Wind and snow battered the snow vehicle. But the one who had let Liu Mei drive while he sat steadily in the back, never once mentioning he could drive a snow vehicle, now pushed the speed like he owned the road; like those empty highways in Xinjiang during the off-season, driving as if no one else existed.
While he was racing along, there was no signal at all. Forget data; there wasn’t even a telecom signal. That removed any chance for Zhen Wuyu to change his mind mid-route, despite having planned for detours.
From the moment he started the snow vehicle, he was left with only one risky choice: the shoe factory.
Nature didn’t allow humans to make precise predictions.
It was even harsher than before.
But as he got closer to the shoe factory area, after the window scraped past streaks of snow, Zhen Wuyu vaguely saw the base station signal tower standing on the mountain ridge.
At that moment, he had some signal.
Messages started chiming in.
The bureau couldn’t call him back. They hadn’t been able to reach him earlier either. Given the communication conditions, they chose to send texts.
Zhen Wuyu’s deep-rooted calm finally mattered. He didn’t look at the phone right away; instead, he drove the snow vehicle to the edge of the woods where the trees blocked the factory’s higher sightlines. He stopped, then checked the messages.
Time wasn’t unimportant; it was that he couldn’t act rashly.
Know yourself and know the enemy; you win every battle.
All three urgent questions he’d asked the bureau to investigate had basically been answered.
First was the shoe factory’s information: when it was invested and built, detailed records, the legal representative and background, operations over the years…
Invested and built in 1984; abandoned in 1991. Hongfeng capital flowed back to Hong Kong. The legal representative was Chen Wanrong, but the real holder behind her was some big Hong Kong boss. During those eight years, operations were decent; steady and conservative, and profits, given the social context and the country’s development trajectory, were actually quite considerable. Baimu Town’s labor was extremely cheap, a demographic dividend. And back then, when the investment came in, they had negotiated a very favorable price with the authorities based on certain timber resources. For Hongfeng, it was basically a guaranteed win. The biggest cost might have been transportation.
Later, the business turned bad, losses linked in a chain, probably due to market problems for the product. In 1991 they announced the factory’s closure. After that the property was sold and changed hands several times. The current owner was a herbal-medicine trader named Zhang Baoli. He bought it a year ago. The file listed him as a seventy-two-year-old man. There was no mention of health issues then; only that he was a merchant with some assets, optimistic about low costs locally, wanting to make an investment and have his descendants manage it.
Old, but with assets; buying industrial property was no problem.
Overall, nothing looked obviously wrong. And this Zhang Baoli did fit the masked man’s profile.
This name was the most directly useful item in the information.
Zhang Baoli.
Zhen Wuyu scanned quickly and kept reading.
Second: the power system near the shoe factory had indeed shown abnormal fluctuations within a two-hour window. Based on the telecom bureau technician’s analysis, there had likely been an abnormal incident there. But current conditions made on-site inspection and repair impossible. They only checked the shoe factory area’s power facility deployment in response to police questions. The factory had never applied for a renovation project, but they couldn’t rule out that local workers or shops had taken private jobs to do such work.
Third: Liu Mei and Huang Xiuling had indeed attended the same school. In 1984, they were classmates in the first year at Baimu Middle School. Back then, Huang Xiuling wasn’t called Huang Xiuling; she was called Liu Aidi. Her age had also been altered; she was already seventeen at the time. Because she started primary school late, she only entered first grade at eleven.
Her deskmate Chen Shengnan, after a loud argument and a scene at school that year, left the school and later disappeared. At the time, the biggest suspect was Liu Mei. Someone had seen Liu Mei argue with Chen Shengnan. There were also rumors that Liu Mei had suppressed Liu Aidi. Chen Shengnan and Liu Aidi were best friends, inseparable. Because of Liu Aidi, Chen Shengnan had defended her several times. Liu Mei likely disliked her very much…
That was the feedback the school provided. As for the disappearance case back then, it had no beginning and no end, and it was during heavy snow. After the girl went missing, police searched for several days and found nothing. Liu Mei had teachers and the principal backing her; and there was no evidence tying her to it. Later, there was also testimony proving she hadn’t left the school. In the end, it gradually faded away…
In that era, people either struggled to earn money and support a family while chasing the future, or sank into hardship and became silent dust. Any disappearance that remained in the archive at all could be called fortunate.
Zhen Wuyu only needed to focus on the answer to the second question. By the time he read it, he had already taken out a towel and bottled water from the vehicle, wet it, wrapped it over his mouth and nose, took his gun, and slipped into the woods. He moved fast, avoiding direct sightlines from the factory, and quickly reached a break in the north wall.
It really had been grand and imposing once. Now it was covered by a vast layer of snow. Where the snow had slid away, rotten sheet metal and the blotched vertical faces of the walls couldn’t hide the ruin.
This place was huge. A herbal-medicine trader like Zhang Baoli didn’t need a factory this large. Local herb resources couldn’t support manufacturing demand on this scale either. Which meant: even back then, this purchase was strange.
But to people who bought and sold ownership, it wasn’t important.
As long as it could be sold.
So Zhang Baoli’s factory was breached by Zhen Wuyu. Time was tight. There was no time to sneak slowly. Zhen Wuyu shed the gloomy, refined look he had when he was doing “analysis” with other officers. He moved sharply, gun ready, guarding his angles as he charged into the factory interior…
No one. Empty like a massive graveyard.
He could see open areas where many machines had been cleared out, dust everywhere. Compared to other abandoned factories, where everything had long been stripped clean, this shoe factory still had some things left behind. They hadn’t been moved; they sat piled under dust like small hills.
Zhen Wuyu only spared one glance. He was looking for the bathhouse, and he was tracking along the newest thing in the factory: wiring.
Footsteps echoed down the deep corridor, terrifying. But there, he also saw fresh marks, clearly recent: overlapping wheel tracks from a push cart.
An iron door had a lock.
But before he did anything to that door, from the corridor’s far end, beyond that iron door, a piercing scream suddenly came through…
Thin, chilling, even a little…
Not human?
Over on Liu Duan’s side, he was an old cop. After seeing the message, he calmly tucked the phone back into his pocket and kept chatting with Liu Mei, asking about local conditions.
Liu Mei said, “Captain Liu understands Baimu pretty well; maybe you understand it better than me, someone who’s been away for years. Some things I can say, you already know. Some things I can’t say; that’s business people’s trade secrets. I can’t tell the police.”
She really was bold and open, sharp in speech without losing humor or slyness. In business, she had to be someone who could handle every direction. Liu Duan knew people like this were the hardest to deal with. If she was tied to the case, with money, connections, and brains, any direct probing would be exposing himself.
So Liu Duan didn’t try. He treated her as clean. “Wuyu just texted me. We need to go to the shoe factory.”
“The shoe factory?” Liu Mei frowned.
Liu Duan glanced at her. “Yes. Hongfeng Shoe Factory. You…”
The snow vehicle’s wheels skidded and fishtailed. It almost slid off the track. Liu Duan jolted. His first thought was: Is she the problem, or is Hongfeng Shoe Factory the problem? Is she about to kill to silence me? I haven’t even probed yet!
After apologizing, Liu Mei said, “Of course I know that one. Who didn’t know Hongfeng when we were kids? Out of all the local factories, it was the most high-end. They said it came from Hong Kong. Back then our Liu family was still a small workshop. We’ve struggled for years; now it looks like we have some industry and some money, but we still can’t reach the level they had back then.”
Liu Duan said, “But they failed later and pulled out. You’re one of the rare successful local companies. They just had more money, that’s all.”
Liu Mei said, “Having money is enough to accomplish 99.99% of things in this world. And Hongfeng’s failure was because of management mistakes.”
Liu Duan was surprised. When he heard high-end leather shoes, he assumed it was bad positioning, wrong styles, investment loss.
Liu Mei chuckled. “Captain Liu, you don’t think they were trying to sell those shoes to people like us, right? Those leather shoes—forget here. Even in Changlin back then, not many people could afford them. It was a processing factory. The real market was coastal developed areas and Hong Kong itself, or overseas through brand resale. If a product’s costs are already squeezed to the limit, failure basically shouldn’t exist.”
Liu Duan asked, puzzled, “Then why did they pull out? Because of the regulations back then?”
“That was only a small part. There was another reason. They were high-end because the materials were high grade. The wood type, the age, the texture; all had to meet standards. But trees take time to grow. The number of trees that met standards was fixed. Those years of reckless logging made the total drop sharply. And second: contracts are one thing, prices are another. When the regulations came out, a lot of people in Baimu Town lost their livelihoods and money. Wouldn’t they have to go find money? Naturally they went to the wealthy. So they wanted to renegotiate prices, raise prices. Otherwise they wouldn’t let them cut, wouldn’t sell, they’d keep it local. Hongfeng refused. So there was conflict and mediation needed… You’re police. This is commerce bureau stuff, not your jurisdiction. And you were in Changlin back then, right, Captain Liu? Family shame doesn’t go outside.”
Liu Duan understood. “Then there was more?”
Liu Mei said, “Yes.”
She said it lightly, but her expression grew much heavier.
“People died.”
Liu Duan narrowed his eyes.
Liu Mei smiled.
“This one, Captain Liu probably knows better than I do, right?”
“Baimian Chang, Snow Spirit Path—that’s what they called the murders around 1991. They were concentrated in the Baimu Town area and spread to nearby rural towns around Changlin. Those years, multiple homicide cases happened. The victims were all kinds of people. Most died horribly, in inhuman ways. The closest lead to the killer was a man fishing on the opposite riverbank who happened to see what the killer looked like.”
“Blizzard skies, frozen riverbanks, redwood charcoal roasting, live human sky offerings—the killer stood in the woods, wearing a red long skirt and leather boots, graceful and beautiful, but with a strange Baimian Chang ghost mask…”
Liu Duan slapped his palm lightly once. “I remember. I participated in investigating that case. Uselessly. We found nothing. But you were still young back then, just first year middle school. How do you know so much about it?”
Liu Mei laughed, and the laughter made Liu Duan uncomfortable.
Bold. Wanton. Even with a trace of mockery.
“Oh my, Captain Liu. You don’t know that gossip is a woman’s nature? And the more terrifying it is, the more curious people get.”
“As for why I know so much, even more than you think—that’s because of Snow Spirit Path.”
Liu Duan’s mouth tightened. His heart thudded a few times.
Liu Mei’s expression turned dim. “It’s been too long. You probably forgot Snow Spirit Path is the most dangerous but cheapest shortcut into the mountains in Baimu Town. Several murder sites were around it. That year the snow was endless, bleak as far as you could see. There was one dismemberment case. I was the first person to find the scene.”
Liu Duan froze. Thinking carefully, he finally recalled. “The dead was a logger. After dismembering him, the killer cut the body pieces into ‘logs’ and embedded them into the wall of the forest cabin where he lived. The head was hung on the chimney… Because the first witness was too young, when I got involved as Changlin police, the record hid information. You were hospitalized too. Female officers handled the earliest contact, so I never met you.”
Liu Mei said, “Yes. I was terrified. For a long time I had fevers and was delirious. But I still remember how horrifying it was. The head was actually the most obvious. But when I first got close, I didn’t notice at all, because it had all been smoked black…”
“After that, Snow Spirit Path kept having incidents, all kinds of rumors. The locals were superstitious and believed in ghosts, saying a Snow Spirit was haunting the mountains… In those years, a lot of young girls went missing too, and people said it was the Snow Spirit looking for sacrifices… Because there weren’t enough girls, it went mad, took revenge on locals, killed people wildly to threaten them.”
Liu Duan sneered. “The evil has always been people.”
Liu Mei said, “Yes. Exactly.”
“But even now, when locals bring it up, plenty still think it was the Snow Spirit.”
“Some people once heard strange, terrifying cries deep in the mountains.”
“Thin, mournful, drifting… not human.”
In that monstrous cry—
Bang, bang!
One shot blew something apart. One kick smashed through.
The instant the iron door was kicked open, gas-saturated air poured out. Along with it came a shadow that shot out strangely.
Zhen Wuyu’s eyes were sharp. He caught a glimpse of a little rat stumbling in panic. It didn’t run far before collapsing weakly.
Small creatures couldn’t withstand poison the way larger ones could.
But—
Zhen Wuyu swept his gaze into the bathhouse.
The gas was heavy, but not as heavy as he’d imagined. And there was no continued hissing sound.
It had stopped?
But the problem was—
Where were the people?
There was no one inside.
Had it leaked out…?
Zhen Wuyu’s first thought was Liu Mei. But in terms of timing, what she gave was a delaying “secret.”
Even if she was dirty, she couldn’t have made it in time…
Unless—
Zhen Wuyu spun around.
He looked at the push-cart wheel tracks behind him.
The floor was dirty; the marks were obvious.
Tracks going in, tracks coming out; the wheel patterns weren’t the same.
No matter how many times the “in” tracks overlapped, the topmost pressed lines were—
The “out” tracks.
They had been moved out.
Transferred.
Zhen Wuyu immediately followed the tracks at speed…
Even if the poisoning wasn’t continuing, if those people had already inhaled enough gas, without immediate medical help they could still suffer brain death or brain damage.
The one behind all this was playing with him.