Would Zheng Kaifeng, an extremely audacious and avaricious person, be willing to die?
But if someone was plotting to assassinate him, then who had placed the bomb on the truck?
Since the killer had the capacity to place a bomb on the truck without anyone being the wiser, why hadn't he made it a little simpler, taking him unawares and stabbing him to death, or stealing a car and hitting him head-on?
Why couldn't all these murderers lately do their jobs properly? Why did they always have to make headline news?
Any one of this series of questions merited repeated thought and deliberation.
But in Fei Du's mind, where a mysterious black hole always seemed to be revolving, a sudden Big Bang seemed to occur. All his thoughts lost gravity, floating out of the frame of logic.
Perhaps the light reflecting on Luo Wenzhou's pants was just the effect of the wildly flashing police lights mixed together. Perhaps this momentary sense of crisis was only his own paranoia… Then this silly joke could keep Comrade Luo Wenzhou entertained for his whole life.
But in that instant, Fei Du was deferring to his most basic instincts.
There was no reason for it.
Luo Wenzhou was knocking on the container's door and blustering in front of Zheng Kaifeng when Fei Du, entirely without warning, threw himself at him from the side and shoved him towards the SUV. Fei Du grabbed the car door with one hand, pulled it open without even looking, and, while Luo Wenzhou was unsteady on his feet, pushed him inside.
Then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw a spark suddenly flare under the container.
Fei Du only had time to reflexively pull over the car door he was holding. Before he'd had time to entirely shield himself with the door, the huge impact had already arrived. The car door slammed into his back.
After Fei Du's car crash, he'd had the whole car reinforced and the glass changed. This was his first day driving it after it had been repaired following its thorough tossing. The crash protection was indeed good, but he hadn't expected that he'd meet a bomb head-on this time.
However good a car was, it still wasn't a tank. The car door couldn't withstand the extreme test, warping at the moment of explosion, the bullet-proof glass shattering along with it. Fei Du's last awareness was the feeling of his arm, which had been struck by the car door, hurting as if it had shattered, along with his shoulder. He didn't make a sound, because his lungs had been nearly laminated by the hit.
All the vehicles in the underground garage cried out in unison, their alarms rising to the ceiling. Unable to reverberate to the skies, they could only echo back and forth in the cramped space. The fierce fire spat up dangerous long tongues, instantly consuming the truck's container. Some car's windows broke, raining shards of glass onto the ground. The container's door flew up several meters.
Fortune was like the wind, changing in a moment. It had only taken a week for the "well-known overseas Chinese entrepreneur" Zheng Kaifeng, who could summon hundreds at one call, to become a "criminal suspect," and then to become a crispy-on-the-outside, tender-on-the-inside scorched sparrow.
When Fei Du had pushed him, the back of Luo Wenzhou's head had hit the steering wheel. He felt he'd nearly gone deaf.
He instinctively caught the person who fell into his arms, not realizing what had happened. The huge noise in his ears collected into a long, thin sound, like mosquito's whine. Luo Wenzhou felt something sticky on his hands and subconsciously twisted his fingers. His eyes opened wide, still with a trace of blankness. His limbs seemed to belong to a marionette, clumsily moving on their own.
Then the smell of blood, smoke, and scorched material rolled over him like a tsunami.
"Fei Du…"
Luo Wenzhou's suspended heart was instantly electrified. First it trembled. Then it began to beat wildly as if in revolt, nearly overloading, about to burst out at any moment.
"Fei Du!"
Fei Du's consciousness was floating beside his body, going in and out. He had become a radio in a state of disrepair.
He could hear intermittent shouting, could hear someone calling his name.
But he couldn't work up any interest. He felt it was rather annoying.
Someone pulled open his eyes. Fei Du saw a light. Apparently, if you followed the light, you could find your way back to consciousness, but he wasn't particularly interested in that. Thereupon he only looked aside, aloof and unconcerned.
The faint light grew farther and farther away from him, and he was swallowed up by the boundless darkness behind him. There was a slamming sound, as if a door somewhere had closed heavily—
Fei Du's weak consciousness sank to a deeper place. Here, he was indifferent to wealth and poverty, stupidity and intelligence. He had no coherent impressions. He wasn't even wearing the painted skin he'd woven with utmost care over many years.
He seemed to have become a small boy. Because his legs were short, he wanted to run around. But as soon as he lifted a leg, a reasonless terror surged up in his heart. The man, like an enormous black shadow, looked coldly down on him from above his head. Very softly, he said, "Only dogs like to run around and play. Fei Du, are you a little dog?"
Confused, Fei Du was pulled by him. He saw a little puppy. The little dog had perhaps just been born; it was smaller than a palm. Its eyes moist, it ran falteringly towards him. He reached out a hand. The little dog also clumsily reached out a plump forepaw, standing on its hind legs, throwing itself at his hand, cautiously sniffing his icy palm.
He felt an unreasoning warmth in his heart and stroked the fluffy little head.
In his soft but ice-cold voice, the man sighed. "There's unhealthy blood flowing in this child. It must be corrected."
The puppy cried out sharply, roughly lifted by his hand.
The warmth in Fei Du's hand instantly disappeared. Then, cold metal rings descended onto his fingers. There was a bundle of threads leading from the backs of the rings, their other ends passing through a complex installation, tied to a constricting neckband. If the threads slackened a millimeter, the band would tighten a centimeter. If the threads went entirely slack, the neckband would clamp tightly around his throat.
Fei Du couldn't breathe. He instinctively stretched out his arm, fingers tightly squeezing together, desperately pulling at the threads on the metal rings. When the threads were at their tightest, the living band around his throat released slightly. A large quantity of air surged into his windpipe, and he coughed violently.
"You have to learn to breathe slowly." The man laughed in satisfaction. "Clever. It seems there's no need for anyone to teach you. You've already learned how not to asphyxiate."
Then the scene in front of his eyes changed again. Fei Du was tied to a chair. He could only move the fingers wearing the metal rings. The pain of asphyxiation wrapped him up like dark clouds. His whole body was cold.
The man walked over, humming a tune, carrying a tiny puppy in one hand. He placed it in Fei Du's palm and asked, "Is it soft?"
It seemed that children and small animals could naturally become friends without needing to try. The little dog smelled the boy's cold terror and struggled to push at him with its warm head, licking his fingers.
The man laughed, asking, "Is it cute?"
Fei Du hesitated a moment. Finally, he nodded. The next moment, the frightening pain descended without warming.
The band around his neck instantly tightened. The warm feeling was still in his hand, but his throat was stopped by the ice-cold iron hoop. Fei Du subconsciously squeezed his fingers together as usual, trying to pull tight the threads that could alleviate his pain.
The life-saving air entered his tormented windpipe, but at the same time, the little dog let out a mournful cry.
Fei Du immediately realized that his hand was closed around the little dog's fragile neck. He hastily let go, and the band around his throat closed all the more fiercely around his neck.
Fei Du struggled desperately, the ropes and metal rings on his body like living evil vines, savagely digging into his flesh—
Holding his phone, Tao Ran paced at the doors of the ICU ward, his head covered in sweat, hearing his colleague on the phone quickly saying, "Zheng Kaifeng and Yang Bo died at the scene. The others had been contained and distributed among the police cars nearby. Everyone had a place to hide at the time of the explosion. A few were slightly injured, and one guy got hit when the container door went flying, which was a little unfortunate, but the others are all right. The only people rather close to the explosion at the time were the boss and…"
The colleague said something else afterwards, but Tao Ran had no attention to spare, because a person who looked like a nurse had come out. "That…Fei Du, was it? The one who was just brought in—are his relatives here?"
Tao Ran hung up the phone directly. "I-I-I'm here…"
The nurse asked, "You're a relative?"
The question brought Tao Ran up short. He suddenly realized that Fei Du didn't have any so-called relatives. Of his direct blood relations, one had been in the ground for over seven years, and the other was a vegetable. He'd been living wildly all these years and had become a leader without a following, a person with no roots or ties.
The nurse was only asking in passing, not caring about his momentary hesitation, quickly saying to him, "For unknown reasons, the patient's breathing and heart rate suddenly stopped just now. We're attempting resuscitation. You two should prepare yourselves."
Tao Ran felt a cold breath rise from his chest to the top of his head. "What, wait…"
Having made the notification, the nurse had fulfilled her assignment. Time was life. She had no time to comfort with tender words. She hurriedly ran off.
Tao Ran instinctively ran a couple of steps after her, then remembered that inessential personnel weren't permitted up ahead. He could only stop helplessly. Only then did he realize that the nurse had just said "you two." He quickly turned his head and saw that Luo Wenzhou had come to stand beside him at some point.
Luo Wenzhou's lower leg had been broken. His back had been hit twice in one day and had been put in a splint. His head had hit the steering wheel too hard, leading to a concussion. He looked like a mummy of the modern era. He was dizzy, leaning on the wall propped on a crutch. Who knew how he'd hopped out of his hospital room?
Tao Ran quickly helped him sit down. "Did they finish your IV drip that quickly?"
"I pulled it out," Luo Wenzhou said expressionlessly. "It won't kill me."
On this unlucky Friday, the suddenly erupting cases had stirred the whole City Bureau up into a pot of porridge. Everyone was up to their ears in work. Tao Ran had run around in circles from the emergency room to the orthopedics department to the ICU, attending to one, unable to attend to the other. He sweated even harder. "What good can you do hanging around here? You can't work a cure, and they won't let you in for a visit. There'll be trouble if your wounds get infected. Hurry up and get back to your room!"
The hospital was full of all kinds of strange medicinal smells, all mixed together, bitter and stinking, making a person not dare to breathe deeply. Everyone's steps as they ran by, all the talk, all the sounds of phones vibrating… For Luo Wenzhou, all of it was a torment. It was as if the sound waves had physical form, stabbing into his temples one after another.
Luo Wenzhou was so dizzy he wanted to throw up. He didn't make a sound, closing his eyes and leaning back against the stiff, cold chair.
Tao Ran said, "Hurry up, don't hang around here making trouble. Get up, I'll carry you."
Luo Wenzhou gently shook his head. "When other people get brought in there, they have someone waiting outside. If he doesn't have anyone, I'm afraid he'll be broken-hearted and won't be willing to come back."
Tao Ran could only clearly hear what he was saying by pricking up his ears. It was really very hard for him to connect Fei Du's heartless scoundrel attitude with the word "broken-hearted." He felt that Luo Wenzhou's concussion was making him talk nonsense. Thereupon he said, "If he could still know who was or wasn't waiting for him, he wouldn't have been brought in there.—Go on, isn't it enough if I wait here? Aren't I someone?"
Luo Wenzhou really didn't have the strength to say much to him. He only nearly inaudibly said, "It's not the same."
His friends were met by chance, parting and coming together at their own inclinations; though old acquaintances were lasting, the people still came and then went, in the end not becoming a concern that could tie a person's soul, in the end still remaining outsiders.—Of course, Luo Wenzhou didn't dare to make too much of himself and take himself for an insider. He felt he was like a moth watching a flame burning across the river, starting to hesitantly flap his wings because of a faint attractive force, flying across the difficult terrain, only drawing close after numerous twists and turns.
He'd finally come into position to glimpse some images revolving on a lampshade, just reached out his feelers to touch that unusually colored light…
Tao Ran took a full half a minute to come around. Then he distinguished an unusual meaning in these words. He stared uncomprehendingly for a good while; then his intellect was pulled back by his suddenly ringing phone. He racked his brain for words. "Are…are you all right?"
Showing no expression on his face, Luo Wenzhou waved a hand at him. "Pick up the phone."
The phone call was from Lang Qiao. It had to be something urgent. Tao Ran couldn't not pick it up. He could only stand up and walk quickly to the corner.
"Deputy Tao, all those people from the cold chain truck have confessed. They're all Zheng Kaifeng's privately kept thugs. These people's salaries all get paid out of a secret foreign bank account. The guys at economic crimes want to follow that lead down to the end, thoroughly investigating the shell company.—Also, going through Yang Bo's phone records, we found that he had a phone call with Zheng Kaifeng before he died. Zheng Kaifeng sent him some photographs. They were of the guys responsible for tailing Yang Bo."
The early autumn wind swept over the sweat on Tao Ran's body, chilling him all the way through. "Got it."
Lang Qiao said, "…how are the boss and President Fei?"
Tao Ran stuck his head around the corner and looked at Luo Wenzhou, sitting there stiff and silent, held together by bandages and splints, seemingly about to become one with the wooden chair. "Don't worry, they'll…"
Before he'd finished, Luo Wenzhou suddenly released his hold on his crutch, propped his elbows on his knees, slowly leaned forward, and buried his face in his hands.