“The informant is his roommate who is also a trainee, named Lucas,” Ji Rui recalled while calling the General Bureau.
Xie Lin: “A foreigner?”
Ji Rui: “…It’s a stage name. He’s our compatriot, pure-blooded, black hair and black eyes.”
After Ji Rui briefly reported the situation to the General Bureau, the Bureau quickly gave him feedback: “He came by this morning and took Yin Wanru away. Currently, her phone is unreachable.”
Ji Rui was stunned: “Took her away?! Wait, didn’t the investigation into Yin Wanru bribing the doctor finish? Who released her?”
Xie Lin took his phone and pressed the speaker button. The voice from the other end came through: “Her manager took all the blame, saying that she did everything herself and that Yin Wanru had nothing to do with it; she claimed she was completely coerced.”
Xie Lin said: “You guys believe this excuse?”
“We don’t want to, but we have no choice,” the other side replied. “It was indeed her manager who contacted the doctor. We can’t find any contact records for Yin Wanru. Since she claims she was unaware of the situation, we have to release her in the absence of concrete evidence.”
At this moment, Jiang Yu, who had been looking down at some literature, suddenly let out an “Ah.”
“I found a research paper on Guman Tong (Kumantong),” Jiang Yu said, pointing his phone screen toward them. It was a paper in English. At this moment, Jiang Yu displayed the high-level information retrieval skills of a top student—clearly, he had written his fair share of graduation theses back in the day. “Look at this sentence.”
Ji Rui covered the receiver: “Big brother, it’s all in English, who can understand that? Can you translate it?”
Xie Lin: “The data says that Guman Tong requires ‘corpse oil’ for nourishment.”
Chi Qing finished the second half: “If the corpse oil is refined from the dead fetus and its biological parents, it can enhance the efficacy.”
Su Xiaolan concluded: “…The practitioner will achieve the wish they pray for.”
After speaking, Su Xiaolan glanced at Ji Rui and stated: “We can all read it.”
Chi Qing also looked at him and asked very seriously: “Did you graduate from college?”
Xie Lin said: “If you can’t pass the CET-6 (College English Test Band 6), you probably can’t graduate.”
“……”
There was no need to hit him that hard.
Xie Lin summarized: “So… this thing doesn’t just require the biological father?”
Meanwhile, on a highway in Huanan City, a dark blue Chevrolet was traveling at a steady pace.
The man in the driver’s seat, with black hair and black eyes, looked quite young. His facial features held a youthful quality between a man and a teenager, and when he smiled, he showed two canine teeth, easily making people feel favorable toward him. He knew how to dress well; in the words of the public, he had a “star quality” about him. “Sister Wanru, do you want to drink some water? I have water in the back seat.”
Yin Wanru had been through many ups and downs these past few days, and her mental state was poor. Without makeup, her skin looked much duller, so she simply used large sunglasses to cover half her face: “No need, just drive faster.”
She rested her elbow on the car window and watched the scenery outside, thinking that her arrest had probably already blown up in the news.
The more Yin Wanru thought about it, the more irritable she became. She looked back at the person in the driver’s seat: “I haven’t really seen you around before. Are you also from our company?”
Lucas smiled: “I’m just a trainee at the company, haven’t debuted yet, and I’m not famous, so it’s normal that you don’t recognize me.”
Yin Wanru looked at him closely: “But you look a bit familiar.”
They encountered a red light ahead, and Lucas slowed the car down: “I’m Luo Yu’s roommate. You’ve visited us during training.”
Yin Wanru had a headache as soon as she heard the name “Luo Yu.”
She had just learned that Luo Yu was dead. She couldn’t say she had deep feelings for him; she even resented him for being disobedient and taking off the protection without asking, which led to her current predicament. But for some reason, the news of Luo Yu’s bizarre death made her feel uneasy.
They said his entire face had been peeled off…
The red light turned green, and the car merged out of traffic, turning onto a road with fewer vehicles.
Watching the increasingly unfamiliar scenery outside the window, Yin Wanru sat up hesitantly: “This isn’t the way back to my house, is it?”
“Sister Li (the manager) told me to take you to a safe place. There might be paparazzi staking out your home and the company.”
The explanation sounded reasonable, so Yin Wanru sat back: “That’s true. Who knows how long they’ll be waiting at my door, just wanting to see me make a fool of myself… Oh, by the way, where’s my phone?”
Lucas handed her an exquisite evening bag.
On the other side.
Ji Rui: “Call Yin Wanru. Is her phone unreachable too?”
Jiang Yu: “Let me try.”
“Let Xiaolan call,” Xie Lin said. “It’s easier for women to talk to each other.”
After Su Xiaolan dialed the number, she listened to the sound on the other end, unsure if Yin Wanru would answer. After a few rings, it was finally picked up: “Hello?”
“Ms. Yin, it’s me. We met at the General Bureau,” Su Xiaolan said, reading the words Xie Lin had typed on his phone screen. “Sorry to bother you. We just learned that you’ve already left, but due to a staff error, a document was missed, and we need you to come back and sign it. If you haven’t gone too far, would it be convenient for you to head back and sign it?”
There was a lot of noise on Yin Wanru’s side, drowning out her voice. Amidst the honking and rumbling, she said: “It’s not convenient. If a procedure was missed, that’s your own problem.”
Having said that, she hung up the phone.
“……She’s really not cooperating with the investigation.” Ji Rui grumbled.
After complaining, he saw Chi Qing fiddling with his phone, having removed one of his black gloves: “What are you looking at?”
“Checking data.” Chi Qing didn’t even lift his head.
“?”
“Huanan City port distribution map,” Chi Qing said. “There was a ship whistle in the call just now.”
They had been so focused on listening to Yin Wanru that they hadn’t noticed the background noise. With Chi Qing’s mention, they suddenly realized: That was a port! Those were ships!
Ji Rui’s body jolted: “I’ll check it.”
“No need, I found it.”
Chi Qing zoomed in on the city map on his phone screen: “Twelve kilometers away in the suburbs, there’s a port along the river. There are a lot of container trucks there, which is why there’s so much noise besides the ship whistles. If they keep driving forward, they will pass through the tunnel entering the island. Notify everyone now; intercepting vehicles at the tunnel entrance might still be in time.”
“……”
Ji Rui felt that Chi Qing constantly refreshed his perception of the world. In less than a minute of a phone call, he could estimate their location based on such minor details, and he had even bypassed the step of figuring out where to catch them.
The vehicle fell silent.
Chi Qing looked at them, finding it inconceivable, and was about to ask why they weren’t driving.
Xie Lin grabbed the initiative: “Drive, what are you standing there for?”
With their current seating arrangement, he and Chi Qing were sitting on either side of Ji Rui, leaving Ji Rui sandwiched between the two.
Xie Lin patted Ji Rui on the shoulder: “I’ve waited a long time for you to get off; how much longer do you plan on squeezing between me and my assistant?”
“……”
“Go to the front and drive,” Xie Lin said. “The people need you.”
There were two rows of seats in the back of the van. After Ji Rui and Jiang Yu moved to the front, only Chi Qing and Xie Lin were left in the back row.
Xie Lin wanted to grab the water on the side, but his leg was injured and he couldn’t move easily. Chi Qing naturally handed him the water.
Only after handing it over did he realize when he had become so accustomed to helping the person beside him.
Xie Lin was also surprised; he hadn’t even had the chance to use his rehearsed lines: “So self-conscious today?”
Chi Qing didn’t want to make a big deal out of passing a bottle of water: “It’s just a bottle of water.”
“Yeah,” Xie Lin recalled the past few days, “I was already prepared for you to tell me ‘drop dead of thirst.’”
“……”
Half an hour later, at the tunnel entrance.
Yin Wanru noticed the car had been stopped at the entrance for a long time: “What’s going on in front?”
Lucas said: “Seems like a random check.”
His fingers tapped on the steering wheel. He lowered his eyes slightly, then raised them again with a smile: “This road looks blocked. Shall we take another route?”
Yin Wanru just wanted to go back and rest as soon as possible; she didn’t care what he said: “Fine, or find a hotel nearby and drop me off. I’m tired.”
Yin Wanru let her hand hang down, intending to sleep in the car. Just as she closed her eyes, her hand touched a black plastic bag under the seat—the same kind of plastic bag that held Luo Yu in the photos.
Suddenly, a voice came to her ears. The roommate of Luo Yu, who was holding the steering wheel, asked her: “Does it look familiar?”
Jiang Yu sat in the passenger seat, observing the long line of cars at the tunnel entrance: “A car in front is backing out, follow it.”
Ji Rui stepped on the gas.
Only when the distance between the two cars closed did they see the situation inside the car. The large sunglasses on Yin Wanru’s nose were too conspicuous; it would be hard not to recognize her.
Chi Qing: “Why are you going around?”
Ji Rui: “I’m taking that lane to get ahead; once I circle to the front, I can force them to pull over.”
Chi Qing couldn’t understand why it was such a hassle just to force the other car to stop: “Wouldn’t it be faster to just ram into them?”
“……?!” Ji Rui nearly slammed on the brakes, sending everyone in the car flying.
Big brother, that would be fast, sure.
But everyone would die faster, too!
How would any normal person have that line of thinking?
When it comes to “forcing a car to stop,” the reaction of a normal person is like Ji Rui’s—peacefully circling to the front so the other party naturally stops. Who starts by ramming into them?
Xie Lin also grumbled about Ji Rui’s slow driving: “If it weren’t for my leg injury, I would have caught up long ago.”
“It’s a good thing one of you has a leg injury and the other doesn’t know how to drive,” Ji Rui said while circling around to intercept them. “Otherwise, Xiaolan, Jiang Yu, and I would probably end up as corpses.”
Although Ji Rui’s method was a bit slower, he successfully parked his car horizontally in front of Lucas’s car. He walked up to the blue Chevrolet and tapped on the window: “Get out of the car!”
Even though Lucas had a Western-sounding stage name, his real name was quite ordinary: Liu Qiangqiang. At first, he insisted on repeating: “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You don’t know? Then what are you doing with plastic bags in your car?” Ji Rui asked.
“To prevent motion sickness. Isn’t it normal to keep plastic bags in a car?”
“And the hammers and pliers in the plastic bag are also normal?”
He looked up: “It’s also normal to have them to fix the car when it breaks down, right?”
“……”
Until the criminal investigator responsible for checking Lucas’s house returned with a ceramic jar carefully sealed in a plastic evidence bag: “Found it in his house. He has a room that was locked. After breaking in, I found it was a Buddhist shrine, and this thing was being worshipped on the altar.”
The ceramic jar looked very similar to the ones they saw at the shop owner’s house for storing corpse oil, but it was much larger, a full palm wide.
As soon as the seal was broken, the thing, which looked like a pickle jar, immediately emitted an indescribable odor. The red cloth covering the ceramic jar was stained with unknown filth, turning from a bright red to a deep, dirty red.
