully me, when I don’t understand anything, right? Even Uncle
Zheng is on his side!”
 
Hu Zhenyu raised his voice. “Huaixin!”
 
“Send a team of guys to Baisha River,” Luo Wenzhou quietly ordered,
then turned to Hu Zhenyu. “President Hu, there’s been a kidnapping
and a suspected murder. It’s a major criminal case. Your family affairs
and everything else can provide important leads. You have to take
responsibility if you conceal important leads. I hope you understand
the nature of this business.”
 
Hu Zhenyu was a smooth operator. Under Luo Wenzhou’s
businesslike questioning, he wasn’t at all irritated. He scratched his
chin. “Yes, yes, I see the sense. You officers must have heard of the
Venerable Zheng. He was our Venerable Zhou’s right-hand man when

65
they were young. While he’s no longer young, he’s still the mainstay
of our conglomerate.
 
“As for President Yang… Mr. Yang Bo, he’s the Venerable Zhou’s board
secretary, young and promising, very able. He stands out too much
from the crowd. It’s unavoidable that some unpleasant-sounding
baseless rumors would have reached Huaixin’s ears. Adding in that
President Yang is that sort of… How do you young people describe it?
‘Another family’s child.’ When the Venerable Zhou was alive, he often
brought him up as an example to Huaixin. It’s normal for their
relationship not to be very good. But if you told me he could harm
the Venerable Zhou and President Zhou, I absolutely wouldn’t believe
you.” As he spoke, Hu Zhenyu kept a careful eye on Zhou Huaixin to
avoid him having another attack. “The two of them aren’t in the
country. They were notified about this yesterday and are also
hurrying back. They must be in flight now. I’ll give you their flight
numbers. Could I trouble you officers to take care of them at the
airport? We can’t have something happen to a third person!”
 
Yang Bo, a youthful talent who stood out from the crowd, about the
same age as Zhou Huaixin but already at a high level in the Zhou
Clan. He really did sound like the rumored “illegitimate son.”
 
Luo Wenzhou looked up at Fei Du. Fei Du silently nodded to him,
confirming his thoughts.
 
Just then, Lang Qiao suddenly rushed in at a jog. “Boss, bad news!”
 
Luo Wenzhou looked at the members of the Zhou family, whose ears
had pricked up at her cry, and gestured at Lang Qiao, taking her
outside the door. “What?”
 
“Look at this.” Lang Qiao held up her phone.
 
“Zhou Clan Heir Zhou Huaijin Kidnapped” had become headline
news in a short time. Underneath there was a link to something that

66
had already been deleted.
 
“I sent an emergency notice to the internet monitors to delete it,” said
Lang Qiao. “There was a link to a video. Here it is.”
 
A video appeared on the screen when she clicked. The camera lens
swayed, then focused on a man unconscious in a chair. The camera
unhurriedly circled his face, filming him clearly from every angle. The
unconscious man was in his thirties or forties, very well-preserved,
sedately dressed; you couldn’t really tell his precise age. Even in this
sorry predicament, you could see that he was a dignified person of
considerable bearing.
 
Fei Du only took a glance before recognizing him. “Zhou Huaijin.”
 
Luo Wenzhou’s scalp simply went a little numb.
 
The kidnappers hadn’t asked for money and hadn’t killed him. They
hadn’t immediately contacted the victim’s family members; instead,
they’d uploaded a video online. What were they even doing?
 
Had they been watching too many English films!
 

67
CHAPTER 65 - Macbeth VI
 
The person filming was very careful. Aside from Zhou Huaijin
himself, there was nothing in the frame but a dilapidated wooden
chair and a small section of the ropes binding him. The background
was all black. You couldn’t see anything. And the video was very
short, less than a minute long. It filmed all around the unconscious
Zhou Huaijin as if afraid he wouldn’t be recognized, striving to let all
the viewers see every pore on his face.
 
Aside from this, the kidnapper didn’t make a sound.
 
“The person who posted this video used a heap of proxies. We won’t
be able to trace him for a bit,” said Lang Qiao. “Boss, this is my first
time running into such a quaint kidnapper. What does he want? What
are we going to do?”
 
Luo Wenzhou didn’t answer. He looked down and scrolled through
the phone.
 
Lang Qiao’s response had been rather quick; she’d dealt with the
video as soon as she’d found it. But the news that Zhou Huaijin had
been kidnapped by unknown individuals had grown wings and
appeared under several keywords, scurrying hither and thither over
the internet.
 
Luo Wenzhou asked, “What time was this uploaded?”
 
“6:00 AM.”
 
Six o’clock was when the city began to awaken.
 
Aside from an alarm clock, what was more bracing than a piece of
living, breathing gossip?
 

68
Fei Du sighed, taking a step back. He asked, “Captain Luo, should I
keep away to cooperate with the investigation?”
 
Lang Qiao didn’t understand what he meant and let out a single
querying syllable: “Huh?”
 
“Huh yourself. He’s one of the suspects, too.” Luo Wenzhou gave Lang
Qiao the phone and rudely turned to Fei Du. “Right now I need to
know which people could have taken part in this, and which groups
are speculating in the background. Give me a list of names.”
 
Zhou Huaijin was very low-key and rarely appeared on camera. There
were hardly a dozen clear photographs of him in circulation. The
ordinary common folk recognized actors and celebrities, but who was
going to know what a wealthy heir who spent most of his time
abroad looked like?
 
So how had this video, not even a minute long, managed to attract so
much attention? Who was promoting it?
 
At first glance, Zhou Junmao’s death and Zhou Huaijin’s kidnapping
seemed closely linked, as if someone had wanted to kill the elder and
then act against the younger, the whole thing hiding a “wealthy
family drama” with a thousand and one links. But thinking about it
closely, it was very strange.
 
Accepting for the moment that Zhou Junmao’s car crash had been
deliberate, then the person who’d plotted it had undoubtedly wanted
him dead, and dead moreover without anyone being the wiser—with
the responsible driver already dead, if the police couldn’t find any
definite evidence of a murder, it was very likely they would handle
this case like a traffic accident.
 
On the other hand, Zhou Huaijin’s kidnapping was too ostentatious,
with an evident flavor of showmanship and sensationalism. The aims
of these two crimes were in direct opposition.

69
 
It didn’t make sense.
 
But aside from making the police and the populace jump at their own
shadows, what benefit was there to anyone in announcing the
kidnapping on such a grand scale under the heavens? With such a
sensitive event coming at such a sensitive time, it seemed that the
only people who could reap any spoils from it were the capitalists
who wanted to take the opportunity to bleed the Zhou Clan dry.
 
For example, Fei Du’s ilk.
 
If not for the fact that the city’s public security bureaus were “not for
sale,” a certain person would have made enough money in one night
to buy two City Bureaus.
 
“I can give you some people I’m familiar with.” Fei Du unhurriedly
picked up his phone and sent an e-mail, then said, “But you must
know, the whole world is full of people looking to seize an
opportunity. Leaving out private investors, I don’t know how many
institutions are mixed up in this. I’m not an immortal who knows
everyone.”
 
“Being able to snatch him from the airport without anyone the wiser
looks like the work of a major local operator.” Luo Wenzhou’s gaze
fell on him like a knife. “You aren’t going to tell me you don’t know
everyone in this sandbox, President Fei?”
 
“As an acting suspect, let me give you a suggestion. Only for
reference, not necessarily correct,” Fei Du said reasonably. “My guess
is the kidnappers may have contacted the people promoting this, but
the promoters aren’t necessarily the kidnappers, and they didn’t
necessarily collaborate ahead of time. While Das Kapital says that
when the profits are 100%, capital will trample on all human laws, I
personally think that that valuation isn’t very amicable. In reality,
everyone knows that even if the profits are 1000%, they’re no good if

70
you aren’t alive to receive them. Captain Luo, we may eat buns with
human blood, but we don’t eat humans.”
 
His words were as cold-blooded and disgraceful as you could ask for.
Luo Wenzhou looked at him coldly. For a moment, they seemed to
have returned to the time of He Zhongyi’s murder investigation,
when Fei Du had come to the City Bureau to provide Zhang Donglai
an alibi and had spouted a lot of absurd rhetoric.
 
“All right, let me say it more precisely.” Fei Du spread his hands,
smiling as he poured oil on the fire. “We don’t eat humans in broad
daylight.”
 
Lang Qiao was scared stiff by this thick and frozen atmosphere,
thinking the two of them were about to come to blows. Their gazes,
neither yielding a bit, seemed to be light beam weapons out of
science fiction, about to collide in midair. She stood to one side,
prostrate with fear, wanting to try to ease the atmosphere but being
at the disadvantage of not knowing why the two of them were at
odds. After an age, she still hadn’t come up with the appropriate
wording and wanted nothing better than to switch places with Tao
Ran, who had been sent to search the Baisha River Basin.
 
But just then, Luo Wenzhou suddenly took the lead in averting his
gaze, withdrawing from this round of mutual hostilities.
 
He calmly said, “From the time the video was posted to the time it
had spread over the whole internet, not a full half-hour passed. This
operator’s methods are clearly very mature. The person behind the
scenes isn’t doing this for the first time. Also, it’s likely that they have
an irreconcilable rivalry with the Zhou Clan. Adding in these clues,
how long will it take you to get me a list?”
 
When Luo Wenzhou had spoken, Fei Du’s phone rang a sweet-
sounding e-mail notification.
 

71
As if Fei Du had already known what was going on, he passed his
phone to Luo Wenzhou without even looking at it. “I figure it must be
one of these two or three. This is a list my assistant put together. You
can arrange to talk to the people in charge.”
 
Then he didn’t look again at Luo Wenzhou. He put one hand in his
pocket and walked back into the magnificent Zhou residence, very
familiarly accepted a cup of tea from the housekeeper, and went to
talk to the weeping Zhou Huaixin.
 
Luo Wenzhou scanned the contents of the e-mail. This person who
worked for Fei Du was evidently very reliable. In such a short time,
they’d not only put together a list of suspicious operators, they’d also
attached the contact information for the relevant management, as
well as summaries of cases they had previously been involved in,
almost like an exquisite little report.
 
Luo Wenzhou forwarded the e-mail to Lang Qiao. “Run along and go
through the formalities. We not only need to meet with the people in
charge, we also need to investigate their work e-mails, phone records,
and financial circumstances. You have to get sufficient authority, and
get some guys from economic crimes to come help.”
 
It took him just a few words to order what was a great heap of
tedious work for Lang Qiao; all the hairs on the back of her neck
bristled just hearing it. But Luo Wenzhou still added, “If Fei Du’s
inference that the promoters don’t seem to be acquainted with the
kidnappers is correct, there’s no telling what will happen next. These
people may do anything to get eyes on them, endangering the victim.
Hurry up, don’t delay!”
 
Lang Qiao sucked in a breath. After he’d laid half a ton of pressure on
her out of nowhere, she had no more attention to spare for the
turbulent undercurrents between her superior and the pretty boy. She
took to her heels and ran.
 

72
Untouched for a long time, Fei Du’s phone locked itself. The
lockscreen was the system default. The metal case had been warmed
by Luo Wenzhou’s hand. He raised his head and looked at Fei Du
from a distance, watching him very familiarly saying something to Hu
Zhenyu and Zhou Huaixin, his body language very relaxed; probably
he was relating the progress of the investigation into Zhou Huaijin’s
kidnapping.—Luo Wenzhou didn’t go to mind him; anyway, Fei Du
wasn’t the type to put a word out of place.
 
A long time before, Luo Wenzhou had thought that Fei Du was a
dangerous element—
 
While there was more or less no ceiling on human nobility and
baseness, outside of an emergency situation, the thoughts of a regular
person who had grown up in a society with a legal order would be
limited—for example, if they knew that there was someone gathering
up a crowd to do something bad, the ordinary person’s reactions
would be along the lines of “go investigate it with daring curiosity,”
“report it to the proper authorities,” “avoid it because I don’t feel like
getting involved,” and so on; sometimes, people with comparatively
corrupt morals wouldn’t be able to resist the lure of going to wallow
in the same mire.
 
But thoughts like “kill someone and attract the police’s notice by
dumping the body where they operate” weren’t at all normal.
 
In an age of peace, even a diabolical murderer would know in his
bones that driving someone into a fatal position wasn’t something
ordinary like eating and drinking. All of society was divided up by the
red lines of the law, repeatedly reinforced over many years, so that
age after age of people unconsciously had a benchmark for what was
taboo.
 
But Luo Wenzhou had clearly felt that Fei Du wasn’t the same. In his
mind, these taboos were all rules in a game, the same as conduct like
“using a legislative loophole to evade taxes” or “accumulating foreign

73
funds to avoid regulation”; if he didn’t do these things, it was to
avoid trouble, and when there was a need to do them, he wouldn’t
feel any guilt. He was even willing to make a close investigation into
these means of “trifling with the law,” against the day when he had a
need to use them.
 
But Fei Du had sat with He Zhongyi’s mother Wang Xiujuan in an ice
cold chair, had spent money like water to show himself on the
Skyscreen, had even gone with a fractured arm to rescue Chenchen
from under Su Luozhan’s knife in the middle of the night; Luo
Wenzhou had thought that he simply had a sharp tongue but a soft
heart.
 
Until just now, when there had been an instant where Luo Wenzhou
had suddenly felt a taste of something out of the ordinary among Fei
Du’s unassailable smile and consistent asking for a spanking.
 
Luo Wenzhou remembered Fei Du’s vague speech in the car the
evening before and found that he hadn’t been avoiding the subject
after all. Fei Du seemed to have grown up in a different place, where
the good was truly good and the bad was truly bad; the rules of this
place were entirely different from those of the real world. As clever as
Fei Du was, he must be well aware of how he didn’t fit in, so he
carefully wore a human skin, restricting himself to a circle, imitating
Tao Ran, imitating Zhang Donglai, imitating all the people he came
into contact with… Only in front of Luo Wenzhou, who’d thought so
highly of himself when he was young and had always wanted to pry
people’s painted faces off, had he given up the act, simply letting the
human skin he wore hang loosely, letting him see the vicious fangs.
 
For some reason, as soon as this thought appeared, Luo Wenzhou
suddenly didn’t want to hold it against him as he usually would have.
In his eyes, all of Fei Du’s capricious behavior from yesterday evening
to now resolved into something comprehensible. Luo Wenzhou dimly
touched that calculating, tense, composed self-protection, a softness
made up of a hundred feelings rising in his heart.

74
 
Just then, Tao Ran’s sudden phone call interrupted Luo Wenzhou’s
gaze and train of thought.
 
“We’ve found the taxi,” Tao Ran puffed, “abandoned by the reservoir.
There’s a lingering smell of ether in the car. Aside from a footprint on
the back of the driver’s seat, there aren’t any very clear signs of
struggle. I suspect there was more than one kidnapper, or else how
could he have taken a grown man off guard and subdued him while
driving? Oh, right, Zhou Huaijin’s bag is in the car, his ID, phone, and
wallet are all untouched… Hey!”
 
Tao Ran’s words cut off, and he suddenly sucked in an angry breath;
Luo Wenzhou could feel him biting back a curse and immediately
asked, “What is it?”
 
“There’s someone taking pictures,” Tao Ran said quickly. “They may
have followed us from the airport. I’ll go deal with it.”
 
Luo Wenzhou hung up the phone and rubbed the center of his brow,
simply unable to imagine anymore what degree matters had
fermented to. He really didn’t want to go online again. He issued a
series of orders: “The taxi that kidnapped the victim has been found.
Zhou Huaijin is over 1.8 meters tall, not a child you could lift with
one hand. Anyone who wanted to transport the victim would need a
vehicle. Investigate all the security cameras within a three-kilometer
radius of the location where the taxi was abandoned, looking for
suspicious vehicles. Get in touch with the media, let them know to do
as they see fit about stirring up trouble again. Aside from that, get the
internet monitoring department to assist…”
 
Luo Wenzhou hadn’t finished speaking when a technician suddenly
looked up. “Captain Luo, the person who uploaded that video has
uploaded another one!”
 
Luo Wenzhou’s heart sank.

75
 
It was the same black background again, with an unconscious Zhou
Huaijin. There was also a hand in the frame wearing a black glove.
The hand was holding a knife, the bright blade held at Zhou Huaijin’s
neck. Then it suddenly pressed down—as everyone instinctively cried
out in alarm, a wound opened in a very critical location on Zhou
Huaijin’s neck. The unconscious man instinctively twitched, and
blood spurted out.
 
Next, the camera panned down. The black-gloved hands tore open
the front of Zhou Huaijin’s shirt and dipped a small brush in the
blood that had just spilled. On Zhou Huaijin’s chest, the brush wrote:
“A cut for each deleted video.”
 
The internet police officer just about to delete the post broke out into
a cold sweat and immediately phoned. “Captain Luo, what should I
do? Do I delete it or not?”
 
The morning sun had fully enveloped Yan City; the morning rush
hour had started.
 
A moment’s hesitation, and the video was being re-posted at
unbelievable speeds, spreading like an explosion.
 
Zhou Huaixin had of course seen it, too. He screamed at a decibel
level that nearly brought down the ceiling. Fei Du picked him up by
the waist, wrestled away his phone, and shoved him at the stunned
housekeeper. “Take him upstairs to rest.”
 
Just then, a car stopped at the Zhou residence’s gates. A young man
of twenty-eight or twenty-nine got out, looking hurried, and was
about to go in. He was blocked by the police guarding the door. He
fished out his ID in a flurry. “Sorry, here’s my ID and business card,
I’m the Venerable Zhou’s…”
 

76
Zhou Huaixin turned his head to get a glimpse at the newcomer and
immediately began to struggle fiercely. “I won’t! Arrest that bastard!
He’s the murderer! You’re even shameless enough to dare to come
here! You dare to come to our house!”
 
Even though Zhou Huaixin was a walking skeleton, his mad efforts
now weren’t to be looked down on. Fei Du and Hu Zhenyu, neither of
whom looked especially strong at a glance, couldn’t hold him for the
moment. Zhou Huaixin flailed his arms like lethal weapons, carelessly
knocking off Fei Du’s glasses.
 
Suddenly, a hand reached out of nowhere, grabbing Zhou Huaixin’s
wildly brandished clubs. Lifting him like a chick, Luo Wenzhou
roughly held down little Young Master Zhou’s precious head, rolling
him into a ball and shoving him onto the soft, genuine leather sofa.
He looked loftily down on him and asked, “Do you want a
tranquilizer or a rabies shot?”
 
Zhou Huaixin: “…”
 
Zhou Huaixin being forcibly calmed down, the young man at the
door gave a bitter laugh and was finally able to finish introducing
himself. “I’m the Venerable Zhou’s aide, and secretary to the
conglomerate’s board of directors. I’m called Yang Bo.”
 
When he had spoken, everyone’s gazes converged on him—Yang Bo,
suspected illegitimate son, suspected criminal, one of the potential
beneficiaries of getting rid of Zhou Junmao and Zhou Huaijin…
 
He’d shown up pretty early.
 

77
CHAPTER 66 - Macbeth VII
 
“I was on a business trip in Canada yesterday. I hurried back when I
heard what had happened, and on the way I heard that Huaijin-dage
had…” Yang Bo couldn’t quite finish what he was saying. He rested
his elbows on his knees and scrubbed at his face, taking several deep
breaths. “Sorry, it’s too sudden, I sort of… I really don’t know what to
do…”
 
The criminal policeman sitting across from him scanned Yang Bo with
an appraising look. He opened a little notebook and didn’t beat
around the bush. He spoke rudely, saying, “Mr. Yang, in order to
understand the circumstances, I won’t beat around the bush with you.
There are some rumors suggesting you and the Venerable Zhou were
father and son. Could I ask if that’s true?”
 
Yang Bo had long been accustomed to approaching people
circuitously; for a time he couldn’t adjust to this rather rude direct
throw. His cheeks tensed suddenly. “What did you say!”
 
Then he rapidly said, “It’s all complete nonsense. It’s an insult to my
capabilities, and to my mother and the Venerable Zhou. I don’t know
where you heard these lies and slanders. You’re…”
 
He glared furiously at the police officer across from him, biting down
hard on his tongue, just managing to bite back the words, “You’re
relying on malicious gossip to solve this case?”
 
Hearing these words, Zhou Huaixin, who had been calmed down
with difficulty, once again showed a tendency to erupt like a volcano.
He breathed deeply from the diaphragm and issued a long-distance,
“I spit on you!”
 
The saliva accompanying this “spit” hadn’t yet touched the ground
when Luo Wenzhou indiscriminately called over another criminal

78
policeman and pointed to the stunned Zhou Huaixin. “Separate them
and question them individually. With Zhou Huaijin kidnapped in Yan
City, anyone who could benefit from his demise is a suspect,
including relatives.”
 
“What? I’m a suspect? Are you crazy! Are you blind!” Two policemen,
brooking no argument, “invited” Zhou Huaixin to get up. So angry he
was about to hit the roof, he turned to Fei Du, who was looking
sympathetic but powerless to assist. “Master Fei, what’s going on with
this cop? What’s he’s talking about? I’m going to lodge a complaint
against him! You think you’re so fucking great? Look out or I’ll get
you for this. You dare treat me like a suspect, I’ll… Don’t touch me!”
 
On one hand, Yang Bo, brimming with restraint and fury, said, “My
mother and the Venerable Zhou were in fact old friends. It was
because of that connection that I had the good fortune to get a job at
the Zhou Clan, but I’ve only gotten this far because of my own hard
work. It’s not the filthy thing you’re imagining.”
 
On the other hand, Zhou Huaixin was thoroughly ignoring all
propriety. “You’ve got some nerve, you were born in filth—”
 
Yang Bo could stand it no longer. He sarcastically retorted, “I really
don’t know what standards you drinking-and-driving,
indiscriminately promiscuous, weed-smoking people use to judge
‘filth.’”
 
Watching these two young masters ripping into each other in front of
a roomful of police, one spouting off as soon as the other was under
control, the veins at Hu Zhenyu’s temples were about to burst. He
would have loved nothing better than to stick both of them in a pot.
 
Fei Du was looking on with great interest. He was just about to pick
up his cup of tea when Luo Wenzhou slapped his hand away.
 
Fei Du: “…”

79
 
Luo Wenzhou said, “You came here on purpose to drink tea? Put
away your nasty habits. The Criminal Investigation Team isn’t your
house. I don’t care if you’re a temporary liaison who’s not on the
payroll or whatever. You’re here, so you’ll obey orders. If you won’t
do your work, then you can beat it.”
 
Naturally, Fei Du had his own aim in using every conceivable means
to find his way into the City Bureau. But while taking on all kinds of
roles that made it suitable and proper for him to appear at crime
scenes, he’d still as a matter of course regarded himself as an
“outsider.” Suddenly meeting with this unexpected slap, he couldn’t
quite collect himself.
 
In his whole life, President Fei had never before been bawled out like
an errand-running lackey. For a time he didn’t know what expression
he should use to respond to Luo Wenzhou. He froze in place for a
while, then finally, at somewhat of a loss, said, “Oh, so what should I
do?”
 
Fei Du was then dragged into a pile of technicians. Luo Wenzhou told
him to enlarge each frame of the kidnappers’ videos and analyze
them pixel by pixel.
 
Compared to Tao Ran, combing over the Baisha riverbanks, and Lang
Qiao, rushing around all over the place, sitting and analyzing a video
was comparatively light work. But Fei Du was still irritated with it
after a few minutes—light as it was, it was still work. Issuing a
beautiful conclusion based on minute traces was a perfect intellectual
exercise, but sifting out minute traces from a huge quantity of
repetitive information was very dull.
 
Fei Du had just spent a night traversing the evil seas of money. He’d
only closed his eyes for a few minutes before rushing to the Zhou
house to get in on the action. He’d already been tired; it wasn’t long
before his eyelids began to struggle.

80
 
Fei Du tried a few times and found that he really didn’t have the
makings of a lackey. He stood up and strolled around in place to
wake himself, overhearing Luo Wenzhou asking Director Lu for
guidance about whether he should delete the video.
 
If they didn’t delete it, it was tantamount to letting the criminals lead
them around by the nose; it would look really bad.
 
But seeing as they had no line on the case, if they deleted the video
and kidnappers really did take up their knife, that was tantamount to
putting the hostage into a more dangerous position. Human life was
of supreme importance; they absolutely couldn’t do such a thing.
 
Even Lu Youliang was hesitating.
 
Fei Du put his hands behind his back, yawned furtively, and said
sleepily to Luo Wenzhou, “If it were me, I’d delete it.”
 
Luo Wenzhou shot a glance at him out of the corner of his eye, hastily
said a few words to Director Lu, and hung up the phone.
 
“Look here.” Fei Du beckoned to him, opening the kidnapper’s video
and going forward to the part where the kidnapper drew blood and
wrote on Zhou Huaijin’s chest. Fei Du bonelessly leaned on his arm,
propped on the table, and said to Luo Wenzhou, “The kidnapper
made a cut first, then picked up a brush and dipped it in the blood to
write. Don’t you think that’s a little too reasonable for a criminal? If it
were me, I’d simply have carved the words onto Zhou Huaijin’s
chest.”
 
Luo Wenzhou, hand resting on the back of his chair, heard these
words and looked down at him expressionlessly.
 
Fei Du used him as a bracing measure, returning his gaze in odious
high spirits. “Ordinarily, when a beautiful man looks at me like that, I

81
assume he’s asking me to kiss him.”
 
Luo Wenzhou didn’t answer him. He very calmly followed up, “You’re
right, the kidnapper’s actions really are a little extraneous. So?”
 
“So I think this kidnapper doesn’t want to hurt Zhou Huaijin at all.
He only wants to exchange his hostage for something. He doesn’t
want to become a wanted murderer. Furthermore, judging from the
way he’s treasuring his hostage, it’s likely Zhou Huaijin is the only
bargaining chip he has. Even if you delete the video, perhaps he
won’t do anything to the hostage. It’s better for everyone to go ahead
and try to get to the bottom line.”
 
“Oh, ‘perhaps,’” Luo Wenzhou said quietly, looking at him. “When I go
to write up my report, I’ll tell everyone, ‘I judged that the kidnapper
perhaps wasn’t planning on harming the victim, so I decided to try
deleting the video to see whether Zhou Huaijin would die or not.’
President Fei, is that what you mean?”
 
Fei Du hadn’t yet answered when Luo Wenzhou put a hand on the
back of his neck, bent down, and said into Fei Du’s ear: “My good
student, when we do this job, we don’t get by on brain-teasers.
Everything we do has to have grounds and reasons, has to be legal
and in compliance with regulations. If there’s any part of those words
you don’t understand, you can ask your shixiong anytime.—I told you
to extract information from the videos in order to determine the
kidnapper’s location. I didn’t tell you to cheat the criminals at ‘Fight
the Landlord!’”
 
The boneless Fei Du was taken entirely unawares; under the pressure,
he nearly knocked his chin against the table.
 
Luo Wenzhou, standing over him, pulled back his hand and said with
a false smile, “You misunderstood. I wasn’t planning to kiss you. Just
now, that expression meant I wanted to hit you a little. Remember it
next time and dodge.”

82
 
Fei Du had yet to voice any protest against his barbarous conduct
when there was an uproar near them.
 
“Boss, there’s a new video!”
 
Luo Wenzhou temporarily let Fei Du off and accepted a pair of
headphones. The whole Zhou villa, including those still under
suspicion, held their breaths and concentrated, waiting for word from
the kidnapper.
 
In the video, Zhou Huaijin had woken up, but he was in a much
sorrier state than before. His perfectly cut and styled hair was in total
disorder, as if he’d struggled and been put down. There were bruises
on his face and body, and his expression was of mingled rage and
alarm. The ropes had been tied tighter, and the blood from the
wound on his neck had stained his shirt. His chest was rising and
falling nonstop.
 
Outside the frame, a voice distorted by a voice changer said, “Read
it.”
 
Zhou Huaijin’s gaze hardened slightly, and veins stood out on his
neck. “You guys…”
 
He’d only said two words when he was kicked to the ground along
with his chair. Then the person holding the camera beat the victim.
The camera flashed wildly for a while; there were only the sounds of
fists and feet hitting a body, and dull moans of pain. Then the screen
went black.
 
Over at the internet police, the atmosphere was thick; they still had
nothing.
 
Zhou Huaixin’s legs folded at the sight. He had no more attention to
spare to exchange curses with Yang Bo. He clutched at the clothes of

83
the people next to him. “I’ll pay! We’ll get some hackers, all right? As
much money as it takes, as long as they’ll come. My brother… My
brother…”
 
In the pre-recorded video, the temporary black screen passed and
there was an image again; the camera focused on Zhou Huaijin, lying
on the ground. The hoarse voice said again: “Read it.”
 
Zhou Huaijin’s lips trembled a few times. This man born with a silver
spoon in his mouth knew very well how to protect himself. He easily
made the choice to submit. He struggled to look at a prompter held
up somewhere, then stammeringly read, “I’ll ask you a question, and
you’ll have…ten, ten minutes to answer. Post the answer on the Zhou
Clan’s homepage. I…I already know the answer, if…if you dare to lie,
I’ll…”
 
Zhou Huaijin panted twice, a whimper coming out of his throat.
“I’ll…cut a part off of President Zhou. We’re going to…peel off a
certain person’s s-skin and have a look.
 
“The first question: is Zhou…Zhou Junmao a sanctimonious
hypocrite, brazenly keeping his illegitimate son by his side,
cultivating him as an heir? Is this…this paternity report real… You
stole my… Ah!” Having read to this point, Zhou Huaijin came
around, his expression becoming agitated. A kidnapper kicked him in
the back of the head, and he gave a sob, gently twitching. Then he
didn’t move; he may have fainted.
 
A wrinkled paternity report appeared on the screen.
 
The kidnapper, using that hoarse, ugly-sounding voice, said, “Ten
minutes.”
 
After he spoke, the video ended, and a timer counting down from ten
minutes appeared.
 

84
For a moment, the whole Zhou house was deadly silent. Everyone
looked at the countdown as though they were looking at a monster.
At the same time, a bomb had been dropped onto the fiber-optic-
crossed virtual world, blowing up a wide swath of roaring mountains
and tsunamis—
 
“Zhou Junmao’s illegitimate son!”
 
“The Zhou Clan’s heir has been kidnapped!”
 
“We’re in the middle of a wealthy family drama!"
 
Within a minute, Luo Wenzhou’s cell phone and those of the Zhou
family members, along with the residence’s landlines, all rang at
once, the whole Zhou residence turning into a hotline, the whole
world trying to get first-hand information.
 
Luo Wenzhou looked down. He couldn’t not take Director Lu’s phone
call. He hadn’t gotten the word “hello” out of his mouth before
Director Lu hurried ahead. “What’s going on? The kidnapper’s done
all this and you still haven’t found him? Are there no clues? If you
don’t have enough people, get some transferred over! You’ve got to
find the bastard, even if you have to dig all the way down! My office
phone is about to blow up!”
 
Before Luo Wenzhou could report his progress to his superior, Zhou
Huaixin had already jumped up and seized Hu Zhenyu’s collar.
“Answer him, answer him! Hu-dage, post a notice at once answering
him yes! Yes, it’s true! That paternity report is real, that Yang is the
shameless illegitimate son!”
 
Yang Bo’s fair face went white, as if he’d been struck by lightning. He
froze under everyone’s gazes.
 
Hu Zhenyu said, “Huaixin, calm down a little.”
 

85
“My brother got people to do the paternity test in secret, he showed it
to me earlier, it can’t be wrong. That report must be the one they took
from my big brother’s bag. It’s irrefutable proof, there’s nothing to
quibble about, Hu-dage! Didn’t they say they already knew the
answer before they asked! My dad is dead, the dead don’t care about
their reputations. Forget about not washing your dirty linen in public,
my brother’s safety is the most critical thing!”
 
Luo Wenzhou’s left ear was full of Zhou Huaixin’s screams, while in
his right ear, Director Lu was categorically ordering, “You have to
contain this at once, or you’ll be writing me a self-examination when
you get back!”
 
Zhou Huaixin pushed aside a police officer next to him and went to
snatch his own tablet, lying on a table. “If you won’t post it, then I
will!”
 
“Huaixin!”
 
“Don’t be rash, Mr. Zhou!”
 
In the whole scene, only Fei Du remained aloof, wholly uninterested
in whether Zhou Huaijin lived or died, indifferent to pressure exerted
by any superiors. He was neither stressed nor impressed; he calmly
looked up and said to Zhou Huaixin, “Zhou-xiong, I advise you not to
ask or answer anything, or afterwards it won’t be a matter of this sort
of immaterial little question. What do you think of that?”
 
Zhou Huaixin said blankly, “Then…then what do I do?”
 
Fei Du ignored him, saying quietly to a technician next to him,
“Isolate the audio from when Zhou Huaijin was kicked down. I think I
just heard that the ‘floor’ sounded hollow.”
 
Hearing this, Luo Wenzhou paused at once and hung up on Director
Lu without a word. He strode up to the screen in one step. “Let me

86
see the whole thing from the beginning!”
 
All the images once again quickly flashed across the screen.
 
Fei Du said, “Aside from when the screen went black, the camera lens
was very close to the victim. There wasn’t a single full-body shot. It
could be that there isn’t enough space, and if they filmed anywhere
else, it would easily reveal the victim’s location… Oh, the camera lens
only moves side-to-side in a rather limited scope.”
 
Luo Wenzhou again had the video stop at the part where Zhou
Huaijin was kicked to the ground; the camera had only pointed down
at him!
 
Luo Wenzhou put his hand on the shoulder of the technician next to
him. “Can you estimate how far the camera moves side-to-side?”
 
“About a meter fifty… Not over a meter eighty at most.”
 
“Captain Luo, listen to this bit!”
 
When Zhou Huaijin fell along with his chair, there was a very strange
banging sound, hollow, with a faint echo.
 
A hollow ‘floor,’ only a meter-something wide…
 
Fei Du spread his hands. “Is it impossible it’s in the trailer of a truck?”
 
Before he’d finished, Luo Wenzhou was already contacting Tao Ran.
“The kidnappers may be in the trailer of a truck that’s stopping and
starting. Search the security cameras around Baisha, put up a
roadblock on all exits out of the city, stop any suspicious trucks and
search them.”
 
Without putting down the phone, he called Lang Qiao on another
one. “How’s it going over there?”

87
 
Lang Qiao quickly said, “I’ve locked in on the Hengda Conglomerate.
Hengda’s position is close to the Zhou Clan’s. They’re a major local
power, and there’s been serious conflict between the two companies
since Zhou Junmao moved operations back into this country. The only
time they attempted to reconcile and collaborate on a project, Zhou
Junmao quashed it midway. Hengda has a subsidiary fund. Last night,
they made no moves, as if they hadn’t reacted yet, but first thing this
morning they suddenly went into action in the foreign markets,
planning on the Zhou Clan stock falling…”
 
Before Lang Qiao had finished her report, Hu Zhenyu loudly cried,
“What are you doing!”
 
Luo Wenzhou turned his head. Hu Zhenyu had been distracted, and
Zhou Huaixin had snatched his phone away while the screen hadn’t
yet locked after being used and quickly used Hu Zhenyu’s account to
access the Zhou Clan’s official website.
 
By the time he was held down, he’d already posted the word “yes.”
 

88
CHAPTER 67 - Macbeth VIII
 
“A truck?” Tao Ran said into one of Luo Wenzhou’s ears. “Lao Luo, it’s
unavoidable for vehicles coming into the outer ring to pass through
Baisha. It’s all trucks coming and going. Should we search the ones
coming into the city or the ones leaving? The kidnappers spirited him
away in a vehicle—do you think Zhou Huaijin is still in Yan City?”
 
Lang Qiao meanwhile said into his other ear, “Boss, should I bring the
person in charge back to the City Bureau now, or investigate their
outgoing and incoming e-mails first?”
 
Behind him, a flustered and exasperated Hu Zhenyu was pointing at
Zhou Huaixin. “You… You… What are you doing! You’re too
impulsive!”
 
Next to him, Yang Bo’s face and neck were all red. “I’m going to
report you for damaging my reputation!”
 
Luo Wenzhou: “…”
 
Chicken Soup for the Soul often posed the question, “Why do humans
have two ears and one mouth?” Now he thought he’d understood—
even if they’d had four ears, it wouldn’t necessarily have been
enough.
 
Fei Du’s gaze flitted over Hu Zhenyu, then fell on Zhou Huaixin.
 
Zhou Huaixin straightened his neck. On his opium-addict’s face, aside
from the eyeliner, something else appeared, indistinct and
indescribable, that made him actually appear rather human.
 
“I’m not worried about what they say outside, and I’m not worried
about any…what do you call it…any losses of market value on any
markets—I don’t understand those things, Hu-dage, and I don’t want

89
to understand them. I only know that I have no one close to me but
my brother.” Having finished this proclamation, Zhou Huaixin’s voice
fell away, and he stared into Hu Zhenyu’s eyes.
 
Hu Zhenyu for some reason avoided his gaze.
 
Zhou Huaixin turned up the corners of his mouth in a half-smile; it
was unclear whether he was mocking others or himself. “This won’t
sound good, but there are some things that if the old man did them,
there would always come a day when they’d be dug up. Paper can’t
contain a fire. You don’t really think you’ll have eternal glory?”
 
Hu Zhenyu in all likelihood had never in his life experienced elegant
words coming out of Zhou Huaixin’s mouth. For a time he was
speechless.
 
“Can you find my brother within ten minutes?” Zhou Huaixin’s gaze
swept over the surrounding police. “Then go look for him! What the
fuck are you all staring at me for? I’m the old man’s legitimate son,
and I’m also one of his heirs. I’m deciding to let the dead be sacrificed
a little for the sake of the living. Don’t I have that right?”
 
These words rather sounded like they made sense.
 
“As long as my brother is all right,” Zhou Huaixin proclaimed, his eyes
red, “I’ll announce that my dad’s an asshole. A person has to be
adaptable—so I’ll be an asshole’s spawn. Even if my father is
conscious underground, he’ll know who wanted to hurt him, who
wants to hurt our family. The blame won’t fall on me!”
 
Hu Zhenyu’s forehead broke out into hot sweat.
 
Just then, someone coughed heavily at the door and a voice coldly
said, “Your family really does belong to you two brothers, but the
conglomerate doesn’t. How many business partners and small
shareholders does such a large operation involve, huh? Even the old

90
man didn’t dare to make peremptory decisions while he was living.
What are you supposed to be, wretch?”
 
Luo Wenzhou turned his head and saw several Zhou Clan employees
scatter in a flurry from the door and an emaciated old man slowly
walk in. He was less than 1.7 meters tall and a little stooped, making
him look smaller and skinnier. Profound wrinkles came down from
his nose to split his chin into three parts. The corners of his mouth
hung down heavily, as if he’d never smiled in his life.
 
Seeing the newcomer, Hu Zhenyu subconsciously stood up straight.
“Venerable Zheng.”
 
Yang Bo sucked in a deep breath and quickly walked over, curling up
his tall and strong body like a little eunuch to lean close to the man.
“You’re here at last, President Zheng.”
 
Zhou Huaixin stared at the old man with a sneer on his face, saying
nothing.
 
Luo Wenzhou understood that this was Zhou Junmao’s deputy, Zheng
Kaifeng.
 
Zheng Kaifeng treated the Zhou house as his own territory,
disregarding the roomful of police, unhurriedly coming in. He looked
all around and in a glance understood who was in charge of the
scene. He went straight up to Luo Wenzhou and reached out a hand
towards him. Very heartfelt, he said, “This is a disgrace. It’s put you to
so much trouble.”
 
On first meeting, Luo Wenzhou was choked by Zheng Kaifeng’s
presumption—originally it had been the police investigating a case,
and the whole Zhou Clan, including Zheng Kaifeng, were suspects.
With a few words he’d twisted the situation to make it seem as if the
Zhou Clan was opposing a nameless evil, and they’d happened to find
a crowd of police officers to act as hired thugs.

91
 
Luo Wenzhou shook his hand rather perfunctorily and calmly twisted
the subject back around. “Pernicious criminal cases are within the
scope of our duty. It’s just work, no question of trouble or no trouble.
Our first aim now is to rescue the hostage. With that as our
foundation, we’ll also do our best to reduce this case’s social impact.
When it’s necessary, we’ll have to trouble the family members to
cooperate with us.”
 
The corner of Zheng Kaifeng’s eye twitched faintly, and his expression
became heavy.
 
Luo Wenzhou was naturally capable of dealing with everyone; he was
immune to all kinds of high positions of power. Wholly uncaring, he
drew back his hand and turned to Zhou Huaixin. “Especially young
Mr. Zhou. We understand the family’s feelings. If there’s really no
other way, for the safety of the hostage, there’s no harm in giving way
to the kidnappers. But I hope that’ll be the last step. Your
announcement should wait until the last moment of the countdown.”
 
Zhou Huaixin gave a sharp snort.
 
“And then there’s President Hu.” Smiling, Luo Wenzhou turned to Hu
Zhenyu. “President Hu says that young Mr. Zhou is too impetuous,
but you’re pretty hasty yourself. You were already logged into the
website’s back-end.—As I see it, everyone should stop talking all over
each other and go give your statements.—Let’s have some people
over here to separate them and take them away.”
 
A few criminal policemen came up at this and, brooking no
argument, separated the crowd of people constituting the real power
in the Zhou Clan.
 
In this air-conditioned room in early autumn, it seemed that the
sweat at Hu Zhenyu’s temples couldn’t be wiped away.
 

92
Zheng Kaifeng looked coldly at Luo Wenzhou. “Young man, you’ve
got some style.”
 
Luo Wenzhou grinned at him. “I think so, too. Thank you for the
praise, though in my capacity as a person in charge of handling major
criminal cases, I don’t look forward to serving you again. Sir, please
come this way.”
 
Having disposed of this crowd of people doing more harm than good,
he turned his head and met Fei Du’s not-quite-smiling gaze as he
stared at him. Encountering his eyes, Luo Wenzhou’s heart
constricted. He felt that Fei Du’s unmatched peach blossom eyes
really were supernaturally endowed; give him a powerful enough
telescope and he’d be able to look up Chang’e’s skirts.
 
“Say something useful,” Luo Wenzhou said exhaustedly to Fei Du. “All
those wishing to praise my good looks or express their infatuation
can line up in the back.”
 
Fei Du said, “I wanted to pass on that the internet police have a lead
on the people who posted the video.”
 
Luo Wenzhou had been prepared for a protracted campaign against
psychotic kidnappers. Hearing this, he froze. “So fast?”
 
“That’s right, so you’d better not have any grand expectations.” Fei
Du paused; then some mood caused him to add, “Shixiong.”
 
Luo Wenzhou: “…”
 
How could he use such an ordinary tone of voice to speak such an
ordinary form of address and yet make it sound so sexual? It was
really incomprehensible.
 
While the internet police were excitedly crying out, “We’ve got him!”
the kidnapper, secure in the knowledge of his own security, uploaded

93
a third recording.
 
This time the camera lens had actually been drawn further away,
showing Zhou Huaijin’s whole body, and at the same time letting
those watching understand the hostage’s location at a glance.—The
whole space was plastered with black plastic cloth. It was less than
1.8 meters wide, and the height was also very limited. At a visual
estimate it was only the height of a grown man. It really did look like
a truck’s trailer!
 
Fei Du stared, thoughtfully rubbed his chin, and looked up at Luo
Wenzhou. Luo Wenzhou understood what he meant at once; he
frowned slightly.—Before, the kidnappers had filmed very close to
Zhou Huaijin, carefully avoiding anything that could provide a clue to
their surroundings, including during the segment when Zhou Huaijin
had been beaten.
 
Only when they’d determined that the kidnappers might be in the
trailer of a truck did the other side send them a film like this…
 
Had the kidnappers used their magic powers to install listening
devices in the Zhou house, or was someone in the room in real-time
contact with them?
 
Luo Wenzhou said quietly to the people next to him, “Get everyone in
the house under control, including the cook, housekeeper, gardener,
and anyone else going in and out. Hurry!”
 
In the video, Zhou Huaijin was looking even sorrier than before.
Someone had splashed cold water all over his face, and it was
dripping down; however firm a temperament he may have had, he
couldn’t work his courage up anymore. He seemed to have been
disciplined into submission. This time, he didn’t waste any words.
Staring in the direction of the screen, he flatly read out the
kidnapper’s letter. “It’s good that you can admit it. Now I’ll ask you
the second question. Same rules, ten minutes. Why was the famous

94
entrepreneur and ‘philanthropist’ Zhou Junmao so public-spirited?
Are the three public welfare funds under his name for grandstanding
or for laundering money? Did Zhou Junmao—Zhou Dalong really
think he could change his name and become a nobleman and that no
one would know what was under his skin?”
 
The malicious video cut off abruptly, and the countdown returned.
 
The atmosphere in the whole Zhou residence instantly tensed.
Everyone, including the household staff, was separated.
 
At the same time, the internet police finally locked onto the
transmitter of the video. Lang Qiao, just then at the general
headquarters of the Hengda Conglomerate, received the news. She
only glanced at it, then took a pair of handcuffs out of her pocket and
put them on the person in charge, who had been leading them in
circles. “They can’t escape responsibility. Search!”
 
Ten minutes was both very short and very long. In reality, it was only
long enough for people to walk up a few flights of stairs, but on the
internet, it was long enough for information to travel around the
globe countless times.
 
In a short time, all kinds of information sprang up, the true and false
hard to distinguish. There were people who stood up to solemnly
swear that Zhou Junmao’s former name had been Zhou Dalong; they
even posted photographs, attaching beneath them the whole story of
Zhou Junmao leaving the country to seek refuge with family, running
errands and doing manual labor for distant relations, and starting a
collaborative enterprise with his first savings. In the end, the most
curious thing was why the other founder of the Zhou Clan had
vanished from the scene.
 
Next, the topic moved from Zhou Huaijin’s kidnapping back to Zhou
Junmao’s unusual car crash. The old philanthropist’s noble and
prestigious image of many years came tumbling down in the wake of

95
one video. Some were saying he laundered money, some were saying
he was a traitor to his country, and there were even some saying he
had engaged in cross-border human-trafficking… It was a
competition of the powers of the imagination of urban legend.
 
As a focal point of attention, Dong Qian, the responsible driver in
Zhou Junmao’s car crash, of course couldn’t escape unscathed. People
had quickly gone back through eight generations of his ancestors. It
was as if the seeds of conspiracy were buried in each strand of his
hair.
 
“Captain Luo, it’s nearly been ten minutes.”
 
“Take over their official website’s bulletin board and issue a response
to the kidnappers under the name of the police force.” Luo Wenzhou
paused. “Say that the financial investigators have already gotten
involved in the investigation and are currently verifying the relevant
circumstances. Ask them not to spread unfounded rumors. If they
have definite proof, they’re welcome to report it. Warn the kidnappers
to surrender themselves before they bring about any grave
consequences.”
 
“That won’t work, boss! The number of visitors to the Zhou Clan’s
official website skyrocketed, it’s crashed!”
 
Luo Wenzhou: “…”
 
The kidnappers’ countdown was down to the last minute.
 
A call came from Lang Qiao. “Boss, we’ve found the e-mail where the
Hengda Conglomerate bought the promotion, and a portion of the
payment vouchers. It really was them uploading the kidnappers’
videos…”
 
Luo Wenzhou said, “Don’t tell me they don’t know who the
kidnappers are.”

96
 
“They say they don’t know who the kidnappers are,” Lang Qiao said
quickly. “This morning, after Zhou Huaijin disappeared, Hengda’s
public relations department received a mysterious e-mail with a few
blurry photographs attached. They thought it was a fake at the time.
They’re not very fastidious over at Hengda. With Zhou Junmao dying
yesterday, they wanted to take the opportunity to muddy the
waters…”
 
“Then the person who sent them the videos said the images were
composites. They believed it and posted them. At most they’re guilty
of malicious commercial competition, right?”
 
Lang Qiao said, “…ah, that’s what they say.”
 
“My ass! What are they doing using so many anti-tracking measures
for a practical joke? Bring in everyone related to it! Keep tracking the
person who sent the e-mails!” Luo Wenzhou glanced at the
countdown. Like flowing water, the time was passing unfeelingly. The
Zhou Clan’s official website was still in a state of paralysis, wholly
unmoving!
 
“Look, boss, we found this on the chauffeur who drove Yang Bo
here.”
 
Luo Wenzhou accepted a cell phone. He saw that the suspicious
chauffeur was logged into an obviously newly-registered Weibo
account. The most recent status update openly read: “The police
know that the ‘meat’ is in a truck.”
 
The countdown hit zero—
 

97
CHAPTER 68 - Macbeth IX
 
The Zhou Clan’s official website had crashed, and nearly
simultaneously, Lang Qiao had arrested the person posting the videos
for the kidnappers. The internet police were racing against the clock
to use the incoming and outgoing e-mails to track down the sender.
 
But now the delicate balance and communications channel between
the kidnappers and the police had been severed.
 
The entire internet was extending its antennae, sailing mightily
against the current through time and rumor.
 
In this instant, Zhou Junmao was no longer a person. His whole life,
his experiences and his sex scandals, had become an open book,
every punctuation mark of it publicly circulated, laid bare before the
gazes of the multitude, supplying material for people to sob and chew
over, their judgments running rampant—
 
“It holds together. Who is this illegitimate son that the Zhou Clan has
officially acknowledged?”
 
“An account of Zhou Junmao’s mistresses.”
 
“Zhou Clan A-shares tumbled when the market opened; an inquiry
into the different regulations for A-shares in the Hong Kong market.”
 
“Why did the Zhou Clan’s mysterious other founder die young?”
 
“Zhou Junmao’s original name was Zhou Dalong; his whole life was
the rise of an underdog.”
 
“Was Zhou Junmao’s late wife actually his cousin’s widow? Famous
wives in history.”
 

98
“An illegitimate son took out a hit on his father. It’s almost like the
plot of Oedipus.”
 
…
 
And so on and so forth, without exception, covering heaven and
earth. Aside from prohibiting the character “Zhou,” expelling it from
the Book of Family Names, there was no way to delete all of it.
 
On the kidnappers’ countdown, zero minutes and zero seconds
flashed incessantly. After the Hengda Conglomerate’s shit-stirrers had
been arrested, the kidnappers had shut their mouths to the outside
world, inauspiciously maintaining silence.
 
Countless pairs of eyes were fixed on the unmoving webpage.
 
Luo Wenzhou lifted Yang Bo’s chauffeur’s collar. “It’s been a long time
since I’ve seen a criminal bold enough to pass secret messages right
under the noses of the police. Friend, you’re the embodiment of
valor!”
 
The chauffeur was around thirty, with regular features that looked
rather proper. But they were “regular features” that were entirely
unmemorable. He’d evidently come in with Yang Bo, but it had been
ages before anyone had noticed him.
 
Now that he’d suddenly been seized, the chauffeur’s legs were
trembling so much he could hardly stand up. “I… I didn’t do
anything, I just…posted on Weibo…”
 
“Using a newly-registered account to post thieves’ cant. Who’s it for?”
Luo Wenzhou swiftly handcuffed him. “Are you keeping a diary, or
expressing your feelings towards empty space?”
 
Fei Du took a few steps back to avoid impacting Luo Wenzhou’s
dramatic capabilities. He shook his head, full of sympathy. “I know

99
the person who incited you is in this house. Perhaps he’s even
watching you. Think clearly, sir. If Zhou Huaijin has an accident now,
your situation will change. What did he give you that you’re willing
to give up your own life to take the blame for him?”
 
When he’d spoken, someone called, “Captain Luo, the kidnappers are
moving again.”
 
Luo Wenzhou: “…”
 
They acted as soon as he’d mentioned “having an accident.” Fei Du
was amazing. If it were only possible to sew his crow’s mouth shut,
Luo Wenzhou thought he would have filed an iron bar down into a
needle.
 
Lacking the Hengda Conglomerate’s technical support, the
kidnappers seemed to be at their wits’ end. In turmoil, they posted a
fourth video.
 
This time, it was only a few dozen seconds long. The camera was
shaking furiously, focused on a man in silhouette. The man appeared
to be one of the kidnappers. He was wrapped head to toe in black
cloth, not showing a single strand of hair. He held the camera with
one hand, filming his other hand—that hand was holding a boning
knife.
 
Zhou Huaijin was desperately curled up, the terror in his voice about
to solidify. “I don’t know, I don’t have anything to do with the Asian
business, my dad and President Zheng handled all of it, I really don’t
understand anything about the funds… Stay away! Stay away from
me—ah!”
 
Just then, another voice came from outside the frame. It seemed to
be the knife-holding kidnapper’s accomplice. His voice, through the
voice changing machine, was hurried. “Stop filming, hurry up! They’ll
catch up soon!”

100
 
The knife-holding kidnapper completely ignored him, slowly lifting
the knife in his hand.
 
Zhou Huaijin seethed like a live fish, at last managing to stand on his
legs, which were tied to two legs of the chair. He tottered backwards,
but unfortunately this young master’s hind-brain wasn’t very well-
developed. He tripped on something and lost his center of gravity. He
screamed and fell to one side, out of the frame.
 
In the moment he fell, the camera lens flashed, as if the knife-holding
kidnapper had struck.
 
Everyone’s hearts thumped, including Luo Wenzhou’s.
 
The next instant, the camera steadied again. Because Zhou Huaijin
had fallen, the knife had narrowly missed him, cutting through the
black cloth firmly covering the walls of the trailer, suddenly cutting a
fissure in it with a tremendous ripping sound, as if it had had the
force to cut a person apart.
 
The knife-holding kidnapper clicked his tongue, seeming rather
regretful.
 
Behind him, his accomplice was rushed. “Hurry up! Aren’t you
finished yet?”
 
Luo Wenzhou immediately raised a hand to block Fei Du’s line of
sight—
 
“No! No! Slow down! I’ll tell you, I’ll tell you… You’re right! You said
everything right!” In the video, Zhou Huaijin was panicked enough
that he wasn’t choosing his words carefully.
 
Hearing this, the knife-holding kidnapper paused, gently tilting his
head.

101
 
His flustered accomplice swore. He turned his head and seemed to
open the trailer’s doors. A ray of light shone in, falling on Zhou
Huaijin’s miserable face.
 
Zhou Huaijin’s eyes were blinded by the sunlight. He struggled
futilely to climb up the wall as he breathlessly said, “Domestically,
there’s three, three public welfare funds, only one is properly
operated to fool people, the others are cover for money laundering
and tax evasion. Cross-border supervision of funds is full of holes, it’s
hard to investigate. This is absolutely true, I have proof! What else do
you want to know, I’ll tell you everything!”
 
The knife-holding kidnapper patiently waited for him to finish and
nodded in apparent satisfaction. Then, without warning, he stabbed.
 
“Ah!”
 
A heartrending scream came from the image. Before the anxious
watchers could see what had happened, the whole trailer shook
violently, as if the vehicle had suddenly started to move. The video
came to an abrupt end.
 
Fei Du patted the back of Luo Wenzhou’s hand and turned to the
handcuffed chauffeur, spreading his hands towards the terrified man.
“You see? What was I saying?”
 
The chauffeur’s eyes rolled up. He was trying to faint, but
unfortunately Luo Wenzhou was categorically unwilling to give him
the opportunity. He took him by the neck, lifted him, and gave him a
shake. “I’ll ask you again. Who are you working for? If you keep
holding back, you’ll be one of the principal offenders.”
 
The chauffeur’s eyes flickered all over the place. He was frightened
out of his wits. “I…I…”
 

102
Luo Wenzhou let go immediately and loudly said, “Look into his
personal accounts, assets, and close relatives, including children, as
well as everyone he’s recently contacted on his cell phone, landline,
and social media—I don’t fucking believe this!”
 
“President Yang! It was President Yang!” the chauffeur cried out.
“Don’t go after my kids, we don’t know anything! It’s all what
President Yang ordered me to do!”
 
“President Yang?” Fei Du calmly leaned on a rosewood table. “Yang
Bo? You mean that kidnapping Zhou Huaijin and revealing his own
identity as an illegitimate son was a performance put on by Yang Bo?
What did he tell you to do?”
 
The chauffeur collapsed listlessly onto a chair, his elbows resting on
his knees. Looking for a hole to crawl into, he held his head with his
cuffed hands and quietly said, “He…told me to register a new
account and post status updates to tell them ‘over there’ what you
guys were doing, so they could run in time.”
 
When he spoke the words “in time,” Fei Du’s eyes narrowed slightly.
 
Luo Wenzhou quickly followed up, “So do you know where the
kidnappers are?”
 
“N-no… I don’t know.”
 
“Nonsense!”
 
“I really don’t know, really! I’ve always worked for President Hu, I’m
not one of President Yang’s people. He couldn’t trust me entirely. I
posted whatever I heard, let them judge for themselves whether it
was right or not. I only know they’re still in Yan City, because a truck
could be searched going out of it, the risk would be greater. It was
better to hide in plain sight. Any, anyway…”
 

103
Fei Du said, “Anyway, there was you to pass information to them.”
 
The chauffeur looked up at him, then quickly avoided his gaze. “They
said they’d find a suitable place and drive the truck with him in it into
the river, and the kidnappers themselves would break out of the
windows and go ashore—they’d run away towards some deserted
wild place. When they’d crossed the water, not even a dog would be
able to find them, and no…no one would be the wiser.”
 
Luo Wenzhou turned away and picked up his phone. “Tao Ran, look
for a truck with about a two-ton trailer, from last night to early this
morning. Eliminate passing vehicles… Right, the kidnappers are still
around the Baisha river basin, eliminate the places within a ten-
kilometer range where the water is shallow, eliminate villages and
inhabited places, eliminate places with relatively level terrain…”
 
Tao Ran quickly said, “Then there’s only the shelter forest in the
northeast, less than a kilometer from me.”
 
Luo Wenzhou said, “Blast the sirens. There are two kidnappers. It’s
easy for them to disagree in a stressful situation, perhaps the hostage
still has a chance.”
 
“This does sound like a rather satisfying story. Yang Bo is the
illegitimate son Zhou Junmao refuses to acknowledge. He schemes
his way into the upper levels and find a suitable opportunity to
dispose of Zhou Junmao, then kidnaps Zhou Huaijin, forcing the
Zhou Clan to officially recognize him as an illegitimate son,
legitimizing him as an heir to Zhou Junmao’s legacy.” Fei Du took off
his glasses and wiped them, continuing to question the chauffeur.
“Bear with my curiosity. What did Yang Bo promise you?”
 
“My son…” The chauffeur forced the words out with difficulty. “My
son had to go abroad for medical treatment, I had no money and no
connections…”
 

104
Fei Du shook his head in apparent disappointment. “That old chestnut
—”
 
Luo Wenzhou put the phone down and gave him a warning glance to
make him mind what he said.
 
Fei Du’s tone changed. “I’m saying, Yang Bo could give you what you
needed, but can it really be that Zhou Huaijin couldn’t? Even Zhou
Huaixin would do. Why would you rely solely on Yang Bo? When you
flap your lips and say Yang Bo incited you, how are we to know that
you aren’t framing him?”
 
Luo Wenzhou immediately followed with another question.
“Colluding with outsiders, publicizing the Zhou Clan’s scandals,
beating down his own company’s stock price—what benefit is there to
Yang Bo? Is he harming others without benefiting himself?”
 
“N-no!” The chauffeur shook his head wildly. “As soon as they
acknowledged that he was an illegitimate son, the official website
would crash—if it didn’t crash on its own, they’d find someone to
make it crash. No one would be able to get on when the time came,
or post any statement. No matter what the kidnappers asked, the
company wouldn’t admit it, and it would be an opportunity to get
rid…get rid of P-president Zhou. Otherwise, why wouldn’t the
kidnappers make them post the announcement on the company’s
official Weibo?”
 
“Afterwards, they’d only need to grieve for Zhou Huaijin’s demise,
denounce the demented kidnappers, put down all those unanswered
questions as slander. After the masses had finished making merry,
they’d remember ‘political correctness’ and would of course get in
line to condemn violence and sympathize with the victims. The
company wouldn’t really suffer a serious injury. With Zhou Junmao
and Zhou Huaijin gone, the only one left would be the little skeleton
Zhou Huaixin, who isn’t worth mentioning. There’s no need to say

105
whose hands the company would end up in.” Fei Du spread his
hands. “It makes perfect sense. I suppose it sounds very satisfactory.”
 
The chauffeur stared numbly at him, feeling that there was
something behind Fei Du’s words.
 
“Take him away, back to the bureau!”
 
In the Baisha River Valley, a motorcade of police cars howling fit to
send the mountains tumbling down divided up, heading swift as the
wind towards the shelter forest in the northeast, producing almost an
atmosphere of siege in the peaceful open country.
 
After the autumn rain a few days ago, the uninhabited open country
was full of mud, the soil having soaked in all the water.
 
“Deputy Tao, there are fresh tire tracks!”
 
Tao Ran wiped some sweat away. “Follow them!”
 
The water in the Baisha River had risen slightly, and the sound of the
water grew louder and louder as they followed the river. The
indistinct tire tracks quickly led them to the riverbank.
 
“There!”
 
“In the water, in the water!”
 
A white truck was bobbing up and down in the Baisha River, slowly
sinking towards the depths as it was pushed along by the rapid
current—
 
In the Zhou residence, aside from Yang Bo, who had been taken away
for individual interrogation, everyone held their breath and
concentrated, waiting to hear word. Everyone’s expressions were
different; everyone had an axe to grind. But Zhou Huaixin, displaying

106
his true feelings, tightly clutched the arms of a wooden chair, his non-
mainstream long fingernails gouging the wood, making it creak.
 
Each second seemed to be drawn out two weeks long.
 
“Captain Luo.” Just then, Tao Ran’s voice came somewhat indistinctly
from among the sounds of rushing water. “We’ve gone into the
container, and he isn’t there. I don’t know if the kidnappers took him
or if the water swept him away.”
 
Zheng Kaifeng’s face sank slightly. Hu Zhenyu’s back stiffened.
 
Zhou Huaixin stood up at once, banging his hip against the solid
wood table but not feeling it at all. There was no trace of blood left in
his lips, like a pale clown on the morning after.
 
“Keep looking,” Luo Wenzhou said heavily.
 
“Deputy Tao, look there!”
 
The kidnappers must have been alarmed by the police sirens, driven
the truck into the water and ran. The container hadn’t been tightly
closed, and Zhou Huaijin, inside it, had floated out along with the
wooden chair under him. Like a shoddy life buoy, the wooden chair
was drifting like a leaf among a storm, dragging a man who may
have been dead or alive.
 
“I’ve got him!”
 
“Hold tight, hold tight! Don’t let go! Wait a minute… He’s still
breathing!”
 
Twenty minutes later, the news that Zhou Huaijin had been rescued
arrived at the Zhou residence—the knife had cut Zhou Huaijin’s leg,
but luckily it hadn’t hit anything vital. The panicked kidnapper hadn’t
allowed his accomplice to carefully attend to murder and

107
dismemberment. He’d been alarmed by the distant police sirens and
impatiently stepped on the gas, driving the truck into the Baisha
River. Then the two kidnappers had fled in an unknown direction,
and Zhou Huaijin had floated out into the river.
 
Hu Zhenyu heaved a sigh of relief. Zheng Kaifeng silently closed his
eyes, perhaps reciting a prayer or something.
 
Zhou Huaixin collapsed onto the ground and couldn’t get up for a
long time. Then he tottered into the bathroom and was violently ill.
 
Someone came through the door after him. Zhou Huaixin thought it
was the housekeeper. Gasping, he closed his eyes and reached out a
hand, hoarsely saying, “Get me some water.”
 
An opened water bottle was placed into his hand.
 
Zhou Huaixin poured it into his mouth, then heard the person behind
him speak. “That bad, Zhou-xiong? Didn’t you already know the
outcome?”
 
Taken by surprise, Zhou Huaixin gulped the mouthful of water he
was using to rinse his mouth.
 

108
CHAPTER 69 - Macbeth X
 
“Master Fei.” Zhou Huaixin rather stiffly turned his head and forced a
smile. “What did you say?”
 
Fei Du looked back. People were chaotically going back and forth all
over the place, and no one was looking their way, so he closed the
bathroom door. The lights in the bathroom were dim, deepening the
lines of his eyes and brow, making him look like a sharp ink painting.
 
“Don’t pretend. I didn’t just meet you yesterday.” Fei Du leaned
against the door, very relaxed, looking at Zhou Huaixin with an
almost smile. “You only saw your dad a few times a year, and you
never cared at all about your family’s property or any legitimate or
illegitimate sons. From yesterday up to now, I think the only true
words that came out of your mouth were what you said when you
snatched President Hu’s phone.”
 
Zhou Huaixin turned and backed up against the sink, his expression
grim, looking at him silently.
 
“Even if Yang Bo really was your dad’s illegitimate son, he wouldn’t
need to put on such a production to be acknowledged. With your old
man calmly lying in the morgue, he could easily have come back to
this country and requested a judicial appraisal of paternity. What’s he
getting at with all this kidnapping and murder? Does he have nothing
better to do?”
 
“Could he get a judicial appraisal just because he wanted to? Are you
acting like me and my brother are dead? We’d burn the old man and
not give him a single hair.” Zhou Huaixin sneered. “Wasn’t he doing it
to get money? For someone from such a humble background, he’s
pretty quick.”
 

109
“Those three funds being revealed online is enough to land your
company in the thick of it. Even if it’s false, an investigation will still
hurt you deeply. If he was really after your family’s money, he
wouldn’t harm others without benefiting himself like this.”
 
“I already said that I’m only a painter. I don’t understand you
businessmen and your business.” Zhou Huaixin spread his hands
impatiently. Skinny as he was, he tried to squeeze past Fei Du to open
the door and go out.
 
Fei Du grabbed his wrist as he reached for the door handle. Zhou
Huaixin gave a start, feeling that Fei Du’s ice-cold fingers were like a
snake, tightly clamped onto his pulse, beating wildly beneath his
unmoved appearance. While Fei Du was rather of the “idle of limb,
unable to tell grains apart” type, he still had enough strength to use
against a sesame stalk like Zhou Huaixin. With a light shove, he
pressed him against a nearby cabinet.
 
Zhou Huaixin said, “You…”
 
“Shh—” Fei Du raised a finger, interrupting him. “Quiet, the police
are outside.—As soon as that unfortunate chauffeur opened his
mouth, I knew it wasn’t Yang Bo. You and I both know how these
things work. When you buy someone to act as a scapegoat, you don’t
leave evidence. A few years on, you give him more money than he’d
earn in his life, and when he gets out, he’ll still have his job. It isn’t a
death sentence; it’s about the same as being sent out on assignment
to an inhospitable location for a few years. No scapegoat is going to
give up his master. We don’t have any special system to protect
implicated witnesses in our country. Even if he gives up his master, he
won’t necessarily escape criminal responsibility. Never mind sitting in
jail for no reason, his family members will be impacted, too. This isn’t
established practice.”
 
Zhou Huaixin squeezed out a few words with difficulty. “I don’t know
about your established practices.”

110
 
“Don’t play dumb.” Fei Du shook his head. “When we’d just guessed
that your brother might be in a truck, the kidnappers immediately
abandoned caution and stopped keeping the camera close to hide
where they were. Was that because they thought the police were too
stupid? They were afraid we wouldn’t find the traitor, and suspicion
wouldn’t fall on Yang Bo?”
 
Zhou Huaixin laughed coldly. “You mean someone framed Yang Bo.
Kidnap my big brother, and at the same time get rid of the
illegitimate son—I understand. However you look at it, I’m the only
one who would benefit. So I’m a suspect now? Then why don’t you
tell the police?”
 
Fei Du loosened the hand holding him and looked at him calmly.
 
“Go on.” While Zhou Huaixin’s voice was very low, his face had
recovered its deranged carelessness. He laughed flippantly at Fei Du.
“Lakes of wine and forests of meat don’t breed any kind of feeling. I
don’t blame you. If I go to prison because of you, I’ll have plenty to
boast about when I get out. It’s a whole grand game, and I’m a
mighty performance artist!”
 
Fei Du sighed gently.
 
Grinning, Zhou Huaixin asked, “What are you sighing about?
Regretting you haven’t slept with me yet?”
 
Fei Du said, “I couldn’t stomach you.”
 
“Naturally.” Even in these circumstances, Zhou Huaixin still had
leisure to be self-satisfied. “Your out-of-date aesthetic sensibilities
certainly couldn’t stomach my type of avant-garde…”
 
“I couldn’t stomach your type of thinking so highly of yourself,
playing the fool while being a real idiot,” Fei Du flatly interrupted

111
him. “Zhou-xiong, is your big brother really Zhou Junmao’s own son?
How good is your relationship with him?”
 
The smile on Zhou Huaixin’s face stiffened at once. His hands
tightened on the door of the cabinet behind him. “Strange, Master
Fei. You just said I kidnapped my big brother and framed that son-of-
a-bitch, killing two birds with one stone. So why have you switched
to asking how good our relationship is? Babbling nonsensically like
this… Are you swooning at my beauty?”
 
Fei Du didn’t respond to his dried-up joke. He straightforwardly said,
“When the kidnappers issued the first question and you snatched
President Hu’s phone, his phone was logged into your official
website’s back-end.”
 
“That’s right. Amazing, Hu Zhenyu was pretending to be so calm and
steady, but actually he was already prepared to expose the matter of
the illegitimate son.” Zhou Huaixin clicked his tongue. “Of course I’d
try to preempt him. The more real feeling I displayed, the more I’d
avoid suspicion…”
 
“When I warned you to be careful about answering the kidnappers,
you clearly listened to me.” Fei Du ignored him entirely, continuing to
declaim. “But in the blink of an eye, there you went. Why?”
 
Zhou Huaixin raised a slender brow. “You’re asking me…”
 
“Because you’d seen Hu Zhenyu’s movements,” Fei Du said almost
inaudibly. “Your company’s management is standard. The official
website must have someone specially responsible for it. There must
be fixed procedures for posting any news. At any rate, it wouldn’t be
President Hu personally looking after it. The first time he personally
logged into the back-end, it didn’t accord with convention. This bit of
unconventionality confirmed certain of your guesses…”
 

112
Zhou Huaixin’s expression hung on his face like a mask, not moving a
muscle.
 
Fei Du paused briefly. “Your brother wasn’t kidnapped at all.”
 
Zhou Huaixin’s breath congealed. After a good while, he gave a sharp
laugh and shrugged as hard as he could, nearly swinging his skinny
neck off his shoulders. “President Fei, do you mean that all that bustle
you and the police did just now was only going along with some play-
acting?”
 
For a moment the two of them were silent. The screen of Fei Du’s
phone lit up, and the ringtone was about to play. He hung up without
even looking. “Why would two kidnappers who knew how use
business competition to stir up trouble, who knew how to
manufacture public opinion online, turn into turtles without shells as
soon as they lost contact with the Hengda Conglomerate and stop
taking any precautions not to be traced?
 
“The Baisha River Valley is large and sparsely populated. After
grabbing the hostage on the road from the airport, it makes sense to
choose that place to swap vehicles, but why would they continue to
linger there?
 
“The Baisha River is already within Yan City’s jurisdiction. Entering
the city from there, they wouldn’t be investigated or have their cards
checked, and the roadblocks were only put up after you called the
police. There was an interval of at least two hours between your
brother getting into the kidnappers’ car and you calling the police.
Why didn’t the kidnappers drive into the city, find a place with
enough privacy and space? Is the person behind the scenes who
plotted this kidnapping so poor he rattles? Can’t he afford to rent a
house?
 
“Was the traitor planted for us to catch so that the kidnappers could
get away in time, or to notify us to rescue your brother in time? Your

113
brother, faced with a vicious kidnapper, didn’t try to threaten him or
bribe him. He carefully answered with everything he knew about the
funds. Was that because he was afraid the Zhou Clan didn’t have
enough lawsuits on its hands?
 
“Two armed kidnappers hold a hostage entirely powerless to resist
them, they’re driving a truck in the wilderness, and the hostage
doesn’t manage to die and even gets smoothly rescued by the police?”
 
Zhou Huaixin, gone pale, made a futile effort to speak. “If you must
say that…”
 
Fei Du interrupted him. “Of course, the kidnappers contacted the
Hengda Conglomerate. Hengda took the lead in misleading the police
and promoting this thing. The kidnappers themselves didn’t
understand anything. You could say that the kidnappers chose the
Baisha River because they were familiar with the Baisha River Valley.
Anyway, the way it looks now, we won’t be able to catch the two of
them to verify. You could also say that your brother saw that the
kidnappers’ goal was to ruin the Zhou Clan, and he carefully
cooperated in order to save his life. And you could say that he didn’t
die in the end because of luck, his own good fortune—” Speaking one
syllable at a time, he said, “But with so many coincidences all put
together, adding in President Hu’s suspicious behavior—forgive my
limited imagination, Zhou-xiong, but this really is the only possibility
I can think of.”
 
Zhou Huaixin’s expression fluctuated several times. After a long time,
he said, “I was wrong, President Fei. Yours is the most impressive
imagination. I concede defeat.”
 
He put up a hand to stop Fei Du’s words. “Is Yang Bo all that?
According to what you’ve said, Zhou Huaijin kidnapped himself,
endured the knife and endured drowning, didn’t stint to discredit his
own company, all for the sake of framing an illegitimate son? Master
Fei, is he crazy, or are you crazy?”

114
 
“Zhou-xiong, do you really believe Yang Bo is your father’s
illegitimate son? Do you really believe that if there were such an
‘undiscovered talent,’ your father, for the sake of such immaterial
things as his dead wife and his reputation, would endure the
humiliation of keeping him by his side without daring to
acknowledge him?”
 
“If he’s not an illegitimate son, how could a stupid cunt like Yang Bo
get to his present position?” Zhou Huaixin suddenly raised his voice.
“Prostituting himself? What bad taste the old man had.”
 
“I also want to know,” said Fei Du, “whether that paternity report was
really identifying Yang Bo. You don’t know, right? Your brother
showed it to you.”
 
“You’re saying that under my dad and the Venerable Zheng’s
treacherous noses, he made up an illegitimate son out of whole
cloth.” Zhou Huaixin laughed and shook his head. He put a hand on
Fei Du’s shoulder. “Forget it, you’re better off saying I kidnapped my
big brother. It’s very kind of you, but you don’t need to exonerate me.
I’m not going to give myself up. If the police are clever enough, then
they can come and investigate. If you want to report me, then go
ahead. I don’t care.—Ah, gaining promotion and wealth at your dad’s
death really is one of the three great joys of human life.”
 
Having said this, Zhou Huaixin shook Fei Du off, pulled open the
bathroom door, and swaggered out, not looking in the least like a
schemer who had just been exposed. He announced with deep self-
satisfaction to the police looking all over for him, “You want me to
cooperate with the investigation, right? Fine, I’ll go back to the
bureau with you in a bit. What’s the rush, let me take off my makeup
first!”
 
Fei Du slowly walked out of the corner bathroom, looking
thoughtfully at Zhou Huaixin’s sinuous back.

115
 
Just then, a hand patted his left shoulder. As soon as Fei Du turned
his head, the hand grabbed his shoulder, pulling him so he stumbled.
 
“Having secret talks alone in the bathroom with a person involved in
the case?” Luo Wenzhou said, staring fixedly into his eyes. “You’d
better give me a written explanation.—Also, why didn’t you pick up
when I called you just now?”
 
Fei Du smiled, avoiding the larger issue. “Catching me cheating,
Captain Luo?”
 
“Fei Du.” Luo Wenzhou sighed, suddenly reaching out and taking Fei
Du by the chin, very quietly saying into his ear, “Do you know you’re
very annoying like this?”
 
Somewhat astonished, Fei Du raised his eyebrows.
 
“When you’re holding a chicken leg and aren’t planning on splitting
it, don’t go around smacking your lips in front of people. It’s one of
the most basic rules of behavior. Didn’t an adult ever teach you?” As
he spoke, Luo Wenzhou’s hand slid down towards Fei Du’s waist. It
seemed that he touched him, but at the same time it seemed that he
only gestured, not making contact at all. The word “adult” was
spoken very quietly, a light breath brushing Fei Du’s ear, seeming to
carry a trace of huskiness. It struck Fei Du’s eardrum, the lingering
sound reverberating ceaselessly.
 
“Come and do some real work if you can,” Luo Wenzhou released
him. “Carelessly fooling around makes you particularly dull.—Let’s
go. Time to get off work.”
 
Fei Du involuntarily tugged at his own collar. Then, as if nothing had
happened, he asked, “If Yang Bo refuses to acknowledge it, I suppose
the chauffeur’s confession alone can’t be taken as evidence?”
 

116
“It can’t,” said Luo Wenzhou. “Our next step is to thoroughly
investigate all of the chauffeur’s communications and financial
circumstances, then go right through Yang Bo. We’ll get Zhou Huaijin
to give a statement, draw portraits of the kidnappers and release
wanted notices. Whether we can get to the bottom of this case may
even depend on how great our colleagues next door investigating the
Zhou Clan are. Perhaps we’ll be able to, and perhaps it’ll come to
nothing.”
 
Fei Du put his hands in his pockets. “That doesn’t sound like
something the person in charge of the Main Criminal Investigation
Team should say.”
 
“Then what should I say? I’ll absolutely bring all crimes to justice?”
Luo Wenzhou stopped and waved a hand. “I’m not Black Cat
Detective. I couldn’t back up that kind of boast. Like this case.
Perhaps in the end, when you’ve gotten everything you can from it,
you’ll find that the way the circumstances stand, you don’t have
enough evidence to throw anyone in jail for a few years. Isn’t that
right?”
 
Fei Du smiled in tacit understanding.
 
“Of course, there are still some things that make me pretty angry
when I think about them.” Luo Wenzhou’s gaze fell on him. “If you
can tell me something useful, for the moment I won’t look too closely
into what you were doing behind closed doors with Zhou Huaixin.”
 
“All right, then. I advise you to first keep everyone involved in the
country, especially Zheng Kaifeng,” said Fei Du. “Then check on Zhou
Huaijin and Yang Bo’s blood relationships with Zhou Junmao.”
 
Luo Wenzhou snapped his fingers and quickly walked off.
 
Fei Du took out his phone—he hadn’t had time to look before. The
internet was roiling with waves from the stone Zhou Huaijin had

117
dropped. There were sandbanks hidden under the great waves, and
countless hands were fishing around for anything they could get.
 
As he read, he sank into thought, staring blankly for a while. Then he
made a call. Lowering his voice, he said to the person on the phone,
“Investigate Yang Bo for me, especially his family background. The
more minute the better.”
 

118
CHAPTER 70 - Macbeth XI
 
Dong Qian lived in the Wave’s Bend Estate.
 
This was a very new residential area. A few years before, all this had
still been damp, narrow little alleys; later, it had been remade into
one of the grand city’s beneficiaries. Dong Qian’s family had been
moved out and moved back into a bright and clean resettlement
house there.
 
All the houses constructed in recent years were very advanced, with
“radiant floor heating,” “central air-conditioning,” “new model
systems”; recently it felt like rather Western-sounding nouns had
become the distinguishing mark of new residences. As a new
generation of the city’s middle class had begun to buy quality of life,
they’d wanted a nice neighborhood, wanted quiet, wanted services,
wanted convenience. The old residents had blearily signed the
resettlement agreements, finding a place to shelter at the edges of the
“quality life,” as if they’d also been integrated into the high tide of the
“quality metropolis”… Of course, only those who had come to live
there knew that this only looked good on the outside.
 
There was a thick partition between the commercial housing and the
housing where former residents had been resettled. The divide was
tightly sealed. On one side was bare cement, while on the other was
an exquisite man-made landscape, separating the similar-looking
houses by class.
 
When Xiao Haiyang and his colleague left Dong Qian’s house, they
found that the place where they’d parked their police car had been
surrounded by a circle of people.
 
“This car came first thing in the morning,” an old man walking his
dog was saying. “I saw it when I was buying breakfast. I don’t know
what they’ve been investigating this long.”

119
 
“Don’t you know there’s a murderer living there? The address they
dug up online is that house.” A young person with the look of a
student held up his phone for the old man to see. The dog-walking
old fart narrowed his eyes in somewhat uncomprehending awe at the
gale-force flow of information.
 
“Hey, are those two police?”
 
Before Xiao Haiyang could open the car door, he was nearly drowned
in the babbling crowd.
 
“Mr. Policeman, I hear that assassin lives there. Did you come because
of that?”
 
First Xiao Haiyang froze. Then he shook his head repeatedly. “No,
don’t make wild guesses. Please move out of the way.”
 
The young person holding up the phone curiously asked, “Is there
really an illegitimate son?”
 
Before the words were out of his mouth, a fashionably dressed lady
yanked him from behind. “Stop asking about this sort of useless
gossip. If you keep fooling around online, I’ll take away your phone.
—Officer, I’d just like to ask a little question. Did the one who crashed
the car die or not? Did you arrest him? Living next door to a
murderer, you know…”
 
Xiao Haiyang’s hand paused in the middle of opening the car door.
Then he pretended he hadn’t heard, lowering his head and getting
into the car without uttering a sound.
 
“Hey, why are you leaving? Is that any way to answer? This is a
question that concerns mass public safety!”
 

120
A man in a parked car nearby grumbled, “I said before we shouldn’t
buy a house so close to the resettlement quarters. You have no idea
who’s living next to you…”
 
Xiao Haiyang didn’t wait for his colleague to close the door before
stepping on the gas. He left the residential estate’s parking lot as if he
were being chased. As soon as he drove out of the estate’s main gate,
a minibus with the logo of a certain news outlet on it met them head-
on. The colleague was sharp-eyed. He quickly poked Xiao Haiyang.
“Go by the side streets. Don’t invite trouble.”
 
Xiao Haiyang spun the steering wheel, turning off into the twisting
side streets, out of the corner of his eye glimpsing a few people with
cameras over their shoulders getting out of the minibus and chasing a
few steps after them. Seeing they couldn’t catch up, they laid down
their arms and took a few photographs of the police car driving away.
 
The colleague looked back nervously, determined that there were no
complications, then at last relaxed, saying to Xiao Haiyang, “Rumor
really does move fast. I’m telling you, Haiyang, times aren’t what they
were. If you run into this kind of thing while investigating a case, you
have to remember to watch your mouth, and if you can’t, take a deep
breath and run. If there’s been no official statement, we can’t say a
single word too much. That’s discipline. Otherwise, I think the boss
would give you a seeing to.”
 
First Xiao Haiyang rather inarticulately nodded. After a while, he
abruptly asked, “Can Dong Xiaoqing keep living here?”
 
First the colleague gave an uncertain “yeah,” then came around and
rather indifferently waved a hand. “It’ll definitely be unpleasant for a
while, but after a time it’ll be all right. Everyone is so busy. Whose
memory is that long? Don’t worry, in another month or two no one
will remember.”
 

121
With a heavy heart, Xiao Haiyang gave an affirmative. His driving
wasn’t anywhere near as boisterous as the rest of him. It was even a
little overly cautious. He saw a light change from far away and gently
braked the car. The old service car slowly came to such a smooth stop
that the people inside hardly felt it shake.
 
“But she herself definitely won’t forget,” Xiao Haiyang said suddenly.
 
The colleague looked at him in surprise.
 
“If in the end we still haven’t been able to find clear evidence to show
whether Dong Qian is a killer or an innocent, this business will weigh
on her heart forever. At first when people ask her, suspect her, she’ll
argue desperately, unwilling to believe under any circumstances that
her father could be an assassin. But this business is going to be like a
splinter, coming up every now and then, like Schrödinger’s box.”
 
The colleague hadn’t expected him to suddenly express so many
feelings. Staring, he asked him, “Schrödinger? Isn’t that a cat?”
 
“A box with a cat in it.” Xiao Haiyang stared fixedly at the traffic light,
his glasses slipping down a little, the frames blocking his eyelids,
giving him a rather depressed look. “Each day you don’t open it is
another day you don’t know whether the cat is still alive, and the the
box will forever press on your heart, so that you can’t think of
anything else. Every day, as soon as it gets dark, you’ll go in circles
around that box, like a fishbone stuck in the throat. Every day, you’ll
suspect… This kind of wound can never heal.”
 
The average person’s everyday conversations were either idle chat or
business communications. In the culture of Eastern people, discussing
feelings with people you weren’t very close with didn’t seem so
“everyday”; it would give people the awkward feeling of talking
intimately to comparative strangers.
 

122
The colleague hemmed and hawed a while, not knowing how to
respond to this rambling speech. In the end he only gave a dry laugh.
 
But Xiao Haiyang seemed to be immersed in his own world, neither
feeling any of his colleague’s awkwardness nor expecting an answer
from him. Having said what he was going to say, he closed his mouth
and sank into some other place.
 
In the Wave’s Bend Estate, Dong Xiaoqing sat alone in her living
room, holding her phone; next to her, a local TV station was playing
the sensational news about the Zhou Clan at regular intervals. From
time to time, the name of the responsible driver, “the individual
Dong,” flashed by in an unobtrusive corner. There were three cups of
leftover cold tea on the coffee table, announcing the recent presence
of guests.
 
The person on the phone spoke very gently. It was their human
resources manager. “Look, Xiao Dong, you’ve really had a lot going on
at home lately. Even though it’s the busy season now, everyone really
feels for you. I asked the boss what to do, and the higher-ups think
that you should rest for a while, take care of yourself and not worry
about work… If you have any trouble, you can always tell the
company, and if we can resolve it, we’ll definitely do our best to help
you. All right?”
 
This was a tactful dismissal. Dong Xiaoqing understood it. She didn’t
want to make an ugly scene, so she did her best to force her voice not
to shake. “All right, Manager Wang. Thanks for going to the trouble.”
 
“Hey, no trouble, no trouble at all.” The person on the line relaxed at
having successfully dealt with her. On account of Dong Xiaoqing’s
sensibility, his voice softened even further. “There’s nothing I can do
for you in these circumstances, but I’ve just submitted a report to the
boss to request an additional quarter’s salary and supplement for
you…”
 

123
The unflagging sounds of knocking came from outside the door. “Miss
Dong, are you home? We’re the Yan City Evening News, we’d like to
ask you a few questions.”
 
“…give it to you all at once. While it might not be much, it’s still
better than nothing. If you need a letter of recommendation in the
future, feel free to come to me.”
 
“Miss Dong? Strange, there must be someone in there, I can hear
voices… Hello, is there anyone home?”
 
Dong Xiaoqing took a difficult breath and held her head.
 
These clamorous noises were like water, powerfully flowing back and
forth. They weren’t necessarily well-intentioned nor necessarily ill-
intentioned, but the person caught in their eddies, unable to struggle
out, unable to catch a breath, understood how it felt to be drowning.
 
But while drowning, this person couldn’t complain about this or that
individual drop of water.
 
Then who should they go reason it out with?
 
Since time immemorial, no one had been able to offer an
explanation.
 
Dong Xiaoqing didn’t know how she managed to finish the phone call
with her job. She’d become a mechanical walking corpse. After a long
time, she finally came back to herself.
 
The people at the door had finally left. She’d taken out the phone’s
battery herself. The thrill-seeking news item on the TV had concluded
at some point, and the daily variety show had begun to play again.
 
She curled up numbly, vague gaze fixed on a piece of paper under a
teacup that had a phone number written on it—the policeman

124
wearing glasses had left it, telling her to call him any time if she
remembered any clues or had any difficulties.
 
Hypocrite, thought Dong Xiaoqing, her face expressionless.
 
The clamorous doorbell rang yet again.
 
Dong Xiaoqing gave a start. She felt an indescribable anger and
swiftly stood up, snatching a glass off the table, spilling half of the
water onto the couch. The person at the door tried knocking,
muttering “no one there” to himself. Then there was a creak, and the
express delivery person, as usual, shoved a package into the little
compartment in the hall and quickly left.
 
Dong Xiaoqing hastily pressed some paper napkins onto the couch to
soak up the water, hesitated a moment, then looked out the peephole
to investigate. Determining there was no one outside, she quickly
opened the door a crack and took the express delivery package inside
like a thief.
 
The package wasn’t at all heavy. It was tightly wrapped. She
remembered she hadn’t bought anything, so who would send her a
package at this time? Dong Xiaoqing suspiciously read through the
packing list. Then she froze instantly—
 
It had come from the address of the freight company where Dong
Qian had worked when he’d been alive. The sender and the recipient
were both Dong Qian.
 
After Zhou Junmao’s cause of death had been thrown into suspicion,
in Dong Qian’s capacity as suspect, all of his personal possessions at
his home and place of work had been searched by the police, only
excepting this package sent in the same city that had taken two or
three days to arrive by “Chinese Expressly Slow Delivery.”
 

125
Dong Xiaoqing impatiently tore the package open with her bare
hands. The first thing to fall out of it was a black-and-white memorial
photograph of a woman. The same photograph was hanging in her
living room; it was her mother, who had died when she was a small
child. After that came horrifying pictures of the scene of a car crash
and the death certificate that had been issued after the rescue efforts
had failed at the hospital.
 
There was a newspaper clipping stuck to the death certificate, a story
related to the car crash Dong Xiaoqing’s mom had died in.
 
Dong Xiaoqing thought at first that these were relics her father had
been storing and was about to ignore them when her gaze
inadvertently swept over a few sentences of the old newsprint. It was
as though a bucket of cold water had been splashed directly into her
face; in an instant she woke from her muddled state—the main
character of this news clipping wasn’t the woman who had died
innocently in the car crash; it was a rather renowned entrepreneur of
the time.
 
The entrepreneur had been driving along when he’d suddenly been
rear-ended by a truck. His sedan had lost control and gone into the
next lane, dragging in a passing van, fermenting a multi-car pile-up.
The driver of the sedan and the responsible driver had died on the
scene, while Dong Qian and his wife had been riding in the van.
They’d both been taken to the hospital. The wife had been critically
injured and had unfortunately passed away when rescue efforts
failed.
 
Dong Xiaoqing impatiently shook everything out of the package—
inside there was an unintelligible diagram of vehicle routes, some
mimeographed hand-drawn pictures, a photocopy of an enormous
bill for something or other, several close-up photographs of license
plates, and a pile of personal information about some strangers.
 
And one of them was Zhou Junmao!

126
 
There was a photograph stuck behind the biographic sketch of Zhou
Junmao; it was of the Bentley the old man had been riding in at the
time of his car crash.
 
Dong Xiaoqing’s heart jumped, and her hands began to tremble. She
saw an envelope under the pile of documents with “Xiao Qing”
crookedly written on it. This was Dong Qian’s sloppy, somewhat
childishly awkward handwriting!
 
A few days had passed in the blink of an eye since Zhou Huaijin’s
kidnapping, and not only had the level of enthusiasm not calmed, it
had become even more intense. All the photographs and articles
concerning Zhou Huaijin participating in business conferences in his
youth were turned up, and even the Zhou Clan’s mysterious other
founder, who had disappeared decades ago, was once again brought
up.
 
“This person’s Chinese name was ‘Zhou Yahou’… Gosh, he was pretty
good-looking.” Lang Qiao was walking around and around the office.
“He was part-Chinese, part-American, with slightly more Chinese
heritage, and married an ethnically Chinese woman, a second-
generation immigrant from a rich family. He dropped out of a famous
school to go into business.—Zhou Junmao was entirely his footman
back then, and don’t even mention Zheng Kaifeng. He’d just left the
country illegally and was a hooligan dodging around here and there.”
 
Tao Ran looked up in surprise. “Zheng Kaifeng left the country
illegally?”
 
“He ran for it when he was in his teens,” said Lang Qiao. “He spent a
few years working for a human smuggler, then somehow hooked up
with Zhou Junmao and got himself a legal identity. Looking at the
miserable state he was in then and comparing it to the way he is now
—the ups and downs of human life…really are hard to predict.”
 

127
Someone next to her protested, “Qiaoqiao, don’t pace like that, you’re
making me dizzy.”
 
“I’m hungry, comrade!” Lang Qiao howled in anguish. “Our zookeeper
is ten minutes late. My stomach is digesting itself.”
 
She’d just spoken when the aroma of jianbing floated in from the
corridor. Lang Qiao leapt to the door in two steps, like a citizen of
enemy-held territory seeing the liberating army. With deep emotion,
she cried, “Boss!”
 
Luo Wenzhou went around her. “Settle down.”
 
“Starving children don’t have to settle down.” Lang Qiao hastily
grabbed the stuff out of his hands. “Hey, why did you buy so many
different kinds today?”
 
Luo Wenzhou didn’t answer, thinking, Who knows what that menace is
going to refuse to eat?
 
It was Friday, time for Fei Du to report to the bureau again. Luo
Wenzhou had originally bought breakfast as usual, but at the last
moment he had thought of this complication and wandered over to
buy something else, accidentally making himself late.
 
Pretending nothing was going on, he strolled over to his office, saw
Fei Du’s empty desk, and immediately, with an air of propriety, put on
a stern look. “Didn’t I emphasize discipline? What is this, now? Tao
Ran, call him and see why he’s not here yet. Where’s he fooling
around now?”
 
Tao Ran: “…”
 
Luo Wenzhou belatedly noticed that everyone’s expressions were very
strange. “What are you all looking at me for?”
 

128
Winking and gesturing, Lang Qiao pointed at the jacket on Fei Du’s
seat. Deliberately “lowering” her voice to a level that everyone could
hear, she said, “He came half an hour ago and went to Chief Lu’s
office.”
 
Luo Wenzhou: “…”
 
Tao Ran slowly added, “Oh, right, Director Lu just called the office
looking for you. I picked up, and he swore and asked me, ‘Is there
any way to improve Luo Wenzhou’s lax discipline?’”
 
Luo Wenzhou: “…”
 
The whole Main Criminal Investigation Team ate Captain Luo’s food
while collectively roasting Captain Luo.
 

129
CHAPTER 71 - Macbeth XII
 
Fei Du was as nice in front of Director Lu as he was rotten in front of
Luo Wenzhou.
 
His clothes resembled a student’s, but he hadn’t paid a student’s
prices for them. Grandpa didn’t understand these costly details,
anyway; Lu Youliang thought this young person seemed unusually
tidy and unusually spirited. Coming through the door, he smiled at
him, and the whole office became a little brighter.
 
Of course, if the young fellow could have gotten a neat crew-cut, the
impression would have been even more perfect.
 
Lu Youliang passed him the list of documents that had been requested
by Yan Security Uni. “I’ve had a rough look. There aren’t any big
problems. There are a few that may not be possible; I’ve ticked those
off. You can revise it a little and print another copy, and then
everything will go smoothly.”
 
Fei Du very properly thanked him and accepted the list edited by
Director Lu. He scanned it quickly. Before he could ask any questions,
Lu Youliang was already explaining to him, “These cases are all rather
old. They were selected for study during the original Picture Album
Project. Their referential value isn’t great. I was afraid you’d be doing
duplicative work.—If your Teacher Pan asks about it, tell him what I
told you. He’ll understand.”
 
However idle a leader was, he still wouldn’t personally sift through
lists to save others from “duplicative work.” Fei Du wasn’t deaf; of
course he could hear that this was an excuse. Thereupon he
obligingly bit back his questions.
 
Having finished with proper business, Lu Youliang very kindly took
an interest in Fei Du’s personal circumstances. He’d just moved on

130
from his studies to the middle-aged-and-elderly’s favorite subject of a
“significant other” when the phone on his desk rang.
 
Director Lu gestured at Fei Du and picked up. After a couple of
sentences, he began to frown.
 
Fei Du calmly observed his expression, hearing Lu Youliang
meticulously explaining: “…it must be objective and even-handed.
Mind your diction very carefully. When you’ve finished writing it,
bring it over here for me to have a look… Fine. This is the thing we
have to keep a firm grasp on.—Garbage like rich people fighting over
inheritances will make a lot of noise for a few days and everyone will
lose their heads, but it still won’t have any impact on your next meal.
The children are what really matters to the common people.”
 
Fei Du waited for him to hang up, then asked, “That was about the
kidnappings, right?”
 
“Ah, yes. It’s already been handed over to the Procuratorate. There’s
nothing we can change about how it turns out now.” At this point, Lu
Youliang paused and, deliberately or not, studied Fei Du’s expression,
then lamented, “That’s how it is sometimes in this profession of ours.
The victims are abjectly waiting for you to get them justice, and you
clearly know who did it, but the outcome often can’t be everything
you could wish. Your luck may be bad; you may not be able to gather
the critical evidence. Or it could be that the evidence is solid, but the
outcome is that the law can’t hold him.”
 
Fei Du nodded as he spoke. “Rules and procedures are a rigid
framework. There will always be some exceptional circumstances that
they can’t deal with.”
 
The corner of Lu Youliang’s eye twitched lightly, expecting his next
words to be out of line.
 

131
He didn’t expect Fei Du to play it safe, adding, “But it’s a framework
that’s undergone endless refining to be able to take into account the
interests of the greatest number of people. It’s Pareto efficiency.
Without it, there would be even greater inequality. So sometimes,
even though we know it may hurt some people, we still have to
uphold that framework.”
 
Director Lu stared. “Wh…what sort of efficiency?”
 
“Simply put, it’s the most optimal choice from the standpoint of
everyone’s overall benefit.” Fei Du smiled. “My family does a little
business. Being around my elders, I’ve picked up some of their
theories.”
 
Director Lu slowly shook his head. Looking at Fei Du’s calm and easy
expression, he seemed to relax. “It’s good for young people to learn a
bit of something. It has the effect of smoothing out their mental
states.—Your Teacher Pan was an angry young man back in the day.
That’s why he changed professions and went to teach.”
 
Fei Du displayed a timely trace of curiosity.
 
But Director Lu was unwilling to continue. He only waved a hand at
him. “Enough, you must be busy.”
 
Fei Du stood up at this. At the same time, his gaze swept Director Lu’s
desk from above.
 
There was a picture frame on the corner of Lu Youliang’s desk with a
group photograph inside it. The hair of the men in the photograph
was still thick, and their waistlines were still “inverted.” Only the
lines of their features still gave some impression; looking closely, you
could just recognize them—from left to right were Director Lu, old
Director Zhang, Fei Du’s academic advisor Pan Yunteng, who he’d
been at some pains to arrange to study under, and Luo Wenzhou’s
late shifu, Yang Zhengfeng.

132
 
There should have been a fifth person in the photograph. Yang
Zhengfeng was pulling someone’s elbow with his right arm, but the
person’s face was hidden under the picture frame; only a bit of skin
showed.
 
Fei Du’s gaze glanced off the picture frame. As if nothing had
happened, he took the list of case materials permitted to be
requested, as edited by Director Lu, and walked towards the Criminal
Investigation Team.
 
Silently, one step at a time, he was following up the hardly visible
threads; he pondered as he walked, the drooping ends of his peach
blossom eyes long and fine, seeming to have a sort of absent-minded
indifference—until he heard Luo Wenzhou’s “bitterly resentful” voice.
 
“Eating one person’s food while serving another!” Luo Wenzhou was
denouncing someone in the office; it was audible some steps from the
door. “It really is the textbook definition of eating one person’s food
while serving another!”
 
Fei Du looked up at once and saw Luo Wenzhou, hands in his
pockets, swaggering out of the office with his back to him. As he
backed up, he pointed at the crowd of ingrates in the office. “You
aren’t my real children…”
 
He hadn’t finished when he bumped into Fei Du, who hadn’t dodged
at all.
 
“Oh, sorry.” Luo Wenzhou didn’t know who he’d bumped into and
was about to turn around when an arm came around from behind
him, half embracing him as it helped him keep his balance.
 
Fei Du leaned forward lightly and quietly said, “No problem.”
 
Luo Wenzhou: “…”

133
 
Instead of walking through the rest of the wide hallway, Fei Du just
had to turn and squeeze through the narrow gap next to Luo
Wenzhou, shoulders faintly brushing against him, hands deftly
reaching out to measure the width of Luo Wenzhou’s waist. Then he
said, preening odiously, “Director Lu told me to pass along to you that
if you’re late again he’ll deduct your wages.”
 
Lang Qiao, wanting nothing but to see the world in chaos, said,
“President Fei, the boss just asked where you’d gone to fool around.”
 
“Oh,” said Fei Du, smiling brightly, “you shouldn’t carelessly besmirch
the reputation of a man of Director Lu’s age.”
 
“Have you eaten?” Tao Ran gestured at a table next to him, laid out
with breakfast. “Take whatever you like. I don’t know what dietary
restrictions you have.”
 
Naturally Fei Du, who could put himself together first thing in the
morning, wouldn’t have lacked for time to eat a leisurely breakfast.
So he waved a hand at Tao Ran. “No, I…”
 
The words “I’ve already eaten” were on the tip of his tongue.
 
Tao Ran added, “Wenzhou bought it. No need to be polite with him.”
 
“…eat everything, no dietary restrictions.” Fei Du wrenched his words
around 180 degrees and casually picked up a red bean cake. “Thank
you, shixiong.”
 
Absolutely shameless!
 
Having witnessed the international standard in lying through one’s
teeth, Luo Wenzhou was simply speechless.
 

134
Xiao Haiyang sat at a desk in a corner, hearing the others’ wholly
unrestrained talk and laughter, not knowing how to blend in with
them. He could only look on from the sidelines, feeling ill at ease.
 
Tao Ran aimlessly looked around and happened to see his
predicament. Catching his gaze, Xiao Haiyang pushed at his glasses
subconsciously, lowering his head as though looking for a sense of
security, putting on a look of concentrating on his work to make his
incompatibility with the group less awkward.
 
Tao Ran noticed his unnatural gestures. A moment later, when he was
pouring himself some water, he strolled past Xiao Haiyang with his
teacup in his hand. “Xiao Xiao—“
 
Xiao Haiyang subconsciously straightened his back in haste. “Deputy-
Captain.”
 
“No need to be so reserved.” Tao Ran patted his shoulder and leaned
casually on his desk. “This isn’t Wang Hongliang’s territory. Relax a
little.”
 
Xiao Haiyang had absolutely no intention of relaxing. He sat there
like a coffin board, nervously listening to his admonition.
 
Tao Ran sighed soundlessly. His gaze swept over the two autopsy
reports on Xiao Haiyang’s desk—they were Zhou Junmao’s and Dong
Qian’s. The two of them had plainly died in the car crash; on neither
had either suspicious injuries or drugs been detected. On this subject,
there was no question at all.
 
“We’ve already questioned Zhou Huaijin.” In order to get Xiao
Haiyang to relax, Tao Ran deliberately used work as a buffer, opening
a subject of conversation.
 
“He said that he got into a taxi driven by one of the kidnappers, and
while they were driving though a fairly desolate patch, another man

135
flagged them down, asking to carpool—that was the second
kidnapper. Zhou Huaijin didn’t think it was suitable and refused him,
but he wasn’t especially on his guard. The kidnapper who was
pretending to flag a taxi used that as an excuse to keep pestering
them, and with his accomplice’s cooperation took Zhou Huaijin
unawares… Hey, Xiao Xiao, you don’t need to take notes. This isn’t a
formal meeting, I’m just chatting.”
 
Lang Qiao put the crispy fritter from her jianbing into her mouth,
gnawing it like a squirrel, then put in a word. “I think there’s a
problem here. How could the kidnapper guarantee that Zhou Huaijin
would get in his car?”
 
Tao Ran thought about it. “We reviewed the film from around the
airport taxi stand. It was the small hours of the morning, and the
attendant had already left. There weren’t many passengers waiting
for taxis, or many taxis looking for business. So there were no split
lanes, only one line of passengers and one line of taxis. If the
kidnapper had been waiting for an opportunity to cut in line, it
shouldn’t have been hard to pick up Zhou Huaijin.”
 
“You really could do that, but it’s still not fool-proof. What if some
lowlife cut in line?” said Lang Qiao. “You know, yesterday we took it
in turns questioning Yang Bo until he couldn’t take it anymore. He
burst out and kicked up a fuss about how Zhou Huaijin hadn’t been
kidnapped at all. He’d put it all on himself.”
 
“That’s impossible,” another criminal policeman said. “What’s the
sense for a wealthy heir in getting beat up and nearly swept away in
a flood? And he discredited his own company. It’s all over the city
now, and all the departments concerned have entered the
investigation.—Why would he want to make life difficult for
himself?”
 
Lang Qiao said, “And what if the Zhou Clan isn’t his own company?”
 

136
Tao Ran put down his teacup. “Where did you hear that groundless
rumor?”
 
“What groundless rumor? I’ve spent ages going through old
newspapers. Just a few months after the Zhou Clan’s founder—that
Zhou Yahou—died, his widow quietly married Zhou Junmao. The
older brother dies and the younger brother marries his sister-in-law,
and the sister-in-law holds a great quantity of stock. Doesn’t sound
very nice, does it? In a foreign Chinese-language tabloid I found, they
talk about Zhou Junmao and his wife as though they were Ximen
Qing and Li Ping’er4, and they say they’d definitely been sneaking
around behind Zhou Yahou’s back when he was alive.” Lang Qiao
knocked on the desk. “All right, friends, now comes the important
part—I verified Zhou Yahou’s date of death and Zhou Huaijin’s date
of birth, and found that they happened in the same year. That’s very
subtle.”
 
“You mean that Zhou Junmao killed Zhou Yahou, then accidentally
raised Zhou Yahou’s son, and now Zhou Huaijin has found out the
truth and taken revenge on him?” Tao Ran shook his head. “Come
back and concentrate on the details of the case. Didn’t I tell you to
find potential witnesses from the airport taxi stand? You don’t do any
work. You only guess blindly.”
 
“It’s not me guessing blindly,” said Lang Qiao. “When we got out of
the Zhou house, the boss went to find Director Ceng to check on
Zhou Junmao’s blood relationship to his three supposed sons—right,
boss? Great minds think alike!”
 
Declining to comment, Luo Wenzhou walked into his own office. “Get
to work and stop staring at me. I don’t have the results yet, anyway.”
 
Hearing this, the silent Xiao Haiyang suddenly put in a word. “But
there’s absolutely no intersection between Dong Qian and Zhou

137
Huaijin. If Zhou Junmao’s car crash was deliberate, how could Zhou
Huaijin have gotten Dong Qian to give up his life?”
 
“But there’s also no intersection between Dong Qian and the other
Zhou Clan people,” said Lang Qiao. “We’ve analyzed it. Supposing
Zhou Junmao was murdered, there’s no doubt someone wanted to
pass it off as an accident, while Zhou Huaijin’s kidnapping was done
with great fanfare, as if they were afraid others wouldn’t know—
those are clearly contradictory. So I’ve been thinking, could it be that
Zhou Junmao’s death really was an accident, and Zhou Huaijin used
this opportunity to make a fuss and destroy Zhou Junmao’s
reputation?”
 
Xiao Haiyang’s expression was grave and pensive.
 
“We need a real basis, not wild stories.” Tao Ran waved a hand,
interrupting everyone’s boundlessly roaming imaginations. “Enough.
When you’re finished eating, get to work.”
 
The portraits of the kidnappers drawn according to Zhou Huaijin’s
descriptions had been issued, but they’d sunk like stones into the sea;
there had been no echoes.
 
Thus far they hadn’t found any witnesses, and the truck that had
driven into the Baisha River had been stolen. Neither on it nor on the
snatched taxi had they found any useful traces.
 
Zhou Junmao’s car crash and Zhou Huaijin’s kidnapping were both
full of suspicious points, both hard to make headway on.
 
Aside from the Zhou family’s driver, who’d been caught on the spot,
everyone seemed very suspicious. But these suspicious individuals
were unwilling to obediently confess; each time one opened his
mouth it was to attack another. Allegations filled the air, and none of
them were reliable.
 

138
So even Yang Bo, under heaviest suspicion from the police, had been
gotten out by his lawyer the evening before.
 
Thus far, the Criminal Investigation Team seemed to have fallen into
a bottleneck. They could only wait for the outcome of the financial
investigation into the Zhou Clan, hoping to scoop up some motives
and leads.
 
Luo Wenzhou read through all the suspects’ statements.—Zhou
Huaixin was like a mad dog, doing his utmost to bite Yang Bo; Hu
Zhenyu, trying to gain the upper hand, said that Zhou Huaijin and
Zheng Kaifeng had recently disagreed about the development of the
company’s strategy, and Zheng Kaifeng had gotten very close with
Yang Bo in the last couple of years; Zheng Kaifeng meanwhile firmly
denied that Yang Bo was Zhou Junmao’s illegitimate son, always
dodging, like a sly old fox…
 
Luo Wenzhou rubbed his chin. Just then, the phone on his desk
vibrated.
 
Luo Wenzhou looked down; it was Fei Du, sitting across from him.
 
In this small place, where every breath and bowel movement could
be heard, Mr. Fei, who was so close to him, didn’t open his mouth
when he had something to say; he had to use the office’s WiFi to send
him a WeChat message: “Shixiong, can I take you out tonight?”
 
Luo Wenzhou looked up at him. Fei Du seemed to be focused on the
screen of his laptop; if not for the suspicious trace of a smile at the
corners of his lips, he would have looked absolutely upright and
proper.
 
The “upright and proper” Mr. Fei moved his fingers, and another
WeChat message appeared in front of Luo Wenzhou’s eyes.
 
He said: “I like your abs.”

139
 
Luo Wenzhou turned his head and looked at the never closed door of
his office; in the half-public space, people made phone calls, came
and went, wholly unobstructed; people often came by to grab a drink,
and the talkative would say a few words in passing to Fei Du. Each of
their movements took place in front of everyone’s staring eyes…
 
And in this sort of environment, there was someone covertly
harassing him.
 
Luo Wenzhou’s throat was a little tight. He shot Fei Du a look from
behind his monitor that gradually acquired a slightly carnivorous air.
 
Just as he was about to pick up the phone and respond, a completely
oblivious colleague charged in and loudly said, “Captain Luo, this
must be urgent. Director Ceng told me to give it to you!”
 
Luo Wenzhou nearly knocked his phone onto the floor.
 
The above-mentioned colleague entirely failed to notice anything
unusual about the atmosphere. He cheerfully handed over the folder
and left as quickly as he had come.
 
Luo Wenzhou gave a dry cough, pulled in his legs, which had been
stretch out under the desk, and absent-mindedly opened the folder.
 
A moment later, his gaze hardened.
 
The results of the DNA test were clear. The two Zhou brothers were
both definitely Zhou Junmao’s biological children, while Yang Bo had
no blood relationship to Zhou Junmao.
 
“Is Zhou Huaijin still in the hospital?” Luo Wenzhou thought about it,
picked up his jacket, and stood up. “I’m going to have a chat with
him.”
 

140
Fei Du said, “I’ll come with you.”
 
Luo Wenzhou looked at him.
 
Fei Du gently licked his lips, and his gaze swept faintly around the
office. While he didn’t open his mouth, he seemed to be silently
saying, “It’s a little crowded in here.”
 
Luo Wenzhou paused. He didn’t respond, silently letting him follow.
 
No sooner had they left than Xiao Haiyang suddenly received a text
message from Dong Xiaoqing.
 
Xiao Haiyang hadn’t expected Dong Xiaoqing to voluntarily contact
him. He was very taken aback. He saw Dong Xiaoqing’s message:
“Officer Xiao, could you please come to my house? I want to give you
something.”
 
Xiao Haiyang immediately called her back, but Dong Xiaoqing’s
phone was already off. He had a sudden ominous premonition.
 
“Deputy-Captain Tao,” Xiao Haiyang said, shooting to his feet, “I have
to go out.”
 

141
CHAPTER 72 - Macbeth XIII
 
Theft, assault, murder… These behaviors had evident goals and
consequences, and came with clearly stipulated penalties. Provided
you could catch the wrongdoer and find the evidence, the victims
would be able to attain some approximation of justice.
 
But this justice wasn’t always possible to attain.
 
For example, someone throwing rocks on the highway for fun,
leading to a crash in which an innocent passerby died; someone
making off with the lid of a well and the power line to a streetlamp,
leading to a person walking by at night falling into the well and
losing their life; or the cream of society casually making some
decision, leading to a destitute and homeless person losing hope and
killing themselves… To whom should these go to ask for justice?
 
Among victims’ family members, there were no distinctions between
the noble and the lowly; neither did pain and indignation distinguish
between the light and the heavy crime. If, seeing the harm they had
caused, the killer could endure internal guilt and the torment of their
conscience all their life, perhaps that could have been some slight
consolation; unfortunately, the consciences of most people in the
world weren’t so profound. Faced with catastrophic self-
condemnation, they would often be beaten down by self-paralysis
and a variety of excuses—
 
I didn’t do it on purpose.
 
I wasn’t doing it to you.
 
I didn’t expect this to be the outcome.
 
From a certain point of view, I’m a victim, too…
 

142
Then who put you in that position?
 
In the final analysis, fate was the murderous bitch.
 
There was something wrong with the City Bureau’s service car. The
steering wheel would never return to a neutral position, and the
brakes were slow to respond; you always felt you were about to
accidentally rear-end the car in front. The whole car gave off a
dispirited air of preparing to go on strike. Luo Wenzhou had thought
that a wastrel like President Fei, who took luxury cars for bumper
cars, would bristle when he’d driven two steps. He hadn’t expected
that he would only frown slightly at the outset, then quickly become
accustomed to the doddering service car, not seeming at all ill at ease.
 
Luo Wenzhou noticed his route and couldn’t resist asking, “Where are
we headed?”
 
“Heng’ai Private Hospital,” said Fei Du. “Zhou Huaijin stayed in the
public hospital for a day, then, on the evening of the day he finished
giving his testimony, he moved to a private one his family holds
shares in. His brother said the noisy surroundings weren’t conducive
to recovering from physical and mental trauma—I figure it was in
order to avoid the media.”
 
“Didn’t he just get a little cut on his leg? Tao Ran said it was only a
flesh wound. I vehemently condemn this conduct of wasting medical
resources.” Luo Wenzhou pointed at Fei Du. “You should all be more
careful. Extravagance and corruption are often the first steps of moral
ruin!”
 
There was also perhaps something wrong with Fei Du; he could never
say more than three proper sentences at a time without his system
nearly shutting down. At this point, he immediately saw an opening
to get in some teasing. “That counts as extravagant? So having you
sitting here in my car right now, am I being extravagant beyond
rescue?”

143
 
Half of Luo Wenzhou’s face was hidden by a pair of sunglasses.
Hearing this, he couldn’t resist sighing. Despite having palpably taken
a hit, he forced out a deadpan tone. “Darling, only with a face as
thick as mine could anyone put up with your priggish style of
flirtation. Is this the sort of summons you used to talk little idiots into
your bed before? No wonder you were so successful.”
 
Fei Du averted his not at all well-disciplined gaze, smiling without
speaking.
 
Yan City’s public security authorities were all near the city center, not
far from each other. With Fei Du’s changed course, the two of them
had to drive past the Procuratorate.
 
The air of early autumn was dry. The sky was high, the clouds thin,
and the sunlight was unbridled. As the police car drove past the back
door of the Procuratorate, they saw a middle-aged woman standing
at the side of the road.
 
She was holding a bottle of water. Around her neck hung a display
board. On the board were a few smiling, dimpled little girls. The
woman’s eyes were a little vague. Seeing a police car, her gaze
subconsciously followed it, passing through some of the numbness of
the apathy she had picked up.
 
“That’s Qu Tong’s mother,” Luo Wenzhou told Fei Du after a look. “I
saw her a few times when she came by to give testimony. How can
she have changed so much after just a couple of months?”
 
Fei Du said, “Director Lu was just talking to me about that business
today.”
 
“Oh?” said Luo Wenzhou.
 

144
Fei Du paused, then, meaning something by it or not, continued the
subject. “It may have been my mistake, but I thought the old fellow
was testing my ideas.”
 
Luo Wenzhou’s expression didn’t change. His eyes calmly turned,
passing through the sheltering sunglasses to peek at Fei Du. “What
ideas?”
 
“I don’t know. It sounded like…maybe he thought I was going to pay
an assassin to butcher Su Luozhan and that crowd of pedophiles on
behalf of the victims’ families.” Fei Du shrugged. “What, does it seem
like my sense of justice is that strong?”
 
For a while, Luo Wenzhou didn’t answer. He changed his previously
indolent posture, sitting up and crossing his legs, his body language
clearly becoming more business-like.
 
“He also crossed off some old case files I’d requested for review,” said
Fei Du. “I think I more or less understand. By coincidence, those cases
all have some flaw. Some failed for lack of evidence, and in some the
suspect submitted a diagnosis of mental disorder to show…”
 
“Fei Du,” said Luo Wenzhou, laughing, “was Chief Lu testing you, or
are you try to get something out of me?”
 
At the sparsely trafficked intersection, the stoplight changed from
yellow to red, and Fei Du slowly stopped the car.
 
“I do actually understand something of this. My shifu got drunk once
and let it slip.” Luo Wenzhou was silent for a while, then said, “If I’m
not mistaken, all the cases Director Lu crossed off must have been
those transferred over during the original Picture Album Project?”
 
Fei Du hadn’t expected him to be so cooperative. He couldn’t resist
giving him a look.
 

145
“Aside from the one who said he had a mental disorder, the others
were all unresolved cases. At the time, the person leading the Picture
Album Project combed through those cases from a different point of
view, hoping to be able to find a breakthrough.”
 
Fei Du listened quietly.
 
“They were limited by the level of technology and by the passage of
time. A lot of the evidence had vanished, and psychological profiling
wasn’t suitable to supply evidence in court, whether from the point of
view of maturity or from the point of view of credibility. In the end,
these unresolved cases could only serve as research material; there
was no way to bring the suspects to justice. The elders and experts
involved in the Picture Album Project were stymied. Afterwards, one
after another, the suspects in those cases met with misfortune.”
 
“What kind of misfortune?”
 
“Some had unusual accidents, some disappeared, and one committed
suicide, leaving a note confessing to the crime. One by one, the
names on their desks faded away. It was too much of a coincidence. If
it wasn’t the heavens suddenly opening their eyes and bringing down
retribution, then it could only be one circumstance—murder. The
killer was highly intelligent and understood the victims even better
than they understood themselves; furthermore, he was familiar with
the police’s methods for working cases. 100%, it was one of our own
people. The Picture Album Project was therefore called to an
immediate halt, and everyone involved was suspended and
investigated.”
 
At this point, Fei Du understood why, when Tao Ran had asked about
the Picture Album Project at the table, Luo Wenzhou had avoided
answering. The people involved in this case must all have been the
cream of their profession or experts in related academic fields. If they
hadn’t yet retired, by now they had probably become respected and
prestigious elders and administrators.

146
 
“And after that?”
 
“After that, the investigation team fixed on a suspect,” said Luo
Wenzhou. “I’m not too clear on the details, but there was no evidence
to charge him with. This person was the key figure in the Picture
Album Project. Many of my elders who participated in the project had
been his students.”
 
Fei Du immediately asked, “Who was he?”
 
Luo Wenzhou shook his head. “I’m not sure. The Venerable Yang
didn’t tell me. I tried investigating afterwards, and his file had been
sealed. Though from what my shifu said, I think he’s dead.”
 
“You’re not sure,” Fei Du said quietly. “Meaning you investigated.”
 
Luo Wenzhou neither acknowledged it nor shook his head. “I’ve
already said this much. It’s your turn to put your cards on the table.—
Why did you get into Yan Security Uni? Why did you scheme so hard
to be involved in the renewal of the Picture Album Project? Don’t tell
me you had nothing better to do and were simply curious.”
 
Fei Du was silent.
 
The two of them sat side by side in the narrow front of the car, the
distance of only a few fists separating them, but there seemed to be a
thick, ice-cold wall between them.
 
Fei Du’s gaze flickered slightly. Luo Wenzhou seemed to hear the
sound of one sluice gate after another opening in his mind as their
master coolly weighed which security doors he needed to open, how
much he needed to reveal, to obtain what he wanted.
 
When the car’s GPS showed that they were almost at their
destination, Luo Wenzhou finally managed to pry a few words out of

147
Fei Du’s mouth.
 
“You know I always suspected that my dad had something to do with
my mom’s death,” said Fei Du. “Even though you eliminated him
from suspicion, I still had that feeling. I couldn’t get rid of it.
Theoretically, intuition is connected to a person’s subconscious, and I
wanted to know where my deep-rooted suspicion came from, so I
tried to think of a way to trace back to when I was little.
 
“I remember my house had a basement that only my dad had the key
to and even my mom couldn’t go in, like Bluebeard’s locked room. I
plotted in secret for half a year to get the key and the code, then
slipped inside…”
 
Luo Wenzhou acutely felt his voice stop at some complication.
 
“…I saw an open folder on his desk, and inside…uh…” At this point,
Fei Du seemed to choke on air; he began to cough. He looked outside,
closed the car window, and continued somewhat hoarsely, saying,
“I’m sorry, I choked.—Inside was a paper. I gave it a rough look. I was
little then, I only just knew how to read. I only vaguely remember
terms like ‘vicious case’ and ‘psychological trauma.’ The name on the
paper was ‘Fan Siyuan.’ I investigated him later, but found that he
was a mystery. Aside from his teaching at Yan Security Uni, there
were no other leads.”
 
Luo Wenzhou didn’t reply. He could tell at once that Fei Du was
talking nonsense—he’d seen all kinds of papers on his parents’ desks
when he was little, and aside from the time he’d gotten hit when he’d
torn up his dad’s meeting notes and folded them into an airplane, he
couldn’t remember a single punctuation mark of any of them.
 
“Why would a businessman have that in his secret study? Don’t you
think it’s strange?” Fei Du drove the police car into Heng’ai Private
Hospital’s parking lot. “After I broke in, my dad stopped using the
place and moved everything in it, not leaving anything behind. In all

148
these years I still haven’t found where he put those things.—That
mysterious paper is my last memory.”
 
“Oh,” Luo Wenzhou replied flatly. When the car had come to a stop,
he unfastened his seatbelt. It was unclear whether he’d accepted Fei
Du’s part true, part false explanation. “If you want to ask about
something after this, you can just ask me straight out. I like to say
things clearly. If I can tell you, I’ll answer right away. You don’t need
to peddle sex appeal. If I can’t say, then even if my brain cells are
missing half their chromosomes, I still won’t say a word. You don’t
need to use such roundabout tactics against me.”
 
After a pause, Fei Du finally realized what he meant. “Wait, you think
I asked you out because of this?”
 
Luo Wenzhou ignored him and went to open the door. Fei Du grabbed
his shoulder.
 
“Shixiong.” Not only was Fei Du not angry, he was smiling. “I’ve
wanted to ask for a long time, are you a little afraid of me?”
 
Luo Wenzhou nearly raised his eyebrows past the frames of his
sunglasses. “Afraid of you? Why would I be afraid of you?”
 
“Afraid I’ll squander your emotions, afraid I’m not in earnest, afraid
you won’t be able to control yourself with me and won’t be able to
end things…” One word at a time, Fei Du said, “Which of my guesses
is right?”
 
Luo Wenzhou’s expression sank. He lifted a hand to shake him off.
“You’re overthinking…”
 
Fei Du said, “Or afraid I’ll make it so you can’t get out of bed?”
 
Luo Wenzhou: “…”
 

149
Never in his life had he seen someone who dared to boast so
shamelessly. It really was an enriching experience.
 
Luo Wenzhou was speechless. He simply shut his mouth and pulled
Fei Du out of the car.
 
As soon as the two of them left the parking lot, they saw vehicles
belonging to every kind of news media surrounding Heng’ai
Hospital’s doors, and a crowd of people craning their necks to look.
Suddenly, someone called out, “They’re coming out!”
 
The sound of shutters clicking filled the air.
 
“Get ready, get ready!”
 
“Hey, guys, wait until they get closer.”
 
“Don’t crowd!”
 
“How inconvenient.” Fei Du stretched out his head to look. “Zhou
Huaixin didn’t tell me his brother was getting out of the hospital
today.”
 
In fact, Zhou Huaijin’s wound hadn’t been as serious as the water
he’d swallowed in the Baisha River. After a bit of treatment, he’d been
ready to leave the hospital. But he was, after all, a spoiled young
master who’d been born with a silver spoon in his mouth; of course
his flesh was more tender than that of the ordinary person. He spent
three days in his own hospital, then cautiously left out the door in a
wheelchair.
 
Zhou Huaixin had come personally pushing the wheelchair to pick
him up. He’d been prepared for the mess at the doors. Wearing an
enormous article of black clothing, he crudely sheltered Zhou Huaijin
behind a human wall. Then he took off the non-mainstream jacket

150
and screened Zhou Huaijin with it, blocking him from the cameras
behind them.
 
Zhou Huaijin laughed good-humoredly. “Let them take pictures if
they want to. There’s no need to shield me.”
 
Zhou Huaixin went along pushing him out. He was silent for a
moment, then said, “Ge, don’t you want to say anything to me?”
 
Zhou Huaijin’s demeanor was unsurpassed. Even sitting in a
wheelchair, his face haggard, he was still very pleasing to the eye and
mind. He really didn’t seem like Zhou Huaixin’s full-blood brother.
“Say what?”
 
Zhou Huaixin looked behind himself; among the racket, he quietly
said to Zhou Huaijin, “Ge, no matter what, no matter what you’ve
done… You’re still my brother.”
 
“What are you saying? If I’m not your brother, then who am I?” Zhou
Huaijin said after a pause, laughing. As he spoke, he reached out a
hand towards Zhou Huaixin.
 
Like an ill-favored skinny dog, Zhou Huaixin stared at his hand for a
while, then, as if he had been well-trained, lowered his head and let
Zhou Huaijin stroke the top of his head lightly. His tense shoulders
gradually relaxed, and on his living ghost’s face something that could
have been called a peaceful smile appeared.
 
Zhou Huaijin warmly said, “Come on. Let’s go home.”
 
Zhou Huaixin nodded meekly, draped the jacket he’d just removed
over Zhou Huaijin, and carefully pushed the wheelchair, avoiding the
rocks on the ground.
 
A pair of eyes watched them from afar, thinking, How tender.
 

151
What did it matter if they gave the clueless outsiders a show? They
were fabulously wealthy; there were bodyguards and a luxury car to
take them on their way, in the grandest style. Let them take a few
pictures today; tomorrow they’d go on the news and say, “The
inheritance dispute is nonexistent, the Zhou Clan’s future is as secure
as the brothers’ affection is deep.”
 
No one would ever know what filth lay beneath their bright and fresh
skins. Everyone was waiting for these social celebrities’s pretentious
performance; who would worry about the human lives hidden
between the lines?
 
There were people who, from birth to death, were only worthy of
appearing at the edge of the frame of someone else’s news.
 
But why?
 
Zhou Huaixin’s phone rang. After a pause, he picked it up. “Master
Fei?”
 
“Look up. Across from you.”
 
At his words, Zhou Huaixin searched all around, then saw Fei Du and
Luo Wenzhou at the parking lot across from him.
 
“The police want to talk to you and your brother about something.”
Fei Du beckoned to him. “How about it, can you extricate yourself?
Should we arrange a place first?”
 
“All right, let’s…” Zhou Huaixin looked around and found that the
media representatives who had been lying in wait for them had
turned their cameras in another direction. There was a young woman
around twenty holding a bouquet. Not coming over, she timidly
bowed towards the brothers from a distance.
 

152
“What’s going on now?” Zhou Huaixin frowned. “Master Fei, wait a
bit. I’ll call you back.”
 
A bodyguard jogged over, bent, and said to Zhou Huaijin, “President
Zhou, this young lady is a relative of the responsible driver in old
President Zhou’s car crash. She hasn’t shown her face before, but
today she somehow learned that you were getting out of the hospital
and came over to find you. I don’t know what she wants.”
 
The bodyguard hadn’t yet finished when the girl began to stammer.
“I’m the only person left in my family. With my dad causing this kind
of accident, we could ruin ourselves and still not be able to make
amends… I…I wanted to come over and have a look, to personally
apologize to you, maybe you won’t think it’s worth much…”
 
Zhou Huaixin looked at Zhou Huaijin.
 
“Tell her to come over here,” said Zhou Huaijin. “She’s not the one
who hit him. I feel pretty bad for her.”
 
Zhou Huaixin didn’t think this was anything too unusual. His brother
consistently showed this kind and courteous behavior when he was
outside. He turned to say a few words to the bodyguards, and the girl
was allowed in as the others murmured resentfully.
 
Across the street, Fei Du narrowed his eyes. “What’s going on with
that girl? She looks a little familiar.”
 
“I think it’s…Dong Xiaoqing?” Luo Wenzhou stared, then he fished
out his phone—Tao Ran had just sent him a text message asking for
leave, with the reason that Dong Xiaoqing claimed to have something
to give the police, and he was accompanying Xiao Haiyang to go see
her. “What’s she doing here? Isn’t she…”
 
Some sort of horrifying intuition leapt up Luo Wenzhou’s spine. He
had no time to consider. He put a hand on the guard rail around the

153
parking lot and leapt over.
 
Fei Du stared. Then he quickly followed.
 
At this time, Dong Xiaoqing had already arrived in front of Zhou
Huaijin, carrying her flowers. Her face was pale, and her body was
trembling faintly. She carefully bowed to both Zhou Huaixin and
Zhou Huaijin and twice said, “I’m sorry.”
 
Zhou Huaijin reached out to take the flowers in her arms. “I know it
was an accident, young lady. It’s all right.”
 
Luo Wenzhou dashed to the hospital doors, but he was blocked by the
heap of media and bodyguards. “Police! Everyone get out of the
way!”
 
It seemed that tears began to glitter in Dong Xiaoqing’s eyes. She
bent and pushed the enormous bouquet of scented lilies towards
Zhou Huaijin.
 
Zhou Huaixin reached out a hand to block her. “My brother is allergic
to flow…”
 
Before he could speak the “ers,” he saw something flash behind the
flowers. In that split-second, Zhou Huaixin had no time to think
about what it was. He instinctively pushed away Zhou Huaijin’s
wheelchair, and a cold sensation pressed against his underbelly,
followed by a sharp stab of pain spreading from it. Zhou Huaijin fell
to the ground along with his wheelchair. He looked back in disbelief
—
 
Dong Xiaoqing fiercely stabbed the melon knife into Zhou Huaixin’s
abdomen, hysterically crying, “I’ve come to send you on your way!”
 
At the same time, Tao Ran and Xiao Haiyang, who had just reached
the Wave’s Bend Estate, were entirely unable to drive the police car in

154
—the estate was surrounded by fire trucks.
 
Xiao Haiyang swiftly looked up. Dense smoke was billowing above
the houses. Along with the firefighters’ back-and-forth struggle with
their high-pressure water cannons, the sounds of cursing and crying
voices rose and fell…
 
His heart gave a lurch.
 
He couldn’t see clearly where the fire was, but it seemed to be near
Dong Qian’s house!
 

155
CHAPTER 73 - Macbeth XIV
 
Dong Xiaoqing was a young girl. Who knew where she got so much
strength? She tugged and yanked fiercely, pulling the knife out of
Zhou Huaixin.
 
Her eyes were red. She looked deranged. Flailing the bloody knife,
like a yaksha in human form, she charged at the stunned crowd.
 
The tightly-packed crowd competed to out-scream each other. Aside
from a couple of warriors who ducked into corners to recklessly take
pictures, most of the people didn’t want to lose their lives over a job.
They pushed and shoved, scattering in all directions, people going
every which way, becoming a perfect human barrier, blocking the
Zhou family’s baffled bodyguards.
 
Luo Wenzhou’s adrenaline was boiling, nearly steaming out of the top
of his head. He didn’t think at all, only instantly gave chase. After
he’d run a dozen meters, his lagging consciousness finally caught up
with his swift legs, and he remembered Fei Du. He turned back to
look.
 
Exceeding Luo Wenzhou’s expectations, Fei Du hadn’t fainted and
hadn’t thrown up. He was only somewhat stiffly standing next to
Zhou Huaixin. The expression in his eyes, without his glasses to block
them, was only a little vague. He was still clear-headed. He stood
facing Luo Wenzhou in profile, gaze deliberately avoiding the
surrounding blood. He glimpsed Luo Wenzhou out of the corner of
his eye and even calmly waved at him.
 
For a moment, Fei Du’s fear of blood didn’t seem very grave.
 
Luo Wenzhou thought that something was off but he didn’t have any
time to think carefully. Dong Xiaoqing had already passed through
the crowd and was about to escape from Heng’ai Hospital. Luo

156
Wenzhou roughly assessed her direction, avoided the crowd by
pressing close to the wall, and stepped over the planters at the side of
the road, giving chase like a martial artist in a film.
 
From Dong Xiaoqing’s murderous attack to her smooth escape,
everything had happened too fast.
 
The inside of Fei Du’s head buzzed. The blood spreading from Zhou
Huaixin’s underbelly seemed to be a heavy hammer, banging on his
chest, banging so hard his soul was jolting inside his flimsy body.
 
Though it was a little inconvenient to get sick at blood, in fact there
weren’t many opportunities to see blood in daily life. Occasionally he
would get a small cut, feel nauseated for a while, and then it would
pass.
 
Fei Du didn’t know how long it had been since he had been directly
faced with a scene like this. His ears roared, and his limbs nearly lost
control, his fingertips convulsing as if in reflex. All his muscles and
bones pulled taut in an instant, making him stay upright and seem
clear-headed, while in fact his consciousness was blurred.
 
Fei Du clenched his fists tightly, joints cracking. He forced his gaze
away and, amidst the irregular lurching of his heart, went towards
Zhou Huaijin in big steps.
 
The fallen wheelchair lay on one of Zhou Huaijin’s legs. He was
sitting numbly and helplessly on the ground. The next instant, he was
lifted by his collar.
 
“It’s likely his internal organs have been injured. Abdominal bleeding
is very dangerous,” Fei Du said to him, voice cold and rushed. “Do
you want him to live? If you do, hurry up and call your hospital’s best
first-aid personnel out here. President Zhou, I know you aren’t lame,
stand up!”
 

157
Zhou Huaijin tottered, then stood firm. He stared at Fei Du in alarm
for two seconds. Then he seemed to wake from a dream. He grabbed
his phone.
 
Zhou Huaixin was instinctively flopping on the ground like a gutted
fish. He was surrounded by a crowd of people, but none of them
dared to rashly touch him. The more he struggled, the more blood
there was. Fei Du heard Zhou Huaijin babbling to get people over,
then saw him toss the phone aside and throw himself at Zhou
Huaixin, words pouring messily out of his mouth, useless phrases like
“look at me,” and “it’s all right.” Some emotion made Fei Du raise his
sweat-drenched eyelashes and meet Zhou Huaixin’s gaze.
 
Zhou Huaixin’s eyes were growing dimmer and dimmer, his gaze
more and more unfocused. In Fei Du’s eyes, he underwent a bizarre
change—he became a pile of unfamiliar organic waste.
 
Fei Du clearly felt that he was split into two parts. Half of him was
nauseated and dizzy because of the blood ceaselessly pouring out of
Zhou Huaixin’s wound, while the other half, like an animal that had
strayed from the pack, was watching Zhou Huaixin’s eyes, unable to
connect this dying person to the Zhou Huaixin he knew. Numb
among the others’ lamentations of anxiety and pain, he instinctively
tried to fit in, futilely searching for what the ordinary person should
theoretically feel.
 
But however he searched, it wasn’t there.
 
“Everyone fears death, but actually what they fear is only the
unknown. Death itself isn’t painful at all. There’s even pleasure in it.
You must have personally experienced it.
 
“Have you noticed the eyes of those animals as they approach death?
That’s the expression of having found the truth—the truth is, ‘life’ is
an illusion manufactured by your nervous system. It’s a false self-
awareness.

158
 
“A person’s consciousness is like flowing water, changing incessantly,
and death is the last direction it flows in. Unless you can understand
or control the whole process of certain changes in your
consciousness, your life doesn’t belong to you. Things that don’t
belong to you deviate from your perception every time they change.
Every moment is death. The only thing that doesn’t change is this
sack of skin made of carbohydrates. If you feel an emotional
connection to the sack of skin, isn’t it like anthropomorphizing the
pork on your plate? It’s a sort of delusional disorder.”
 
The thick scent of blood poured into Fei Du’s nasal cavity, and all of
his organs roiled. The first-aid personnel, foreheads covered in sweat,
charged out of Heng’ai Hospital, surrounded Zhou Huaixin, and
began emergency treatment. After an interval they took him away as
quick as the wind. Fei Du followed the whole way to the emergency
room. Then at last he could stand it no longer. He abandoned Zhou
Huaijin and turned into a restroom.
 
Dong Xiaoqing had murderously attacked a person in front of a
crowd. She was covered in blood. Her hair tie had broken, and her
hair, meticulously styled into large curls, hung loose behind her. The
perfectly set hair bobbed up and down in the wind, from time to time
tangling on the horrifying weapon in her hand.
 
“Dong Xiaoqing!” Relying on his height and long legs, Luo Wenzhou
was constantly closing the distance between himself and Dong
Xiaoqing and had already run out onto the road after her. “Stop! Do
you really think you can run!”
 
Perhaps Dong Xiaoqing was already worn out. Her steps had slowed.
Hearing him, she suddenly stopped. She turned back and looked at
Luo Wenzhou, raising the knife towards him.
 
Luo Wenzhou wasn’t afraid of her wielding the knife and stabbing
him. From his point of view, there wouldn’t be anything frightening

159
about ten knife-wielding Dong Xiaoqings. But he really had no ideas
as to the young lady’s motive and was afraid that in her unstable
mental state she would kill herself. He quickly stopped a few steps
away from her.
 
“Calm down.” Luo Wenzhou pressed his hands down, looking at Dong
Xiaoqing with a gaze that was as steady and gentle as possible. Trying
to stabilize her, he spouted some nonsense on the spot. “Listen to me,
young lady, the person you stabbed just now didn’t die, the
consequences won’t be grave. Don’t be afraid. It’s all right.”
 
Dong Xiaoqing was still under psychological stress, but she was
starting to come around. Her hand holding the knife was shaking,
whether out of fear or regret that she hadn’t stabbed Zhou Huaixin a
second time.
 
“I’m a police officer,” Luo Wenzhou said in a deep voice, getting out
his ID and holding it up. “If there’s anything you need, you can tell
me.”
 
Dong Xiaoqing backed up a step. Her gaze finally focused on Luo
Wenzhou. A moment later, the mania on her twisted, bloody face
gradually calmed, and only deep-rooted grief and indignation were
left behind. The rims of her eyes reddened. She was like a mute; the
whole world was full of people who couldn’t hear her voice, and
when she happened to encounter an ear that deigned to inquire into
her circumstances, she didn’t know where to start.
 
Luo Wenzhou carefully tried getting a step closer. “Relax. Don’t keep
holding up that knife. Isn’t it heavy? It’s very dangerous.”
 
“I…” At his words, Dong Xiaoqing subconsciously lowered the point
of the knife a little and incoherently said, “My papa, he…”
 
Luo Wenzhou kept an eye on the knife in her hand, cautiously
planning how he would wrest it away from her. As he calmly

160
approached Dong Xiaoqing, he continued speaking. “Your dad was
wronged. We all know that. In the future, we’ll restore his good
name.”
 
He didn’t expect that Dong Xiaoqing’s tears would come spilling
down when she heard these words. “My papa… My dad wasn’t
wronged.”
 
Luo Wenzhou stared. “What did you say?”
 
“He’s one of those people, too. They…”
 
Just then, a fierce wind swept by. With no warning at all, a little
sedan appeared out of nowhere and accelerated after turning a
corner, running right into Dong Xiaoqing. There was no way Luo
Wenzhou could have reacted. Dong Xiaoqing brushed past him as she
flew up; the words had hardly had time to leave her throat.
 
The shards of the front windshield were like raindrops blown by a
gale, spraying right in Luo Wenzhou’s face, and the responsible car,
with no hesitation, once again accelerated, flooring the gas pedal,
charging right towards Luo Wenzhou. Luo Wenzhou used what must
have been primordial force to dodge, but one of the car’s side mirrors
still swiped him. The side mirror broke off on the spot. Ignoring the
pain, he instinctively tensed his muscles and shielded his head, taking
the opportunity to roll towards a siding far from the main road.
 
The perpetrator was extremely experienced indeed. Knowing his risk
would increase with every second he lingered, he didn’t waste time
turning around and renewing his attack. He ran into Luo Wenzhou in
passing, saw he hadn’t killed him, then decisively gave up.
 
The road at Heng’ai Hospital’s back door was rather desolate, and
this wasn’t rush hour. The road was empty. The demented car with its
shattered windshield whistled past, leaving no trace!
 

161
Half of Luo Wenzhou’s body had been numbed by the collision. It was
a good while before he struggled to climb to his feet. Only then did
the others successively react and rush over. As he went towards Dong
Xiaoqing, he contacted the City Bureau’s office. “Nanshan Road at
Heng’ai Hospital’s back entrance, a white sedan, model XX, license
plate Yan CXXXXX, send out a notice to the whole city… No, the
whole county, the whole country. Even if he’s driven into the Pacific
Ocean, cast an anchor and haul him back!”
 
The shape of Dong Xiaoqing’s head had changed. One shoe had flown
directly across the street. Her bare hands and feet were covered in
dirt. She was badly mangled; she couldn’t have been more dead.
 
“Fucking asshole.” Luo Wenzhou couldn’t resist uttering a curse. His
brow ridge itched, and he went to rub it, his hand coming away
covered in blood—he’d been cut by the spraying glass.
 
Luo Wenzhou took a few deep, violent breaths. “What’s going on with
Tao Ran and Xiao Haiyang? Did they get to Dong Xiaoqing’s house?”
 
Lang Qiao had first unquestioningly carried out his orders. Now she
finally had a chance to speak. “I was just about to report to you,
Deputy Tao just called saying there was no one at Dong Xiaoqing’s
house, and it was on fire… Boss, what’s going on here? Also, why did
you want a notice on that car?”
 
Luo Wenzhou squeezed his eyes shut.
 
The people who had just been frightened into scattering all over by
Dong Xiaoqing’s attack gathered together once again. They didn’t
dare to approach, only stood at both sides of the road, pointing and
gesturing.
 
Dong Xiaoqing had fallen in broad daylight.
 

162
The girl’s temper had been fierce, and she had been unyielding. On
the one hand, she’d claimed to be prepared to ruin her family
compensating the victims; on the other hand, she had incessantly
defended her father’s reputation.
 
So why would she run the desperate risk of assassinating Zhou
Huaijin?
 
And why would she contact Xiao Haiyang beforehand?
 
What had she wanted to do? What had she wanted to give Xiao
Haiyang?
 
And then there was what she’d said just before her death: “He’s one
of those people, too.”
 
Who were those people?
 
Who had been so bold as to commit murder right in front of a
criminal policeman?
 
For a time Luo Wenzhou couldn’t quite catch his breath.
 
Meanwhile, in Heng’ai Hospital, Fei Du had nearly vomited up his
guts. His hands shook as he rinsed his mouth.
 
Fei Du irritably unbuttoned two buttons of his shirt and splashed cold
water onto his face, pushing his wet hair back. He put two breath
mints in his mouth. When the mints had completely dissolved, he
finally got up the strength to walk upright. Fei Du glanced
apathetically at his white-faced self in the mirror and stuck his
incessantly trembling hands into his pockets.
 
Zhou Huaijin was bent over, curled up on a hospital bench, nervily
wringing his blood-soaked hands. All the veins in his neck were
standing out. Suddenly, a wet paper towel descended from the

163
heavens. Zhou Huaijin looked up numbly. He saw that Fei Du had
walked up to him, but he wasn’t looking at him, only at the operating
room light.
 
“Go ahead and wipe them off.” Fei Du spoke first. “I think President
Zhou isn’t very familiar with me, but I’ve occasionally gone out
partying with Huaixin.”
 
Zhou Huaijin pulled himself together, forcing himself to answer. “I
know. Mr. Fei, I’ve looked forward to…”
 
“I’m the one who’s looked forward to meeting you,” Fei Du
interrupted. “Zhou Huaixin can’t get off the subject of his brother for
three sentences at a time. Every time he brings up President Zhou, he
sounds like an unweaned baby. I’ve heard so much about you my ears
are going to grow callouses.”
 
Zhou Huaijin took a deep breath, his hands lacing together tightly.
 
Just then, for some reason, a few medical workers hastily ran past
them. Their movements startled Zhou Huaijin. He stood up fearfully
and stared towards the operating room for an age. As if he could
neither sit nor stand still, he wandered back and forth where he was.
The refined mask that usually hid his face had vanished entirely. His
hair was a mess, his hands involuntarily pressed together, as if
begging the mercy of some unknown god. He whispered in self-
consolation, “It’s all right, it’s all right… It’ll definitely be all right.”
 
“When such a long knife goes in and out, it’s very unlikely to be all
right,” Fei Du heartlessly interrupted him again. “President Zhou,
while it’s said that life and death are ruled by fate, he still did it for
you.”
 
Zhou Huaijin’s shoulders fell feebly. “I know, I just…”
 

164
“I’m not talking about him getting in front of the knife for you,” Fei
Du said somewhat aggressively. “President Zhou, you know what I
mean. I’m talking about the whole course of this thing in its entirety.
—Do you believe there will be retribution for those who fool the
whole world? If you keep on fooling, it’s possible that that bad luck
will become reality.”
 
Zhou Huaijin shook.
 
“Do you want to start with how you planned your own kidnapping?”
Fei Du said.
 
A few black-clothed expressionless bodyguards drew close, tensely
circling Fei Du.
 
There was a faint satirical smile at the corners of Fei Du’s pale lips; he
entirely disregarded these shoddy goods—if there’d been any use to
them, Zhou Huaixin’s life wouldn’t be hanging by a thread in the
emergency room.
 
After a good while, Zhou Huaijin waved a hand and spoke quietly.
“You’re right. All of you can scatter. Get out,” Zhou Huaijin said to the
bodyguards. “Let me talk to Mr. Fei.”
 
Fei Du walked over to a vending machine and bought two bottles of
water. He passed one to Zhou Huaijin.
 
“I found the people.” Zhou Huaijin drank half the bottle in one gulp,
took a deep breath, then spoke without beginning or end. “Including
using Hengda for support. That was also my choice.”
 
“Weren’t you afraid the police would get there late and your fake
drowning in the river would turn into a real one?”
 
“There were people looking on from the sidelines. If anything had
gone wrong, they would have rescued me. The people we found were

165
all locals, familiar with the roads. It wouldn’t have been easy for the
police to catch them—and even if they did catch them, there was no
need to worry. I could just have given evidence that they were kind-
hearted passersby.”
 
That really was very convenient.
 
Fei Du nodded. “You’re hardly ever in the country, so you wouldn’t be
very familiar with the terrain. I suppose it was Hu Zhenyu who got
you in touch with the kidnappers? Why did you choose the Baisha
area?”
 
“I came up with the plan and made the decisions. The others were
only following my orders. There’s no need to drag in others.” Zhou
Huaijin paused, then forced himself to nod. “I chose Baisha first
because it was on the road from the airport, and second because the
person helping me was a local. Also, we didn’t have any obvious
connections to Baisha. We were unlikely to be suspected.”
 
Fei Du said, “The person helping you?”
 
“Just a friend I did a little favor for once.” Zhou Huaijin shook his
head. “Nothing to do with this thing.
 
“I… When I suddenly heard the news about his death, I felt that there
was an opportunity,” Zhou Huaijin said hoarsely. “I’m only a bright
and shiny mascot in the conglomerate. Zhou Junmao had covered
everything up. Even though he was dead, there was still his
henchman Zheng Kaifeng. I wouldn’t get my chance to speak.”
 
Fei Du said, “I’d have thought that from the standpoint of identity
and experience, President Zhou would be better placed than Yang
Bo.”
 
“Identity?” Zhou Huaijin laughed bitterly. “What identity? I’m only a
fig leaf.”

166
 

167
CHAPTER 74 - Macbeth XV
 
“My mother was pregnant with me when she married Zhou Junmao.
I’m her son with her previous husband. Of course, they told others I
was born ‘premature.’” Zhou Huaijin laughed bitterly. “Outsiders all
thought Zhou Junmao was capable, dedicated, public-spirited,
patriotic—a standard of virtue and prestige. Mr. Fei, I don’t suppose
you also think that?”
 
Fei Du looked up in faint surprise.
 
“Oh, I’ve heard that old Mr. Fei never remarried after losing his wife.”
Zhou Huaijin had evidently misunderstood the reason for his
surprise. He spread his hands a little self-mockingly. “What, are these
things very hard for you to understand?”
 
Fei Du said quietly, “So you’re saying you’ve performed a paternity
test?”
 
Zhou Huaijin shrugged. “What would be the point? I’ve known since I
was little that I wasn’t his biological son. Zhou Junmao wouldn’t have
gotten it wrong himself. If he hadn’t been sure, he would have done a
test. I had no illusions about him. Huaixin is his true only son, and he
still didn’t care about him at all, never mind me.—You may laugh, but
the fact that he never poisoned me is the result of a many-sided game
of chess.”
 
Fei Du’s hands were still trembling uncontrollably. He had to apply
some force to twist the cap off the ice-cold water bottle. At the same
time, he glanced at Zhou Huaijin as though nothing were the matter.
—Though Zhou Huaijin looked very young, from the date recorded
on his ID, he was already thirty-eight.
 
It seemed that Zhou Huaijin wasn’t too clear on the fact that
paternity testing technology hadn’t been widely available thirty-eight

168
or thirty-nine years ago.
 
“Are you hinting that Zhou Junmao,” Fei Du said, considering his
wording, “would have used some not very appropriate means?”
 
“If not, how else would my biological father have died? Did he really
die of a heart attack?” Zhou Huaijin said coldly. “His right-hand man
Zheng Kaifeng was a local thug. Birds of a feather flock together.
There’s nothing they wouldn’t have done.”
 
“How do you know?”
 
“My mother told me before her death. When she was young, she was
unsatisfied with my biological father’s desire for control and some of
his…not very easy to accept hobbies, but she didn’t want to divorce
him. Meeting all kinds of seduction, she started an affair with Zhou
Junmao. Then, egged on by those two pieces of scum Zhou and
Zheng, she conspired with them to do this. But could an adulterous
couple find eternal happiness?” Zhou Huaijin, temperate as jade,
showed the barbs that had been hidden under his skin for decades.
“It’s ridiculous. Not long after, she found out that this man was even
worse than the last scumbag, and she inconveniently had me. Zhou
Junmao always thought that she had evidence of their conspiracy to
murder Zhou Yahou, and because of that—and because of the
company shares she held—he held his nose and pretended I didn’t
exist.”
 
Fei Du’s misgivings were growing heavier and heavier. “Thought?”
 
“My mother had a secret safe deposit box at a private bank. No one
but her and her designated heir could open it. That was the key she
used to keep Zhou Junmao under lock. Later it fell into my hands.”
Zhou Huaijin sighed. “Zhou Junmao is dead now anyway, so I can tell
the truth.—In the safe deposit box there was only a package of
expired emergency heart medication. Otherwise, would I have had

169
any use for such inadequate and serpentine means to ruin his
reputation?”
 
“You say you’re Zhou Yahou’s son.” Fei Du slowly asked, “Who knows
that?”
 
“Zhou Dalong was virtuous and moral on the surface, but he
considered himself to be extremely potent. How could he let others
know he was raising another man’s child? Aside from Zheng Kaifeng,
I think everyone else would have been in the dark. Though
Huaixin…” At this point, Zhou Huaijin again looked up at the
operating room light. He paused, then said with difficulty, “Since he
was little, Huaixin has been more sensitive than other children. I
think he must have guessed, he just never said. That child…I watched
that child grow up. My mother was tormented all her life by that
murder, and she was getting on in age when she had Huaixin.
Postpartum depression made her nervous problems worse. She had
no attention to spare to take care of him. In the Zhou house, aside
from my mother, a stupid murderer, he was the only person I had a
blood tie to. He was so small, so innocent. Even though that person’s
blood flowed in his veins…he only had me, and I only had him.”
 
This pair of brothers had grown up in a twisted home. With evident
reasons to hate each other, they had been forced over time to depend
on each other for survival.
 
Zhou Huaijin pressed his hands together and held them to his
forehead. “If there is such a thing as retribution, why would it fall on
him?”
 
Fei Du knew that, according to social etiquette, he should now reach
out a hand and pat the red-eyed Zhou Huaijin on the shoulder a
couple of times to indicate consolation, but his heart was full of
indifferent weariness. Like a cold-blooded animal with a slow
metabolism, he couldn’t be bothered to reach out that hand.
 

170
He tilted his head and studied Zhou Huaijin. He responded in a flat
voice: “You just said that Huaixin was the old man’s ‘only son’—so
you already know that Yang Bo has no blood relationship to Zhou
Junmao?”
 
“You’ve investigated Yang Bo and Zhou Junmao’s relationship? The
police in this country move pretty fast.” Zhou Huaijin blinked hard a
few times, striving to calm his feelings. He said hoarsely, “Yang Bo…
He’s very superficial, ambitious but incapable, trails after Zheng
Kaifeng every day, professing to be Zheng Kaifeng’s student, when in
reality he’s only learned the surface-level skills. Why would such a
person, without qualifications or abilities, his background and his
academic record unremarkable, be promoted to such a position at a
young age? Of course people started guessing, and that’s when the
‘illegitimate son’ rumors started to flow.
 
“The rumors were in fierce circulation for a while, but neither Zhou
Junmao himself, nor Yang Bo’s backer Zheng Kaifeng, said anything
to clarify. As time went on, the joker might really have thought he
was an unacknowledged prince.” Zhou Huaijin twisted the bottle of
water and shook his head. “He secretly collected his own DNA and
Zhou Junmao’s, privately found a not too aboveboard paternity
testing organization… He’d even do that by stealth. Some people
really aren’t suited by nature to mount the stage.”
 
Following along, Fei Du said, “You discovered that he’d privately
found someone to perform a paternity test.”
 
“I knew the person in charge of the illegal workshop from playing
basketball with him, something along the lines of a golf buddy,” said
Zhou Huaijin. “A typical example of ‘white trash,’ a scammer. He
knows quite a few people’s secrets. He seems like a gourd with a
sealed mouth that can keep anything contained, but actually in
private deals he’ll give up anything, as long as you can meet his
price.”
 

171
“He told you about this business—”
 
“You ought to say, he gave me this business as a free gift,” said Zhou
Huaijin. “What I bought was another service. I had him swap in a
sample from Huaixin.”
 
Yang Bo, a poor devil who had nothing, had somehow been
recognized by the big boss. Most likely he’d felt proud and grateful,
perhaps even somewhat awed. He must have conscientiously
followed the man he owed a debt of gratitude to, daily exhausting all
his resources to make himself seem less average; perhaps he would
even have taken the old man with his legendary life as his idol.
 
But what if he’d found out one day that perhaps all he’d obtained had
only been because he was his “idol”’s legal heir?
 
At first, he would inevitably have been shocked, then quickly hateful,
because this meant that his mother had betrayed his father and their
family, while his idol had betrayed his trust.
 
But perhaps this person had a natural weakness and baseness. His
none-too-firm hatred couldn’t last long. He would quickly have some
different thoughts—it turned out that he should have been born with
a silver spoon in his mouth, on an equal footing with those “youthful
talents” who relied on their fathers to make their way.
 
Were Zhou Huaijin, Zhou Huaixin, and all their strutting friends in
any position to look down on him?
 
Why wouldn’t Zhou Junmao acknowledge him?
 
He was Zhou Junmao’s son, and Zheng Kaifeng’s protégé. Everyone
knew that relations between Zheng Kaifeng and the Zhou Clan’s
eldest son were strained. They were sons of the same father, so why
did he have to work for a living instead of having a share in the
profits of the enormous family property?

172
 
To say it another way—couldn’t the Zhou Clan be his?
 
“So it was you,” Fei Du said quietly. “‘He shall spurn fate, scorn death,
and bear his hopes ’bove wisdom, grace, and fear.’”
 
Zhou Huaijin closed his eyes, lips moving faintly, almost inaudibly
adding the next line: “‘And you all know, security is mortals’ chiefest
enemy.’”
 
Fei Du looked at him with a trace of ridicule. “Goddess Hecate, you’ve
expended a great deal of magic to make Yang Bo think he’s Zhou
Junmao’s illegitimate son, give him unlimited hopes. To what end?”
 
“Yang Bo is one of Zheng Kaifeng’s people,” said Zhou Huaijin. “I
don’t know why Zheng Kaifeng would value him, but the old thing
really does treat the joker as his confidant. When Yang Bo was
promoted, it was Zheng’s opinion against everyone else’s. Even Zhou
Dalong had some veiled complaints—though in the end he also
accepted it. It’s a contest, and I don’t have enough people or
resources. I had to think of some way to break up my opponents’
alliance. I needed to stir up Yang Bo’s ambition, use him to drive a
wedge between Zhou Junmao and Zheng Kaifeng. I wanted to make
them all pay the price.”
 
Fei Du looked at him coolly.
 
“It’s true. At this point, I have no need to trick you.” Zhou Huaijin
pinched the bridge of his nose. “Mr. Fei, although my methods haven’t
been very aboveboard, it’s not as if I used a violent criminal’s
methods to get revenge. You can criticize me from the standpoint of
virtue, but you must admit that what I’ve done isn’t altogether
inexcusable.”
 
“President Zhou,” Fei Du said slowly, “it’s not for me to say whether
you should be criticized, nor whether you should pay a price. To start

173
with, we’ll see how to define your conduct of wasting police
resources cooking up such a big farce. Next we’ll see what the results
of the investigation into Zhou Junmao’s car crash say.”
 
“I didn’t expect that Zhou Junmao would die in a car crash.
According to my script, the DNA appraisal workshop’s head would
have told Yang Bo the results, and I would have ‘accidentally’ gotten
ahold of them and run to Yang Bo to excoriate him. First I’d get him
angry, then I’d get flustered and assert to him, ‘Dad won’t
acknowledge you.’ I understand Yang Bo. He’s very superficial.
Meeting with that kind of attack, he’d start to ramble. If my luck was
good, I could get some recordings that would be useful in the future.
Meanwhile Yang Bo would have been provoked. It’s likely he
wouldn’t have been able to hold back, wanting to show me by getting
himself ‘brought back into the fold.’ I had follow-up arrangements for
that.—But you can see now that Zhou Junmao died at the wrong
time. I had to abort my plan when it had just started.”
 
“When you heard the news of Zhou Junmao’s death, you realized at
once that while it had upset your plan, it could also be an
opportunity. So you hinted to Zhou Huaixin that he should call the
police, attract their notice and the notice of the public using Yang Bo
as a pretext. Then, when the car crash had been thrown under
suspicion, you put together a fine game, making Zhou Junmao’s
death even more bewildering. First you shifted the blame onto Yang
Bo, and then you used the business of the public welfare funds to
lead the police to investigate Zheng Kaifeng. While the Zhou Clan
was unstable, you’d wipe out your two enemies at one fell swoop, at
the same time whipping up the flames of public opinion to
completely destroy Zhou Junmao’s reputation—”
 
Zhou Huaijin’s throat moved. He didn’t expound, as if silently
acknowledging it.
 
Fei Du said, “Weren’t you afraid that the Zhou Clan wouldn’t recover
from the attack, and when it came to you, it would be a shambles?”

174
 
“The current Zhou Clan is Zhou Junmao’s ‘Zhou,’” Zhou Huaijin said
quietly. “Whether he’s living or dead, it’s inextricably linked to his
reputation. It’s another part of him. I wanted to destroy his gilded
image. As for the rest… Isn’t it all worldly possessions? Mr. Fei, if
you’d also had a thorn in your heart from the time you were little,
would you not dare to pull it out because you were afraid of being
reduced to poverty and ruin? Money, things… To people like us,
sometimes they really don’t have the power to attract.”
 
Hearing the words “a thorn in your heart,” Fei Du’s fingers tightened
even further, nearly twisting the water bottle. Just then, a few
medical personnel carrying plasma for a transfusion darted past in
front of them, hurrying towards the operating room. There seemed to
be an ominous rhythm to their steps.
 
Zhou Huaijin shot to his feet. “Doctor, my little brother, he…”
 
The Zhou family was Heng’ai Hospital’s major financial backer. A staff
member who had the look of a nurse said tactfully, “Set your mind at
ease, we’re doing everything we can to save him.”
 
Zhou Huaijin understood the implication. His steps tottered.
 
Fei Du took his elbow. “Mr. Zhou, is Huaixin also a worldly possession
to you?”
 
Zhou Huaijin looked like someone had stepped on his tail, his
expression altering abruptly. But Fei Du was unwilling to let him off.
“When you and your henchman Hu Zhenyu were echoing each other,
he’d already realized that something was going on, but he didn’t
make it public. He even cooperated in helping you two play the game
down to the end. Do you know what he said to Hu Zhenyu?”
 
“I don’t…”
 

175
“He said he didn’t understand any of your business, he only wanted
you safe and sound.” Fei Du’s voice was fast and harsh, like a short,
sharp dagger, stabbing into Zhou Huaijin’s ear. “When I tried to get it
out of him afterwards, he wanted to take the blame for the
‘kidnapping’ in your place. Mr. Zhou, there’s a question I want to ask
you. This whole time, you’ve been telling me a story of a prince’s
vengeance, full of cause and effect. Why haven’t you said a word
about the murderous woman with the knife? It’s like you know why
she was so deranged. Can you tell me—”
 
The operating room door opened from inside, suddenly interrupting
Fei Du’s words.
 
The clock on the hospital wall, marching ceaselessly forward, seemed
to pause. Zhou Huaijin’s panicked gaze watched the doctor coming
out. And at the same time, the phone in Fei Du’s pocket vibrated. He
got it out and looked. Luo Wenzhou had sent a concise and
comprehensive message: “Dong Xiaoqing is dead.”
 
Fei Du stared, letting go of Zhou Huaijin on the spot. His first
reaction was to call back. “How are you doing?”
 
It was noisy where Luo Wenzhou was. Before he could answer, in
front of Fei Du, Zhou Huaijin had fallen to his knees with a thump.
He heard the doctor saying, “I’m sorry, Mr. Zhou. We really…”
 

176
CHAPTER 75 - Macbeth XVI
 
The shrieking police cars had stopped in a circle around the scene
where Dong Xiaoqing had come to grief. The surveillance camera at
the intersection clearly showed the whole course of the responsible
car hitting her, then absconding.
 
“Right, it’s that car.” The place where the car mirror had hit Luo
Wenzhou smarted fiercely, the flesh already swollen, though it
seemed nothing was broken. It was having no impact on his ability to
hop around the scene issuing orders. “The son-of-a-bitch had his face
wrapped up, and he was dressed in full battle array, not showing a
hair. This definitely isn’t his first time doing this kind of thing.
Suddenly turning at that speed and hitting someone, it’s easy to mess
up and flip the car over, and he absolutely had his escape route
planned out in advance.”
 
“Captain Luo, are you all right?” The colleague reviewing the security
camera footage next to him was appalled by the sight of him. “Why
don’t we get a doctor to look after you?”
 
“I’m all right. It won’t kill me.” There was an anger in Luo Wenzhou’s
heart that could have burned a hole in the ground. He was afraid that
if he breathed too deeply he’d blow the earth out of the solar system.
He forced it down, doing his best to calmly say, “I need everyone to
investigate all of Dong Xiaoqing and Dong Qian’s social relationships
afresh—all of them—especially Dong Qian’s. The fleet he worked for,
his clients, the rest stops he passed through, where he bought food to
eat…”
 
“Captain Luo, why don’t you at least get a bandage? Your arm is
bleeding.”
 
Interrupted for the second time, Luo Wenzhou at last exploded. “We
still don’t know where the murderer who ran someone over in broad

177
daylight is, what the fuck do you all keep staring at me for?”
 
The circle of people around him was stunned silent as cicadas in
winter by his roar. The little physician who’d been called over didn’t
even dare to breathe deeply.
 
Luo Wenzhou irritably wiped his scraped forearm on his shirt, then
noticed that he’d lost control and quickly took a deep breath, forcing
down his unhelpful exasperation at the speed of light.
 
“Sorry, that wasn’t aimed at you guys.” Luo Wenzhou lowered his
head slightly, his voice relaxing. “This murderer killed someone right
in front of my face, and I actually let him get away. It’s a problem I
have. I’m filled with anger. I was taking it out on all of you.”
 
The colleague next to him knew his temper and was very
understanding. “Boss, it’s already lucky that you’re all right. Who
could have stopped him? You aren’t a Transformer.”
 
Luo Wenzhou forced a smile at him and said, “The murderer had his
face and head obstructed at the time. It’s not very likely he’d give us
his car’s information to investigate as we liked. I think…”
 
He hadn’t finished when word came from his colleagues who had
been searching for the responsible car according to his orders.
“Captain Luo, we’ve found the owner of the responsible car. It’s an
ordinary white-collar worker, a woman, taking a professional
qualifications exam today. She says she was running late, she was in a
rush, and had to find any empty spot. She made do with parking her
car illegally, and since she was afraid of getting a ticket, she
purposefully found an out-of-the-way place without security cameras.
The owner had another test after. She didn’t know someone had
made off with her car until we contacted her just now.”
 
Luo Wenzhou signed deeply. His crow’s mouth had made another
correct prediction.

178
 
“Captain Luo, the traffic camera network caught the responsible car!”
 
“Go after it!” Luo Wenzhou said heavily.
 
But they were too late.
 
Half an hour later, the police found the broken-down car in the yard
of an abandoned factory. The previously well-maintained white
sedan’s front windshield had died a violent death, and there was only
one side mirror remaining, making it look like One-Ear5 in the
cartoon. The car’s four doors were wide open, and there was no sign
of anyone. The cracked headlights and twisted bumper, faintly blood-
spattered, formed a mocking smile.
 
Luo Wenzhou heard the technicians who had come along quietly
commenting—
 
“What a sorry state it’s in. Can it still be repaired?”
 
“Repaired my ass. Who’d drive a car that had killed someone?”
 
“But this car isn’t cheap. I think it’s the kind where the basic car is
three or four hundred thousand? Is the owner rich?”
 
“I don’t think so, she’s working away to test for a certificate so she
can get work.”
 
“If I were the car’s owner, I think I’d go mad. Isn’t this an unmerited
calamity?”
 
This group of technicians had been called over straight from the City
Bureau. They hadn’t gone to the scene of the murder and hadn’t been
face to face with the corpse. At first they didn’t make an association
with the hair-raising murder; the scrapped “murder weapon” touched

179
the eternal insecurity of a salaried worker—they observed the law
and discipline daily, working hard and scrambling every day, saving a
bit here and a bit there, in ten years saving up for a house they could
only come home to sleep in, in five years saving up for a car that was
always stuck in traffic on the highway, carrying a load of loans,
thinking it was a disaster if they ran late and couldn’t make full-time
hours.
 
Years of struggle and frugal living, then someone had casually made
off with it and destroyed it in an instant. There was no one to take
your grievance to; after all, compared to the girl who had become a
pile of rotting meat, there didn’t seem to be anything that bad about
losing a car. It could even be called lucky.
 
Doors and locked courtyards deter gentlemen; they don’t deter
villains. All kinds of laws and regulations seemed to exist only to
control honest and decent citizens. Looked at like this, “honesty,”
“decency,” “civility,” “sensibility”… These qualities were all errors that
wouldn’t make you anywhere near as happy as a mad dog going
around biting everyone.
 
When Luo Wenzhou went over, the technicians doing their work
consciously closed their mouths under the influence of his low
pressure system. He walked around the scene, knowing that the
murderer’s choice to ditch the car here had been carefully deliberated
and extremely secure. He had planned ahead of time how to escape
with no one the wiser; by now he must have disappeared into the sea
of people.
 
He went back alone to sit in the police car parked outside the scene
and lit a cigarette.
 
The cigarette smell and faint scent of blood together made Luo
Wenzhou squint. He thought about it, got a bottle of water out of the
car, carelessly poured it onto the grazes and lacerations on his

180
exposed skin, then did his best to send brief and accurate
notifications to all parties involved.
 
When he got to Fei Du, Luo Wenzhou hesitated, guessing that he
would be at the hospital, taking advantage of Zhou Huaijin’s shaky
mental state to worm something out of him, and thereupon only sent
him a text message. He didn’t expect Fei Du call him back before he’d
put the phone away.
 
Hearing his non sequitur question, Luo Wenzhou slowly breathed out
a smoke ring. “What would be going on with me?”
 
Fei Du was silent for a moment. Over the phone, Luo Wenzhou heard
his light, lengthy breaths. They lingered in his ear, for no reason
calming him down.
 
Unfortunately, he hadn’t been calm for two seconds when chaos
suddenly erupted in the background on Fei Du’s end of the phone.
Someone cried out something, followed by hasty footsteps and a
babble of voices.
 
Fei Du looked up and saw Zhou Huaijin kneeling on the floor.
Reading the body language of the medical personnel, he already
knew the outcome of the rescue efforts.
 
The Zhou Clan was Heng’ai Hospital’s major financial backer. No one
dared to slight them. One after another they made a production of
coming up to help Zhou Huaijin to his feet. The director of the
hospital and the heads of all the departments also shortly came over
one after another. Their “condolences” sounded like a group of frogs
in a pond after it had rained, croaking unanimously.
 
Fei Du, holding up the phone connected to Luo Wenzhou, thought
clearly, “It looks like Zhou Huaixin is gone.”
 

181
As soon as the thought appeared, there was a lurch in his heart, like
driving over a pebble in the road.
 
“I think that based on your abilities, it should have been very easy to
chase down Dong Xiaoqing.” Without blinking, Fei Du stared at the
dark doors of the operating room. At the same time, he spoke to Luo
Wenzhou in a steady voice. “You’ve been involved in many hostage
situations. It’s impossible that you wouldn’t be able to calm down a
knife-wielding girl. Even if she’d planned to finish herself off after
she’d killed him, I believe that if she’d only hesitated for a second, it
would have been enough of an opportunity for you to subdue her. So
why did she die? Did something unexpected happen?”
 
Fei Du’s wholly unwavering voice was like a bowl of warm water,
pouring into Luo Wenzhou’s ear over the phone signal. For some
reason, his restless emotions were rinsed clean by these brief words.
Luo Wenzhou put out his cigarette, pressed his thumb to his
forehead, and for no reason at all very much wanted to see Fei Du.
 
“I can’t explain clearly in a few words—my colleagues from the
bureau are already at Heng’ai Hospital. What’s going on with Zhou
Huaijin? Did he confess anything?”
 
“He confessed. He planned the kidnapping himself.”

“Fine. Tell them to get him under control and take him back to the
City Bureau.” Luo Wenzhou paused, then added, “Wait for me at the
hospital.”
 
Fei Du seemed not to notice the softened voice that last sentence was
spoken in. He hung up and went to Zhou Huaijin’s side.
 
There were no tears on Zhou Huaijin’s face. There was hardly any
expression. He was only staring at the operating room in disbelief…
until a person covered in a white sheet was pushed out. Suddenly he
found the strength somewhere to force apart the people trying to

182
hold him back, heedlessly throwing himself forward. His first reaction
was to pull away the white sheet covering the face of the deceased,
needing to see clearly for himself.
 
Zhou Huaixin lay there quietly, his face pale, somewhat ashen. He
didn’t seem anything like he had when he’d been alive. He put Fei Du
in mind of a painting he’d bought from him.—The painting was of an
intersection on a bustling high street. Upright buildings and
billboards had been carelessly daubed with big gray blobs of varying
thickness. The street was filled with walking skeletons, each brightly
dressed in a different style of clothing, separating the skeletons by
sex, age, and social class.
 
Zhou Huaixin’s artistic abilities were limited, neither here not there.
He normally chose subjects that would make people think anyone
who hung them in his living room was crazy. Quite a few of the
people who bought his paintings had only done it to curry favor with
him, and after buying them had put them in the bottom of a chest to
gather dust. Fei Du and his other drinking buddies had jeered at him
when they’d bought paintings, often asking him, “Great Master Zhou,
when are you going to die? When you die, this painting will really
appreciate!”
 
Now it was all right. For those paintings lying under beds, in
basements, in storage rooms, the greatest news that would raise their
stock had finally arrived; they had hope of seeing the light of day
again.
 
“President Zhou! Don’t look, President Zhou!”
 
Everyone hurriedly tried to pull Zhou Huaijin away. Zhou Huaijin’s
lips trembled. He seemed not to have reacted yet.
 
Fei Du looked him up and down. “President Zhou.”
 

183
Amid the chaos, Zhou Huaijin with difficulty pulled together the
remains of his intelligence and looked at him weakly. “I… Forgive me,
I’m… My head’s not quite…”
 
Just then, the police came in. Having received Luo Wenzhou’s
notification, they wanted to take Zhou Huaijin away.
 
Fei Du stood with his back to them, lightly waving a hand, indicating
that they should wait a moment. He himself went over to Zhou
Huaijin and said, “They have their procedures for handling cases. I’m
afraid I’ll have to trouble you to go with them. President Zhou,
believe me, I can look after Huaixin for you for the moment.”
 
Zhou Huaijin’s gaze swept over the surrounding policemen. He
seemed to want to turn back to look at Zhou Huaixin again, but
perhaps he didn’t dare; whatever the reason, in the end, he still
hadn’t looked.
 
At this point, past the initial shock, Zhou Huaijin was once again
instinctively preserving his image in front of outsiders. He shook off
his bodyguards’ support and stood up straight, nodding to Fei Du.
“Then I’ll ask you to help.”
 
Fei Du calmly jabbed another knife into his heart. “Huaixin defended
you with his life because he hoped you would live well. President
Zhou, look after yourself.”
 
Zhou Huaijin had his back to him. His footsteps tottered.
 
“Oh, right.” Fei Du looked at his back. “There’s another rather
important matter I just forgot to mention—in fact, when we tested
Yang Bo and the Venerable Zhou’s blood relationship, we also
collected samples from you and Huaixin. President Zhou, I don’t
know how complicated your family relationships are, but DNA is
simple and clear.”
 

184
Zhou Huaijin’s pupils contracted. When Fei Du’s voice paused, he had
a certain dim premonition and turned around.
 
Fei Du made a show of shaking his head pityingly, covering up the
trace of a smile at the corners of his lips. “It’s very strange. The
results of the paternity test were clear. You’re Zhou Junmao’s son.”
 
There was a moment where it seemed that Zhou Huaijin didn’t
understand Chinese. He stared numbly at Fei Du. Then his disordered
reflex arc managed to run its course, and he immediately leapt up
and grabbed Fei Du’s collar, incoherently saying, “What did you say?
Say…say it again…”
 
When a person’s inner world came tumbling down, you could see a
magnificent sight by looking into his eyes, like an avalanche on a
high mountain, a tornado sweeping over a village, a tsunami dozens
of meters high grandly striking land, a meteor shower falling down—
 
Fei Du clearly felt that incomparable pleasure, what sadists and serial
killers had jointly pursued in fascination from time immemorial.
 
The criminal policemen next to them suspected Zhou Huaijin wanted
to assault him and quickly swarmed around, getting him under
control. Zhou Huaijin, reported to always show a graceful bearing in
front of others, crumbled, yelling, “No! No! Say it again! Impossible!”
 
“Are you all right?” A policeman helped Fei Du keep his footing.
 
“I’m all right.” Fei Du straightened his collar. “Look after him. If you
really can’t control him, sedate him. Don’t worry. When he wakes up,
he’ll tell you everything.—You’ve worked hard. Go ahead now. I’ll
wait for Captain Luo.”
 
The policeman heard him, nodded, and hastily went after his
colleagues. Having gone a dozen steps, for some reason, he turned
back to look at Fei Du and felt an inexplicable trace of terror.

185
 
Fei Du methodically made arrangements for dealing with Zhou
Huaixin’s remains. He notified the medical examiner, then cleverly
shook off the director of Heng’ai Hospital, who wanted to question
him about the circumstances. He waited at the hospital door for Luo
Wenzhou to come.
 
Luo Wenzhou had been afraid he wouldn’t be able to stand the sight
of blood and had simply taken care of all his visible wounds. He’d
been prepared to take a dehydrated Fei Du straight to the hospital.
But Fei Du was not only in one piece, there was even a rare trace of
rosiness on his usually pale face.
 
The two of them briefly exchanged information—Luo Wenzhou
hesitated, then concealed what Dong Xiaoqing had said to him, while
Fei Du roughly summarized Zhou Huaijin’s confession, omitting how
he had step by step forced Zhou Huaijin to the point of collapse.
 
After hearing the Zhou family’s bizarre wealthy family drama, Luo
Wenzhou looked sidelong at Fei Du and couldn’t resist saying, “So
your so-called fear of blood was also just you messing with me?”
 
Fei Du smiled without answering. He only said, “Shixiong probably
isn’t in the mood to go out with me today. Could I trouble you to take
me home?—To the villa. You’ve been there before.”
 
Fei Du’s activities were normally in the city, and he lived in a mid-
sized apartment near the conglomerate. Luo Wenzhou stared for a
moment, then realized that Fei Du meant the house his mother had
died in. “What do you want to go there for?”
 
Treasuring words like gold, Fei Du said, “Things to do.”
 
Luo Wenzhou frowned, dimly sensing that there was something not
very normal about Fei Du.—After he’d learned about Dong Xiaoqing’s
death, his first reaction had been to call back and ask Luo Wenzhou

186
what was going on with him, but now, seeing him covered in
blooming bruises, he hadn’t asked a single question. A person who
normally talked so much nonsense, he was now leaning back in the
passenger’s seat, not saying a word, resting his eyes.
 
It wasn’t at all far from Heng’ai Hospital to Fei Du’s family’s villa.
Without traffic, it was a twenty-minute trip. Luo Wenzhou stopped
the service car at the gate of the gloomy and magnificent residence.
He poked Fei Du. “We’re here.”
 
Fei Du opened his eyes; his gaze was so cold his eyes seemed to be
made of inorganic material. He didn’t even say thank you, only
wordlessly opened the car door and made to go.
 
Luo Wenzhou finally couldn’t resist grabbing Fei Du’s wrist. “Wait.
What’s the matter with you?”
 
Fei Du struggled, but naturally he couldn’t shake him off. He sighed,
seeming extremely exhausted. Almost inaudibly, he said, “Let me go.”
 
The more Luo Wenzhou looked at him, the more he thought
something was wrong. Of course he didn’t stop worrying and let go.
“You…”
 
He’d only said one word when the next instant he was pushed back
against the driver’s seat. The wounds on Luo Wenzhou’s back
throbbed with pain, half-immobilizing him and pinning him to the
spot. Ice-cold lips stopped his breath—
 

187
CHAPTER 76 - Macbeth XVII
 
In all his years of doing criminal police work, Luo Wenzhou had
never encountered this kind of “assault on a police officer.” He was
taken wholly unawares and short-circuited on the spot,
subconsciously reaching out a hand to push…and pushing empty air.
 
As if having anticipated his reaction, Fei Du released him after a
touch, backing off a bit. His eyes were slightly bloodshot, and their
corners were subtly curved, brewing a trace of a smile.
 
It wasn’t any kind of a warm and genial smile; it was rather ill-
intentioned.
 
At this point Luo Wenzhou tasted the flavor of mint he’d left behind—
not at all sweet, but rather cold, diving right through the crack
between his lips, blowing through his throat, infecting his chest,
riding roughshod over his clamoring heart.
 
Fei Du’s tempo was precisely accurate. He didn’t fiercely pursue with
a single kiss; staying now near, now far, he gave him an interval to
resist and consider. His gaze, like something physical, skipped lightly
over his features, keenly hearing Luo Wenzhou’s breath catch.
 
This seemed like a good opportunity to pursue his advantage. The
next instant, Fei Du regrouped and came back stronger, grabbing the
hand Luo Wenzhou had pulled him with, pressing it to the back of the
seat. Like a cheetah patrolling its territory, his straight nose gracefully
and unhurriedly brushed Luo Wenzhou’s cheek. He deftly pried open
Officer Luo’s lips, not meeting any firm willpower to resist.
 
It was as if an immersion heater had appeared out of nowhere in the
narrow car. The thick air heated with lightning speed. Fei Du’s breath
enveloped everything.
 

188
Luo Wenzhou wasn’t any kind of man of honor to sit there calmly and
be kissed. A whole day of emotional vicissitudes had critically
depleted his willpower, and moreover it had been a long time since
he’d encountered an expert kisser like Fei Du. With his intellect’s
spirit struck dumb, his impetuous body was drawn on by the trace of
warmth already existing in his heart; it answered involuntarily, acting
first and asking permission later, ordering him to raise his hand and
press it to the back of Fei Du’s neck, ready to draw him into his arms.
 
At this point, the icy chill of Fei Du’s body called back some of his
intellect. The remains of Luo Wenzhou’s reason caught a breath and
bawled into his ear, “What the fuck do you think you’re doing!”
 
The veins stood out on the back of Luo Wenzhou’s hand holding Fei
Du’s neck. Exerting the radical willpower needed to resist pepper
spray and torture on the rack, he grabbed the back of Fei Du’s neck
and lifted him off.
 
Fei Du tumbled back into the passenger’s seat, raising his eyebrows
rather regretfully. Then, seeming not at all concerned, he casually
opened the car door. Under Luo Wenzhou’s gaze, about to roast him
into a human skewer, he lightly wiped the corner of his mouth with
his thumb. “I’ve settled my fare. I suppose I can go now, shixiong?”
 
His expression cold, Luo Wenzhou said, “Get the hell out. Go.”
 
His reaction seemed to please Fei Du. The bastard unhurriedly got
out of the car, then bent down and waved at him through the
window. “Drive slowly on the way back. Also, the bruises on your
waist are really dreadful. Shouldn’t you go to the hospital to have
them looked at? I couldn’t bear to touch them.”
 
Luo Wenzhou: “…”
 
A breeze came through the opened window, and he only then noticed
that his shirt had been untucked at some point by that foul hoodlum

189
Fei.
 
“But your abs really do feel good,” Fei Du commented, pouring oil
onto the fire. He stuck his hands in his pockets and easily turned and
left, heading towards the empty villa.
 
There were two flames rising by turns in Luo Wenzhou’s heart,
steaming out of the seven apertures of his face. There was no way to
reconcile them. He was simply about to explode.
 
Agitated, he glared at Fei Du’s back in the rearview mirror, the faint
bit of warmth in his heart leaking away entirely; he didn’t know
whether he wanted to peel off Fei Du’s clothes or simply peel off his
skin.
 
As he glared, Luo Wenzhou suddenly inadvertently noticed that the
sleeve of Fei Du’s trim shirt was moving without any wind. At first he
thought it was some embroidery on the shirt reflecting the light, but
looking closely again, he found that Fei Du himself was trembling
involuntarily, as if he was freezing, or as if he’d been electrocuted.
 
Luo Wenzhou frowned, hesitated for a moment, then couldn’t relax
about it. He opened the car door and followed.
 
Fei Du hadn’t even closed the gate, perhaps thinking the security in
this wealthy neighborhood was too good. The doors stood wide open.
Maybe because no one had lived there for a long time and he’d been
worried it would be a problem to deal with weeds, Fei Du had had
the yard covered in stone. There wasn’t a single blade of grass
growing; it looked flat and cold.
 
When Luo Wenzhou caught up, Fei Du had already gotten out the
keys and opened the door.
 
Luo Wenzhou said, “Hey, are you…”
 

190
As soon as he opened his mouth, he saw President Fei, who had just
been flamboyantly domineering and taking liberties, shake all over.
His hand pressed down on the doorknob, as if trying to support
himself, not expecting the door to open inward at this pressure. Fei
Du stumbled and fell right to his knees.
 
The vestibule was floored in big slabs of ice-cold marble. His knees
hit it without any cushioning with a dull thump that made Luo
Wenzhou feel his own legs were about to give out. He quickly went to
support him.
 
The unusual color in Fei Du’s face seemed to have been used up; he
was even somewhat paler than usual. There was a trace of cold sweat
at his temples, and his hands and feet shook incessantly, as if
twitching.
 
“What’s wrong?” Luo Wenzhou pulled him into his arms and put a
hand to his face. “What is it? Fei Du, talk to me!”
 
“Maybe it’s…low…low blood sugar…” Fei Du groaned almost
inaudibly, putting a hand on Luo Wenzhou’s knee, trying to stand, but
his arm went weak, and after a struggle he dropped back down.
 
“Low blood sugar?” Hearing this bizarre explanation, Luo Wenzhou at
once irritably jeered at him, “Taking advantage of me tired you out,
did it? I’m really impressed—”
 
Saying so, he simply picked Fei Du up.
 
With Fei Du’s tall and slender stature, his presence was very imposing
wherever he stood. Picking him up, though, Luo Wenzhou felt it
didn’t take nearly as much effort as he would have imagined. He
could faintly feel the bones under a thin layer of flesh; evidently he
was of the constitution that became skinny through lack of exercise.
 

191
Thinking about it carefully, it did actually make sense. For a young
man in his early twenties to fracture a bone at a single bump, not
even as sturdy as the frames of his glasses, he had to be the sort of
person who relied on his youth and went out partying, always a little
unhealthy. There was hardly ever any flush in Fei Du’s face;
sometimes when he’d partied too hard with his drinking buddies,
there would be a clear lack of vigor about him. A clear case of a
typical “young lord with renal deficiency.”
 
But there was some cold and unyielding particular quality about him
that made a person forget he was an attractive but useless
“embroidered pillowcase.”
 
Luo Wenzhou laid Fei Du flat on the couch, then straightened up,
shifting his bruised back. “Don’t die. Is there anything to eat here?”
 
Fei Du didn’t speak. He feebly pointed at the kitchen.
 
Luo Wenzhou walked two steps away, then turned back and picked
up a blanket from the couch, throwing it over Fei Du. He turned and
went into the kitchen.
 
The kitchen was bright and clean, probably because someone
regularly came in to clean it. The kitchenware was basically for
decoration; some things still had tags on them. Luo Wenzhou opened
a few cupboards, found where the condiments were kept, and got out
a bag of sugar. Then he picked up a barrel of purified water, poured
half a glass, and dissolved some sugar in it.
 
Luo Wenzhou was just about to carry it out for Fei Du to drink when
he thought of something else and looked down at the barrel of water
that had already been opened, thinking, “How long has this thing
been here? It hasn’t expired?”
 
He smelled the water and turned over the barrel to look at the
manufacturing date, suddenly discovering that it had been bought a

192
week before. Luo Wenzhou stared, then noiselessly opened the door
of the refrigerator next to him. The fridge was rather empty. There
were some cans of milk, some fruit, and a bit of not very sumptuous
pre-made food. All of it was very fresh, basically enough of a reserve
for a person to temporarily come and spend the night here—had Fei
Du just been coming back here lately by coincidence, or did he
regularly come to stay here for a few days?
 
As far as Luo Wenzhou understood, even before Fei Du’s mother had
died, he hadn’t been living here permanently. He’d normally lived in
an apartment near his school with a housekeeper to take care of him,
coming back here every weekend. Only when he was making
arrangements after his mother’s death had Fei Du come back to live
here for a part of a year.—His father had never been there. It had
been appalling to think of a child living on his own in an unlucky
abode, so Tao Ran had often come to see him then, until half a year
later Fei Du had moved back into the apartment in the city, and the
people who had been worrying about him, both obviously and in
secret, had relaxed slightly.
 
Luo Wenzhou had thought that he had never sold the place only
because it was hard to get rid of a house where someone had died,
but now it seemed…
 
He thoughtfully turned his head and looked at Fei Du lying on the
couch.—This place really did have the makings of a haunted house.
Even though it was exquisitely decorated, brightly lit, swept so clean
there wasn’t a speck of dust, it still made you feel gloomy, well-suited
to suicides and hauntings.
 
Since he’d walked through the door, Luo Wenzhou had dimly felt that
there was something wrong with this house, but after all he’d last
been here seven years ago; he was already doing pretty well being
able to find the door. For a time he couldn’t think of what the
problem was.
 

193
He put the sugar water in front of Fei Du, wanting him to drink it
himself, but he found that Fei Du’s hands were shaking so hard he
could hardly hold the glass. He could only bow to his fate, snatch the
glass away, and hold it up for Fei Du to drink.
 
Fei Du sighed gently. “Shixiong, I’m going to love you until you can’t
escape.”
 
Luo Wenzhou was so stirred up by his slightly nasal voice that his
scalp went numb. Not turning a hair, he said, “Hurry up and drink.
What’s all the chatter for? You’ll choke.”
 
Having finished drinking a glass of sugar water, Fei Du finally had
some strength. He sat bonelessly on the couch. “It’s all right. I just got
sick at the blood and got a little dehydrated after throwing up at the
hospital. Zhou Huaijin was there, so I didn’t have attention to spare
for anything else at the time.”
 
Luo Wenzhou looked him over and suddenly asked, “Do you often
stay here by yourself?”
 
Fei Du opened his eyes at once. Though his posture didn’t change,
Luo Wenzhou could feel Fei Du’s nerves tense instantly.
 
“It’s far from your company, from Yan Security Uni, from the City
Bureau…even from your academic advisor’s house,” Luo Wenzhou
said slowly. “As far as I know, none of the places of entertainment
your crowd of wastrels frequents are around here, either—why would
you come over to stay on your own in an unlucky abode?”
 
“What’s the problem?” After a pause, Fei Du showed him an
unassailable smile. “It’s my home.”
 
While his tone was gentle, his answer was a defensive one, a needle
hidden in silk floss, impossible to answer.
 

194
Luo Wenzhou was silent for a moment. As soon as he considered it,
he wanted to smoke. As his gaze subconsciously searched for an
ashtray, he asked Fei Du, “All right if I smoke…”
 
Before he’d finished, Luo Wenzhou paused. Their gazes fell
simultaneously on the ashtray on the coffee table.
 
Fei Du reacted, his expression altering immediately.
 
At the same time, Luo Wenzhou’s blurry memories and faint
intuitions finally came together and cleared up—yes, he remembered
now!
 
Neither Fei Du nor his father smoked. This ashtray had been used by
his mother when she’d been alive.
 
When he’d been investigating her death, Luo Wenzhou had come to
the Fei house a few times to talk to Fei Du’s father. Once, just like
today, he’d asked the master of the house if he could smoke, and Fei
Du’s father, that powerful and astute man, had pulled out a ceramic
fruit bowl from under a table and offered it to him, claiming that
since his wife had passed, he’d cleared away all of her things so
looking at them wouldn’t bring up painful associations, and he’d also
moved all the furniture in the room.
 
He’d said then…
 
“I changed the position of the TV and removed the piano that used to
stand there. The coatrack at the door, the vases she liked to arrange
flowers in… I can’t look at any of them, I’ve moved them all away.—
I’m sorry, Officer Luo, I don’t smoke. Since she passed, there are no
ashtrays in the house. You’ll have to make do with this.”
 
Luo Wenzhou’s gaze immediately swept the whole living room. The
TV, the piano, the retro coatrack at the door, even the vases in the

195
vestibule and living room, had all been returned to their original
positions!
 
In the vases were extremely realistic fake flowers. They’d been
specially ordered from somewhere and were made to look like fresh
flowers that hadn’t been changed in too long, exactly the way the
floral arrangement had looked on the day when they’d first come
here after the case had been reported!
 
Luo Wenzhou finally understood what was strange about this place. It
was like a large-scale exhibit, its time fixed at seven years before—
 
“I’m a little tired.” Fei Du tore away the blanket over him and sat up,
ordering his guest to leave in a somewhat stiff voice. “I can’t entertain
you any longer. Have a nice weekend.”
 
Luo Wenzhou wasn’t to be gotten rid of that easily. He leaned back
against the soft couch. “Hey, just now you were saying you were
going to love me so I couldn’t escape, kissing and groping and taking
advantage, and now you’ve changed your mind just like that.
President Fei, that’s a little unfriendly.”
 
Fei Du tensed all over, but his hands had stopped trembling as though
he had Parkinson’s. He concentrated and forced a smile, glibly saying,
“That’s all right. If you feel like you’ve gotten the worst of it, you’re
free to demand…”
 
He hadn’t finished when Luo Wenzhou was already beside himself
with anger. He leaned over and grabbed Fei Du’s collar, hauling him
up and pressing him into a corner of the couch. “I’ve spoiled you
rotten—do you really think I wouldn’t dare to do anything to you?”
 

196
CHAPTER 77 - Macbeth XVIII
 
At first Fei Du was rather shocked, but he quickly relaxed. Secure in
the knowledge of his safety, he embraced Luo Wenzhou. “Well, Mr.
Policeman, what would you dare to do to me?”
 
Fei Du undoubtedly had a beautiful pair of eyes, especially when he
smiled, his irises refracting light in several layers. The gradations of a
natural human eye couldn’t be replicated by even the highest grade
of contact lens; it was a miracle of the accumulated accomplishments
of hundreds of millions of years of slow evolution, containing the
most complex and changeable moods and desires, the subtlest and
most tortuous emotions, like a mustard seed in a fantasy novel, the
whole world in a grain of sand.
 
Evidently, Fei Du’s “mustard seed” had an indestructible outer shell.
 
Luo Wenzhou gazed at him from close up. His throat moved. Then,
without saying a word, he tore open his collar. The movement was
rather rough; shirt buttons scattered over the floor. With his skin
exposed to the slightly cold air, a layer of gooseflesh rose on Fei Du’s
neck. The tattoo on his chest was revealed. It was a beast that seemed
about to open its mouth and eat someone.
 
Luo Wenzhou’s gaze swept over it, and he paused slightly. “I
remember last time at West Ridge, that was a different picture. Did it
wash off?”
 
Fei Du was touching him now and then, taking petty advantage,
magnanimously letting him look. “Supposedly the nanotechnology
that simulates a real tattoo is more waterproof than a synchronized
swimming team’s mascara, but of course that’s just false advertising,
so I would advise you…hss…not to lick it.”
 

197
Luo Wenzhou’s lightly calloused fingers closed on Fei Du’s neck,
forcing him to lift his head. Fei Du didn’t mind at all, as if what had
fallen into Luo Wenzhou’s hands wasn’t his own precious throat but a
tie bought at a street stall that he would let someone tear apart
without regretting it.
 
Luo Wenzhou looked loftily down at him. “Why didn’t you get a real
tattoo? Afraid of the pain?”
 
Fei Du nodded calmly. Before his nod was finished, Luo Wenzhou
suddenly drew his hand tight. With his airflow suddenly strained and
a most vital place squeezed, Fei Du gave a momentary physiological
shudder, but Luo Wenzhou could feel that the pulse in his carotid
artery was as calm and steady as a flat line, not speeding up at all. Fei
Du even forced out a trace of a smile towards him. “I can’t…tell if…
you like this?”
 
“If your breathing is obstructed for a minute, there will be an
unbearable burning pain in your lungs. Then you’ll begin to feel dizzy
due to lack of oxygen, and your eyes will start to fill with blood. Your
brain, which hasn’t fully evolved, will be panic-stricken and cut off
other life functions, disregarding the consequences in its attempt to
survive. Your limbs will be numb and powerless. You’ll lose your
ability to resist, start to be unable to feel your body. Your muscles will
spasm. Within a few minutes you’ll die.” Luo Wenzhou abruptly
released his neck. “It’ll be a rather ugly death, too.—You’re afraid of
pain, but you aren’t afraid of that?”
 
Fei Du seemed to know how to avoid choking. When Luo Wenzhou
released him, he didn’t instinctively gasp for breath, only gently
moved his neck, carelessly saying, “It’s another sort of exper…”
 
“You aren’t afraid I’ll do anything to you,” Luo Wenzhou interrupted
him, pressing a hand behind his ear, “aren’t afraid I’ll use force, aren’t
afraid I’ll hurt you. When I squeezed your neck, your heart rate didn’t

198
even increase. Why? Do you trust my moral character too much?
Huh?”
 
Somewhat astonished, Fei Du laughed. “What, I can’t trust you?”
 
Luo Wenzhou expressionlessly gave an “oh.” “If you trust me so
much, then answer a question for me—I remember your dad threw
that ashtray away. Did you buy one exactly like it, or get the old one
back?”
 
Fei Du hadn’t expected that he’d make this kind of sudden thrust
halfway through a perfectly nice flirtation. His pupils contracted
slightly. At such a short distance, there was no way to hide even such
a slight alteration from Luo Wenzhou’s eyes.
 
“Why? Because you’re still investigating her death?”
 
Fei Du immediately pushed him away. Luo Wenzhou had been
prepared. The moment he pushed him, he encircled Fei Du’s
shoulders and pressed down, familiarly using the moves he’d
normally use to arrest a criminal on Fei Du, easily twisting his hands
behind his back, kneeling on the couch with one knee to trap his legs.
 
Fei Du struggled a few times and found that no effort would get him
out of this position—of course, given his battle abilities, even if his
effort had been enough, it still wouldn’t have been much use against
an expert.
 
President Fei, a gentleman who used his words and not his fists, had
no opening to resist. He could only ridicule. “Captain Luo, if you
don’t want to put out, then just say so, and we can be friends. I think
using force doesn’t look very good…”
 
At this point, his complaint abruptly came to a halt.
 

199
Because Luo Wenzhou had suddenly bent down and kissed him on
the forehead.
 
Fei Du: “…”
 
Luo Wenzhou not very gently stroked his rumpled hair, clearly seeing
panic flash across Fei Du’s face.—It really was strange that a playboy
who could flirt a person into a fantasy, who was equal to anything,
would panic like a child someone had confessed their feelings to for
the first time because a person kissed his forehead.
 
It was as if he’d never known warmth in his life.
 
For some reason, this bit of panic made Luo Wenzhou’s heart throb
more distinctly than Fei Du’s earlier seductive arts. His throat moved
slightly. He had a strong impulse to kiss Fei Du again and resisted
only with difficulty, slowly relaxing his hold.
 
“You aren’t afraid I’ll hurt you, you’d hand over your body and your
life to me without a care, but you’re afraid of me asking a few
immaterial questions,” said Luo Wenzhou. “Is telling the truth for
once harder for you than dying?”
 
Fei Du quietly maintained his calm, neither answering nor acting up.
 
“In fact, I also have a suspicion I’ve never been able to let go of. If I
tell you about it, will you listen?” Luo Wenzhou said suddenly.
 
Fei Du didn’t respond, and Luo Wenzhou paid him no mind, starting
to relate. “When I’d just graduated, I thought I was destined to do
great things. When I had nothing else to do I liked to go online to
read those ‘However-many Great Unsolved Cases’ posts, follow the
blind analysis of falsehoods concerning the facts of the cases as
though it was the real thing. Sometimes when I had an opposing
view, I’d get into fights with people. In the end, I came to the same

200
conclusion about each case—that the people who talked about these
things online were all stupid cunts.
 
“At the time, transmigrating into the Qing Dynasty and marrying a
prince was all the rage among girls. Sometimes I’d hear my female
classmates discussing it and I’d think, if I were going to transmigrate,
I’d go back to the Victorian era to ferret out Jack the Ripper.”
 
Captain Luo had weathered a thousand storms; his face was
extremely thick. He exhibited his stupid inglorious past without a
single care. The odd thing was that Fei Du didn’t take the opportunity
to make any sarcastic comments.
 
“The outcome was that after I started work I discovered that it wasn’t
like that. The city had a policy just then that anyone just starting out
had to spend a year doing grassroots work, so I went to a local police
station for experience.” Luo Wenzhou waved a hand in front of Fei
Du’s eyes. “Do you know what a little cop at a local police station is
responsible for?”
 
Fei Du looked up at him.
 
“Things like keys locked into houses, lost dogs, little brats knocking
each others’ teeth out in a fight, the tenant upstairs springing a
leak… Everyone and their mother comes to you with their trifles. The
biggest thing we’d be responsible for was catching a few pickpockets.
The only thing that could be called a ‘case’ was your family’s
business, and it seems my handling wasn’t all that satisfactory. I did
that for a year and thought that if I had to do any more I’d hang
myself, so I simply dragged Tao Ran to test into positions at the City
Bureau—and in fact we got in afterwards because I called in some
connections.”
 
At this point, Luo Wenzhou himself shook his head. “But then it
wasn’t any better at the City Bureau, with everyone knowing you
were a fastidious but incompetent child of an official. I’d get

201
reprimanded every day, especially by Lao Yang. He’d say all kinds of
ugly-sounding things, make me do anything no one else was willing
to do, as if he had some grudge against me. Every day I was
mistreated, and every month I’d get my bit of wages that wasn’t
enough to buy cigarettes with. I forced myself to stay for half a year. I
had my letter of resignation all printed and was about to send it up
when Lao Yang told me to come with him to get in touch with an
informer. We were investigating a prostitution gang.
 
“That kind of gang will usually be somewhat of an underworld
nature. Many girls had been abducted and coerced by them using all
kinds of tricks. Lao Yang was talking to the informer when, all of a
sudden, a girl with her face all bloody ran out. There were two guys
with sticks and switchblades chasing her. The girl was crying and
calling for help as she ran, and everyone around was acting like
they’d seen it all before. The hot blood rushed to my head and I ran
over to fight them. When I’d shaken them off, another crowd
appeared.”
 
Luo Wenzhou spread his hands. “Have you ever stirred up a hornet’s
nest?”
 
“…Why would I want to stir up a hornet’s nest?” said Fei Du.
 
Luo Wenzhou sighed rather pityingly. “Then I’m afraid you can’t
understand the situation we were in—but even though we got into a
gang fight, we did save the girl. Lao Yang got cut on the backs of his
thighs and his back to shield me, and broke a kneecap. In the end,
even though I’d made such a mess, he didn’t reprimand me first thing
afterwards. He even said that although I was unreliable, there was
something of a policeman in me. Maybe he’d reprimanded me so
much I’d developed Stockholm syndrome. I was totally overcome at
hearing an occasional good word. I went home and tore up the letter
of resignation, and from that time on I became the old man’s devoted
dog.”
 

202
Fei Du’s expression softened, even showing a trace of a smile.
 
“But that isn’t the important point of this story.” Luo Wenzhou
dropped his purposefully entertaining playful tone, his voice
becoming grave. “The important point is, the injury to Lao Yang’s
knee remained. He was also fat. The older he got, the worse it got.
He was more accurate than the weather forecast when it was about
to rain. Whenever he could avoid taking the stairs, he absolutely
wouldn’t take the stairs. But when he gave up his life in an underpass
crossing a street on the way home from buying groceries at the
market, there was clearly a pedestrian crossing fifty meters away.”
 
Middle-aged and elderly people who had problems with their legs
and feet were all conscientious about avoiding sky-bridges and
overpasses, even if it meant a little extra walking. Yang Zhengfeng
had been going home from the market. Outside of work, the old
man’s greatest hobby had been strolling through the market and
going home to cook. He walked that route every few days. It was
impossible that he wouldn’t stay on the sidewalk every day, insisting
on challenging his knee’s endurance.
 
“Why would he take the underpass?” Luo Wenzhou said quietly in the
utterly silent living room. “The place where the wanted criminal was
hidden was far inside. There was no way a person outside could have
seen him. I couldn’t understand it. I even quietly investigated Lao
Yang’s phone records from that time—nothing. There was nothing.
The records of the phone he had on him were very clean. Aside from
the phone call he’d made requesting backup, for some days before
there wasn’t even a suspicious telemarketing scam call.”
 
“On the way home from buying groceries, an old police officer
encountered a wanted criminal and called for backup,” said Fei Du.
“What else?”
 
“There was an eyewitness,” said Luo Wenzhou. “Lao Yang only had
some celery and a bag of ground meat on him. He was totally

203
unarmed. He didn’t act rashly at first. Only because an old lady
walking her dog passed by and somehow disturbed the wanted
criminal, and he saw that a bystander was in danger, did he charge
ahead.”
 
“And the wanted criminal?”
 
“The wanted criminal’s mental state was irregular. We couldn’t get
any answers out of him. We investigated the eyewitness, and there
were no issues. The surrounding residents confirmed that the old
lady lived nearby and walked through there every day to walk her
dog in the park across the road.”
 
Coincidence, unassailable cause and effect, an old criminal policeman
dying for a just cause. It was a perfect accident—
 
“I mentioned this suspicious point at the bureau,” said Luo Wenzhou.
“My colleagues and superiors all cooperated to investigate and collect
evidence, and in the end we came up empty-handed. You know, when
someone dies a violent death like that, their friends and relatives
often can’t accept it, often imagine a hypothetical murderer, so there’s
a direction for them to vent their grief in…”
 
Fei Du responded, “Just like me back then.”
 
“Like you back then.” Luo Wenzhou suddenly grabbed his hand. Fei
Du subconsciously pulled it back, but the man gripped it tighter.
“After that happened, I dimly sensed that perhaps there was some
basis for you to question the outcome of your mother’s case so
fiercely, but, Fei Du—”
 
Luo Wenzhou looked up at him. “You can remember her forever,
never abandon your search for the truth, but you can’t trap yourself
inside it. Actually, what I forgot to say to you that day…”
 

204
Fei Du used a bit of strength, forcefully pulling his hand away. “The
cause of her death isn’t what’s trapping me.”
 
Luo Wenzhou froze.
 
“It’s not that.” Fei Du shook his head and averted his gaze, staring at
the ashtray on the table. He was silent for a long time. As if using up
the last of his strength, he forced out, “I know how she died… It’s not
that.”
 
If a soul could sweat, Luo Wenzhou would have been drenched. He’d
really used up everything he had to pry Fei Du’s mouth open a crack.
He hurriedly followed up, “You know how she died?”
 
Fei Du firmly clenched his teeth, as tense as a string about to snap.
 
Luo Wenzhou was about to say something milder when Fei Du
abandoned his guest in the living room, wordlessly standing and
walking straight to a bedroom on the second floor.
 
Luo Wenzhou was about to follow when his phone suddenly rang.
Frowning, he picked up. “Tao Ran, what is it?”
 
“I think you know about the fire at the Dong house? It’s been put out,
and we’ve gone in now,” Tao Ran said quickly. “The fire was set
deliberately. Someone lit some kind of paper product on fire and
threw it onto the couch, then left.—There’s a camera installed across
the corridor from Dong Xiaoqing’s house. It got a frontal shot of the
person. Male, about a meter seventy-five, tightly wrapped up, not
even showing his face.”
 

205
CHAPTER 78 - Macbeth XIX
 
Fei Du had gone upstairs. There was a click, as if he’d locked the door
from inside.
 
Luo Wenzhou sighed silently, forcing his attention back to the phone,
saying to Tao Ran, “You’re saying someone set the Dong house on
fire. What was there worth burning in the Dong house?”
 
Tao Ran looked up at the scene of desolation in Dong Xiaoqing’s
burned house. Strictly speaking, the circumstances weren’t all that
grave. The fire had started in the living room and burned up a good
part of the furniture and blackened the walls. The TV’s carbon fiber
frame had melted a little, but the wall the TV was on and the
surrounding cabinets were all right, and in a drawer, the property
ownership certificate, bankbook, and other such important items
were unscathed.
 
“We’ve investigated the Dong family three times over, including the
father and daughter’s browsing history, e-mails, and social media. We
also searched the house. If we somehow still missed something,
either it was something very unremarkable…”
 
Luo Wenzhou interrupted him. “No, that’s too big a scope.”
 
“…or it wasn’t in the house at all at the time.” Tao Ran didn’t get
angry at all over being interrupted. He unhurriedly added the end of
his sentence, and after a paused asked, “Do you have something
pressing to take care of over there?”
 
Luo Wenzhou was at a loss for words.
 
Tao Ran said very understandingly, “Then let’s hang up. When I’ve
finished taking care of things here, I’ll give you a report.”
 

206
“Tao Ran, wait,” Luo Wenzhou said quickly. “The complexity of this
thing may exceed what we imagine. Be careful when you’re out in the
field. Starting from now, no one taking part in this investigation is
permitted to operate on his own.”
 
Tao Ran had worked with him for many years. Hearing his anxiety, he
smoothly acknowledged, “Got it,” then hung up the phone.
 
“Deputy-Captain Tao.” Xiao Haiyang, the rims of his eyes red, came
over. “It was the paper. I think the criminal’s aim was the paper
product he used to light the couch on fire.”
 
Tao Ran said, “For what reason?”
 
“When one residence catches fire in this type of building, the
neighbors to either side will report it very quickly. Unless he made
sure the thing he wanted was entirely burned up, it’s likely some
traces would have been left behind because it hadn’t finished
burning.” Xiao Haiyang’s speech inadvertently sped up even more.
“Also, Dong Qian’s level of education wasn’t high. I’ve been to the
house a few times; aside from a few advertisements someone had
shoved in, there were no books in the living room. Everything needed
for writing and drawing was in Dong Xiaoqing’s study. After the
arsonist on the security camera footage broke into the Dong house,
he stayed a full ten minutes. It doesn’t take that long to start a fire.
He must have been looking for something…”
 
“After he found it, he lit it on fire, made sure it was nearly burned up,
then threw in onto the couch, lighting up the whole room.” Tao Ran
frowned. “Don’t you think that’s strange? Since this person could get
into Dong Xiaoqing’s house without anyone the wiser, couldn’t he
have just taken whatever he wanted? Why did he have to set the
room on fire, making such a commotion and leaving an impression of
himself? Was he purposefully calling for the police to investigate an
arson?”
 

207
Xiao Haiyang stared, reduced to silence.
 
“Haiyang, I have a feeling that in his eyes, whatever Dong Xiaoqing
had wasn’t any particularly amazing secret. Making such a mystical
production of burning it… It’s to provoke us.” Tao Ran pointed at his
phone. “Go investigate whether it really was Dong Xiaoqing who sent
you the text message, or if someone stole her phone number.”
 
Xiao Haiyang put a hand on the phone, but his feet didn’t move.
“Deputy-Captain Tao, is Dong Xiaoqing really dead?”
 
Lang Qiao had sent the photographs of the scene to Tao Ran, and
Dong Xiaoqing herself was already in the hands of the medical
examiners. Tao Ran sighed and patted Xiao Haiyang on the shoulder.
 
“I…I talked to her quite a few times, and I privately assessed her. She
absolutely wasn’t the sort of person to pick up a knife and harm
someone. Even though she had negative emotions, they were aimed
at the people accusing her father. She never directed her anger
towards the car crash victim’s relatives,” Xiao Haiyang said. “She
stabbed someone, and immediately afterwards the criminal ran her
over to shut her up, and her house was burned at the same time.
There must be someone behind this manipulating…”
 
Tao Ran slowly pulled Xiao Haiyang’s phone out of his hand. He saw
that it was open to a news website Xiao Haiyang had been looking at.
 
Zhou Huaijin and his brother being attacked at the hospital door had
already become public. The report only had a brief line of news,
simply naming the casualties and identifying the killer, but the
onlookers were all exhibiting their imaginations to add what they
thought was an appropriate sequence of cause and effect to the
bizarre story.
 
Xiao Haiyang’s voice shook somewhat. “She wasn’t like they’re
saying. Really.”

208
 
“When he was alive, my shifu asked me something.” Tao Ran gave the
phone back to Xiao Haiyang. “The old fellow asked me, ‘Do you
believe that heaven’s law is clear and brings appropriate
retribution?’”
 
Xiao Haiyang stared blankly at him.
 
“I said of course I couldn’t believe it. Wasn’t that feudal superstition?
Anyway, the old sayings are always self-contradictory. Sometimes
they’ll say, ‘Heaven’s law is clear and brings appropriate retribution,’
and sometimes they’ll say, ‘The good don’t live long, a scourge lasts a
thousand years.’ You don’t know who to listen to.” Tao Ran laughed.
“My shifu said, ‘You must believe it, because you’re a criminal
policeman. When you’re chasing down suspected killers, you are
heaven’s law. The reason those words are feudal superstition is
because you’re useless, because you can’t find the truth and clear
away an injustice.’—Those are rough words, but the sense isn’t
rough. Let’s encourage each other, little comrade. Start with the text
message. Don’t waste time beating your head against a brick wall. Go
on.”
 
Xiao Haiyang opened his mouth, pushed up his glasses, and quickly
went to ask for technical assistance.
 
Tao Ran looked around the disordered scene of the fire. He sighed.
Perhaps because he’d just mentioned Yang Zhengfeng to Little
Glasses, he subconsciously got out his phone, hesitated, then opened
Zero Hour Reading.
 
The newest guided reading topic threw itself into his eyes—“So foul
and fair a day I have not seen.—Macbeth. Contributor: The Reciter.”
 
“88.6 FM” were Yang Zhengfeng’s dying words. Only Tao Ran had
heard them, under extremely frantic circumstances. He hadn’t even

209
had a recorder on him at the time. There was no evidence apart from
his disordered memories.
 
After Luo Wenzhou had pointed out the suspicious point of the
underpass, the police had conducted a routine investigation into
those questionable last words—they’d turned the head of the radio
program and the relevant personnel upside-down, but they’d come up
empty-handed. Any way you looked at it, it was an audiobook
program for the amusement of a minority of the population.
 
The conclusion issued by the investigation team was that the portable
radio in Yang Zhengfeng’s pocket had fallen out in the struggle and
had been tuned to that frequency; Tao Ran may have inadvertently
heard a voice announcing the frequency on the radio, and under the
circumstances had experienced some cognitive dissonance.
 
Tao Ran hadn’t given up. He’d pursued the program on his own for
two months. Aside from doing the equivalent of retaking middle
school extracurricular reading, he’d come up with nothing. Even he
would have accepted the cognitive dissonance explanation…if not for
the fact that he’d developed a habit of listening to audiobooks and,
whiling away the time when he was bored, discovered the ID “The
Reciter.”
 
Before, The Reciter wouldn’t necessarily appear once in a whole year.
Tao Ran had suspected that he was jumping at shadows, and that
there wasn’t anything wrong with the books this person chose—but
this year there had been three cases in a row, all faintly reflected in a
wholly unrelated reading program. If it was coincidence, then it
really was too coincidental.
 
Standing in the scorched living room after the fire had been put out,
Tao Ran stared at the subject line for a full minute, then gave a light
shiver.
 

210
On the other end, Luo Wenzhou, heavily weighed down, hung up the
phone and walked a few circles around the living room on his own.
He decided to go upstairs to see Fei Du. When he reached the stairs,
he inadvertently looked down and saw the path to the basement.
 
Luo Wenzhou’s steps suddenly paused. He somehow remembered Fei
Du’s description of the basement on the road to Heng’ai Hospital.
 
Luo Wenzhou’s feet, prepared to climb the stairs, inexplicably turned
and headed down.
 
There was a bend in the stairs leading to the basement that kept the
light from upstairs from shining in. The surroundings became
increasingly dim. There was an additional security door installed at
the end of the stairs, with a keypad lock on it.
 
Luo Wenzhou exchanged a helpless look with the keypad lock, got
out his phone, and called Fei Du. It disconnected after two rings. The
owner of the phone upstairs evidently didn’t want to talk to him.
 
Luo Wenzhou opened the keypad for entering the code and examined
it for a moment. He found that there was also an alarm attached—
that was to say, if someone tried to force the door or entered the
wrong code, an alarm like the wailing of ghosts and howling of
wolves would go up over the whole villa.
 
“Maybe the alarm will startle the quail upstairs. It’s more civilized
than kicking down the door, anyway.”
 
That lousy idea appeared in Luo Wenzhou’s mind. While the wounds
on his back wouldn’t get in the way, they still hurt pretty badly. He
didn’t want to be kicking down doors today. He reached out a boorish
paw, carelessly entered six digits on the keypad, then quickly blocked
his ears.
 

211
But after a moment, the expected alarm didn’t come. The light on the
security door flashed twice. There was a click, and the lock slid open.
 
Luo Wenzhou: “…”
 
He awkwardly put down the hands blocking his ears and stared at the
security door in front of him. He only then realized that he’d just
entered the date of Fei Du’s mother’s death.
 
Luo Wenzhou absolutely hadn’t expected to have the dumb luck of
accidentally guessing the code. He was dumbfounded for a good
while. He hesitated, looked upstairs, and gave Fei Du another call—
this time the phone was simply off.
 
“Well, don’t blame me,” Luo Wenzhou whispered. “I take silence as
acquiescence.”
 
With justice on his side, he entered the residence’s most secret corner.
He encountered the underground gloomy dampness, turned on the
light, and immediately froze—
 
The basement didn’t contain the desk Fei Du had spoken of. It was
very open and spacious. The floor, the walls, the cabinets, the
ceiling…all of it was white. In the midst of it was a luxurious
projection setup, with a screen as big as one in a movie theater’s
small screening theater. Right across from the screen was a reclining
chair. There were belts on the chair, and a computer next to it, along
with some complicated equipment for an unknown purpose. There
was also a small refrigerator.
 
For no reason, Luo Wenzhou’s palms broke out in cold sweat. He
gently opened the small fridge. There were some small medicine
bottles in it, the labels all written in some unknown foreign language.
He couldn’t understand them.
 

212
Perhaps it was his mistaken impression, but he seemed to faintly
smell a trace of blood.
 
What had Fei Du been up to here?!
 
In an instant, Luo Wenzhou’s heart rate sped up to 150. For a space of
time his mind went blank, and he nearly froze in place, ten thousand
bees flying around his ears.
 
After a good while, he gently bit his tongue and shook his head hard,
gaze traveling all around. He thought, “No, that’s not it. There aren’t
any convenient weapons here.”
 
Given Fei Du’s weak constitution, if he’d really wanted to do
anything, he couldn’t very well do it bare-handed.
 
Luo Wenzhou struggled to calm down and look carefully at the belts
on the chair. His heart, which had come up to his throat, crashed
back down into his chest. Luo Wenzhou breathed a sigh of relief—he
found that he was jumping at shadows. The belts on the reclining
chair were fashioned like safety belts; you could fasten and unfasten
them yourself. It wouldn’t be very useful for murder and
dismemberment.
 
He touched the leather recliner, took separate photographs of the
inexplicable instruments and the drugs, and stealthily sent them to
Lang Qiao, telling her to investigate what these things were.
 
There was a set of headphones hanging on the back of the recliner.
Luo Wenzhou picked them up and brought them close to his ear,
turning on the audiovisual equipment.
 
First the unhurried music of “You Raise Me Up” flowed into his ears
over the extremely high quality headphones. Luo Wenzhou had never
noticed how pretty this song was; he was just sighing over the truth
that expensive electronic equipment really was better when, without

213
any warning, a hysterical scream suddenly stabbed through the
music. Though Luo Wenzhou’s psychological quality was superb, he
still gave a fierce shudder.
 
Then the large screen suddenly lit up. He swiftly looked up—
 
There was a direct broadcast of a murder playing on it. This was a
deranged homicidal maniac from abroad from a few years ago. The
killer had already been given an injection and sent to their foreign
god, and the video had been taken care of by the government, though
it was still going around on the dark web. The victim in the video
screamed like a dying farm animal. The sound of the scream
intertwined with the music on the exquisitely good headphones, like
two whips flogging your soul.
 
Luo Wenzhou, unable to stand it any longer, tore off the headphones
and fast forwarded. There followed videos of beheadings, videos of
executions by firing squad, videos of extremist organizations abusing
prisoners of war and hostages, bloody photographs…
 
Luo Wenzhou’s phone, which was on vibrate, buzzed suddenly. He
gave a start, nearly dropping the phone onto the ground. His voice
sounded off when he picked up. “Hello?”
 
“Boss, where are you? Can you talk?” Lang Qiao asked, keeping her
voice low. “Have you wandered into some kind of underground rehab
center?”
 
Luo Wenzhou frowned. “What rehab center?”
 
“I found someone to have a look at those photographs you sent,” said
Lang Qiao. “That’s electric shock equipment, and the drugs are
emetics, tranquilizers, and some others…”
 
Luo Wenzhou didn’t clearly hear what she said afterwards.