My watch was showing three when we reached town. Edelweiss and Na San followed along with me at the wheel on my old Volkswagen with Lin Feng driving himself, Chongxi, and Big Sister, in another car, following closely behind. “Shiyan,” Lin Feng called to ask, “Where to now?”

I pondered for a second and answered, “Lu Shengnan’s teaching center first. That’s our only lead for now.” Lin Feng snorted an assent and the call clicked off.

Our cars, both moving in a file, came to the street bustling with commercial activity and to our dismay, there were no parking spots available. We circled around and finally found a couple not far away from our destination. In busy shopping areas like this one, beggars can’t be choosy.

Our party waded through the currents of shoppers until we finally reached the entrance leading up to Lu Shengnan’s place upstairs. Unexpectedly, we found the entrance locked by a sturdy-looking padlock. Lin Feng and I looked at Chongxi simultaneously, who, in turn, began to look around at our heads.

“What are you looking for?” Big Sister scowled when his eyes traveled above her head. “A hairpin,” Chongxi muttered, still looking around. She shook her head, indicating she had none. Chongxi’s eyes wandered to Edelweiss, who promptly stroked her long hair and shook her head apologetically too. “If only Xiao Yu’s here,” he breathed.

Big Sister and Edelweiss were still unaware of Chongxi’s other talent in picking locks. “What do you want a hairpin for?” The former asked and Chongxi looked strangely at her. “To pick the ruddy lock, what else?” Big Sister and Edelweiss turned to face each other and they shared an incredulous look.

A hand patted on Chongxi’s shoulder. It was Lin Feng, with his other hand pointing somewhere. We followed his hand and saw he was gesturing at a store selling hair products. “That shop might have what you need,” he said and Chongxi patted the back of his head, exclaiming, “Right, what luck!” We walked off the pavement and stepped on the asphalt to cross the road. Chongxi’s hands nearly grabbed for the handle of the door into the shop when he stopped. He whirled around, asking, “Anyone of you brought any cash?” I was just stealing the opportunity to light myself a cigarette and the question made me choke and I coughed. Everyone dug through their pockets and revealed despondent frowns; none of us had brought any money.

It was quite embarrassing. A bunch of young people standing in the middle of a busy shopping street with not even a dollar between us! We looked at each other, all of us unanimously lost for words.

Then, out of nowhere, the door of the hair product shop suddenly swung opened and a beefy torso of a man peeked out and when he noticed us, he cast a peculiar look at us, a group of youngsters bunching together in front of his shop. He must be puzzled by the sight of us huddling in front of his entrance and had come out to check. “What do you people want?” he asked and I broke into a benign smile. “We’re the friends of the proprietor of the first-story teaching center just opposite. She asked us to come here to help collect some things for her. But I’m afraid I have lost the keys, so we’re here, helpless and hopeless.”

The huge bear of a man walked out and stood in front of us. He took a closer look at each of us and asked suspiciously, “What’s the surname of the girl who runs the center here?” “Lu. Her name is Lu Shengnan. I’m her former classmate from university and a good friend of hers. Trust me, we’re not bad people. We’ve been here before. You might recognize us from back then.” The man studied us for several seconds, muttering under his breath, “Well, you do look kinda familiar…” “Of course I am!” I quipped.

He plucked a set of keys off his belt and riffled through the keys to one in particular. He detached it and dangled it in front of us, saying, “This is a spare key for her place.” He led us back across the road and he unlocked the padlock for us.

We stared at each other, dumbstruck and dazed. Big Sister, ever the impatient one, blurted immediately, “How is it that you have the key to her place?” The thickset man smiled gently, saying, “This little lass knows how unkempt she is, so she had a spare made just in case she lost her main. She handed it to me so that I could keep it for rainy days.” The answer made Big Sister broke into a little giggle. “She’s a girl!” She exclaimed, “Girls should be tidy and neat!” The big man cackled himself. “Well, I would not have believed it if it was somebody else. But if it’s Lu Shengnan, I’d say that’s her to a tee. She’s a little boy in the husk of a girl.” The big man chuckled a tacit agreement. “All right,” he said, “Go get your stuff. Just let me know when you’re leaving and I’ll come to lock up.” And he trotted back across the road.

We shared a quick look at each other right before I dove headfirst into the open threshold.

We climbed up a flight of stairs to find everything in the scene of Lu Shengnan’s abduction in complete disarray. Guzhengs were still there, but the benches were scattered around everywhere, bearing the telltale vestiges of a scuffle. She must have been taken in a hurry and against her will, given how chaotic everything was here. But there was all to what we could find. Even with my Spirit Sight, I could find nothing amiss. In fact, if not for our prior knowledge about her abduction, we would have thought she was only leaving in a hurry and the mess was only inadvertent. Big Sister circled twice around the guzhengs, sniffing like a dog as she moved and she said, “Five men and one woman.”

“HUH?!” Everyone gasped. Big Sister spun around like a ballerina and said, “Five men and one woman were here. That one woman must be Lu Shengnan so that leaves the rest of the five men strangers.” “So you can even tell whether it’s male or female by their scent?” She gave me an absurd look that one would get if one was telling the obvious, “Of course, dummy.” “Why haven’t you told me about this before?” “You didn’t ask,” she muttered with the same look she would throw at fools spouting nonsense and I could only keep quiet.

I shook my head heavily, with no more stomach to bicker with Big Sister, and I moved towards the stairs. I wanted to check the second story as well.

Everything was shipshape upstairs. The furniture pieces were all arranged neatly as if nothing had happened here. Lin Feng and Chongxi came up to join me and after a thorough inspection, we found nothing nevertheless.

Standing at the stairwell, I shouted for Big Sister, “Hey, Big Sister, come on up! I need your sense of smell here!” She came up without replying, with Edelweiss and Na San towing behind. “Come, sniff around and see if you find anything,” I said to her.

Big Sister made a few rounds and pronounced, “There’s only the smell of you three and the girl Lu Shengnan. No one else was here.” I inhaled deeply on my cigarette, saying, “So that means those people did not come up here when Lu Shengnan was taken.” “That looks like it,” Big Sister agreed.

We retreated back downstairs to the first floor. For Heaven’s sake, I grieved quietly, Lu Shengnan’s been taken by Huang Li but we’re all out of leads. I sat in front of Lu Shengnan’s own zither, the one she used for her lessons, and pondered silently. Could she be at the big house opposite mine? No, hardly likely. That place’s now under the microscopic scrutiny of the District Police Department. But where else could she be?

I was so deep in thought that my friend knew enough not to intrude. They sat down quietly around me, but the most I could give them were dejected frowns and a few shakes of my head. I really could not think of where Lu Shengnan would be taken to. Huang Li would surely try to avoid leaving anything for us to trace her if she only wanted to take Lu Shengnan. But I was sure her goals were not so provincial. At least she would never be so much as a fool to deliberately avoid me.

Then my phone rang, interrupting me. I peered at my screen and saw it was a WeChat message from Zheng Shuang, saying, “Where are you Shiyan?” I tapped on his name and called him directly, but my call was rejected, much to my surprise. So I wanted to send him a message to ask him what was wrong when another message from him came before I could hit the “Send” button. It said, “Busy. At a crime scene.” I replied with another, saying, “I’m in town. What’s wrong?”

For minutes I expected another message from Zheng Shuang but nothing came. I stowed away my phone but only then my phone buzzed again. Zheng Shuang had replied, finally, and the message said, “I’m also in town. There’s been a development with the case about you being framed for murder.”

What development?! I almost blabbed out loud. “What do you mean by development?” was the reply I sent back to Zheng Shuang and he sent back a short video clip. I tapped on it and it buffered and when it played, I almost yelped. The video depicted a bunch of policemen escorting a woman out of a large house. The house which I recognized immediately as Unit 104 opposite mine! The very same one where my friends and I had been trapped inside the Bamen Dunjia enchantment! And the woman who was being escorted out was an unnervingly-placid Huang Li!

My phone shuddered again, heralding another new message from Zheng Shuang, saying, “It’s too complicated to tell. It’s best you come personally!” For a moment, I was utterly petrified by the indescribable shock as my brain grappled to process what I just saw. Heavens, Huang Li’s been found and arrested? But what about Lu Shengnan? Is Jin Qichen with her?

I slapped my thigh and sprang up like a jack-in-the-box, giving everyone such a fright that some of them jumped. Na San instinctively rose up right after me and bent down to kneel. But I ignored him and barked, “We need to go back to the villa!”