Hu Xing thought Qingmu had gone upstairs, leaving her alone on the dark staircase. The mother and son were still in the basement, one kneeling and the other standing, neither speaking. The atmosphere felt eerie.
As a detective, she had seen her share of serious situations, but a woman's innate fear of darkness and solitude made her very uncomfortable.
Damn Qingmu! Leaving so fast without even saying anything!
Cursing inwardly, she was about to head upstairs when she turned and saw a dark figure behind her coming down.
She jumped, but when she saw the outline of a bird's-nest hairstyle on the figure's head, she patted her chest in relief and whispered, "What are you coming back down for?"
Seeing her turn, the figure stopped too.
Hu Xing suddenly noticed something was wrong. Although Qingmu was quite tall, he looked scholarly overall, like an intellectual with eighth-grader syndrome. The shadow before her was clearly more heavily built than Qingmu, and its hair was even messier-not so much a bird's nest as an Afro.
Following her keen police instincts, she reached for her gun and drew it.
At that moment, the figure moved too. Its seemingly huge body made no sound at all as it stepped onto the stairs, like a ghost.
Hu Xing raised her gun, then suddenly felt a wave of dizziness. She fell backward, slammed hard into the wall, and struck her elbow painfully. The gun clattered to the floor.
The dark figure seemed to realize something. With a low growl, it lunged at her.
Hu Xing remembered that she seemed to have heard that growl earlier in the backyard. She had thought Ma Fuqing kept a Tibetan mastiff.
What was this thing?
Whatever it was, Hu Xing no longer had the strength to resist.
Her head spun terribly, and her stomach churned, as miserable as being half-awake after a night of heavy drinking. She could do nothing but watch the shadow pounce toward her.
Just as the figure was about to land on her, she heard a heavy thud, followed by a faint blue glow.
Qingmu appeared on the staircase holding his phone with its screen lit. He kicked the figure over, and it immediately scrambled upstairs, as agile as an ape.
The phone's light was too weak for Hu Xing to make out what the thing was.
Qingmu steadied Hu Xing and asked, "Are you all right?"
"The watermelon... poisoned..." Hu Xing slumped limply against Qingmu's shoulder.
"I'll help you upstairs first."
Qingmu helped Hu Xing up the stairs, but when they reached the entrance to the ground floor, he found that the iron-barred gate across the staircase had been locked.
The gate was made of stainless steel bars, not the usual aluminum-alloy security door, and was extremely sturdy.
What sort of household needed such a strong iron gate?
Qingmu remembered that the front door of Ma Fuqing's house was quite ordinary. If this gate was not meant to keep outsiders from coming in, then it was meant to keep something from getting out.
"My gun... it's... down there..." Hu Xing said weakly, draped against Qingmu.
Qingmu helped her back down, shining his phone along the stairs and all the way into the basement, but found no gun.
The mother and son in the basement had disappeared.
Seeing a table and chairs in the basement, Qingmu helped Hu Xing over and sat her down.
He lifted Hu Xing's eyelids to look, then asked her to stick out her tongue and shone his phone's light on it.
Qingmu's preliminary judgment was that she had taken a neuroactive hallucinogenic sedative such as triazolam. From that morning until now, apart from some bottled water at the Lu County criminal investigation unit, Hu Xing had only eaten a few pieces of watermelon that Ma Fuqing had cut.
Qingmu carefully recalled the entire sequence of events.
He had not eaten any watermelon because he had been smoking. Ma Fuqing had fed his mother watermelon without eating any himself, while Ma Fuqing's mother, displeased that the seeds had not been picked out properly, had not actually eaten any either.
In the end, only Hu Xing had eaten the watermelon on the table.
Fortunately, watermelon was not like a drink, and the dose of the drug in it probably was not large. Otherwise, Hu Xing should already have fallen asleep by now.
Thank goodness I don't like putting sweet things in my mouth when I'm smoking! Qingmu silently counted himself lucky.
"Rest here for a while." Qingmu had Hu Xing lie forward over the table.
The staircase leading up must have been locked by that thing that was neither quite human nor ghost, because Ma Fuqing and his mother had still been in the basement at the time.
Qingmu now prayed that the basement had no other exits, which would mean Ma Fuqing and his mother were still inside. As long as they were here, there would always be a way to deal with them.
If they had already gone out and then sealed every exit, he really would be at a complete loss.
The dim little room had a door on either side.
Ordinary wooden doors like these could not stop Qingmu, of course.
He first pushed open the door on the left. Beyond it was a long, narrow passage, apparently with rooms on both sides.
He felt around at the entrance to the passage and found an old-fashioned pull-cord light switch. An incandescent bulb overhead, about twenty-five watts, gave off a dim yellow glow.
Farther down the passage, there was a storeroom on each side, both crammed with miscellaneous junk covered in thick dust and cobwebs.
Qingmu backed out and opened the door on the right. There was another passage, but this one was noticeably cleaner than the other, with no dust rising as he walked. However, Qingmu smelled something like a public toilet.
On one side of the passage were several interconnected empty rooms with no lights. On the other was a large room with an iron-barred gate at its entrance, as sturdy as the one at the stairs.
The gate was not locked. Qingmu went in, found the light cord, and pulled it. In the middle of the room stood an iron cage about two meters tall. Inside were several thick iron chains, with straw and filthy mats covering the floor.
There was a pit in a corner of the cage. That was where the stench came from.
This was probably where they kept that thing.
He left the room and walked to the end of the passage. Sure enough, there was an exit, but it was sealed by the same kind of iron gate.
Qingmu glanced at his phone. No signal. He returned to the stairs outside, but there was no signal there either.
He had heard that police phones could contact the outside world even without a signal, but he did not know how to use one, and Hu Xing had already fallen asleep over the table.
The dose of the drug in the watermelon couldn't have been very large. She should wake up before too long, right?
Qingmu lit a cigarette and began pacing around the room.
His slippers slapped against the floor, unusually loud in the empty, silent basement, as though amplifiers had been installed on his soles.
What were they after?
Could this be a shady establishment selling human-meat char siu buns? Had I just delivered myself to their door?
A basement, dim rooms, iron chains, a cage, a putrid stench... All these eerie things together looked so much like scenes from certain movies.
Could the room with the iron cage be an underground dismemberment site?
No!
If that was the case, what about the headless female corpse?
Had Ma Fuqing really sought me out just because of a dream?
Qingmu felt a little agitated, and the slapping of his slippers grew faster.
Just then, the sound of an iron gate moving suddenly came from the passage on the right.
He rushed over as fast as he could.
This time, his slippers made no sound at all as they touched the floor.