Chapter 36
As for Zhuangzhuang's whereabouts, none of them knew except the young man. So in exchange, he could let Young Master Han and the middle-aged man go, provided that they forgot everything that happened tonight.
Before leaving, Young Master Han gave him a subtle and profound look.
"May I have your name."
At that time, Pei Huai was wiping the inner blade with a cloth without even raising his head.
The young master didn't give up and asked him again: "I'm Han Shaochen, what's your name?" Unfortunately, he didn't get an answer. Young Master Han raised his eyebrows, revealing a look of confusion and accusation.
The middle-aged man standing behind him hurriedly pulled him and said respectfully in his ear, "We should leave, young master. He is not one of us, so you can't do what you want."
"But..." Han Shaochen left unfinished, reluctantly leaving. He tried to catch Pei Huai's attention several times, but his gaze fell on Xiang Mingqi, who was standing beside him, with a look of frustration.
He was a man about 1.9 meters tall, with a firm, rounded figure. His brown hair was curly and fluffy, parted on the side, revealing a large forehead. With his hands behind his back, he skipped up behind the white-haired young man, bent down, and rested his chin on his shoulder.
He bent his index finger and brushed away a few strands of silver hair that fell to his shoulders. He looked into Han Shaochen's eyes from a distance - it was a smile that made the edge of his lower eyelid bulge slightly, a smile that was between friendly and sarcastic.
Xiang Mingqi burst out laughing, and the curve of his lips deepened.
After seeing this smile, Young Master Han understood and drooped his eyelids.
"Let's go," he said.
As the two walked away, Xiang Mingqi was also elbowed and fell. Then, under the pressure of Pei Huai's gaze, the young man quickly confessed the whole story.
His name was Yan Xu. He was the child of a migrant worker couple who had conceived him unexpectedly. The three of them lived in a brick house less than ten square meters, living a simple but manageable life. His father found a fresh fish shop in a snack street, butchering fish for a living. His mother worked part-time, leaving early and returning late every day, so they rarely saw each other.
It was this lack of communication and trust that escalated the arguments between the parents and turned into one-sided violence. Initially, the man simply expressed his dissatisfaction with his wife's late return home. He wanted her to stay home to take care of the children and manage the housework, rather than work and socialize.
After his mother refused, he became paranoid that his wife was having an affair with the man of the house. His violent behavior spiraled out of control. Initially, his mother was able to hide her injuries with long sleeves, keeping them hidden. But as his father became addicted to alcohol, the situation worsened.
Later, the fresh food store laid off employees, and his father lost his job. He blamed his wife for the loss, and once nearly took her right eye. The night he was injured, his mother hugged her son and said she was ready to leave home and wanted to leave with him.
The mother and son agreed to abandon everything.
But the night before departure, my father drank a few bottles of wine, lost a game of mahjong, and his violence began to escalate again - he always used alcohol as an excuse to shirk all responsibility.
He dragged his mother inside by her hair, her forehead banging against the corner of the table, and a bottle smashing down on her face. The boy rushed over, hugged her, and begged desperately through several screams. His father, drunkenly, demanded where the money was, insisting he would win the next time.
He looked at his dying mother, her lips moving several times but unable to utter a word, and finally, tearfully, he confessed where he had hidden the money. The man finally let go of her bloodied scalp, took the money, and walked away. That day, she limped out the door and told her son to wait in the living room until she got the money back, and they could run away together.
But when daybreak came, all he got was a man who had lost the game and was returning home in disappointment.
So he decided to run away from home.
After many twists and turns, he wandered into an underground boxing ring in Kensos. He was recruited as fresh blood. When he met Duan Heng, he was preparing for a fake match requested by his sponsor. They both joined as new members at the same time. Just after the match, Duan Heng found him and said he was planning to join a street gang that provided food and shelter. It was much better than this place.
He went without thinking.
When recounting this past event, the boy rarely showed the childishness that was expected of his age, and occasionally wiped away tears.
"It was not a place for human beings to stay. The adults threw us out onto the street and forced us to work. Those who earned less had their teeth knocked out and their nails pulled out. They didn't allow us to use our phones or contact anyone, and they threatened us with hardship if we sought help from the hospital or the police."
He swallowed nervously. "I, I've seen it before. Someone went to the police because they couldn't stand the beatings and scolding. And... the police didn't even take a statement. They just took him back to the dormitory. They even told the woman who was in charge of our food and clothing that people like him needed to be disciplined. At that moment, I realized that we had all just gone from one hell to another."
"So one day, when the adults said they wanted to find a kid with some knowledge of chemistry and promised good treatment, I volunteered."
"—He wasn't lying." The young man sniffed, choking back tears. "He wanted to take back the market for banned drugs in this area, so he desperately tried everything and asked me to use stray cats for experiments. Every time he finished testing the drugs, he had the cats taken away, saying he wanted to see their physiological data..."
It was not until he finished the stories using words that Pei Huai nodded without comment.
The young man crouched down, hugging his knees. "Can you take me to a safe place? Anywhere is fine. I'm so cold."
"That's not within the scope of my commission."
Yan Xu's face suddenly showed tears: "Then I, can I go to the police station? I really don't want to stay here anymore."
"I need to consult my client first." Pei Huai stood up from the front, ignoring the face that was about to cry, "Wait a moment."
He first contacted the Bangkok hotel. Within five minutes of explaining the situation, a text message arrived, containing an emoticon and the capitalized word "OK." Pei Huai nodded in agreement, then half-knelt down and asked, "Before I resolve your issue, answer me. Where's the cat?"
"As for the cat, it should have been taken to a factory after the experiment. It's not here." Yan Xu wiped the blood from his face and smiled through his tears. "Well, I know the exact location and I can take you there."
-
Before leaving, they searched the basement of the house from top to bottom. Behind every door, there were operating tables, granulation ovens, crushers, dissection diagrams, and lab benches. From the specifications, it looked like a crude pharmaceutical workshop. But its scale was quite large, and one could imagine how rich and precious pharmaceutical factories it once was.
There were indeed no cats inside; the only signs of their presence were empty cages. This made time even more urgent.
As Xiang Mingqi returned to the car from the villa, he twisted the key and started the engine, wondering if this was going too smoothly. Based on the movie's progression, there was probably going to be a major twist or crisis. Mumbling, he fixed his gaze on Pei Huai, who was pretending to be deaf and dumb.
"Handsome, handsome brother Pei Huai, did you just hear my reasoning? Isn't it brilliant and reasonable?"
The other person simply shifted his gaze from the front windproof door to the window.
Xiang Mingqi mistakenly thought he hadn't heard, and took advantage of his loud voice to shout: "Acquiescence means agreement, brother! So you really want to praise me, right? You are sincere, right -"
"I'm not deaf."
"But why did you ignore me when you heard me? I finally said something right. I guess I'll have to wait until my next life to guess it right again. Hey, why are you frowning and looking down on me again?"
Pei Huai crossed his arms and had no intention of listening to his coquettish behavior.
It was unclear whether he had taken his junior's words to heart. In short, based on the address Yan Xu provided, they successfully found the so-called chemical plant on a piece of wasteland just three blocks away.
According to Yan Xu, the dormitory where they were housed was also nearby.
He pointed to the south and saw a two-story bungalow not far away, hidden under the dense shade of trees and branches.
“We lived there,” he said. “Every night we had to hand over our earnings before we could even get into our room.”
Pei Huai responded without showing any emotion, got out of the car and walked towards the factory.
"Brother Pei Huai."
"explain."
"I haven't heard you say anything good about me since I started working. Please, my handsome brother, have mercy on me and at least encourage me." Xiang Mingqi jumped out of the car, jumped impatiently on the concrete floor, ran over and grabbed Pei Huai's sleeve - and then was slapped away.
"Ugh, I got beaten by my brother."
He started to feel wronged again.
At two o'clock in the morning, the factory was immersed in the darkness and there was no one around.
"Wow." Xiang Mingqi raised his hand to his eyebrows and looked into the factory. "This place really has the atmosphere of a haunted house, like the kind where the boss owes the company money and migrant workers jump off the building in droves, and resentment boils over overnight. Brother, are you scared? If you're not, then I'll be scared—"
Pei Huai ignored him and walked in.
"Ah, you left me again. Every time something happens, you just leave me standing aside like a sandbag...hiss, my neck is so cold. It's not a ghost, wait for me!"
"Hey brother, walk slower. Huh? I think I stepped on something. Ahhh, it turned out to be your heel."
"……Shut up."
The guardhouse seemed to have been unattended for some time, the keyhole rusted and unable to be turned. Walking along the large chimneys and intricate pipes along the aisle, further in, we arrived at the chemical plant.
The factory is only three stories high and its windows are badly damaged, making it difficult to tell how long it has been abandoned.
After entering the main door, the corridor split into two at the entrance, and the occasional cat's meow could be heard. Pei Huai asked Xiang Mingqi to split up with him and find Zhuangzhuang as soon as possible.
Yan Xu chose to follow the former. Every time the door opened, the frightened cats would rush into the cage regardless of everything, and some would scratch the door desperately, trying to get out.
Pei Huai searched several rooms in a row, but there was no sign of Zhuangzhuang.
As for the other cats they found in the factory, he later notified the company and asked a special department to transfer these poor little guys.
But as he approached a door at the end of the corridor, a bloody smell made his feet shiver. The smell came from the gap in the door.
Something is…not right.
Pei Huai frowned and steadily pulled out the bolt. In this room, there was no sound of breathing, only the faint, heart-wrenching moans of the cat.
He shone his flashlight around and found more than a dozen cages filled with bruised cats, some with stiff limbs.
Zhuangzhuang was trapped in a metal cage under the table, lying on his side with half his tongue hanging out and his stomach twitching. Half of his head was sunken, as if he had suffered a blunt force trauma.
The only thing that can move is the eyeballs.
When his peripheral vision barely caught sight of Pei Huai's figure, Zhuangzhuang instinctively lifted one of his hind legs and showed him his belly.
But when it moved, the wound was pulled, and it felt like it was in pain, causing its throat to spasm and groan, like a little lamb that was both aggrieved and frightened. It wanted to show its belly to the person it loved, and let them touch it, but it was too painful.
The sound was so miserable that Pei Huai's temples throbbed. Perhaps in response to this cruel scene, the young man behind him closed the door, and the room suddenly became pitch black.
"Do you think I'm really innocent in these matters?"
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