There are two types of gamblers: those who refuse to believe they will lose, and those who think they can afford to lose.
Ji Xun finished speaking, but seeing the two men standing completely motionless, his face betrayed his bewilderment. “What’s the matter? Are you two planning to just stand in those poses for your little heart-to-heart? Aren’t you tired?”
Huo Ranyin stood up, dragging Zeng Peng off the floor along with him.
Zeng Peng kept his head low, his messy hair obscuring his eyes, which only served to make the bruises on his face stand out even more. Someone had dealt a savage blow to his left cheek, swelling it up so high it looked like he was harboring a quail egg inside his mouth. “I didn’t break any laws yesterday, did I? What business do you two officers have visiting my doghouse?”
“If you didn’t break any laws, why did you run so fast? You were so agitated you looked ready to jump off the building. Is life really that boring, or are you just jumping for the fun of it?” Ji Xun stepped into the room, casually shutting the door behind him. “And let me correct you on one point: I am no policeman. I am merely a hardworking, public-spirited model citizen cooperating with the police.”
As he spoke, he felt Huo Ranyin’s gaze drift lightly across his face.
Had he not been genuinely exhausted tonight, he would have pulled a face at Huo Ranyin. Then, he heard Huo Ranyin cut straight to the chase, demanding of Zeng Peng: “Where are the drugs hidden?”
Zeng Peng snapped his head up!
His sullen eyes glared at Huo Ranyin from beneath his disheveled hair. “Officer, I have no idea what you’re talking about…”
Not only Zeng Peng, but even Ji Xun whistled silently in his mind.
Wow.
The raw efficiency of this new Second Detachment Captain was truly no joke.
And to be this utterly unafraid of startling the snake—was it because he already had the cards stacked in his favor?
Nothing Zeng Peng said or did could sway Huo Ranyin’s judgment. He produced a pair of handcuffs, snapping them around Zeng Peng’s wrists as his gaze swept inch by inch across the cramped, single-room apartment. “The drugs are in this room. They are hidden in—”
Right then, a sudden knock sounded at the door.
Knock.
Knock.
Knock.
A sluggish, stagnant, solitary knock.
The sound brought everyone’s movements inside the room to a grinding halt. They stared at the door, behind which stood an unknown presence.
After a brief pause, Huo Ranyin gave a slight jerk of his chin toward Ji Xun.
Grasping Huo Ranyin’s meaning, Ji Xun switched positions with him. Ji Xun kept his eyes locked on Zeng Peng, while Huo Ranyin slipped behind the door. His hand wrapped around the doorknob, applying a slight pressure from his wrist as the handle depressed…
With a click, the door swung open.
The last person anyone expected appeared at the threshold. It was a simply dressed elderly man with square-framed glasses and a hunched back.
Ji Xun had met him once before, at Xi Lei’s funeral. His surname was Cheng—Teacher Cheng.
At the doorway, both Huo Ranyin and Teacher Cheng looked taken by surprise as they faced each other.
Teacher Cheng asked, “You guys are…”
Ji Xun suddenly darted forward, blocking the view of Zeng Peng’s cuffed wrists. He said with a beaming smile, “Hello, Teacher Cheng. We are friends of Zeng Peng and Xi Lei.”
“You know me?” Teacher Cheng asked, caught off guard.
“I saw you at Xi Lei’s funeral, and I heard everyone say that you were the one who bought her tombstone,” Ji Xun explained.
Huo Ranyin’s heart stirred.
Stepping back from the doorway to stand beside Zeng Peng, and using Ji Xun’s body as a shield, he used the key to unlock the handcuffs and slipped them off Zeng Peng’s wrists. Throughout the entire process, Zeng Peng remained completely silent and cooperative, evidently desperate to avoid letting Xi Lei’s relative see him in such a wretched state.
This was a good sign.
It proved he still possessed a shred of self-respect and shame.
Ji Xun took two steps forward, his eyes sweeping over Teacher Cheng. He noticed a plastic bag from a pharmacy in the elderly man’s hand, containing external medications like liniment and gauze.
The supplies were meant for Zeng Peng.
The pharmacy was located right on this street.
Furthermore, there were two disposable cups sitting on the table.
The only reason Zeng Peng had opened the door so unguardedly just now was because he assumed the person knocking was Teacher Cheng—the two had been together before the police arrived.
“Lei-lei, sigh…” The old man let out a long sigh, the wrinkles on his face deepening.
“By the time, I don’t believe I know your full name, Teacher Cheng?” Ji Xun asked. “Please, take a seat. I assume those medications are for Zeng Peng? How did you end up coming here? I’ve never heard Zeng Peng mention knowing you before.”
“My given name is just Zheng. Child, come over here, let me help apply the medicine for you.” Cheng Zheng did not decline. He sat down on the sofa, first beckoning Zeng Peng over before turning back to Ji Xun. “It’s a long story. Since you are his friends, you should help me reason with him. When a person dies, their earthly troubles should end with them, and they should rest in peace. How could anyone think of digging up a grave and robbing a tomb?”
“Lei-lei told me herself that she wanted to be buried in Ning City,” Zeng Peng muttered, keeping his head down. “I even wrote a letter from the detention center to her parents before the funeral, telling them it was her wish and begging them to wait until I got out so I could take care of everything.”
“…”
Well, that settled it. Ji Xun finally understood the whole picture. It turned out this brother’s battered face and restricted mobility were entirely due to the fact that his goal of burying Xi Lei in Ning City had failed. The moment he was released from the detention center, he had rushed frantically to Xi Lei’s hometown, fully prepared to exhume her grave to fulfill her dying wish.
He was quite the devoted lover.
Cheng Zheng displayed a look of helplessness. He appeared to be a weary, dispirited old man with drooping eyebrows and a mild, slow demeanor. “We all know how much affection you held for Lei-lei. We were all happy for her to have a boyfriend like you. It’s fine that you want to fulfill her wishes, but you must also understand the feelings of her family. They want to be able to visit her and keep her company somewhere nearby. Besides, young people’s minds change easily. Lei-lei might have thought that way in the past, but now, can you really say she wouldn’t want to return to her little village…”
…To show filial piety to the parents who had to bury their own child.
These arguments were so familiar that Ji Xun had already filled in the blanks in his head.
However, the teacher uttered words that caught Ji Xun entirely off guard.
“…To look at the village where she grew up, and gaze at the scenery she knew so well?”
Zeng Peng offered no answer.
No one could answer.
The only person who could provide an answer was now sleeping eternally beneath the earth.
“Things have already reached this point, so just accept it. Everyone has their own destiny. Lei-lei was a good child, but this was her fate.” The teacher let out a long, heavy sigh, his gentle eyes looking at Zeng Peng through his square glasses as he patted the young man’s shoulder. “As for that apartment you bought under Lei-lei’s name, you ought to reclaim it. That’s a massive sum of money, the very capital you need to settle down and make a living in this city. If you live a good life ahead, Lei-lei will be happy. She was always the type to put others before herself.”
Having finished his piece, the teacher pulled the medicine out of the bag and began dressing Zeng Peng’s wounds.
Zeng Peng’s injuries were a fair bit more severe than they appeared on the surface. After all, the act of grave-robbing was something that no one—let alone a closed-off, traditional village—could ever tolerate.
Ji Xun observed Huo Ranyin staring intently at Cheng Zheng’s hands. The man’s bandaging technique was remarkably professional. As he rubbed the medicinal oil onto Zeng Peng, he rolled up a section of his sleeve, exposing a firm, muscular wrist thick with prominent veins.
This physique hardly matched the image of a frail, elderly man he presented.
Ji Xun sneered a glance back up at Cheng Zheng’s face. The teacher still looked profoundly weary, but it didn’t seem to stem from age or physical health. It was merely the dejected exhaustion displayed by someone who had surrendered to reality and no longer possessed the spirit to fight back against fate.
While applying the bandages, Cheng Zheng asked once more, “What do you plan to do next?”
“I plan to leave.” Zeng Peng, who hadn’t spared a single glance at Ji Xun or Huo Ranyin since the teacher walked in, couldn’t help but steal a furtive look at the two men as he spoke these words, a trace of pleading in his eyes. “Once I settle things regarding Lei-lei, I will leave this city. I’ll head back to my hometown; I still have relatives and friends there.”
Ji Xun maintained his silence, and Huo Ranyin did the same.
Since they hadn’t exposed the handcuffs to the teacher in the first place, they would protect this shred of dignity for Zeng Peng in front of Xi Lei’s relative to the very end.
Only the teacher continued speaking. “Since you’re leaving Ning City, you have even less reason to obsess over moving Lei-lei’s grave. If you leave, what becomes of Lei-lei if she’s moved here? Who will visit her every Qingming Festival? When are you leaving?”
Zeng Peng lowered his head; he didn’t know either.
Breaking his previous pattern of taciturnity, Huo Ranyin chimed in, “Probably after the Spring Festival. After all, the new year is just around the corner, and there are far too many chores to sort out before then. It’s best to get everything in order first.”
“If you don’t have anyone to spend the holidays with this year, you can come to the village for the New Year. We’ve just finished gathering all our holiday provisions anyway,” Cheng Zheng offered.
“When did you prepare the holiday goods, Teacher Cheng?” Huo Ranyin pressed further. “I heard from Zeng Peng that Xi Lei’s funeral was on the 23rd, so you must have bought them before that date.”
“Yes, it was around the 18th. We happened to transport the village’s podocarpus trees to Ning City that day to sell to a company, just to make some money for the holidays,” Cheng Zheng replied.
“Did you head back on the 18th itself? The distance from Ning City to Xi Lei’s hometown isn’t short. A round trip on the same day must be exhausting.” The teacher chuckled softly. “People in the village rarely get a chance to visit Ning City throughout the year, so everyone stayed over for a day. We only headed back after having dinner on the night of the 19th. There’s a restaurant over on Xingchun Road that serves large portions at cheap prices; a large group of us ate there, and it only cost a little over seven hundred yuan.”
“I see,” Huo Ranyin murmured in response.
Ji Xun could sense Huo Ranyin’s suspicion toward Cheng Zheng, and he too felt the man was highly suspect. As Xi Lei’s former teacher who went so far as to purchase a tombstone for her, he clearly possessed deep feelings for her, giving him an ample motive for the crime. Beyond that, what was most intriguing was that despite Huo Ranyin never revealing his identity as a police officer, his aggressive, probing questions had failed to provoke any rejection from Cheng Zheng. Perhaps it was simply a teacher’s natural patience and good temper?
“Little Zeng, have you given it any thought? Why don’t you come to the village for the New Year this year?” Cheng Zheng nudped again.
“I don’t know,” Zeng Peng’s lips trembled. “Let me think about it some more.”
Once Cheng Zheng departed, Huo Ranyin stood by the upstairs window, gazing outside. He watched Cheng Zheng step into a small grey sedan bearing the license plate NS4455SN.
Ji Xun turned to Zeng Peng. “The man is gone now. Have you made up your mind? Leniency to those who confess, severity to those who resist. The two of us are already here; even if we have to tear this entire apartment apart, we will unearth the drugs you’ve hidden. Otherwise, how could I possibly justify the brain cells I’ve lost tonight due to sleep deprivation?”
Zeng Peng remained mute, as though Cheng Zheng had taken his tongue along with him when he left. He sat on the sofa, as silent and cold as a statue.
Just as Ji Xun was pondering how to pry open this stubborn clam, Huo Ranyin spoke up.
Shifting his gaze from the window back into the room, he remained leaning against the sill without moving. “There are two types of gamblers: those who refuse to believe they will lose, who go completely wild when defeat stares them in the face; and those who know they will lose, and believe they have prepared themselves for it. Zeng Peng, you belong to the second type. You anticipated that you would eventually get caught, and you believed you could afford the loss. Unfortunately, this gamble hasn’t just stripped away your foresight—it has taken the very thing you absolutely could not afford to lose.”
A mocking smile flickered at the corner of his lips as he gave a soft scoff:
“Exactly thirty-one minutes after you stole the money and fled, Xi Lei returned home, followed immediately by the killer. You were a mere matter of hours away from saving your girlfriend’s life. You staked everything on a desperate bid to assassinate Tang Jinglong, yet in doing so, you missed your girlfriend’s funeral and lost the chance to see her one last time. Every single choice you made dragged your life two steps deeper into the abyss. You are truly laughable, and utterly pitiful.”
The silent statue fractured. Huo Ranyin’s words cut effortlessly through Zeng Peng’s defensive shell, causing him to let out a strangled wail like a wounded lone wolf.
His retribution had arrived, tracking him like a shadow, far more terrifying than the most horrific nightmare he had ever endured.
“What do you know?! All I wanted was an apartment—a home with Lei-lei’s name on it, a place that would allow us to stay in Ning City! I have no education, no skills! Aside from dealing drugs, what else could I have possibly done?! What could I have done to buy a house in this fucking beautiful, fucking heartless city that doesn’t give a damn about outsiders like us?!”
Zeng Peng’s teeth chattered violently for a moment before all the fight drained out of him. He buried his head in his hands, curling back into a ball on the sofa.
“I achieved that wish… I fought with everything I had to make it happen…”
I clearly made it happen, so why did things still turn out this way?
More than four years of memories—thousands of days spent getting to know and live alongside Xi Lei—flashed through his mind frame by frame, like the brilliant, spinning lights of a magic lantern.
He had met Xi Lei back when he was working as a waiter in a bar, at a time when she was being harassed by a drunken customer.
Panicked and desperate to escape, Xi Lei had crashed right into him.
Perhaps it was because he had just taken a hit and the drugs were clouding his mind, or perhaps every man harbors a foolish dream of being a hero. After that night, he lost his job, but someone knocked on the door of his dingy, shared apartment. When he pulled it open, the rescued princess stood outside, waving at him shyly:
“Hello, my name is Xi Lei. Thank you for yesterday. I’m a nurse, and I came to check on your injuries.”
She stood there smiling, her eyes bright and warm, like a sunflower turning toward the sun.
The beautiful dream had been realized, and rather than fading away, she had remained by his side. Reality soon came crashing down; the bizarre metropolis remained as alienating as ever, but the small space around him suddenly became solid and grounded. He could see the narrow path of his future clearly laid out:
Get a job, save money, buy a house, secure residency, get married, and have children.
He resigned from the bar and underwent drug rehabilitation under Lei-lei’s strict supervision. During every agonizing night of withdrawal, when he would shiver uncontrollably and thrash through nightmares, he could feel Lei-lei holding him close, gently patting his back to comfort him from the dead of night until the break of dawn, without fail.
He swore to get clean, and eventually, he truly broke the addiction.
He found a new job as a car washer at a detailing shop. It was one of the higher-paying honest jobs he could find. Every time a vehicle arrived, he was always the one who washed it with the utmost care. Sometimes the owner would be pleased and tip him an extra one or two hundred yuan; other times, the boss would be demanding and make him polish the customer’s shoes along with the car.
He never dared to clash with anyone.
He worked tirelessly to earn money, abandoning all his previous expensive hobbies. He rarely went out for meals with his colleagues either; dining out cost money, and he knew someone would have a hot meal waiting for him at home—and even if there wasn’t, if he prepared it, someone would rush back just to eat with him.
Then, a sudden accident occurred. Lei-lei became pregnant.
That was three or four years ago. He had only recently gotten clean and started working, and Lei-lei was still a nurse at the Sunshine Hospital; neither of them had much in the way of savings.
Everything was so brutally practical. They had no money, no house, no time, and he didn’t even have parents, as they had passed away long ago. If they kept the child, they had only two choices: force the child to endure a nomadic lifestyle alongside them, or send the child back to Lei-lei’s parents’ home.
After several days of heavy silence between them, Lei-lei went to the hospital for an abortion.
Amidst the white sheets and the pungent stench of disinfectant, Lei-lei lay on the hospital bed. For the first time, a dazed, profound sorrow fractured her usually bright and warm smile. To this day, he could still recall the icy chill of her fingers pressed against his palm.
“I fought so hard to escape that mountain village. No matter what, I will never go back, and I won’t let my child go back either… Let’s buy a house here. I want to stay in Ning City; I want to become a part of this place.”
He said yes.
He threw himself into his work with even greater ferocity, and Lei-lei did the same, returning to duty after resting for less than half a month. Yet none of it seemed to matter. No matter how hard they strived, the housing prices in Ning City soared even faster. They saved every single day, trying their best to live a decent life, but compared to the price of a home, everything remained tantalizingly out of reach.
Later on, he discovered that slip of paper—the abortion record from Sunshine Hospital.
The child hadn’t been his.
A massive conflict erupted between him and Lei-lei. He roared, raged, and smashed things in a one-sided fury before finally collapsing against the base of the wall. The white Java sparrow inside its cage stared at him in confusion, and he suddenly found himself wishing he were a bird too, so he would naturally have a cage—a house—to contain his entire life.
In the end, he felt Lei-lei approach. She placed her hand upon his back, just as she used to do a long, long time ago when he was going through withdrawal.
Turning his head, he beheld her sorrowful, wooden face.
“Did that man force you?” he asked.
Lei-lei nodded, then shook her head. After a long silence, he heard her speak: “I took the money afterward. In just a little while longer, we’ll have enough to buy a house.”
He walked out of their rented apartment, wandering aimlessly through this city that had never truly accepted them. He drifted back to the bar from his past, where he ran into his old acquaintances. His old friends came over to show concern, dragging him out for drinks, and eventually handed him a thick stack of cash.
Everything came with a price.
What in this world didn’t carry a price tag?
All he wanted was a house—a property in a good school district with Xi Lei’s name on it, where he could live alongside her, get married, raise children, and spend the rest of his days in simple, ordinary comfort.
…
How on earth had things devolved to this point?
He knew he would end up behind bars, that he would be sentenced, but Lei-lei was completely innocent.
Why did they have to kill her?
Why was it that after he had finally bought the house and fulfilled their dream, he couldn’t even see her one last time?
Breaking the heavy deadlock in the room were Ji Xun’s words. Ji Xun fished a dried plum out of his pocket—one he had casually swiped from a fruit platter at the KTV—popped it into his mouth, and mumbled around the pit, “You ought to find a good lawyer.”
Zeng Peng remained curled up like an infant, his voice hollow. “It’s meaningless. I don’t need one. Do whatever you want with me.”
“Xi Lei’s grave exhumation requires it.”
This successfully recalled Zeng Peng’s drifting soul.
“What?”
“A brain is a wonderful thing to have; don’t act as though yours packed its bags and left long ago,” Ji Xun remarked. “You bought that apartment, making you the actual investor. The property legally belongs to you, which means it legally belongs to the state—because it was purchased with drug money, it will be confiscated and paid into the state treasury. However, considering your current circumstances, as long as you aren’t sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve or immediate execution, your personal property won’t be entirely seized. If a portion of that apartment can be proven to be your legitimate assets, the court will return a certain amount to you. That refunded money may mean nothing to you, but what about Xi Lei’s parents? Aside from a daughter, they also have a son. Furthermore, this was Xi Lei’s dying wish; do you think they would consider it, or be willing to cooperate? And all of this requires you to secure a competent lawyer, so you can hammer out an agreement with Xi Lei’s parents ahead of time and promptly relocate her grave.”
Zeng Peng’s stiff neck snapped around. His heart leaped, and a sudden ray of hope pierced through his ash-grey, gaunt countenance. “But I don’t know any good lawyers…”
“I do. I can help you,” Ji Xun said smoothly. “But you must pay the price.”
A price—everything carries a price.
“Zeng Peng, confess everything,” Ji Xun stated. “And I will handle this matter for you.”
A protracted silence filled the room.
“…The stuff is hidden behind the baseboard in the bedroom, and also inside the outer casing of the wall-mounted air conditioner outside the window. I can give the police every single supplier I’ve ever come into contact with. But you must deliver on your word; you must let me see with my own eyes that you’ve accomplished all of this.”
__
Author’s Note:
Legal Tip Reference Regarding Drug Assets:
How fines for drug trafficking are determined: When imposing fines in drug trafficking cases, the amount of the fine should be reasonably determined based on factors such as the nature, circumstances, and harmful consequences of the drug crime, as well as the defendant’s illegal gains and financial status. For drug crimes where a concurrent confiscation of property is decided, if the defendant is sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment, the amount of personal property confiscated should be determined according to the aforementioned principles for determining fines; if sentenced to life imprisonment, all personal property may be confiscated concurrently; if sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve or immediate execution, all personal property must be confiscated concurrently.
