Corpse Retriever

The Telephone in the Phone Booth Rings

The telephone in the phone booth rang. Tan Yunlong had received the page and was calling back.

Tan Wenbin went back inside and picked up the phone.

“Hello, may I ask if this is Officer Tan?”

“It’s your father.”

“Officer Tan, we’re discussing serious business here. Please be a little more dignified.”

“Name.”

“Tan Wenbin.”

“Sex.”

“Male.”“Family situation.”

“Raised by my mother.”

“Heh.”

Tan Wenbin covered the receiver and shouted to Li Zhuiyuan, who was standing outside, “My dad’s been drinking. Quite a lot.”

Tan Yunlong really had been drinking. The department had held a celebration banquet for him, and he had drunk heavily.

Then Tan Wenbin heard several sharp slaps in succession from the other end of the line.

Right after that, the voice on the phone returned to its usual composed manner.

“Comrade Tan Wenbin, have you located Granny Yu’s criminal gang?”

“Yes, Officer Tan. In Tong’an Town, at the acrobat troupe’s camp in West Suburb Square. The entire troupe is made up of human traffickers.”

“Good. I understand.”

The line went dead. Tan Wenbin shrugged and walked out of the phone booth, just in time to see Lin Shuyou toppling to one side. He lunged forward and kicked away a stone on the ground.

Bang!

Lin Shuyou only hit his head on the ground.

“Hoo, Brother Xiaoyuan, my reaction was fast that time, right? Hahaha.”

“Why didn’t you just catch him?”

“Uh…”

“You’re worn out. Hurry and take a taxi back to get some proper rest.”

“Brother Xiaoyuan, we really need to get a car of our own, even if it’s secondhand.”

Trying to get a cab in the suburbs this late at night really was inconvenient.

“You should get your driver’s licenses first.”

“Oh, right, I actually forgot about that. Then I’ll go take the test first. The other two don’t have time right now. By the way, Brother Xiaoyuan, don’t those arrays need to be dealt with?”

“No. Their effects will fade before dawn, and by then the police will definitely already be here.”

“But what if they trap my dad and the others in there…”

“They won’t. What little power remains in the array will break as soon as it’s hit by a police badge.”

“It even works like that?”

“Officers of the Command Banner—put bluntly, isn’t that just the underworld’s local police station?”

“Oh, hey, a car’s coming. Pretty lucky today.”

A taxi pulled over and rolled down its window. It was actually the same driver who had brought them there at noon.

“Well, would you look at that, it really is you boys.”

“Of course it is. What a coincidence. It’s fate, isn’t it? You’ve got to see things through from start to finish if you want good fortune to last. Don’t you agree, driver?”

Tan Wenbin could tell the driver had gotten off work and was heading home. He had said before that he lived in this town, so Tan Wenbin had to block him off before he could refuse.

The driver’s face clearly showed hesitation, but considering the auspicious words Tan Wenbin had just said, he waved his hand and said, “Fine, get in. I’ll take you back to school. So… we won’t use the meter?”

“Sure, no meter. Whatever it cost at noon, that’s what it costs to take us back tonight.”

“That’s not what I meant…”

“So you mean you’re taking us back for free? That works too.”

“Then let’s just do the original price. Daytime original price.”

There were few cars on the road at night, so the taxi sped all the way and dropped the three of them off at the school gate, where Tan Wenbin paid the fare.

The driver counted the money and sighed. “Ah, now I’ve got to drive back empty.”

After saying that, he started the car again. But the moment it got moving, whether because he lost focus, made an operating mistake, or there was some problem with the car, it suddenly charged straight onto the flower bed, the front end pitching high into the air.

The commotion was loud enough that the security guard at the school gate came out and went over to help.

Tan Wenbin said, “Brother Xiaoyuan, is it because he really shouldn’t have taken our fare?”

The driver had said during the day that tomorrow he would bring his child to watch the acrobat troupe perform. If Li Zhuiyuan and the others had not gone tonight and taken care of it first, then tomorrow his clever son would have been at extremely high risk of being abducted.

When repayment doesn’t come back properly one way, it spills out somewhere else.

When a child breaks bowls and plates, an elder will say, “Broken means peace.” It was the same principle.

“Maybe.”

Tan Wenbin went on, “But he already did us a big favor just by driving us back at normal fare. How is an ordinary person supposed to know what they should do? This is way too hard.”

Li Zhuiyuan said, “So in real life, who can keep their good fortune flourishing forever?”

After saying that, the boy thought of his Taigong.

They walked into the campus and arrived beneath the dormitory building. The new dorm supervisor auntie had already locked the door.

“Brother Xiaoyuan, I’ll climb over.”

“No need. Dawn’s almost here anyway. Take Lin Shuyou to the infirmary. I’ll go sleep over there.”

“Got it.”

Tan Wenbin carried Lin Shuyou on his back toward the infirmary, while Li Zhuiyuan carried his bags and bundles toward the residential building.

He pushed open the courtyard gate. It was very quiet inside.

Even after Li Zhuiyuan walked up to the floor-to-ceiling window, there was still no movement inside.

The girl did not, as she used to, come open the window herself and stand there barefoot.

The floor-to-ceiling window was not locked. Li Zhuiyuan gently opened it and stepped inside.

The girl was lying on the bed, asleep.

Li Zhuiyuan stood by the bedside and watched for a while in the moonlight streaming in.

The blanket was beside her.

Li Zhuiyuan reached out and picked it up. Feeling the lingering warmth in it, he knew the girl had originally been covered with it, and that just now she had gotten out of bed to open the window and welcome him back as usual.

But then she remembered what he had said, so she lay back down again and pretended to be asleep.

Only, she had folded the blanket over her stomach the way the boy usually did, and there had not been time to fold it back properly.

Li Zhuiyuan folded the blanket neatly again, then gently laid it over the girl’s stomach.

Then he set down all the bags he was carrying, lay on the carpet by the bed, and closed his eyes.

He was tired. He wanted to sleep.

Granny Yu had been dealt with ahead of time, which meant that for the next while, he would have a peaceful stretch and could sleep without distraction.

After a while, the girl slowly sat up, carefully lifted the blanket the boy had folded for her off her body, and set it aside.

Then she turned sideways and came to the edge of the bed, propping up her chin with her left hand as she watched the sleeping boy on the carpet.

The moonlight fell across him too, as though brushing him with a layer of radiance.

As for the stars, they were all in the girl’s eyes.

…

Police cars were mobilized on a large scale and entered the western outskirts of Tong’an Town. There were also many green trucks, from which armed police carrying live weapons disembarked.

They completed the encirclement first, then moved in for the assault and arrests.

The entire process went far more smoothly than expected.

Because all the members of the acrobat troupe were sitting where they were, waiting to be arrested. They were more wilted than autumn grasshoppers, utterly incapable of jumping anymore.

Aside from the old woman and Sister Rou, the rest of the troupe were ordinary people—genuine human traffickers.

So quite a few of them had already suffered mental collapse inside the ghost wall. When they saw the police rushing toward them, it was like seeing saviors. Weeping bitterly, they voluntarily began confessing their crimes.

Tan Yunlong stood beside a police car and lit a cigarette. He was very sleepy now and forcing himself to stay alert.

He had let himself drink a little only because he had the next morning off. Who knew another case would come up?

At the celebration banquet, his superiors had still been praising his outstanding performance, saying that not long after arriving at his new post he had already solved several cold cases in succession, and calling on everyone to learn from him.

Then, when he got the page and stepped outside to make the call and gather everyone for deployment, even his superior had looked startled and blurted out, “Another case already?”

He had never meant to stand out so much, but his son just kept calling one after another, making his old man shine like a light bulb.

“Captain Tan, a corpse was found in that performance tent.”

“Male or female?”

“I… I can’t tell.”

“Take me to it.”

Tan Yunlong walked into the performance tent and saw the bizarrely shaped corpse, flesh and bones separated.

And the flesh portion had clearly been subjected to extensive, sustained beating. It was already nothing but a bloody pulp.

Tan Yunlong stepped closer for a look and said, “It’s a female corpse.”

Xiao Zhou at his side asked curiously, “How was this done?”

“With stones.”

“Huh?”

Tan Yunlong pointed to the many bloodstained rocks near the corpse.

Xiao Zhou clicked his tongue. “How deep was that grudge? She was already dead, and they still kept smashing her.”

“Unless the killer rearranged the scene after the murder, then judging by the distribution of the stones on the ground and the blood traces on the floor, the victim should still have been alive while she was being stoned. She was still moving.”

“She still didn’t die after being hit with that many stones? That’s ridiculous.”

“Secure the scene first.”

Tan Yunlong and the others walked out of the performance tent. Outside, the armed police were escorting the acrobat troupe members into vehicles one by one.

Officer Xiaoyun from the same department asked curiously, “Captain Tan, how did you know this place was a human trafficking ring this time?”

“My son studies at university in Jinling.”

Everyone present had all come from the same office and were now part of Tan Yunlong’s team, so they all felt that opening sounded a little familiar.

Tan Yunlong continued, “You’ve all met Binbin before. Last time he came to our office and even brought you breakfast. Today he came here with his classmates for fun, noticed that something was wrong with this acrobat troupe, and told me.”

Everyone nodded.

Only Xiao Zhou—probably because he had drunk too much—actually dared to say, “Captain Tan, your son again… I don’t really buy it.”

They were all police. People in this line of work were not so easy to fool. They just hadn’t felt comfortable saying it before.

Just then, an armed policeman came over and pointed at a man and a child standing in the distance. “That man wants to turn himself in.”

Xiao Zhou said, “Also a trafficker?”

“No. He said he originally wanted to come here and sell his son, but regretted it. When he wanted his son back, they refused. Then they beat him and locked him and his son in a cage together.

“That child said it was an older brother named Binbin who saved them.”

Everyone’s expressions changed a little on hearing that. So it really was true. Captain Tan had not lied.

Xiao Zhou immediately said, “Captain Tan, I was wrong.”

“Heh, it’s fine.”

Tan Yunlong waved his hand, putting on an expression that said: See? What I said was the truth.

But what he was actually thinking was:

That little brat really was sloppy this time. He rescued someone and actually let himself be seen.

He’ll have to come to the station and go through the formalities then. Hopefully it won’t delay Li Zhuiyuan’s matters.

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