It was late at night. Several colleagues had just returned from a time of drinking at a barbecue stand and were sound asleep, dead to the world.
Thunderous snoring could be heard from the people lying on the beds. Cui Shengde tossed and turned but simply couldn’t fall asleep. As a result, he decided to go out for a smoke. At the same time, he planned to find an empty patch of land behind the dormitory to relieve his bladder.
He slipped out of the prefabricated building, hands in his pockets the entire way. Glancing around and confirming that there was nobody present, he then undid his waistband behind a big tree and got ready to do his business.
One hand gripped his pants while the other held a lit cigarette. Cui Shengde stared with squinted eyes at the construction site in front of the underbrush.
He didn’t know if Kang Liu and Peng Zhengchu had already fallen asleep, but he knew for sure he couldn’t.
The day before yesterday was their first day of work at a new construction site, and yet they had already stepped into a police station yesterday afternoon. Not because they had committed any wrongdoings, but because Sang Xingwen had died.
The police officers had called them in individually to look over the surveillance tapes, confirm the deceased’s identity, and establish their sequence of movements that night. When he entered the room, the gazes of everyone inside seemed off, as if they were looking at a suspect.
How could he have killed Sang Xingwen? He was an upright man!
Out of a sense of camaraderie from having lived in the same construction site for a brief period of time, he enquired with the officer walking him out, “Officer, can I see Old Sang? He died for no rhyme or reason, I don’t feel good about it either…”
The police officer informed him in a business-like tone that Sang Xingwen’s elderly parents had already rushed over from the countryside. It had not been long since they identified the body and they were now crying their hearts out outside the mortuary.
He returned to the construction site in the evening. After a vicious scolding from their boss blaming them for drinking yesterday night and making a blunder of things, the little bit of sympathy in his heart also vanished from the face of the earth.
All they had done was go out to buy alcohol and Sang Xingwen was already gone when they returned. Why had such an unlucky matter happened to the three of them?
Cui Shengde stuffed the cigarette into his mouth and inhaled. He lifted his waistband, withdrawing his gaze from the massive machine surrounded by police cordons not too far away.
It was just the death of a single person. Work at the construction site would still continue as per normal tomorrow. Their days would be the same as always. He wondered if the loader could still be used or if they would have to wait for a new one to be sent over.
In this port metropolis built on reinforced concrete, time was not life. Time was more important than life.
Cui Shengde yawned. He tossed the cigarette butt into the shrubbery and turned to head back to the dormitory.
Suddenly, he caught the sound of slow-moving footsteps from the construction site not too far behind him.
[Crunch–]
[Crunch–]
The night breeze swept up the fallen leaves. The treetops above his head swayed too. The footsteps were neither hurried nor slow. Even the speed and frequency remained consistent throughout.
Cui Shengde swore as he turned around, “F*ck–”
Who wasn’t sleeping in the middle of night but creating this sort of inhuman but also un-ghost-like sound? They really didn’t have a single bit of discretion. Didn’t they know that someone just died here yesterday?
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
“…”
Lf obgmfv atf ijaafg tjio bo tlr rajafwfca yjmx vbkc tlr atgbja.
Ktf vlw iluta bo atf cluta fcjyifv tlw ab ufa j mifjg nlfk bo atf oluegf kjixlcu jwbcu atf ecvfgygert.
Jel Vtfcuvf’r fcalgf ojmf aegcfv j vfjatis ktlaf. Llr yjmx kjr mbnfgfv lc mbiv rkfja.
C wjrr bo ajcuifv kffvr rfqjgjafv tlw ogbw j oluegf mibatfv lc j mbcragemalbc kbgxfg’r eclobgw, ktb kjr wjxlcu atflg kjs jibcu atf qfglqtfgs bo atf mbcragemalbc rlaf. Ktf oluegf mjwf ab j rabq lc ogbca bo atf qbilmf mbgvbc fcmibrlcu atf ibjvfg.
The person didn’t seem to have sensed Cui Shengde, who was standing rigidly in the darkness. The person raised his head under the gloomy moonlight, gazing up at the colossal object in front of him.
Cui Shengde still remembered how the police officers had scrolled through Old Sang’s phone in front of them and gotten them to compare and verify each and every picture. Old Sang seemed to have been very fond of taking pictures of the moon. Whether it was a sunny or rainy day, full or not full moon, virtually all of the photos in his photo album were of the round white jade in the sky.
The last photo Old Sang had taken before his death was of the moon in the sky. The photo had been taken somewhat shakily. Rays of moonlight had scattered in front of the camera lens, forming long streaks.
However, the person who should be lying in the mortuary had appeared, alive and well, in front of him.
Cui Shengde erupted in cold sweat from the immense shock. He turned around and hastily made to leave his position. But owing to his overly-large footsteps, he stumbled over the dry twigs on the ground.
The quiet night was broken. Only the chirping of cicadas among the underbrush remained.
A short distance away, Sang Xingwen slowly turned around and looked in his direction.
–
Not long after receiving Old Zhao’s phone call, three police cars from the city bureau reached Gaoxin District.
Despite it being 3am, the entire construction site was brightly lit. All the construction workers had been woken up in the middle of the night and were gathered along the dormitory’s aisle for roll call.
The project manager who’d rushed over in a flurry checked through the name list one by one. Apart from Hengshi construction site’s Cui Shengde, the rest were all present.
The scene was intact this time. Yu Baiqing and Zhang Yu were greeted with a fresh, bloody corpse covered by white cloth the moment they reached the site.
“According to the forensic investigator’s preliminary assessment, the deceased received a severe injury to the head with a blunt instrument. However, the body had also been subjected to the loader’s crushing pressure. For now, it is uncertain which of these is the cause of death,” Old Zhao led the group of people from the city bureau over.
Cui Shengde was a driver for the construction site’s loader. He had more than ten years of experience operating loaders and was considered an extremely experienced worker.
Yu Baiqing had also noticed this point, which was why he’d instructed the criminal investigation team from Gaoxin District to focus their investigation on this individual.
Unexpectedly, this individual had died before they’d even finished taking his statement.
Noticing that Zhang Yu was observing the construction site’s surroundings, Old Zhao responded very quickly. “Out of the four cameras, only one captured the deceased. He was shown leaving the dormitory around 1.50am and heading towards the vacant land behind the dormitory, leaving the range of the camera. At 2.10am, the camera captured the loader running over the police cordon and leaving the range of surveillance.”
The loader had also started up on its own this time. There was nobody in the driver’s seat.
Zhang Yu laughed coldly after listening to Old Zhao’s description of the overall situation at the scene. “Hah, how bizarre. They really are taking us for fools eh?”
Yu Baiqing accepted the cigarette Old Zhao handed him. He was just about to borrow a lighter but after some thought, he put the unlit cigarette into his pocket instead.
He asked, “Where’s the person who reported the incident?”
“It was the project department’s second-in-charge who made the report. The first person who discovered the corpse was a construction worker who had flipped over the wall in the middle of the night. The worker was returning to the dormitory after drinking outside. His name is Kang Liu. He drank too much and is still seated over there, dead drunk.” Old Zhao pointed at a middle-aged man surrounded by several police officers in front of a stone block. “No matter what we ask, we can’t get anything out of him. He just keeps on shouting about how ghosts are killing people and that none of them would be able to escape.”
Old Zhao just completed his sentence and Yu Baiqing was already making his way over the police cordon and towards the loader parked in front of the underbrush.
He climbed up to the driver’s seat, then called over a police officer on probation. “You, lie down.”
The young police officer stared blankly for a long time before it dawned on him what Captain Yu meant.
He glanced down at the corpse that was a blurry mass of blood and flesh, and then looked up at the gigantic shovel above his head. He couldn’t stop himself from voicing, “Captain Yu, this–”
Under the immensely sympathetic gaze of Captain Zhang, the young police officer had no choice but to swallow his saliva and bend his waist, crossing the police cordon. He walked over gingerly, put his palms together, and apologized to the deceased lying on the ground. Then, he lay down beside the corpse covered with a white cloth and rested his hands, one over the other, on his chest. From his facial expression, he looked exceedingly serene.
The air was saturated with the faint smell of blood from the corpse. Yu Baiqing closed the door to the driver’s cabin. He gripped the steering wheel with both hands and then looked straight down from the cabin.
The shovel blocked a great half of his line of vision. He could see the police officer lying on the ground, but not the corpse.
He leaned his upper body back slightly and simultaneously pushed his seat backwards. He saw the deceased shrouded by an enormous shadow.
The killer must have experimented before the actual act, otherwise the bloodstains at the bottom of the shovel wouldn’t have ended up so nicely in the middle both times.
Based on his own height of 1.87m, the killer had to be slightly shorter than him, likely ranging from 1.78m to 1.8m.
“Old Yu, are you done yet?” The Octopus yelled from below. “You’d better not press any activation buttons, Little Chen is already on the brink of crying.”
Yu Baiqing opened the door and was just about to climb down the ladder when his gaze abruptly stopped on the uppermost area of the shovel.
With the help of the bright moonlight, he caught sight of a virtually indistinguishable dark mark on the inner part of the shovel, near the welding.
It was dried blood.
Yu Baiqing’s gaze deepened.
Since a person had been crushed by the shovel, any bloodstains should be concentrated at the bottom. Why were there traces of blood on the inside?
After climbing down the loader, he picked up a coarse twig from the underbrush nearly and casually tossed it towards the shovel suspended high up in the air.
The twig happened to land on the inside of the shovel, letting out a dull sound.
Yu Baiqing gestured towards the police officer lying stiffly on the ground. “You, get up there.”
The little police officer: ???
Senior Yu’s brain circuits worked too quickly, he couldn’t quite keep up with the pace.
It was the little police officer’s first time operating an excavator in his entire life. Under the guidance of the head of the construction site, he moved the joystick.
The shovel slowly moved downwards from its position in the air. The twig was jolted a few times on the inside of the shovel. Just as the shovel was about to hit the ground, the twig rolled around the inner sides of the shovel, then dropped out of the shovel and onto the soil with a thump.
“…Could this shovel have been used to transport somebody?” Yu Baiqing heard Zhang Yu murmur thoughtfully at the side. “Or, a corpse?”
–
White gradually emerged on the horizon. Murder cases had occurred on the construction site for two days in a row; it was a certainty that work would not be able to resume as planned.
A few police officers led the person who’d reported the case, now sober, back to the bureau to take his statement. Only Yu Baiqing, Zhang Yu, and the little police officer who’d been forced to accompany Yu Baiqing in all sorts of experiments remained at the scene.
The little police officer was called Chen Anyang. He was quite a bright, energetic child, not very different in age from Yu Baiqing’s di.
Yu Baiqing suddenly thought of Ying Wan. That person had sent him a brief message last night before going to sleep. Who knew if he’d slept well, or if he was still angry with Yu Baiqing.
They were both in their twenties, the age where one fooled around. One scoured a murder scene with their seniors, still energetic even after a busy night, the excitement exclusive to the young all over their face. While the other sat quietly in his own little corner for the entire night, without any tears or fuss.
After examining the entire construction site and handing the follow-up work to Old Zhao, Yu Baiqing and Zhang Yu got into the car to make the trip back. The two ‘old men’ who couldn’t burn the midnight oil napped at the back while Little Chen drove back to the city bureau.
Yu Baiqing was getting ready to rest when he received a phone call from Ruan Tianjie asking if they had returned.
They hadn’t called Ruan Tianjie to join them last night. This rich second generation lived in a big villa overlooking Linshui Bay. Gaoxin District and Linshui Bai were on opposite sides of the country; the sky would have brightened by the time he rushed over.
Ruan Tianjie’s tone was somewhat complicated. “Old Yu, one of my old acquaintances came to the bureau. He’s saying he would like to take the initiative to cooperate with our investigation. Our personal relationship is not bad. This time, I’m afraid we’ll have to wait for you guys to return and talk to him in order to avoid arousing suspicion.”
“He’s Heyu Real Estate’s third young master, He Guanyu,” Ruan Tianjie said. “His family started the construction project where the murders happened.”
After a busy night, Yu Baiqing’s eyelids were fighting to close. He leaned against the backseat, rolling up his sleeves. He slowly kneaded his temples. “Let Old Liu see him. Tell him that if we require the company’s cooperation in our investigation, we will issue Heyu a letter of inquiry.”
They had not grasped even the killer’s shadow, and their only suspect had also died. They didn’t have the leeway to accompany whatever young master for tea.
There was a brief period of silence. Ruan Tianjie added, “Old Yu, I’m not sure if I should tell you this–”
“This He Guanyu was previously a platinum member at Club LEON along Bar Street,” Ruan Tianjie coughed. “He seems to be one of your di’s rumored… financial backers.”
Ohhhh! Well, that is very interesting! Thank you! This novel has me in its grip!