108 – I’ve Found a Clue

Episode 108: A Clue Has Emerged

Every Night in my dreams

I see you, I feel you

That is how I know you——

The moment their lips touched, He Yu’s phone rang.

Celine Dion’s clear singing voice pulled He Yu out of the labyrinth of desire. As the erotic spell broke, the mistakes he had committed in the past flashed through his mind like a kaleidoscope.

He Yu abruptly sat up. His flushed chest heaved up and down. He forced himself to look away from Xie Qingcheng’s handsome face.

“Ah… I need to take this call.”

Xie Qingcheng also sat up with a start.

A cold aura lingered around his eyes beneath his disheveled bangs. He Yu wasn’t the only one who snapped back to reality at the sound of the ringtone. Xie Qingcheng, too, had been slightly flustered without realizing it while locking eyes with He Yu.

It wasn’t that his heart had softened, but rather the thought [Read on Read BL Novels]that He Yu’s Read on Read BL Novelsstate was strange. Receiving He Yu’s gaze had even led him to such a delusion.

The delusion that if he continued to ignore the boy in silence, the kid might actually die right then and there.

But it was, quite literally, a delusion.

That gaze, like a young bird—that gaze that suggested you were the only person in the world he could rely on—was closer to that of a young Xie Xue from long ago.

Who was He Yu? He was an omnipotent figure; if he told the wind to blow, it blew, and if he told the rain to fall, it fell. He was fundamentally different in nature from Xie Xue. Would a kid this capable really be unable to survive without a single person by his side?

Damn it, why did I have such a delusion? I almost got bewitched by this bastard again.

Irritated, Xie Qingcheng began looking for a cigarette. After fumbling through his pockets for a while, he finally realized he had smoked the last one earlier.

“…Yes, yes. I understand.”

He Yu continued to answer sporadically, the phone still pressed to his ear.

Xie Qingcheng wanted to get out of the car. It had been a fucking night. If this call hadn’t come and they had ended up having sex in the car, he would have compromised his dignity for a lifetime. That would have been irresponsible for both He Yu and himself.

He unbuckled his seatbelt and reached for the door handle.

Suddenly, He Yu grabbed him and shook his stolen contenthead as if telling him [Read on Read BL Novels]to stay still, then focused seriously on the receiver with a furrowed brow.

He Yu’s voice was still steeped in lust, but his tone was remarkably calm. It was hard to imagine that this man had, until a moment ago, tried to strip his attending physician in the car, tried to shove him into the backseat for a passionate kiss, and tried to have sex with a man old enough to be his uncle. So-called ‘beasts in human skin’ are generally like this.

“Yes, it’s fine. I’ll be there soon.”

After hanging up, He Yu looked back at Xie Qingcheng and spoke.

“Let’s go to Baoshan Nursing Home together. There’s someone who wants to see us.”

“Who is it?”

“I’m not sure if you remember.”

He Yu said.

“That elderly man, Zhuang Zhiqiang, whom you ran into back when you were on a blind date with that woman whose surname was Bai.”

Baoshan Nursing Home was one of the He family’s businesses.

He Jiwei had entrusted this business to He Yu so that he could take charge of managing the nursing home. After the Qingkang Psychiatric Hospital incident, the homeless old man Zhuang Zhiqiang, who suffered from mental illness, had been moved to this nursing home for care.

That had happened several months ago, but the head nurse of the nursing [unauthorized copy]home had just called to report that Zhuang Zhiqiang was in critical unauthorized copycondition. They said he had two days at most.

Yet, miraculously, the old man’s mind had cleared just before death.

He remembered how he had been rescued and brought here, and he said he wanted to meet the young people who had helped him.

When He Yu and Xie Qingcheng drove and arrived at Baoshan Nursing Home, Zhuang Zhiqiang was lying on a nursing bed, half-awake and dozing off.

“Sir, Director He and Mr. Xie have arrived.”

The nurse carefully woke Zhuang Zhiqiang.

Waking from his light slumber, the old man focused his blurred vision on the two men.

“Oh, you’ve come.”

Zhuang Zhiqiang’s heart operated heavily like an old radiator, emitting the scent of a person barely clinging to life.

“You’ve come…”

As the old man tried to get up from the bed, He Yu reached out to stop him.

“Sir, please stay lying down.”

The lips of the old man, who was breathing heavily, trembled. He seemed to have much to say to the two of them, but before he could even open his mouth, hot tears filled his eyes and flowed down endlessly.

“I… I hope I’m not intruding in the middle of the night?”

“Not at all,” He Yu replied. “I was awake because I had business outside.”

Zhuang Zhiqiang seemed relieved; he wiped his tears and gripped He Yu’s hand tightly.

“Right… I know I don’t have many days left to live. That’s why… somehow… I really wanted to tell you both thank you. I actually came to Huzhou often. I thought I had lived my whole life wandering for years without ever doing anything to be ashamed of in my conscience, but now that it’s time to go, why does life feel so bitter… My heart is just so distressed…”

Having said this, the old man gasped for breath and wiped his tears.

“It’s so bitter. If I hadn’t met good people like you, I probably… might have died on the roadside, in a pavilion, or somewhere like that, without even a place to lay my body for the last time… It would have taken days before I was discovered as a corpse.”

As he continued to speak, Zhuang Zhiqiang became overwhelmed with emotion.

He looked as if he might crawl out of bed right now and prostrate himself in gratitude to the people who had accepted him for the last time.

He Yu quickly held him and laid him back on the bed. Xie Qingcheng did the same.

Zhuang Zhiqiang’s mind was much clearer than before. It was proof that his life had truly [Read on Read BL Novels]reached its end. The old man, who had lived a tragic life, encountered a rare act of kindness at the end of his road. It seemed as if his simple nature had temporarily restored his clear mind stolen contentso that he could express his gratitude to his benefactors before dying. As if only then could he bid farewell to the world and leave with a peaceful heart.

Thanks to Xie Qingcheng and He Yu staying by his side for a while, the old man finally regained his composure and asked.

“That… that young lady from back then?”

The young lady he was referring to was Xie Xue.

Xie Xue was currently lying in another private hospital, receiving isolated treatment for a rare disease.

This time, Xie Qingcheng spoke.

“She is on a business trip to another region. If there is anything you wish to tell her, I will pass it along, so please feel free to speak.”

“Sigh… how could I be any more of a nuisance.”

Zhuang Zhiqiang coughed and slowly shook his head.

“I don’t want to be a nuisance anymore.”

His cloudy eyes stared at the ceiling.

“Just… when you see that [unauthorized copy]young lady later, just tell her thank you… Right, that unauthorized copyyoung lady… what was her name?”

“Her name is Xie Xue.”

“Xie Xue…”

A ray of light permeated the old man’s eyes, which had been hazy like fog. A rainbow-colored cluster, as if passed through a prism, sparkled over his dying pupils.

“Oh… that young lady’s name was also Xue… This is… truly…”

He Yu, who had been listening silently to the conversation, suddenly felt his heart thud.

He asked Zhuang Zhiqiang.

“Sir, when I saw you that day, you mentioned you had a daughter. That you came to Huzhou to find her. But at that time, the people at the shelter said they had checked the household registration and there was no such daughter in your hometown. So everyone thought you might have been hallucinating and let it go…”

“What? It was absolutely not a hallucination!”

The old man’s emotions became intense.

“How could she, how could she be a hallucination? Her name is Zhao Xue. Of course you couldn’t find her… She… isn’t my biological daughter… she’s an adopted daughter who wasn’t even put on the household registration!”

Following this, while lying in the hospital [Read on Read BL Novels]bed, Zhuang Zhiqiang revealed a hidden stolen contentpast unknown to others.

Zhuang Zhiqiang’s hometown, Zhuang Family Village, was a clan village where people of the Zhuang surname lived together in the past; it was a region poor both economically and mentally. Because it was a remote rural village far from the capital, it was an environment where crops were hard to grow and all sorts of strange customs flourished.

Arranged marriages and bride-price marriages were basic, and marrying and having children at a young age was the social norm of the region. Even absurd things like ghost weddings occurred.

Zhuang Zhiqiang’s mother was a victim of such customs. Sold to Zhuang Zhiqiang’s father at the age of fourteen, she suffered domestic violence from this incompetent piece of trash.

As a child, the old man saw his mother wiping away tears, covered in wounds, every day. This greatly shook his young soul.

After his parents passed away, Zhuang Zhiqiang distanced himself from the wicked men who knew only how to idle and lived alone. The villagers regarded him as an eccentric and kept their distance. He did not marry. The villagers sold daughters, who had already suffered from filthy family fights, to the beds of men they did not like in exchange for expensive gifts. In this process, the daughters had to endure desperate sobbing, the pointing fingers of guests, and irresponsible sexual harassment.

Zhuang Zhiqiang was poor to begin with, and he did not want to treat other people’s daughters this way.

He was the only one in this foolish village who kept his senses and lived as a bachelor his whole life.

Even for such a man, a close acquaintance soon appeared.

A beautiful and intelligent girl from the neighboring village, Zhao Xue.

One day, after finishing farm work and returning home, Zhuang Zhiqiang heard a rustling sound from the haystack behind his house. Thinking a weasel had entered, he grabbed a club and rushed over, but the one hiding there was a girl.

That was the first meeting between him and Zhao Xue.

Perhaps because of the upright aura Zhuang Zhiqiang exuded, the girl hesitated in embarrassment and then followed Zhuang Zhiqiang into the house. Only after drinking hot water with oil floating in it did the girl collapse to the floor and burst into tears.

—Mister, please save me. Please save me. I don’t want to get married.

Even Zhuang Zhiqiang, who lived in a remote mountainous area and was accustomed to bad customs, was shocked. This was because Zhao Xue was a young girl whose body had not even fully grown. Even in this village, it was rare to marry off such a young girl.

Zhuang Zhiqiang asked about the inner circumstances, and upon hearing the full story, he felt his head tingle with rage.

Zhao Xue was a girl living in a village a few li away. She was the only daughter in the family, and the other three were sons born between her mother and stepfather.

The wicked stepfather treated Zhao Xue as an eyesore. Her frail mother tried to block the husband when he got drunk and tried to harass the daughter, but she was severely injured by her husband and passed away after suffering for a few days.

Regrettably, in this remote countryside, it was common for men to beat women. This meant that unless the woman died instantly on the spot, it was difficult to conclude that the culprit was the wicked husband.

After holding her mother’s funeral, Zhao Xue stopped her studies, returned home, and took charge of the meals for her stepfather and three older brothers.

After his wife died, the stepfather could not harass the daughter rashly for a while. Then, not long after, a wealthy family offered a large amount of dowry and said they would ‘buy’ Zhao Xue. The stepfather readily accepted the offer.

The dowry offered by the other party was generous enough for him to idle and eat for several years.

So, it didn’t matter whether the son of that wealthy family had vitiligo or was a [unauthorized copy]psychiatric patient. What did Read on Read BL Novelsit matter? He wasn’t the one getting married.

Terrified by this news, Zhao Xue slipped out of the house in the middle of the night, crossed the mountains, and fled to a village near her hometown.

After hearing her story, Zhuang Zhiqiang smoked in silence for a while, and looking at the girl kneeling before him, he made up his mind.

—Then, child. If you’re okay with it, spend the night at my house today. Tomorrow, I will take you to the county center. There is a newly built Hope Elementary School there. It has a dormitory, so I’ll try talking to the principal about your situation. If the school accepts you, stay in the city and don’t go back home. How about it, will you trust this mister?

Zhao Xue was unlucky, but she was still okay.

Though she was unfortunately born into such a family, she was fortunately able to meet Zhuang Zhiqiang.

By a stroke of luck, the principal of Hope Elementary School was a woman with a kind heart. She accepted Zhao Xue as a student and steadfastly protected her for a long time.

Zhao Xue usually stayed at the school and followed the principal well. During holidays, she would take a car back to Zhuang Zhiqiang’s village to help with the field work.

Zhao Xue treated Zhuang Zhiqiang as her father. Every time she called him father, Zhuang Zhiqiang’s face bloomed with a smile of contentment. Of course, almost no one in the village saw Zhao Xue. The number of people who knew of the friendship between the adoptive father and daughter was even smaller. Regardless, Zhao Xue was a child who had fled from the neighboring village. Zhuang Zhiqiang did not want the child’s life to become noisy.

Thus, Zhao Xue grew steadily from an elementary school student to a middle school student, and later to a high school student.

Without betraying the kindness of Zhuang Zhiqiang and the principal, she entered a newly built high school in the county center with excellent grades.

Like the schools she had attended before, it was a school that did some charitable work, [unauthorized copy]but the educational environment was much better than [unauthorized copy]a typical Hope School. To provide children from mountainous areas with the opportunity to Read on Read BL Novelsadvance to big cities, it also had various arts specialization programs.

“I heard she was later selected as a special talent in arts and sports,” Zhuang Zhiqiang said, recalling his memories.

“I wondered what a special talent in arts and sports was, but according to her, it meant becoming a model or a celebrity that appears on TV… So she said she was majoring in acting in Huzhou…”

The old man stopped there, raised his trembling hand to wipe his tears with a tissue, and sobbed.

“You don’t know how happy I was then. Huzhou is a big city that only a few people from our region can go to. But since my daughter was going… how amazing…”

Zhuang Zhiqiang, whose voice trailed off, suddenly began to wail sorrowfully.

“But I haven’t seen her once until now… It’s as if she disappeared as soon as she arrived in Huzhou; even when I went to the school to ask, they said they knew nothing. Even when I went to the address she gave me, she was nowhere to be found… I want to meet her… but I just can’t find her at all…”

The old man continued, sniffing.

“I’m not crazy… I really have a daughter… My daughter whom I haven’t been able to find for twenty years… I searched and searched, searched until my black hair turned white, but no matter how much I search, there’s no news… I miss my daughter so much… She is the last lingering attachment of my life. Where on earth did she go… I wonder if she even remembers this old man…”

Tears fell pattering onto the blanket.

He Yu and Xie Qingcheng quietly stayed by the side of the old man, who was crying like a child.

Listening to the story, He Yu, feeling sorry, asked even though he knew the chances were slim.

“Sir, I will find a way somehow. Is there any information regarding your daughter’s last whereabouts? For example, who was the person who called your daughter to Huzhou back then?”

“I asked the school, but they said there were no records because it was too long ago…”

“Did your daughter contact you after arriving in Huzhou?”

“Only briefly at first…”

Recalling again, Zhuang Zhiqiang said.

“When she first called, she sounded very happy. Instead, she only talked about how beautiful the scenery in Huzhou was, and that there were many things she had only seen on TV… She said she signed some documents with a certain Chairman Wang… A non-disclosure agreement or something like that…”

At these words, He Yu paused once again.

There are plenty of people with the surname Wang in this world. However, once the keywords ‘aspiring celebrity,’ ‘secret disappearance,’ and ‘crime’ appeared, one person immediately came to mind.

He asked Zhuang Zhiqiang.

“This person called Chairman Wang, did your daughter ever tell you his full name?”

“She did, but I didn’t stolen contentlisten attentively, [visit our site]so my memory is quite hazy. Wang something… Wang… was it [Read on Read BL Novels]Wang Kang, or something…”

It felt as if a bolt of lightning had struck from the sky.

He Yu and Xie Qingcheng exchanged glances simultaneously. Their distorted expressions were clearly reflected in each other’s eyes.

Wang Jiankang.

The first victim of the Huzhou University Control Tower murder case.

To think that the missing Zhao Xue was a person connected to him. If so, Zhao Xue would serve as an unexpected clue to track the Qingkang Psychiatric Hospital incident and the Huzhou Control Tower incident.