Quecha slept until midnight when she felt the latex mattress shift slightly on her side. It was Jiang Baichuan getting up.
Quecha remained still, holding her breath—she had argued with Jiang Baichuan before bed and swore she wouldn’t be kind to him for the next couple of days. But despite her resolve, her ears betrayed her; she listened intently to every movement Jiang Baichuan made. She heard him drag a chair to the desk, turn on the computer, and put on his headphones. The light in the room flickered—he was watching videos again.
Quecha gritted her teeth in frustration. She was a beautiful woman, in the prime of her life, yet here she was with a man past his prime who didn’t know how to appreciate her. He had promised to show her a good time in Xi’an, but instead, he seemed preoccupied with that stupid Banya business every day.
This man, she thought bitterly, if I stick around with him, it’s my fault. Why should I? It’s not like I have any commitments here, no title, no ring. There are plenty of strong men around who could take his place.
Her mind wandered. Old Knife is good—strong and probably more enduring than Jiang. Shan Qiang might not be as striking, but he’s young, barely in his twenties, a fresh prospect. And then there’s Xing Shen…
At the thought of Xing Shen, Quecha’s mind drifted, and she suddenly found herself lost in her thoughts.
Quecha met Xing Shen for the first time in Banya.
It was raining that day, and Sister-in-law Hua took her to the newly cleaned small building—she didn’t have much hope for a place to live in the village, but after seeing it, she was very satisfied.
After all, it was in the village, and it was quite an accomplishment to make the windows bright and clean.
She opened the window to take in the scenery of the mountain country.
The rain wasn’t heavy.
In places near the mountains, when the rain is light, it easily becomes foggy from far and near—the field of vision blurs, and even the plate teeth under the nose seem to fade as if still holding onto the pipa.
A man holding an umbrella passed by downstairs.
That was Xing Shen.
Quecha didn’t pay much attention to him at first but felt that this scene was like an ink painting, where the person and the scenery complemented each other, creating a strangely beautiful artistic conception. Then Sister-in-law Hua came over and told her that it was Xing Shen, such a prominent character, but unfortunately, he was blind.
Blind?
Quecha stared at Xing Shen.
A blind man, she thought, how can he go in and out without help? I haven’t seen him use a blind cane or a guide dog, and he actually walks far better than most people, with a quiet detachment as if “a cloud of smoke and rain envelops life.”
…
Quecha rolled over in a daze.
In the past few days, she had always disliked the dilapidated and deserted Banya, thinking, “It makes people sick.” She had argued with Jiang Baichuan for a long time before he finally took her back to the bustling world of flowers as she wished.
But now that she thought about it, it wasn’t without its benefits.
At least, she saw Xing Shen in Banya, didn’t she?
Jiang Baichuan didn’t notice these careful thoughts of Que Cha. These days, his mind is full of thoughts, all centered on the three “people” who were secretly imprisoned in Banya.
When he opened the folder, it was densely packed with small videos, which he had requested: all contacts and conversations with these three people must be recorded by images. He hovered over the video with the name number of the person on different dates, and finally selected one.
The video opened, and the first few seconds of the screen were dark and shaky. Yan Tuo struggled to sit up straight in his chair, then spat sideways with a mouthful of blood.
There were blood marks and bruises on his face and neck, and his cheeks were slightly sunken from being forced to fast for several days. The person who questioned him was Jiang Baichuan, but he did not appear on the camera.
Jiang Baichuan: “How did the dog’s teeth come about?”
Yan Tuo looked directly at the camera and tugged at the corners of his mouth as if he wanted to laugh, but he was so hungry that he really didn’t have the strength: “Pick it up. I have a company that does the distribution of Chinese herbal medicines, which also involves subsidizing direct procurement, that is, paying people to go to some remote places to find wild medicinal materials. Cultivated is always almost meaningless.”
With that, he licked his lips.
A hand entered the frame and splashed a small bottle of water on Yan Tuo’s face. Yan Tuo desperately raised his face, stretched out his tongue, and sucked everything he could into his mouth.
The water didn’t relieve him much. On the contrary, it made him even hungrier, and his body trembled a little.
“Once, they went straight into the mountains, and I happened to be free, so I went. It was the dog tooth that I picked up that time. I thought he was lost, and I wanted to do a good deed by sending him home. Who knew that he couldn’t tell me his name and address, and the direct mining was not over yet, so I took him first.”
Jiang Baichuan: “And then?”
“Then I found out that there are some things about him that are different from people, or rather, better than people. When we do business, there are inevitably some unclean things that need to be dealt with by people who dare to step on the line.”
Jiang Baichuan: “Where did you pick him up?”
Yan Tuo raised his head and licked his heavy and dry lips: “Give me a map of the area, and I’ll show you.”
Jiang Baichuan pressed the pause button here, enlarged Yan Tuo’s face, and enlarged it again until it was so large that the pixels were blurry, and a pair of eyes could barely be seen.
He felt that Yan Tuo wasn’t telling the truth, but he couldn’t refute it: no matter how he beat or abused, Yan Tuo stuck to these few sentences.
Jiang Baichuan frowned, and it took a long time before he clicked on the second video.
This time, the protagonist is Sun Zhou.
He only wore a pair of pants to cover himself, had his mouth stuffed with cloth, and his hands and feet tied with bandages. His whole body was in the shape of a “big” figure, fixed on an iron plate bed. His eyes were filled with fear, and he struggled desperately, so much so that the veins on his forehead bulged.
The person who entered the frame was Hua’s sister-in-law. She was holding a bunch of firewood sticks three inches long and as thick as lotus roots. The head of the stick was first stirred in the oil jar, and then moved to the oil pot by the fire.
Sister-in-law Hua moved her head closer to Sun Zhou’s face.
This was tantamount to roasting him alive. Sun Zhou’s body slammed, struggling even more. The camera zoomed in, cutting directly to Sun Zhou’s face, and the sound of oil could be heard along with the sight of wisps of white gas rising from his burning skin.
Jiang Baichuan pressed the pause button for the second time, enlarged Sun Zhou’s face, and then magnified it until Sun Zhou’s bulging eyes almost occupied most of the screen.
Even though the pixels were blurred, the bright red bloodlines in Sun Zhou’s eyes could still be clearly seen, passing through his pupils.
Jiang Baichuan shook his head and muttered in a low voice: “I can’t save it.”
The last video he clicked on was the one of the dog’s teeth. As he clicked, his throat rolled slightly, and his lips were a little dry—despite having already watched these videos, and being psychologically prepared, his body still had a stress response.
Like Sun Zhou, Dogtooth only wore a pair of pants, but he was asleep due to his serious injuries: Nie Jiuluo had stabbed him on the back of his neck, arms, and thighs to verify his “Earth Owl” body. To incapacitate him for a short time, he was stabbed twice more—once in the top of his skull, and another that broke his spine.
In this state, plus the previous injury to his left eye, Dogtooth had a total of six wounds.
At first glance, his left eye socket looked like a piece of white stubble, with a small white tip on the top of his head.
There was no need to look down frame by frame. The six wounds all looked the same, so Jiang Baichuan directly pulled the progress bar to 2 minutes and 39 seconds.
On the screen, there was a close-up of the wound on Dogtooth’s left eye, still densely wrapped in white cocoons. The cameraman’s heavy breathing could be heard, and his voice was strange: “I filmed his blind eye, which was completely damaged before. Now, if I look closely, this layer of cocoon has swelled up…”
To make the viewer feel the “bulging” effect, the camera turned to eye level, and it indeed showed the cocoon swelling little by little, as if it was about to burst open…
The phone rang, vibrating on the bed without music, just buzzing on the table like a restless clam.
Jiang Baichuan quickly turned off the video, grabbed his mobile phone, and went to the balcony.
The night was thick, but the city remained bright with lights. The road below was full of traffic, and in the distance, the outline of the Big Wild Goose Pagoda could faintly be seen.
The call was from Shan Qiang, who spoke quickly and urgently.
Jiang Baichuan listened quietly: “Informal channels?”
“Yes, Uncle Jiang. Isn’t it intriguing? It was posted in WeChat groups, circles of friends, and forums, but not on official channels. Also, it was said that it had been reported to the police, and the company was anxious and spontaneously offered a reward to find someone. But my friend at the police station inquired, and no one received the report. Call the police? Call the police in your dreams.”
Jiang Baichuan snorted: “And then?”
Shan Qiang hesitated a little: “I discussed it with the big head, and we pretended to be insiders to contact the other party. Isn’t the old saying that if the mountain doesn’t come to me, I’ll go to the mountain…?”
“If the mountain doesn’t come to me, I’ll go to the mountain,” this phrase was quite lively and local.
Jiang Baichuan smiled lightly.
It had been two weeks since receiving the three “goods” such as Yan Tuo from Nie’s second-hand. After two weeks, they had reached a dead end with no progress, so most of the people dispersed, leaving only four or five caretakers like sister-in-law Hua in Banya.
Dogtooth was dizzy, Sun Zhou was “curing,” and Yan Tuo was recruiting, doing it impeccably—he had many industries under his name, thanks to his money-making father. He not only had a Chinese herbal medicine distribution company but also owned planting farms. His mother, Lin Xirou, was indeed a bedridden vegetative person, and the photos taken showed her as a shrunken, shriveled little old lady near death. The phone calls were plenty, all because Yan Tuo was a filial son, and the nurse often communicated with him about Lin Xirou’s physical condition…
There was no solution, which could mean two things: either it was indeed true and credible, or the opponent had set the game too perfectly.
Jiang Baichuan’s intuition leaned toward the latter. The pool of water behind Yan Tuo was much deeper than he had thought.
He pondered for a long time before saying, “Contact should be made, but it should be planned well.”
The lid of the casserole was banged by the boiling steam, and the white fungus soup was ready. Sister Lu put out the fire, took out a bowl, and placed it on a plate with black lacquer and gold before holding it out.
This is an old house from the Republic of China era, though it doesn’t strictly follow the architectural style of that time. It’s a blend of Chinese and Western elements. The main house is a two-storey small building situated in a quiet area. Looking up, one can see the commercial buildings of the central city.
Sister Lu is a housekeeper who initially provided door-to-door services. She took this job a few years ago when an intermediary told her about a young female client named Nie, who was looking for a live-in aunt. The pay was high, the work was light—just cooking, cleaning, and other similar tasks.
Sister Lu took the job decisively and felt fortunate: she lived comfortably, ate well, had little work, and her employer was easy-going.
This good fortune seemed rare. Miss Nie had gone to southern Shaanxi last month for some inspiration. Perhaps she caught a cold, and since her return, she had been frequently ill with a cold and cough. To help her, Sister Lu boiled white fungus soup every night to soothe her throat and lungs.
It was raining outside, and it was quite heavy. Fortunately, there were rain eaves around the yard, forming a covered corridor. Sister Lu walked along this corridor to the front of the main house and pushed the door open.
The first floor was the living room. The lights were off, but visibility was adequate due to the light from the second floor that filtered through and cast a faint glow on the spiral staircase on the left side of the hall.
Sister Lu ascended the stairs. Miss Nie was a sculptor with a diverse range of interests, but her primary focus was traditional Chinese clay sculpture. The second floor served as both her studio and living room.
Upon reaching the second floor, the lights were much brighter. The space was an open, transparent large room with two massive workstations. One was a workbench with tools such as axes, saws, hammers, wires, wooden frames, and plastic knives—giving it the appearance of a carpenter’s worktable. The other was a sculpture turntable with a central rotating platform for the sculpture, allowing it to be viewed from all angles without the need to move around it.
Additionally, sculptures were scattered throughout the room, some completed, some drying, and others left midway through the process due to dissatisfaction. These unfinished pieces were covered with large transparent plastic sheets and regularly sprayed with water to maintain their pliability for future work.
Nie Jiuluo was not busy. She was quietly flipping through a photo album. She had changed into a pearlescent silver satin nightgown and sat comfortably.
Sister Lu placed the tray aside and glanced at the album. The photos were old, with yellowed edges, but the people in them appeared youthful and vibrant.
One of the photos Nie Jiuluo was examining was a wedding photo.
Sister Lu immediately recognized the individuals as Nie Jiuluo’s parents from her reaction: “Yo, are these your parents?”
Nie Jiuluo tilted the photo sideways towards Sister Lu: “Do they look like me?”
Sister Lu nodded repeatedly: “Yes, you look like them. You must have inherited their good traits.”
Nie Jiuluo smiled and touched her face: “Really?”
The housekeeping company’s policy required employees to do more work and speak less, especially regarding their employer’s private life. Since Nie Jiuluo frequently traveled for work, Sister Lu had been working there for a long time and still knew little about her personal life.
However, seeing Nie Jiuluo smiling and engaging in conversation, Sister Lu felt comfortable asking: “They… don’t live with you?”
Nie Jiuluo replied, “My mother died in an accident a long time ago. My father was so grief-stricken that he jumped off a building.”
Sister Lu was taken aback, her mind momentarily blank. She responded, “What a man.”
As soon as she spoke, she regretted her choice of words: praising someone’s deceased parents as “good men” seemed inappropriate.
She stumbled to explain: “No, I mean, in TV shows, men usually die, and martyrs are often women. It’s rare to see the reverse—your father… he must have been very emotional.”
Nie Jiuluo looked at the photo and responded casually, “A good man… maybe. A good father? Perhaps not. When he jumped, he probably forgot he still had children to raise.”
Sister Lu felt embarrassed, unsure how to respond.
Noticing Sister Lu’s discomfort, Nie Jiuluo looked up and smiled: “It’s okay, I’m not sensitive about this. I don’t hold any grudge against my father; I’m just expressing my feelings.”
Sister Lu felt this was a major “work mistake” and said a few more words before quickly making her exit as if fleeing downstairs.
Thank you for reading!
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