Chapter 6: Potent sleeping agent
On the third day, Qin Xiaoxia quietly made up his mind and went out.
To be on the safe side, even though he was certain the little thief would not leave the house to follow him, Qin Xiaoxia still went a little farther afield this time, to the center of Kehua District.
The urban districts of Yue City, a third-tier city, were different from those of some typical big cities. Its districts included numerous towns and villages. Just a few years earlier, these districts had still been counties under its jurisdiction; only recently had they been redesignated as urban districts.
But planning was one thing, reality another. Towns and villages were still scattered throughout, with large stretches of undeveloped land, fields, and wilderness between them.
At around ten in the morning, Qin Xiaoxia arrived at a large pharmacy in Kehua District.
A pharmacy employee in a white coat eyed Qin Xiaoxia suspiciously, making him rather uncomfortable.
"Sir, buying anesthetic drugs, including sleeping pills, requires documentation from a doctor. You look quite energetic to me, not like someone suffering from insomnia."
Qin Xiaoxia froze for a moment, then immediately realized he might have been mistaken for someone with shady intentions.
"Ha, well, lately I keep finding things hidden away when I wake up in the morning. I suspect I might be sleepwalking, so I wanted to try some sleeping pills."
The employee looked thoroughly unconvinced.
"Sir, sleeping pills cannot treat sleepwalking. In your situation, you should go to a hospital first, have a doctor write you a prescription, and then get the prescribed medication."
The employee's tone grew noticeably firmer.
Even someone as thick-skinned as Qin Xiaoxia felt deeply embarrassed. He could only keep apologizing, then leave the pharmacy with an awkward laugh.
Although he could not get what he wanted at the pharmacy, plenty of people wanted to buy strange things these days. There were always some obscure channels where such things could be found.
These channels played hide-and-seek with law enforcement and generally did not last long, but they were always difficult to eradicate.
After leaving the pharmacy, Qin Xiaoxia learned from his painful experience and decided to try finding another source.
"Potent aphrodiXXX... works in one minute... the ultimate XXX weapon..."
He searched online for terms like anesthetics and knockout drugs, only to be bombarded with slogans like these. One glance was enough to tell they were completely unreliable.
What the !#? They actually allow ads like these...
While inwardly cursing the people responsible for policing the internet, Qin Xiaoxia thought of someone.
Yes, Brother Gou.
Qin Xiaoxia remembered seeing quite a few "banned toys" in Gou Junbao's home.
These things had not been banned when people born in the seventies, eighties, or even nineties were children, but they were no longer legal toys.
Gou Junbao was particularly fond of them, and his were high-quality replicas. As for where they came from... heh.
Naturally, these were not things you could buy through normal channels. As Qin Xiaoxia saw it, sellers of banned goods were generally willing to sell anything that made money. Maybe they had connections.
On his way back from Kehua District, Qin Xiaoxia made sure to find a cake shop with decent online reviews and buy some pastries.
For now, he would treat the little thief as a "minor."
What child did not like sweets? Cream cakes in particular were irresistible.
Still, he bought the kind made with vegetable-based cream. Dairy cream was too expensive; one tiny cake cost enough to buy a whole roast chicken.
At a Lanzhou noodle shop in Qingcheng, after waiting a little over ten minutes, he finally saw Gou Junbao arrive, having taken advantage of his lunch break and the convenience of his job to come over.
"Hey, Xiaoxia, what's so urgent that you had to drag me over here? Oh, right, I haven't paid you for that day's work yet. Surely that's not it?"
Gou Junbao spotted Qin Xiaoxia as soon as he entered. As he teased him, he took a can of beer from the drinks cabinet, opened it, and started drinking.
"Boss, one bowl of beef hand-pulled noodles."
"Coming right up!"
Qin Xiaoxia was busy tackling the noodles already served in front of him. A bag of little cakes sat beside him, and he ignored Gou Junbao's joke.
Seeing this, Gou Junbao reached for a cake himself.
Qin Xiaoxia slapped his hand away.
"Those aren't for you. I need them for something."
Gou Junbao grimaced.
"You little... all right, what is it?"
After asking, he took out his phone and sent Qin Xiaoxia a digital red envelope containing 588 yuan, 88 more than they had agreed on.
"Aw, Brother Gou, we're practically family. You didn't have to be so generous."
Qin Xiaoxia put down his chopsticks and smiled. His words sounded gracious, but no one could have tapped the accept button faster.
The sight made the corner of Gou Junbao's mouth twitch.
"Brother Gou, I really do need your advice this time. The seller you get those toy 'pets' from-does he have some shady connections?"
("Pets," usually "chickens" or "dogs," generally referred to air-powered BB guns, though some also used glass marbles or small steel balls. "Chickens" were mostly manually cocked air guns, while "dogs" were mostly electric or powered by gas canisters. Their power varied.)
"What, you want to try them too? Hey, I only play with mine at home. If I actually took them outside, they'd get confiscated. But honestly, the seller carries all kinds of stuff. Sometimes his posts on Moments make me break into a cold sweat."
His noodles arrived just then. Gou Junbao snapped apart his disposable chopsticks, stirred the noodles a couple of times, added some of the shop's chili sauce, and began wolfing them down.
Qin Xiaoxia solicitously added a little more chili sauce for him, pushed two little cakes his way, then slid over the fried egg he had ordered for himself as well.
"Brother Gou, I'm not looking to buy 'pets.' I want something else. Uh, something like a really powerful knockout drug."
"Guh-cough, cough, cough..."
Gou Junbao forced down a mouthful of beer and choked, coughing repeatedly.
He stared at Qin Xiaoxia in disbelief.
"Cough, cough... Xiaoxia, I never would've guessed! You... you're a beast!"
"What the hell! It's not what you're thinking! I need it for something!"
"For what?"
"Uh... would you believe me if I said I had insomnia?"
Gou Junbao stared at Qin Xiaoxia without blinking, disbelief written all over his face.
"All right, my house is haunted, and I want to knock the ghost out!"
The corner of Gou Junbao's mouth twitched.
"You won't believe the truth, so I guess I'll have to lie. My buddy's girlfriend cheated on him. We've already found the bastard, and we're planning to lure him in with a honey trap, knock him out, then teach him a lesson!"
Qin Xiaoxia delivered this explanation angrily, his expression a convincing picture of righteous indignation, then added one more sentence.
"I'm in charge of getting the drugs."
Gou Junbao was taken aback.
"Quit joking. That's ridiculous!"
But Qin Xiaoxia maintained his air of sorrow mixed with indignation.
They stared at each other for a while.
Gou Junbao opened his mouth.
"Is it... Huang Jiutian?"
The only person Gou Junbao could think of whom a homebody like Qin Xiaoxia would call a brother was Huang Jiutian. Next on the list would be Gou Junbao himself, but he definitely had not been cheated on! Pah, not now, and not in the future either!
Qin Xiaoxia nodded solemnly and even let out a sigh.
"Look, if you run into him, whatever you do, don't bring it up. It's best to pretend you know nothing. If a few of us hadn't happened to catch sight of them when we were out having barbecue the other day, he probably wouldn't even have told us who it was. Jiu Tian might seem cheerful, but once he gets stuck in a dead end, he can take things badly! Still, as his buddies, shouldn't we help him get some payback?"
For a moment, Gou Junbao did not know what to say. He seemed to still be piecing together the incident in his mind, and only reacted after a long while.
"You should! Is there anything I can do to help?"
Qin Xiaoxia hurriedly pushed the plate with the fried egg a little closer to him.
"Brother Gou, you don't need to get involved. We know where to draw the line, too. We won't go overboard. Just give me a source. Whether we take naked pictures of that bastard or do something else, we can decide later."
Gou Junbao was actually still a little worried that Qin Xiaoxia and his young friends might take things too far.
But thinking of how Huang Jiutian, such a sunny-looking young man, had suffered such anguish in so short a time, Gou Junbao nevertheless nodded silently.
"Heh, this seller's got some nerve. So many dangerous, restricted goods! Hmm, a potent sleeping agent. This should work!"
After lunch, Qin Xiaoxia murmured to himself as he looked at his phone screen, walking through a park to help his food settle.