In everything, you had to do your best and leave the rest to fate.
Only after doing your best could you leave the rest to fate.
But now I had gained a different understanding.
Things depended on human effort.
Luckily, we hadn't given up. After hitting a dead end, we had looked for another way out, deducing, step by step, the version of events closest to the truth.
Now we had another lead: Xiang Kai's wife, and the killer she had hired.
It was late, so Seventh Master went to bed in his room first.
Song Xiaotian and I stayed in the living room, continuing to review the entire sequence of events, looking for an opening that could help us save Meng Yifan.
Cigarette butts piled up like a mountain in the ashtray.
But we had been so exhausted lately that Song Xiaotian fell asleep with a cigarette between his fingers.
I took the cigarette from his hand, tossed it into the ashtray, and continued listing every suspicious point on paper.
I went over my deductions and reviewed everything again and again. Around four in the morning, I grew so sleepy that I slumped onto the sofa and fell asleep.
At eight in the morning, Seventh Master got up to pee and woke me.
We were going to approach Xiang Kai's wife today, so I had no intention of going back to sleep.
After going downstairs for breakfast, Song Xiaotian and I drove to the Jiangling Group.
In the car.
Song Xiaotian and I began reviewing the entire incident again, working out how to deal with Xiang Kai's wife when we met her.
Xiang Kai's wife was named Pan Xiaorou. She was thirty-one, eight years younger than her husband.
Rumor had it that she had started dating Xiang Kai while