Thanks to the donut we ate that morning, the sugar, carbohydrates, and ample calories sustained us through nearly two hours of hiking in the wilderness. 

Midway, whenever we encountered relatively clearer puddles or ponds, we stopped to replenish water and rest briefly. 

At noon, we finally reached the outskirts of the high-voltage electric fence, the boundary between forest and field.

The path beneath our feet grew wider as we walked, and wind carrying the scent of straw blew from afar. 

After crossing a pile of scattered rocks, we were able to see large expanses of unobstructed sky: the sun sank into pale cloud layers, like a hole someone had burned in cotton wadding with a cigarette butt, appearing and disappearing, uncertain between clear and cloudy; beneath the firmament, the wheat field was as flat as if it had been shaved by a guillotine. 

Huge warning signs and yellow-and-black skull symbols sealed off this place layer upon layer. 

For miles around there was no sign of human habitation, even bird calls were much sparser, as if Yu Baijin and I were the only two living things here. 

“How wonderful,” he sighed. 

“An excellent location for dumping bodies.”

“Maybe we can try it next time.” 

I said, making conversation.

“But baby doesn’t like me doing this line of work.” 

He pursed his lips, lifting his leg to step over vigorously growing wild grass. 

“I need to replan my career path.”

“Don’t.” I hastily made him stop. 

“I don’t want to interfere with major life choices of yours. This is your business, I can’t bear that responsibility.”

“True. We haven’t progressed to that stage yet. At this phase, talking about these things is too solemn…”

“We won’t talk about it in the future either!”

I felt embarrassed. 

My personality wasn’t originally this irritable, but every time I faced Yu Baijin, I was like a program invaded by a virus, a radio wave disturbed by radiation—if I wasn’t careful, I’d fall into his trap, easily losing control, getting angry, acting impulsively.

Touching the photo fragment in my chest pocket, I urged myself to calm down, to think about the disappearance case, not to waste energy on insignificant trifles, to focus on solving the current puzzle.

“There should be a ‘dog hole’ nearby.”

We carpet-searched along the outer side of the wire fence, looking carefully for misaligned mesh, especially those dead corners buried by wildly growing weeds.

After passing four or five fixing stakes, we indeed found an inconspicuous gap.

Shaped like a dog-eared page, it looked like a neat cross-section cut open by someone using pliers or some other sharp tool. 

The height didn’t even reach an adult male’s waist. 

Even a person of medium build would have to squat down completely to barely pass through—extremely concealed.

“Be careful.”

I lifted up a corner of the cut wire fence, letting Yu Baijin go in first while I covered the rear. Inside the fence, the grounds were open. 

Judging by the scale and facilities, it seemed like the compound of a power plant.

Outdoor power transformation devices stood in rows. 

At the end of the field of vision, cut into geometric shapes by wires and steel frames, several brick-colored bungalows could be vaguely seen. 

In front of the door was a bare cement ground painted with yellow paint to form a simple basketball court. 

About a dozen men who looked like workers were sitting there eating lunch, playing cards in groups, talking and laughing loudly.

Yu Baijin put both hands in his jacket pockets and walked toward them as if nothing was amiss. 

His shadow made a circle at his feet, then faded like pencil marks as the sun was once again swallowed by clouds.

Someone put down their lunch box, threw down their playing cards, and looked toward us two uninvited guests.

He paid no attention, offered no explanation, made no interpretation of his behavior or motives whatsoever. 

He walked straight up to them and questioned the person under the eaves: “Hello, may I ask if Boss Jin is here?”

The person swallowed: “Who?”

“Seems he is.”

He nodded, smiled. 

“Trouble you all to pass on a message to Boss Jin. I’m an old acquaintance of his, and I have important matters I want to ask him about.”

“What matters?”

A burly man with a dark complexion came out from the factory building, holding a pair of stainless steel chopsticks in his hand, speaking with a heavy accent. 

“Where’d you come from? You think you can just ask to see him? There’s no such person here.”

I stood at Yu Baijin’s left rear, catching sight from the corner of my eye that the men eating and playing cards around us had at some point gathered into a circle, silently surrounding the two of us.

And I remained motionless, only warning myself internally that no matter what happened next, I shouldn’t overreact and disturb the plan.

Yu Baijin pointed at the front yard of the factory building: “He’s over there.”

“Stop fucking looking for trouble.”

“Be accommodating.”

I suppose neither the burly man nor I could see clearly how Yu Baijin pulled those gleaming silver chopsticks from his hand and stabbed them into his left ear.

The entire process was like dropped frames—the audio and video had not yet synchronized, and the burly man collapsed heavily at Yu Baijin’s feet like a sick and dead livestock, blood flowing down his tensed neck tendons, his hands and feet spasming as if electrocuted.

“Jin Wei.”

The burly man had already rolled his eyes back, drool spilling from the corner of his mouth.

Yu Baijin grabbed him by the hair, as if lifting a freshly severed head, and shouted toward the front yard: “Don’t make me wait.”

Deathly silence.

In the stagnant air, a grass mosquito flew onto the back of my right hand to suck blood. 

I moved my fingers to drive it away, and only then did the crowd of onlookers seem like suddenly loosened teeth—one broke off and fell out. 

Someone collapsed sitting on the ground, someone took off running outside. 

Death had arrived ahead of schedule, like a venomous snake lurking in the shadows, slithering along the ground in pursuit to bite them.

“Hurry, hurry.”

Yu Baijin released the burly man’s head, letting him lose strength from the intense pain and fall back onto the cement ground, making a muffled thud and countless splattered tiny blood droplets.

“There are twelve people here.”

He counted the number of people present, holding up one finger.

“I still have one chopstick left.”

Unfortunately, before this chopstick could be put to use, half a minute later, the “worker” who had gone to report returned, indicating that he could take us to see the man named “Jin Wei.”

“The organizer of the ghost market, an unscrupulous merchant who goes to any lengths, a money-grubber who never learns his lesson no matter how many beatings he takes.” 

Yu Baijin said as such.

“My former former former employer had me chop off one of his pinkies, to punish him for reaching his hand too far. 

Clearly doing shady business, yet he didn’t understand when to stop, causing my employer to also be implicated and targeted.”

We followed that underling through the power plant’s employee dormitories, workshops, and front yard, stepping from darkness into brightness, then plunging back into darkness again. 

The factory compound was quite large, yet it didn’t have a matching number of workers, making the grounds seem even more spacious. 

One could only hear the day-and-night ceaseless low roar of huge steel machinery.

And on the side of the main entrance, there was another side door that opened up an additional branch road leading to the highway and the essential service station. 

Under the straight rows of poplar trees stood two rows of two-story buildings. 

Their exterior was utterly ordinary and completely unremarkable. 

Only when you pushed open the door could you perceive—their “base.”

The first-floor hall was wreathed in smoke. 

Dozens of enforcers with physiques no less imposing than that burly man from earlier were sitting around mahjong tables drinking tea, counting money, keeping accounts. 

Seeing outsiders arrive, they cast resentful looks from behind the smoke screen. 

Yu Baijin and I paid them no mind, simply following the underling upstairs, turning right, entering an office, and stopping in front of a water-ripple pattern Brazilian rosewood tea table.

Sitting across from us was a middle-aged man in his forties, potbellied, a whole body of fat contained in a leather chair, so full it was about to overflow. 

A heavy gold watch hung on his wrist, four diamond-encrusted teeth held a cigar, and on his densely-haired forearm crawled a pure white and agile ferret, which he was affectionately stroking.

His left hand was missing its pinky finger. It had been severed cleanly from the base, leaving only a smooth flesh-colored stump—proof that the person who had done it possessed excellent knife skills, both accurate and ruthless.

“Boss Jin.”

Yu Baijin sat sideways on the tea table, greeting him familiarly. 

“Long time no see.”

“Crazy bastard.”

The man smiled ambiguously, the excess flesh on both cheeks squeezing his eye corners. 

He squeezed out three words through clenched teeth with resentment, like a command. 

The enforcers standing ready on both sides of the tea table simultaneously reached into their jackets to draw their guns, but I was faster.

Before they could release their safeties, my right hand tucked in my clothing pocket was already squeezing the trigger, pointing straight out from above Yu Baijin’s head, aimed at Jin Wei’s brow.

I had no grievances with him. 

But no one cared.

“You fucking brought someone with you?”

He glanced sideways at me. 

The startled pet ferret darted into his collar in a flash. 

“Speak up, who hired you?”

He spat out his cigar, resting it on the edge of the purple clay ashtray, waiting for it to slowly extinguish. 

The smoke rose spiraling upward, only to be swept aside by Yu Baijin’s raised hand. 

He smiled and said: “A misunderstanding. This time I’m not here to fight.

“Just want to find a little girl who’s gone missing.”

Having said this, he clasped my gun-holding hand and rubbed it against his cheek as if no one else was present, signaling me to lower the gun. 

The cold steel was rigid, yet his cheek was warm and smooth. 

His breath swept across my fingertips, making me notice the strange looks from people around us.

Two seconds later, both sides put away their weapons.

“Oh?”

Jin Wei grinned.

“How much is she worth?”