Chapter 5
Edward Quan ·
It was an empty farmhouse.
There were plenty of abandoned houses in the countryside.
Not many with a basement like this one.
I'd brought Yang here.
It had been simple.
There was a phone in the black bag.
One messaging app. One contact.
Yang Huiqiong.
Someone using a false female identity had been manipulating him through sexualized online messages and exploiting his interest to arrange a meeting.
The exchanges showed he already understood sexual matters years earlier.
The meeting was waiting for him when he came back.
One message was enough to draw him out.
The hotel manager concealed his absence from his parents.
The supposed bodyguards looked the other way.
Drugs were part of the arrangement too.
Just like that, he was in my hands.
He woke restrained to a chair, a black hood over his head.
I slapped him again and again.
Eventually, he screamed.
Useless.
The house was remote, the basement sealed away. Nobody would hear.
Whenever he screamed, I struck him again.
My palm began to sting before he finally wept and begged for his life.
I asked if he knew who I was.
He didn't answer. He only pleaded with me not to kill him.
I thought he probably knew.
I injured his hands and demanded that he tell me what he'd done to my daughter.
I'd begun to suspect Mr. Jiang had left him until last for more than the distance his family had moved.
I was right.
Under the pain, he told me everything.
He'd started it.
There had been four boys involved, but at first he'd been alone.
He'd taken my daughter somewhere isolated and committed an appalling assault.
He'd beaten her unconscious.
Then he'd persuaded the other three to return to the scene and hurt her further.
All to conceal what he'd done first.
My tears started again.
Simply killing him wouldn't be enough.
At dawn, disheveled and stumbling, I returned to the village.
They detained me immediately.
I recognized them.
Criminal investigators.
I laughed at them.
They put me in a room and demanded to know where Yang was.
I named a place.
They searched. Nothing.
They came back and questioned me again.
I named another.
Another fruitless search.
They were angry enough to hit me.
“I'm mentally ill. And you believe what I say? Ha ha ha!”
A day passed like that.
The next day, they brought me back to the interview room.
They still hoped to get something out of me.
I only laughed.
That afternoon, Chen arrived just in time.
He burst into the room, forceful and unyielding.
“Captain Xu, it's been twenty-four hours. Article 119 of the Criminal Procedure Law limits a summons or compulsory appearance to twelve hours. In particularly serious or complex cases requiring detention or arrest, the limit is twenty-four.”
“If you have evidence, detain her formally. If not, release her.”
Xu answered immediately.
“The Criminal Procedure Law also allows the period for seeking approval in cases of serious suspicion to be extended to thirty days.”
“Then show me the evidence that makes my client a serious suspect. As far as I know, she's only connected to an ordinary missing-person case. Calling that serious is almost laughable.”
Chen didn't laugh.
He was mocking him.
His tone reminded me of Mr. Jiang.
I laughed so hard I cried.
Xu's expression darkened.
He was in a difficult position.
He couldn't simply release me. Every reasonable suspicion pointed my way.
But they had no evidence.
He turned back to me.
“Ye Qing'e, be honest—”
Chen slammed both hands on the table.
“Can you shut up?”
Xu lost his temper too.
“What are you trying to do? Want to spend a few days in here yourself?”
“Do you have that power?”
I'd never seen Chen so angry.
“You know how social order is maintained. Do you know how order is maintained in this place of yours?”
They stared at each other for several seconds.
Then Xu's phone rang.
He answered without expression.
After listening a while, he said, “All right.”
Only then did I understand.
Chen never entered a battle unprepared.
He'd made the fullest use of the connections Mr. Jiang had left.
Someone higher up had intervened.
They could only release me.
Then keep investigating.
Only when they found clues and evidence could they restrict my freedom again.
It was dark when I reached the village.
Even so, Yang's parents were waiting.
They'd hidden in my house. Without a word, they beat me, forced me down, and dragged me away to a deserted spot.
I kept laughing.
The more frantic their fury became, the more I wanted to laugh.
They demanded to know where their son was.
“In hell.”
They beat me until I could barely breathe.
I pretended to beg for mercy and said I could take them to him.
They tied me up, switched on an emergency lamp, and made me lead the way.
I brought them to the remote farmhouse.
His father rushed inside.
He came straight back out. There was no one in the house.
“Where's my son? Where is he?”
I laughed.
“Everywhere.”
Then I looked at the wasteland in front of the house.
“What do you mean? Everywhere?”
I pointed to one corner.
“Want to try digging?”
“No... No!”
His mother screamed and ran toward the place I'd indicated.
She dropped to her knees and clawed at the soil.
I smiled.
“There's a hoe. I left one for you.”
His father found it at once and began digging beside her.
Soon, they found something.
An arm.
His mother clutched it and wailed.
“My son! My boy...!”
She was close to madness too.
His father came at me.
The emergency lamp on the ground lit his bloodshot eyes.
“Tell me! You only cut off his hand and buried it to frighten us! He's still alive! Isn't he?”
I laughed.
“Of course not. I spent the whole night with him.”
I told him I'd tortured his son and dismembered his body.
He refused to believe me.
“You're lying! Tell me where he is!”
“Everywhere. Keep digging.”
“You! Go to hell!”
He raised the hoe and brought it down on my forehead.
My head split.
My legs gave way.
I fell.
“My son... My son...”
“Dig him up... All of him... Get him out... Bury him...”
Listening to his mother's desperate cries and his father's helpless, furious curses, I still wanted to laugh.
At last, they knew the pain I'd endured.
I could die without regrets.
If I had one, it was that I hadn't seen my husband again.
Perhaps, as we'd said, we'd only meet in the world below.
Just before consciousness left me, another regret surfaced.
I'd brought this couple to unbearable grief.
But I couldn't take them both with me.
The place was so remote. Once they disposed of my body, perhaps even the law would be unable to touch them.
But...
My husband would be out in a little over two years.
So all of it...
Had been arranged.
Satisfied, I closed my eyes.
En'en, Mommy's coming.
The End.
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