The night gradually deepened.
An old-fashioned clock hung on the living room wall, its second hand making a “tick-tock” mechanical sound as it moved. It was an antique from who-knows-what era, its gears so stiff it seemed they might fall apart and go on strike at any moment. The sound reminded Zhuang Ningyu that Yi Ke’s wristwatch was still with him, so he unfastened it and handed it over.
“You keep it,” Yi Ke said. “It was a gift for you anyway.”
Zhuang Ningyu, of course, wouldn’t accept.
Yi Ke had bought this watch last year. Back then, Zhuang Ningyu had just undergone surgery. When he woke up, the aftereffects of the general anesthesia hadn’t faded, and he was completely dazed. He stared blankly at the ceiling, contemplating the meaning of life. What was that glowing thing? Was it heavy levity, serious arrogance, or bright smoke, cold fire?
The caregiver auntie said, “It’s the hospital lightbulb.”
Zhuang Ningyu grabbed her hand. “Romeo has come! Romeo has come!”
It was at this moment that Yi Ke had appeared in the hospital room, carrying a Patek Philippe.
Zhuang Ningyu caught a glimpse of it out of the corner of his eye and waved his hands repeatedly, saying there was no need for gifts when visiting the sick.
The caregiver auntie chimed in, confirming that someone had just sent nine hundred and ninety-nine beautiful blue roses, which Mr. Zhuang had also sent back. Besides, it wasn’t visiting hours. How did this handsome young man even get in? He should just be a good boy and go home.
As she spoke, she opened the door to show him out. But Yi Ke was the picture of elegance. He raised a hand to brush off non-existent dust from his clothes and replied in the proud tone of a swan, “I’m not here to visit.”
He then pulled a massive, hardcover book from his coat pocket and kindly explained, “Today is the birthday of the great nineteenth-century Russian writer Fyodor Dostoevsky. I’m here on behalf of the book club to celebrate with our lucky member.”
Without waiting for the caregiver’s response, he plopped himself down on the edge of the hospital bed under everyone’s astonished gaze, even taking a moment to kick an offending fallen blue rose toward the trash can.
The lucky member, Zhuang Ningyu, was at a disadvantage due to the anesthesia.
His brain wasn’t working fast enough, so he was forced to read along. The nurses and the caregiver in the room fell silent, their gazes toward Yi Ke filled with awe.
The incident later became an enduring legend at the hospital. After all, other people babbled nonsense after general anesthesia, while Zhuang Ningyu recited Shakespeare. Others brought fruit and milk when visiting the sick, while Yi Ke brought The Brothers Karamazov.
It was to be said, at first blush, they sounded like a perfect match.
Zhuang Ningyu didn’t want to reminisce about that bizarre past. He tossed the watch back to him. “Time for the meeting.”
Yi Ke put on his headphones. The signal here was better than on the street; at least there was no more piercing static.
Ye Jiaoyue’s voice came from the other end. “We found Du Xiaohe.”
Zhuang Ningyu was slightly surprised. “So quickly? Where is she?”
“Portugal.” Ye Jiaoyue simultaneously uploaded the latest file.
Zhuang Ningyu opened the photo. The woman on the screen was about fifty years old, with short hair, a strong build, and a face that strongly resembled a younger Du Xiaohe. The file indicated that after breaking up with Yun Dali, she had indeed snuck out of the country.
She worked illegally while learning the language, and after many years of struggle, she finally obtained legal status.
She was now the owner of three restaurants. She had made a good life for herself, with a happy family, decked out in gold and jewelry. She looked like a completely different person from the “quiet and silent” out-of-towner wife the old residents of Taoli Community remembered.
“Du Xiaohe is very willing to cooperate with our investigation,” Ye Jiaoyue continued. “She and Yun Dali met when they had nothing. She was head-over-heels in love back then, quit her job, and dedicated herself to supporting him. Yun Dali was actually a good man at the beginning—family-oriented, loving, and hardworking. When he was out making deliveries, he couldn’t bear to eat at restaurants, surviving on instant noodles when he was hungry. Du Xiaohe’s heart ached for him, but there was nothing she could do except run around buying him different flavors of instant noodles, adding eggs, pickled vegetables, and sausage, trying to make her boyfriend’s meals a little better. Soon, they saved up some money, moved to Jincheng, rented a place in Taoli Community, and later partnered with Cheng Ye to start a company, ready to find more opportunities in the big city.”
As it turned out, the opportunities were there, and they did make some money. Just as the beautiful dreams of their youth were slowly coming true, Yun Dali began to drift further and further away from home. At first, Du Xiaohe didn’t notice. Later, when she vaguely sensed it, she instinctively avoided reality, deceiving herself.
“Ever since moving to Jincheng, Du Xiaohe had stopped working. Yun Dali’s income was enough to support the family, so she became a full-time housewife. The residents of Taoli Community said she was quiet and reserved, but her personality was actually more extroverted; otherwise, she couldn’t have held so many jobs before. The reason she seemed introverted later was that she had just moved from a small town to the city and didn’t know how to make friends. Most of the residents in the community were young female teachers—fashionable, refined, and well-mannered, seemingly from a completely different world than her. On top of that, Yun Dali, perhaps with a little money in his pocket, started to have a wandering eye. Having seen the women outside, he began to find his girlfriend at home embarrassing. He constantly put her down verbally. If she didn’t buy new clothes, he’d call her dowdy. If she did, he’d say her figure was out of shape and she couldn’t pull them off, that it was a waste of money. He found fault in everything, never having a kind word to say.”
At first, Du Xiaohe was genuinely affected by this behavior. She became increasingly silent and unwilling to socialize, spending all her time at home. She nearly had a psychological breakdown, but Yun Dali was completely unaware, or if he was, he didn’t care. After all, he was always on the road, and as long as he was willing to spend money, what kind of woman couldn’t he find?
“I hadn’t snapped out of it back then,” were Du Xiaohe’s own words. “I was always thinking about how to win him back. So I picked a special day and cooked two packs of instant noodles. Maybe he still had a shred of conscience, because that night, eating the noodles and reminiscing about our hard times, he actually behaved himself for a while.”
Just like that, Du Xiaohe dazedly got pregnant, and just as dazedly, she lost the child. The reason for the miscarriage wasn’t directly related to Yun Dali, but one couldn’t be sure—after all, cold violence is still a form of violence.
“The first time Yun Dali hit her was shortly after this miscarriage,” Ye Jiaoyue said. “They had an argument, and he slapped her across the face.”
But no one expected that this slap would be the very thing that snapped Du Xiaohe to her senses. Without a word, she swung her arm around and slapped him back. Caught off guard, Yun Dali lost his balance and crashed into a cabinet, his face covered in blood. Du Xiaohe wasn’t the type to scream and shout, and Yun Dali was even less willing to let the neighbors see his bruised and swollen face.
As Cheng Ye had said, he “bullied the weak and feared the strong,” so the physical altercation was quite brief, ending with both sides taking a step back.
The next day, Du Xiaohe asked Yun Dali for a bankbook, spent a large sum of money, and signed up for a gym membership.
Yun Dali, knowing he was in the wrong, or perhaps fearing another beating, didn’t comment on the matter. In fact, he started treating her a little better. The two of them remained entangled for a while longer, maintaining a seemingly peaceful life, until Du Xiaohe’s second pregnancy, and second miscarriage.
“That’s when I confirmed he already had a woman on the side, and not just one. There were long-term and short-term ones. The longest one had even borne him a child, a son.” On the other side of the screen, Du Xiaohe twisted the jade ring on her finger, calmly recounting the past to Ye Jiaoyue. “He’s old-fashioned. He always wanted a son.”
Ye Jiaoyue asked, “And then you left the country?”
Du Xiaohe nodded. “It wasn’t just because he had another family. It was also because he’d gotten addicted to gambling by then. The first time the debt collectors showed up, they didn’t actually smash anything. The men were quite friendly, probably afraid I’d run off too. But I knew that, friendly or not, I couldn’t live that kind of life anymore.”
Once she had made up her mind, Du Xiaohe was incredibly decisive. She managed to lower her guard, took all the money she could from the house, and to avoid being bothered by the mess Yun Dali had made, she gritted her teeth and followed a friend on a bumpy journey to Russia, thinking she’d run to the ends of the earth if she could.
Listening to Ye Jiaoyue’s account, Zhuang Ningyu asked, “How much does Du Xiaohe know about Yun Dali’s other woman?”
“The woman’s name is Lan Lan. She was with Yun Dali for a long time. Around the time of Du Xiaohe’s first miscarriage, she was already pregnant with Xiao Cong,” Ye Jiaoyue said. “We’ve already found some of her information.”
Looking at the photo, Lan Lan was a completely different type from Du Xiaohe. She wore a ruffled dress, with long hair and red lips. Her cheeks were somewhat thin, and though her expression was weary, she still fit the popular perception of a “stylish and pretty” woman. Her hometown was a remote mountain village in the southwest. She hadn’t had much schooling and had a police record from her early years for engaging in the illegal s*x industry. Later, she simply vanished.
Like Du Xiaohe, Lan Lan was an orphan with extremely simple family ties, which was why it wasn’t until nearly a year after her disappearance that a distant cousin belatedly reported her missing to the police.
The police interviewed her former colleagues from the hair salon, who said that Lan Lan had left with her boyfriend for Jincheng. As for who the boyfriend was, a colleague recalled, “I wouldn’t know. Those truck drivers are slick. The first time he comes, his name is Wang, the second time, it’s Zhang. They never tell the truth. What did he look like? Don’t know. Where was he from? Don’t know that either. Officer, I really don’t know. I wasn’t close with A-Lan, I just heard her mention him a few times when we were chatting. A-Lan’s friends? A-Lan didn’t have many friends. That woman, her psyche wasn’t all there. How do I put it… it seemed like she couldn’t get along with anyone.”
“According to the testimony from Yun Dali’s fellow villagers, on a snowy night, a woman with a limp came to the village looking for Yun Dali. And at that point in time, Du Xiaohe said she was already abroad,” Ye Jiaoyue said.
“Lan Lan’s hair salon colleague confirmed that her right leg had been injured years ago and would ache terribly during rainy weather or seasonal changes, sometimes even requiring hospital treatment. We screened for this lead and, sure enough, in the surgical department’s records at the Third Hospital, we found a patient named ‘Lan Lan’ who perfectly matched the current description.”
The nurse who treated her back then still had an impression of this patient, though not because of the old leg injury. It was because one night while on duty, a woman was transferred from the emergency room, her head covered in blood and her arm dislocated. Her injuries were severe, but she claimed she had accidentally fallen down the stairs.
“This female patient was Lan Lan,” Ye Jiaoyue said. “Both the nurse and the doctor suspected she had been beaten and suggested reporting it to the police, but Lan Lan refused, insisting she had fallen on her own. She was clear-headed, emotionally stable, and spoke coherently. She seemed like a person with her own opinions. Plus, she was beautiful, and with a single sharp glance, the man who brought her to the hospital immediately became meek and submissive, so the nurse didn’t insist on filing a report.”
The investigation team reviewed Lan Lan’s medical records from those years. Apart from this incident, there were indeed no other signs of domestic abuse.
In the nurse’s memory, the man who brought Lan Lan to the hospital that time stayed in the room for less than half an hour, constantly taking calls. The nurse, afraid he would disturb the patient, asked him to handle his business in the hallway first.
But once the man left, he disappeared completely, leaving the patient alone in the room. There was no one to pay the bills or handle the paperwork. It was only later that another woman rushed over and took care of everything.
“Another woman?”
“It was Cheng Ye’s wife, Feng Ting.”
After Yun Dali left, Lan Lan’s mood became noticeably agitated. She kept cursing him as a useless waste of a man. While changing her dressing, the nurse overheard a few sentences of their conversation. Based on the dialogue, she inferred that Lan Lan’s child was also being looked after by Cheng Ye and his wife at the time.
Ye Jiaoyue continued, “Our people have already been to the Yunye Group. This time, Cheng Ye and Feng Ting didn’t hide anything. They admitted it, but they insisted that after Lan Lan was discharged from the hospital, she took the child and ran off with Yun Dali, and they never had contact again.”
“Then how do they explain their previous lies?”
“Cheng Ye said he felt the matter with Lan Lan was unimportant, and moreover, it was dishonorable. The only reason he didn’t tell us was to protect Yun Dali’s image.” Ye Jiaoyue scoffed. “Not a word of truth. He’s a sly old fox. Don’t believe a word he says.”
“Yun Dali was busy dodging debt collectors back then. No matter how much he loved his son, it’s unlikely he would have taken him along while on the run,” Zhuang Ningyu said. “So it’s highly probable that the person who brought Xiao Cong back to Taoli Community was actually Cheng Ye or Feng Ting. As for the purpose, it could have been to help Yun Dali find something, or perhaps to destroy some evidence. After all, their business wasn’t started cleanly. If Yun Dali was at his wit’s end, he might not have hesitated to blackmail Cheng Ye.”
But for either reason, they would have had to search the apartment. At that age, Xiao Cong could already run and walk and was at his most mischievous. If he went outside, he could easily climb the stairs leading directly to the rooftop.
“Yun Dali cherished this son. Du Xiaohe knew it, and Cheng Ye and his wife certainly knew it too,” Zhuang Ningyu said. “If the child really died by accident due to the couple’s negligence, Yun Dali would never have let them off easily.”
Yi Ke suddenly interjected, “Could the person who killed Lan Lan at the reservoir back then have been Cheng Ye, not Yun Dali?”
After all, once Lan Lan was discharged from the hospital, the first thing she would do is look for her child. If Yun Dali was dodging creditors at the time, his phone was likely unreachable, so Lan Lan would have had to find Cheng Ye and Feng Ting.
Yi Ke continued, “Saying they sent the child to Yun Dali’s old village would have been the most reasonable excuse. Cheng Ye originally intended to use this to stall for time, but he didn’t expect Lan Lan to actually go there herself.”
Once Lan Lan discovered the child wasn’t in Yun’s village, once Yun Dali found out his son was missing…
Zhuang Ningyu said, “So Cheng Ye followed her to Yun’s village and killed her to silence her. That way, even if Yun Dali asked, he could claim that Lan Lan ran off with the child.”
“Possible,” Ye Jiaoyue agreed with their assessment. “But that’s something for our colleagues to investigate. Our mission is to break the rules. How are things on your end?”
“There are a lot of patrol officers here, flying around like mutated monkeys. They’re everywhere,” Zhuang Ningyu said, rubbing his temple with one hand. “I originally wanted Yi Ke to look for Lan Lan under the cover of darkness, but it looks a bit tricky now. We’ll have to think of another way.”
“Alright,” Ye Jiaoyue nodded. “But we still need to hurry. After all, Xiao Cong’s condition… is really not good.”
After the meeting ended, Yi Ke got up and poured two glasses of water. “Should I go have a look?”
“If you get chased by the patrol officers, I won’t be much help,” Zhuang Ningyu said, gripping the sofa to move himself into his wheelchair. “Since the rules mention ‘good neighborly relations,’ the neighbors should be able to provide some help.”
Yi Ke pushed his wheelchair back to the window. Based on the lights in the community at that moment, about half the units were occupied, and half were empty. Unlike Taoli Community, there were technically no trapped residents here, because all the residents were monsters. But monsters were divided into NPCs and hostile monsters. Judging by the rules, for now, only the patrol officers posed a danger to their mission.
BANG!
As Zhuang Ningyu was mentally calculating the numbers, a loud noise suddenly came from next door, like something heavy had fallen to the floor.
Yi Ke’s first reaction was that something had happened to Lan Lan. Just as he was about to climb out the window, a sharp, high-pitched female voice drifted over. “How much money have you given that useless brother of yours all these years? Get every last cent back for me within three days, or we’re getting a divorce!”
Zhuang Ningyu grabbed Yi Ke’s sleeve, signaling him not to worry. “From the voice and accent, it doesn’t sound like Lan Lan.”
The two of them leaned against the window, listening intently to the argument next door. It seemed to be a couple fighting.
They went back and forth, and when the woman started to lose the argument, she got emotional and shrieked, “Aren’t you afraid I’ll report the money you’ve been taking privately all these years to your work unit?” As soon as the words left her mouth, the man’s voice immediately quieted. Soon after, there was the loud slam of a door, followed by the woman’s cursing and crying.
Yi Ke asked, “What’s this? A domestic dispute caused by him using bribe money to subsidize his brother?”
Zhuang Ningyu nodded. “Accepting bribes means he both loves money and has power. That’s good news for us.”
Yi Ke asked earnestly, “What’s the next step? Go over there directly?”
Zhuang Ningyu replied, “Let’s be more subtle. We’ll start by mediating their domestic dispute.”
Mediating marital conflicts was a specialty of the Dispute Resolution Department. Rumor had it that when Zhuang Ningyu had nothing better to do, he’d grab a handful of five-spice sunflower seeds and wander around District 15, persuading one couple to split up and another to reconcile.
He switched seamlessly between being a marriage destroyer and a modern-day matchmaker, as if the Civil Affairs Bureau had taken human form.
“Let’s go.” Zhuang Ningyu patted the armrest of his wheelchair. “Bring those orange peel butter cookies you just baked. We’re going to pay a visit to our new neighbors.”
But Yi Ke immediately rejected this request. How could he just give away his love-filled cookies? It was a breach of boyfriend ethics.
He rummaged through their things and finally pulled out two jars of Pixian doubanjiang from a small supermarket plastic bag, shoving them into Zhuang Ningyu’s arms. “Alright, let’s go.”
Zhuang Ningyu: “Is this really an appropriate gift?”
Yi Ke: “It’s appropriate.”
The small supermarket was already closed. Appropriate or not, it would have to be. The iron gate of the neighboring apartment opened. A middle-aged woman with red, swollen eyes looked at the two young men at her door with some confusion. “Who are you looking for?”
“We’re your new neighbors from next door,” Zhuang Ningyu said with a friendly attitude. “We might be repainting our place in a couple of days. With workers coming and going, we’ll inevitably disturb you, so we came over to give you a heads-up. Please forgive the inconvenience.”
“You’re too kind,” the woman said, tidying her messy hair and forcing a polite smile. “I’m going on a business trip in a couple of days, and my husband’s work keeps him busy, so he’s often not home. Go ahead and renovate all you want, you won’t be bothering anyone.”
With that, she turned to close the door, but Zhuang Ningyu called out to her. “Ma’am.”
“Is there something else?” the woman asked.
“I’m sorry, I just wanted to say,” Zhuang Ningyu pointed to her swollen forehead, “it looks like you need to put some medicine on that.”
The woman froze for a moment, then shook her head dismissively, but tears fell uncontrollably with the movement.
Zhuang Ningyu, holding the jars of Pixian doubanjiang in one arm, wheeled himself through the door with the other. “Ma’am, come, come, have a seat. Let’s talk things through slowly.”
