Chapter 156

Approaching the end of the year, Luo Cheng got busier rather than the reverse. Mu Xiaoqing had gone out of town to deliver a lecture, leaving him alone, and eating by himself was rather dull, so he simply stayed at work and scrounged food from the dining hall.

When the driver dropped him off at home, it was nearly nine o'clock.

Then he picked up a son at the door.

Luo Wenzhou had been waiting at the door for a while, not minding the cold, clearly relying on his own youth and good health. He'd somehow put his down coat on wrong; it looked like he was hugging a big cushion. He was sitting on the stairs, looking at his phone with his head down. His hair hadn't been cut recently, and it was a bit messy. There was a backpack sticking up at his feet that looked like that of a refugee fleeing a famine.

Hands behind his back, Luo Cheng looked him up and down, felt that this appearance really was unsightly, and thereupon walked up and gently kicked him. "Hey, why don't you go somewhere else? I don't have any food today."

Luo Wenzhou looked up and meowed at him. Luo Cheng broke out in gooseflesh at the meow, then took a closer look and found that the "cushion" in Luo Wenzhou's arms was a living creature.

"How long have you been waiting here?" Luo Cheng asked. "Why didn't you think of calling?"

"I'm fine," Luo Wenzhou said rather indifferently. "Freezing for a while is conducive to appreciating the value of life."

Luo Cheng's gaze inadvertently fell on the phone in his hand and saw how this person had been "appreciating the value of life." There were photographs of himself from every angle. Luo Cheng suddenly felt he had indigestion, thinking that Luo Wenzhou was becoming more and more shameless.

Five minutes later, Luo Cheng had brought the son he'd picked up off the ground and the cat of his own flesh and blood into the house, then personally rolled up his sleeves, put on a pair of reading glasses, and, following the directions, set up a cat tree for Luo Yiguo.

"I didn't bring any cans or snacks. Just give it some dry food to eat. And don't buy it any of that garbage, the fatty needs to go on a diet. It broke the zipper of my jacket with its weight."

Arrived in an unfamiliar place, Luo Yiguo was a little shy. It lay on a slipper Luo Wenzhou had worn, rolling into a big fifteen-jin fur ball, vigilantly looking left and right.

Luo Cheng looked out from behind his reading glasses. "You're not afraid you won't get the cat back if you leave it here with me?"

"Stop boasting, sir. If my mom had agreed, you'd have turned the house into a zoo long ago and wouldn't have to come scrounge pets off my cat."

Luo Cheng: "…"

Luo Wenzhou rudely searched the fridge and pulled out a bowl of leftover fried rice, tossed it into the microwave, took it out, and swallowed it down. He said, "Boarding at a pet shop costs more at the end of the year, and it'd have to fight over territory with other cats, and, critically, this coward couldn't beat them. I thought both my wallet and the cat could easily get hurt."

"Then I'll watch it for you until the New Year," said Luo Cheng. "Any longer, and your mom won't have it."

Luo Wenzhou paused, feeling the leftover rice he'd just bolted sticking in his chest, refusing to go down no matter what. He picked up a teacup and drank a mouthful of cold tea, coughed, and said, "That's fine, we'll come visit you for the New Year and pick it up."

Hearing this, Luo Cheng didn't ask why he needed to board the cat; nor did he ask why Fei Du hadn't come with him. Matter-of-factly, seeming to know everything, he said, "Apart from looking after the cat, do you have anything else to ask of me?"

Luo Wenzhou sat for a moment. In the end he clenched his teeth and didn't make a sound, standing up and washing the bowl.

Luo Cheng didn't rush him. The cat tree that had been only a pile of parts quickly took shape. Luo Yiguo couldn't resist its curiosity and at last carefully abandoned the slipper and strolled over, turning around at the foot of the cat tree, sniffing.

"Dad," Luo Wenzhou said suddenly, "have you had to put up with a lot of gossip on my account?"

Luo Cheng looked at him strangely. "Have you taken leave of your senses and run over here to repent?"

Luo Wenzhou sat down next to him rather gloomily. "You've never said anything to me."

"If I said something, would you listen?" said Luo Cheng.

Luo Wenzhou thought about it. "…No, I wouldn't. Anyway, Fei Du is mine."

Luo Cheng was choked by this for a while. When Luo Wenzhou thought the old man was about to flare up, Luo Cheng smiled. "You didn't get so big drinking milk. At your age, if you needed my sanction for a trifle like who you're with, what would be the point in living? Other people can say what they like. Anyway, they don't dare to say it in front of my face. And it could be that their requirements are unusually high—though I think you…"

Luo Cheng paused, and Luo Wenzhou felt nervous for no reason.

The reading glasses made the old man's eyes extremely large, spoiling his usual solemnity. Luo Cheng looked at him with a none too solemn gaze and pursed his lips. "I think you'll do. You've managed to grow up into something like a person."

Starting from adolescence, Luo Wenzhou had always followed a path his elders and the great bulk of the population didn't approve of. He'd staked everything on it. So while he was reluctant to admit to mistakes, he still felt self-doubt, suspecting he'd bungled things, that he didn't have the natural endowments and abilities he imagined, suspecting that when he left the protection of his elders, he may end up a total failure.

Where countless elders had fallen over the decades, he now had to bring things to a conclusion; could he make that conclusion a satisfactory one?

When Luo Wenzhou had gone home to get the cat and bring it over here, he'd felt his legs were stuck in mud, ice-cold and sticky, wrapping around his legs and making each step difficult to take. But when this appraisal, which could hardly count as kind words, fell on his ears, it was like a high-speed dryer, instantly breaking up his awkward fright.

Luo Wenzhou stared blankly for a while, then suddenly wiped his nose, stood up, and said, "I'll be going, then."

"Wait," said Luo Cheng, "you really don't…"

"I don't." Luo Wenzhou changed his shoes and bent to tie his shoelaces. "When I first joined the police, didn't you say that I could climb up the path I'd chosen for myself, and if anything happened afterwards it wouldn't be your business? So what's this now? Getting soft in your old age, sir?"

"Beat it, you brat!" Luo Cheng scolded him.

Luo Wenzhou stood up and hopped twice, picked up the phone that had made his dad feel indisposed, brought it to his lips, and kissed it. "I didn't get so big drinking milk."

Then he put on the hood of his coat and went out like the wind.

Back then, Lao Yang had thought he couldn't handle things. Up to his death, he hadn't given Luo Wenzhou a hint, and he'd even left behind a testament compelling shiniang to hold her tongue.

If he'd been able to become "sensible" a few years earlier, taken the load from his elders' shoulders a few years earlier, would shiniang have come to this?

But with things as they were, there was no sense in going over these things.

At least he still had Fei Du, still had his brothers, still had the injustices the last generation had been unable to resolve. Since even the old man had said he was "something like a person," one way or another, he had to act something like a person.

"It's me," Luo Wenzhou said, calling Lu Jia. "Your President Fei has entrusted you to me. Where are you right now?"

Lu Jia, bringing Zhou Huaijin along, arrived at a garden estate.

"Here it is." Zhou Huaijin looked at the address he was holding. "This is where Yang Bo and his mother used to live!"

Lu Jia parked the car and stuck out his head to have a look. The estate's security guard looked over alertly at once. Then, seeing the car Lu Jia had driven, his expression eased.

Lu Jia smiled and went into a convenience store at the gate, bought some random stuff, and started chatting with the cashier. "What estate is that? It looks pretty good, and very private."

The cashier looked the way he was pointing. "Oh, the Milky Way Town. Of course it's very private.—Are you looking to buy an apartment or what? If it's buying an apartment, I advise you not to buy one there."

"Why's that?" said Lu Jia.

"A property right isn't a residence. You see, they have twenty-four hour security, three layers of guards at the courtyard gates, the building doors, and the hall doors. It's all expensive cars going in and out. If your car is a little more ordinary, the security guards will stop you and cross-examine you for ages. You get me?" The cashier winked very ambiguously at Lu Jia. "They also call this the 'Kept Woman's Tower.' It's a bad atmosphere. Though if you don't want to live there yourself, it would be all right to rent it out."

"So the rent must be pretty high?" said Lu Jia.

"The property management fees are high. Ten years ago it was five yuan per square meter. Of course the rent is even higher." The cashier made change and laughed unkindly. "No one without money would be up to tricks like that."

Lu Jia and Zhou Huaijin exchanged a look. After moving to Yan City, Yang Bo's mother had had no fixed work and had lived a life of retreat. How had she been able to afford to rent an apartment here?

"Apparently she ran a private kitchen restaurant here," Zhou Huaijin said. "The kind where you cook the food yourself and only book one table at a time. The kind where you have to make an appointment in advance. She wouldn't even necessarily get two tables booked a month. When my little brother's relationship with Yang Bo was at its most fraught, he wanted to come and investigate, but he couldn't manage to get an appointment. She wouldn't receive him. Zheng Kaifeng was nearly a regular visitor, although, hm…"

Zhou Huaijin looked down at a photograph of a woman on his phone. While you couldn't call her appearance ugly, she still had nothing to do with beauty. Young, she would have been a passerby; afterwards, she'd become a middle-aged woman so ordinary it was easy to overlook her sex. Looking at her, even Zhou Huaijin thought she didn't fit Zheng Kaifeng's taste.

"She died of illness, and the time of her death was very delicate." Lu Jia motioned for Zhou Huaijin to get in the car. "It was right around the time Dong Qian started making contact with the fake delivery person and planning Zhou Junmao's murder… If Yang Bo wasn't Zheng Kaifeng's illegitimate son, then I think there's one possibility."

"What?" said Zhou Huaijin.

"A contact." Lu Jia started the car. "Zheng Kaifeng wasn't like Wei Zhanhong. His base wasn't domestic. If it happened the way President Fei guesses and he first got in contact with this domestic gang of full-time murder conspirators through Su Hui, then for maintaining the relationship and passing on assignments afterwards, he would have needed a contact he could rely on. Su Hui ruined herself young. Her health broke down over a decade ago, and she died young, too. So could his contact have been Yang Bo's mother?"

Zhou Huaijin said, "You're saying that Zheng Kaifeng and Zhou Junmao kept her son with them as a hostage to ensure her good behavior!"

"If that's really how it was and she worked for Zheng Kaifeng for over a decade, then it's likely she left behind some trick. So even though she was dead, Zhou and Zheng still didn't dare to be discourteous to Yang Bo, and even tacitly accepted the 'illegitimate son' rumor," Lu Jia said. "This woman must have been very reliable, so it was only when she died that the fake delivery person found an opening to play tricks on Zheng Kaifeng…. But the question is, why use her? What's so special about…"

Halfway through, Lu Jia suddenly went silent.

Zhou Huaijin waited for an age without there being a follow-up. He couldn't help looking uncertainly at Lu Jia.

"Mr. Zhou," Lu Jia said quietly, "did you put on the bulletproof vest I prepared for you before?"

Zhou Huaijin gave a start and looked all around in a flurry. "Wh-what's wrong? What is it? This is home, would they really dare to…"

"Stop looking around," Lu Jia interrupted him. "It's the black sedan following us. They'd dare anything." He sent his location to his companions and to Luo Wenzhou, then suddenly spun the steering wheel, turning at an intersection without any warning. "If I can't shake him, I don't dare to take you to the hotel.—Mr. Zhou, fasten your seatbelt. You don't get carsick, do you?"

Before Zhou Huaijin could answer, the black sedan following them determined from its target's reaction that it had been discovered. Not only did it not pull back, it ferociously put on speed and kept after them.

On a night close to the Spring Festival, the main streets of Yan City were as empty as a little Australian village. Not stinting, Lu Jia used the luxury car as though it were an F1. The wheels let out an enormous screech as the car turned. Zhou Huaijin grabbed a handhold, suspecting the car was about to overturn!

Just then, a white SUV driving towards them from opposite direction suddenly turned on its distance lights. Strong light flared up, making it hard to open your eyes. At the same time, without slowing in the least, the white car headed right for them.

Refusing to be distracted, Lu Jia stamped on the gas pedal, screeching as though planning to die along with the other car. Zhou Huaijin subconsciously closed his eyes. He heard a loud noise, then the teeth-aching sound of the side mirror scraping against a wall. Zhou Huaijin found that, in imminent peril, Lu Jia had turned into a very cramped little alley. He'd sent the bicycle at the mouth of the alley flying, forcing a turn at high speed and stuffing the car into the insufficiently wide lane!

The white car that had been coming towards them reacted too late. The driver hit the brakes; there was no time to turn off the distance lights. The black car that had been following Lu Jia and Zhou Huaijin was dazzled, and the two cars hit each other head on, sending up exploding sparks that lit up the night sky!

Zhou Huaijin swiftly turned his head to look at Lu Jia and actually saw a stylish secret agent in a movie in the fat man's physique. "You…you…"

Lu Jia shrugged, lit a cigarette, and put it in his mouth. "It's lucky President Fei is going to pay for the car repairs.—Mr. Zhou, this is only getting started. Can you take it?"

Zhou Huaijin took a few panting breaths and wiped the cold sweat off his forehead. In this dangerous moment, he said, "So that must mean I'm very important? It seems like all these things I've found… Su Hui, Zheng Kaifeng, all that miserable business, it's all an important lead!"

Lu Jia looked at him in astonishment.

He saw the refined heir to the Zhou Clan smile unexpectedly. "That's a load off my mind!"