You Rulan entered the Bluebird Tavern to speak with Jiang Gelei about the aftermath of the fallen driver’s death.
“Old Wang divorced his wife a few years ago,” You Rulan said. “The only family he has left is his mother.”
“She’s wheelchair bound and relies on him for daily care. There’s no one else she can depend on.”
“Alright,” Jiang Gelei replied. “I’ll send someone over later to check on her.”
“What’s going on?” Weilang asked.
Jiang Gelei glanced at him lazily. “Go play your detective game.”
Weilang immediately protested, “The boss told me to investigate! You all have an obligation to cooperate with me.”
“Old Wang died in a driving accident,” Jiang Gelei said. “It has nothing to do with your case.”
“I heard everything,” Weilang insisted. “There was something wrong with the drink he had. Maybe Zhou Zu sent someone to poison him again.”
“We still haven’t confirmed it was the drink,” You Rulan said.
The three previous victims who had died from organ failure all had the same unidentified toxin detected in their bloodstreams. Many people suspected Zhou Zu had somehow obtained a new kind of poison and was using it to carry out random acts of revenge.
But all three victims had been insignificant, peripheral figures. Their deaths hadn’t caused any meaningful damage, so the theory remained nothing more than suspicion.
Weilang was in charge of investigating the matter.
Of course, everyone understood perfectly well that something requiring actual brains would never truly land in Weilang’s hands. The situation was probably more like this: Weilang had enthusiastically volunteered himself to Wen Tiannan and Wen Tiannan had casually waved a hand and tossed the task to him without a second thought.
…….
“Weilang,” Lu Pei asked, “how’s the investigation going?”
Weilang immediately perked up. “Now that you mention it, I actually found a few things…”
The moment someone showed interest, he became unbearably smug, spilling out every detail of his investigation in one breath.
Victims A, B and C had all been errand workers, bottom tier laborers who handled miscellaneous jobs. Driving, hauling cargo, loading and unloading shipments. They worked different transport routes, weren’t from the same hometown and didn’t know one another at all.
After listening quietly, Lu Pei concluded, “So in other words, you found absolutely nothing.”
Weilang exploded in outrage. “That’s way too harsh!! I memorized all their files, okay?!”
“Can you take me to look around?” Lu Pei asked. “The places they worked before they died and where they lived.”
Weilang instantly brightened. “I approve of your willingness to become my assistant.”
With that, Weilang led Lu Pei out of the tavern and toward a nearby transfer station, while Yuan Que followed silently behind them.
This had been the place Victim A frequented most often during his lifetime and also where his coworkers had suddenly discovered him dead. Weilang had apparently done at least some proper groundwork beforehand.
Completely familiar with the area, he quickly called over Old Feng, the first witness on the scene and let Lu Pei question him personally.
After some careful questioning, Old Feng’s account proved straightforward and clear. There weren’t many details, nor anything especially suspicious.
He pointed out the vehicle Victim A had used most often while alive and Lu Pei examined it thoroughly with a flashlight, inspecting every corner.
“Doesn’t seem like there’s anything unusual after all,” Lu Pei murmured thoughtfully. “Let’s check the next place.”
Weilang bought some fruit from a roadside stall and directly brought Lu Pei to Victim B’s home.
Lu Pei felt it was somewhat abrupt and intrusive to disturb the man’s family like this but Weilang assured him it was fine.
When Victim B’s wife heard they were former coworkers of her husband, she warmly welcomed them inside. The atmosphere remained fairly harmonious.
The couple had a daughter.
The child was sick.
The moment they mentioned her husband, however, the woman suddenly burst into tears.
“My husband… he’s just gone like this…” she sobbed. “What are my daughter and I supposed to do from now on…”
She cried bitterly for a long while. The three of them comforted her until she finally calmed down enough for them to leave.
Once they stepped outside, Weilang let out a sigh full of emotion.
“Ah… if I died someday, would my wife cry for me like that too?”
“You’d need to have a wife first,” Lu Pei replied calmly. “Did you notice the common point between the three victims?”
“…Huh?” Weilang was still immersed in his imaginary funeral scene and failed to keep up with the abrupt topic change. “Uh… they all had wives?”
Lu Pei said, “They all had families depending on them. Elderly parents, wives, children and each of them was the primary breadwinner of the household.”
Weilang frowned. “How is that some kind of common point?”
“In order to give their families better lives,” Lu Pei said patiently, “they needed to work harder than others to earn money.”
“But everyone works hard to support their families,” Weilang argued.
“Yes,” Lu Pei replied. “But they were only errand workers. Menial laborers. Their income was relatively low. So they had to actively take overtime shifts, accept extra jobs, or pick up side work in order to make more money.”
“Obviously!” Weilang complained. “Is this seriously the conclusion you came to after investigating all night? You found just as little as I did!”
Lu Pei ignored the complaint.
“In your line of work,” he asked, “taking private side jobs is pretty common, right? Especially jobs where people are required to keep their mouths shut, even from those closest to them.”
“Well, yeah. Of course.”
“What type of work pays the best?”
Though Weilang continued grumbling internally, he still followed Lu Pei’s train of thought and answered honestly.
“Uh… drugs? Weapons? Medicine?”
“Now summarize the shared nature of those three things.”
“…Uh…” Weilang hesitated before cautiously replying, “They’re all illegal?”
“Exactly. Illegal.” Lu Pei said calmly. “Anything written into law tends to generate enormous profit.”
After circling around the topic for so long without reaching a clear point, Weilang finally started losing his mind.
“But everyone knows that already!”
“Have you heard of smuggling?” Lu Pei asked.
“Of course! I literally do that kind of work myself!”
“Have you ever smuggled wild animals that weren’t on the approved safety list?”
“Yeah, before. That’s pretty common… ah.”
Weilang suddenly froze.
At last, he realized Lu Pei hadn’t been speaking meaningless nonsense at all. He had been deliberately guiding him, step by step, deeper into the thought process.
“They took side jobs transporting wild animals smuggled in through illegal routes outside the city,” Lu Pei said. “Maybe out of curiosity, one of them touched the cage.”
“And the animals carried viruses from outside the city.”
Weilang stared blankly.
“Or let’s take the theory one step further,” Lu Pei continued evenly. “Suppose a few animals, wild rabbits, for example, died during transportation. That kind of loss is perfectly normal during transit.”
“And once they died, the bodies had to be dealt with somehow.”
“Out of curiosity, they wondered what rabbit meat tasted like, so they roasted and ate the dead rabbits themselves.”
Lu Pei lifted his eyes toward Weilang.
“Guess what would happen next?”
Weilang’s mouth fell wide open.
“Holy… shit.”
A chill crawled down his spine involuntarily. Only after several seconds did he recover enough to ask with a complicated expression, “How the hell did you even think of that? The boss never had you involved with this kind of stuff before, right?”
Just as Lu Pei was about to answer, his nose suddenly twitched.
“Ah choo!”
Even underground, the difference between day and night temperatures was obvious. Winter nights were especially cold. Once the artificial sunlight panels shut down on schedule, the temperature dropped rapidly and they had spent the entire night running around in the freezing wind.
“Are you wearing too little?” Weilang asked.
“Not really.”
Lu Pei was already layered in two coats and the outer one had even been given to him by Yuan Que.
But when he turned to look, Yuan Que himself was the one truly underdressed, wearing nothing but a black turtleneck sweater.
“Let’s head back first,” Lu Pei said to Weilang. “No point freezing ourselves into a cold. Keep investigating along this direction. If anything comes up, tell me.”
……
The next morning, Lu Pei woke up dizzy and congested.
His head felt heavy, his nose completely stuffed.
He had genuinely caught a cold.
Meanwhile, Yuan Que remained perfectly fine. In the middle of winter, he was casually wearing a short sleeved shirt after returning from exercising outside, as though he felt no cold whatsoever.
Lu Pei felt a deep sense of grievance inside.
And envy.
He watched Yuan Que move busily around the room, bringing breakfast over to the bedside before handing him a letter as well.
“It was stuffed through the door,” Yuan Que said.
After opening it, Lu Pei realized it was intelligence passed along by Duoban, most likely under Lu Xun’s instructions.
The general contents summarized recent developments and warned him about possible shifts in the underground district’s situation, advising him to stay cautious.
Lu Pei skimmed downward line by line.
Then one sentence near the bottom caught his attention.
【Rong Yao Dogrins has been gathering information about you from various sources. Should measures be taken?】
The moment Lu Pei saw the name, he let out a cold laugh.
“That idiot really did catch the scent and come looking.”
“Rong Yao Dogrins,” Yuan Que repeated. “Who is that.”
Lu Pei: “…?”
Turning his head, he found Yuan Que openly staring at the letter together with him without the slightest attempt to hide his curiosity.
Although Lu Pei admittedly hadn’t intentionally concealed the contents from him…
Still…
“You can read this?”
“A little.”
Lu Pei stared at him suspiciously.
“That’s actually another fake name my brother uses.”
A trace of confusion appeared on Yuan Que’s face.
“He’s asking about you.”
Lu Pei immediately pointed accusingly at him.
“You definitely understood that!”
“…………”
“You already know a lot of words now, don’t you?” Lu Pei narrowed his eyes. “You’ve been pretending not to learn this whole time, haven’t you?! Answer me!”
Yuan Que simply turned his face away.
No matter how much Lu Pei shook him afterward, he remained completely silent, as though his ears had gone deaf.
Lowering his head, Yuan Que calmly peeled a tea egg for him instead, carefully picking away every fragment of shell before holding it to Lu Pei’s mouth.
“Eat.”
“Since you already learned everything,” Lu Pei huffed, “then I’m not teaching you how to write anymore.”
“No.”
Yuan Que rejected the idea instantly.
“Teach me.”
“You pretended not to know,” Lu Pei accused. “You lied to me.”
“A little.”
“You deliberately tricked me! How can you be like this?!”
Yuan Que calmly retaliated, “You told me a fake name.”
Lu Pei: “…”
He coughed lightly.
Lowering his head, he bit into the tea egg and strategically focused on eating breakfast instead.
At the same time, he realized with growing solemnity that Yuan Que seemed to have genuinely become sharper lately.
Neither of them occupied the moral high ground.
The room fell quiet for a moment.
After a long pause, Yuan Que still asked again:
“Who is Rong Yao Dogrins?”
Lu Pei immediately countered, “Why did you pretend you couldn’t learn? Exactly how many words do you know now? Were you pretending before too?”
“…Not before.”
Yuan Que looked away.
It seemed he spent some time organizing his thoughts before finally admitting the reason in a low voice.
“If I learn, you watch television.”
“If I don’t learn, you watch me.”
Lu Pei immediately attacked him.
“What are you, an elementary school kid? That’s so childish! You just want people paying attention to you all the time.”
“Not people,” Yuan Que refuted.
“Then you still want me staring at you all the time!”
“Only you.”
Lu Pei: “……”
The atmosphere instantly became subtle.
Lu Pei closed his mouth.
His fingers unconsciously hooked a strand of hair beside his temple.
He had received plenty of ambiguous advances before. Because of that, he was usually capable of identifying the hidden implications in someone’s tone or actions and could smoothly avoid or reject them in time.
But when Yuan Que stared directly at him and said things like this, he neither blushed nor showed any sign of emotional fluctuation at all.
It sounded less like flirting and more like the cold statement of a simple fact.
That made his intentions impossible to read.
The two stared at each other for several seconds.
“If you don’t mean it that way,” Lu Pei finally said, “then don’t talk like that.”
“What way?”
There was no point speaking indirectly with someone like Yuan Que, so Lu Pei said frankly:
“The kind of way where someone has special feelings for me.”
Yuan Que thought about it seriously.
“No.”
Then, after another pause, he added:
“I just want to smell you.”
Lu Pei: “……”
Lu Pei warned him grimly, “If you keep talking like that, I’m seriously going to hit you.”
“Why?”
“You don’t understand anything,” Lu Pei said. “You say random things that make people misunderstand. That’s very bad.”
The narrow minded people from the surface intentionally looked down on him. Yuan Que vaguely felt this was another form of unreasonable prejudice, even if he didn’t know how to explain it clearly himself. In his mind, he had already expressed himself very honestly and directly.
The other party was the one deliberately misinterpreting him.
At that moment, the ringing of a phone interrupted their conversation.
Weilang’s excited voice burst loudly from the speaker.
“Hey, Ruby! Guess what? You were absolutely right! They really did take jobs transporting animals!”