...

Once the two girls had finished eating, they went upstairs. It was already very late by then, around eleven o'clock, and both of them had school the next day, so at this hour they ought to have been turning in early.

Wei Zhao rose to his feet and came over to the dining table, a faint and rather handsome curve sliding across the corner of his mouth. He had not heard what Gu Mengyao and Shen Yushu had said to each other earlier, but everything that had happened after Shen Yushu called him over to eat and then sat back down at the table — that Wei Zhao had seen perfectly clearly.

The two girls had kept their voices very low, but it never once occurred to them that Wei Zhao could read lips, and so every word Gu Mengyao spoke had been taken in by him without a single one missing.

So the young lady was one of those girls with a sharp tongue and a soft heart. Wei Zhao smiled faintly and set about clearing away the two girls' leftovers — though leftovers they hardly were. Neither girl had much of an appetite, and no matter how hungry they got, they could never finish four large boxes of food. The braised chicken pieces had only been picked at a few times; plainly they had held back for fear of putting on weight.

In truth, to be allowed to eat what Gu Mengyao and Shen Yushu left behind was, in the eyes of many boys at No. 1 High School, nothing short of tremendous good fortune. Take Zhong Yongliang, for instance: he could eat it every single day and never grow tired of it.

Wei Zhao was genuinely starving. After sweeping every dish on the table clean the way a gale scatters the clouds, he let out a satisfied belch.

Footsteps sounded behind him. Wei Zhao did not turn around; from the sound alone he could tell that the one coming was Shen Yushu. The two girls' footsteps differed slightly, and he could still tell them apart with perfect accuracy.

"Whoa there, Arrow Brand, are you a pig? That's some appetite." It was indeed Shen Yushu. She was a little thirsty and had come down to fetch a bottle of something to drink upstairs, only to be greeted by a table of utterly empty food boxes — which gave her quite a fright.

"Heh." Wei Zhao smiled. "Not bad, I suppose. Though the two of you are wasteful enough, leaving this much behind every day."

"Well, now you're here, aren't you?" Shen Yushu said airily. Plainly, raised in a household like this, they could hardly be expected to know the feeling behind the old line: every grain upon the plate is bought with bitter toil.

Wei Zhao said nothing more. He understood well enough the gulf that circumstance had opened between them, and so there was no use in speaking of such things; Shen Yushu and Gu Mengyao would never understand.

"Oh, that's right, Arrow Brand, let me tell you a little secret." Shen Yushu took a bottle of black tea from the cooler, then addressed Wei Zhao with a most conspiratorial air.

"What secret?" Wei Zhao blinked, looking at Shen Yushu in some bewilderment.

"Sister Yao-yao said she never said she didn't like you. Next time you can eat together with us." Shen Yushu said this in a low voice.

"Is that so. I see." Wei Zhao nodded. "Thank you. But next time I'll still wait until the two of you have finished before I eat."

"Why?" Shen Yushu looked rather puzzled.

"Afraid I'd eat it all and leave the two of you short." Wei Zhao smiled and gestured at the empty boxes on the table.

"Ha!" Shen Yushu burst out laughing. "I'm going up. You get some rest early too." And with that she made a little gesture of farewell and went scampering up the stairs.

Wei Zhao watched Shen Yushu's figure disappear into the stairwell and shook his head. This girl gave him a feeling he could not quite see through: she looked sweet and adorable, but in truth she was very shrewd.

Because of the wound on his leg, Wei Zhao did not take a shower. He wiped himself down with a wet towel instead, and then got into bed. He had not expected to get hurt here; some of the medicinal herbs from his hometown had not been brought along, and there was no way for him to make the wound on his leg heal any faster.

Closing his eyes, Wei Zhao began to practice the Xuanyuan Dragon-Taming Art. Though every day he hoped for some breakthrough, still there was not the slightest progress.

Warm sunshine came spilling into the room and fell across Wei Zhao. He stretched himself lazily, opened the window, and let the fresh air wash through.

Another beautiful day. Wei Zhao felt a great anticipation for life; this kind of student life was something he had once dreamed of wanting, and now at last it had come true, and he would treasure it well — who knew, one of these days the young lady might just toss him out and send him packing.

...

In the interrogation room of the Songshan City Police Bureau's criminal investigation division, Qiu Lingshan gazed at the motley crowd of people before her with a look of helplessness, feeling a distinct and thorough sense of futility.

A whole night had passed, and the case had not advanced a single step. Everything they had managed to extract was useless.

The drivers of those black Hyundai business vans bearing the counterfeit plates "Song A74110" had all been picked up, one after another, but every last one of them knew nothing about anything.

At first Qiu Lingshan refused to believe it, but the subsequent investigation into their backgrounds left her bitterly disappointed. They were either laid-off drivers or bus drivers on their days off.

Driving a car with "Song A74110" plates had been purely a job they took from someone else; each had been handed five hundred yuan and told to drive the vehicle to a designated place at a designated time.

None of them had even reached the designated spot before the police caught them. At first they had assumed it was the traffic police, since none of the vehicles had legal paperwork — though it was the high price of five hundred yuan that had made them take the job in the first place.

Only when they learned it was connected to a bank robbery did they realize they had been duped, strung along by criminals. The only thing to be done with these men was to send them to the traffic division and deal with them as ordinary traffic violations; Qiu Lingshan could hardly take her temper out on them.

The night's exhaustion had been wasted effort, and Qiu Lingshan was thoroughly depressed. After all, this was the first time she had been given sole charge of a case and told to solve it on her own; the pressure was only too easy to imagine.

"Captain Song, should we step up the search?" asked Liu Wangli, squadron leader of the first squad under her command.

They had been searching all night without finding any trace of the robbers, and if they kept up this kind of manhunt after daybreak it would certainly interfere with normal public activity, so Qiu Lingshan was very hesitant.

Increasing the search would in practice mean setting up checkpoints on the main roads, stopping passing vehicles and examining the people inside.

"Let me ask Captain Yang." In the end, helpless, Qiu Lingshan put through a call to Yang Huaijun and asked him what should be done in a situation like this.

Sometimes Qiu Lingshan felt she truly was a poor specimen. Yang Huaijun, a captain who had likewise been a soldier transferred to civilian work, possessed an insight a hundred times sharper than hers; whatever case landed in his hands could not escape his meticulous analysis and reasoning, and the truth would soon come to light.

But she... Qiu Lingshan felt there was far, far too much she still had to learn. This post of deputy captain... well, Wei Zhao had been right: it really did look like something she had gotten through backdoor connections.

She knew that judging by the rank she had held before leaving the military, she was fully worthy of the position — but her ability fell short by a notch.