Mr. Huang stared at me as if he was surprised at my introduction. I smiled and stepped closer to him, offering a hand. “Well, I must say, as Huang Li’s former classmate, I’m sorry to hear what she’s gone through. Considering our friendship, I felt it right to come and meet you.” With feigned embarrassment, I scratched my head, trying to look as sheepish as possible before I went on, “We’re sorry we came empty-handed; we don’t want to be untactful since you being in your office might attract a lot of unwanted attention.”

A look of comprehension broke on his face just as immediately before a slight hesitation, then he took my hand and shook it.

The shake of hands was deliberate. Before this, my shaking hands with Huang Li, Cao Xuedong, or even Sergeant Zhan at the police’s District Headquarters had always resulted in me experiencing hallucinations as soon as we came into contact. It was my own way so far of determining if anyone was a descendant of Tribe Nine Li. Yet, nothing happened as Huang Li’s father and I shook hands. He spied the troubled frown on my face and asked, “Anything wrong, young man?”

“Nope, nothing at all, Mr. Huang,” I sputtered hastily, “It’s just that recent events, devastating they might be, must not affect you. Do rest well and take care of yourself. You look quite awful.” Mr. Huang nodded gratefully and gestured us towards the sofas.

Once we were settled comfortably into our seats, I started the ball rolling with some small talk, “Huang Li told me that she came here to help you, Mr. Huang?” He nodded. “You know how poorly disciplined she could be. She dropped out of university without heeding my advice then. Truth be told, her mother and I were quite appalled when we heard about her decision.” Mr. Huang paused a moment, as if drifting in the sea of his recollections, before he said again, “You might have heard about my estrangement with her mother when she was a girl. She grew up with her mother and I admit, I have not been a very good father… So when she announced about her dropping out of school, I could only stand by the side and watch through a looking glass as my daughter sank further down into depravity…”

A pall of gloom over us as we felt sorry for him. The sullen, gloomy look on his face was so infectious that we would have believed it real. “There’s no need to blame yourself, Mr. Huang,” I consoled and said, “This is the path Huang Li chose for herself. You can only do so much for her as a parent.” He nodded and extracted a pack of cigarettes that he distributed to us. When I took the pack, I looked and gasped quietly, Gods, high-end cigarettes that cost more than a hundred yuan!

With a click of my lighter, I set Mr. Huang’s cigarette aflame and said through the cigarette between my teeth, “Well, about Cao Xuedong…” The mention of the name hardly affected Mr. Huang. He looked calm and ready, as if he was expecting us to speak about him. He nodded and picked up where I left off, saying, “I know all about Xuedong. That is why I asked my people to bring them here. It was only then I realized how difficult their life was. Xuedong’s a nice chap… Dependable… Responsible and level-headed… yet…”

He paused, supposedly for a beat of grieve, and he spoke again, “I should have predicted all these, knowing my daughter’s temperament. Yet I was mistaken, choosing to believe that she had become a more sensible person after everything. I mean, she’s already of marrying age, and God knows how happy I was for her when I heard she has found herself a man. They have lived together for so many years, so I trust them. That is why I bought them that villa house, so that they have a better place to live in after their marriage… Yet! Goddammit!” He stopped to choke and hold back tears. We consoled him a bit and he finally cooled down, nodding his head.

I decided on a change of pace, so I thought it best to speak about Huang Li’s mother. “So,” I began and said, “Have you recently been in contact with your ex-wife?” It would have been a sensitive question, but Mr. Huang was neither perturbed nor affronted since he was under the impression that this was part of a police questioning. “Actually, she did approach me a few times, citing her intentions for us to re-marry. I know it was all for our daughter. But my company was doing poorly then and I was sailing perilously close to ruin…” He sighed before he went on, “Then a decade passed without any contact between us. I still went to see my daughter, but I only went to her school and she had been careful to avoid mentioning her mother.”

“Don’t blame yourself, Mr. Huang,” I smiled gently and said, “Worse things happen at sea. Who knows, you could be landing on your feet after this. Ah, yes. That reminds me. Huang Li has another friend, who is also a former classmate of hers from university by the name of Lu Shengnan. Last I heard, she’s come here to work at Huang Li’s invitation?”

The question stunned Mr. Huang until he could shake his head with a bewildered look on his face. “Lu Shengnan? I’m afraid I have not heard about this before. But I suppose you can go down to Human Resources and speak to them. My daughter has quite a considerable position here and she is accorded certain freedoms; I’m afraid I do not really vet every decision she’s made.” I nodded. This at least, I’m willing to believe, I thought. No owner of such a large company could ever hope to know every single detail about every member of his staff.

I stole a look at my watch and realized that it was almost noon. I rose to my feet, still smiling, and I said, “Well, I guess that’s all for today, Mr. Huang. We’d best not to take up too much of your time.” With a brusque wave, I motioned for everyone to leave. “How about lunch together?” Mr. Huang invited. The notion of food slowed Chongxi to a dawdle although Lin Feng, quick to note Chongxi’s penchant for food, gave him an inconspicuous shove and eased him out of the door. “You’re too kind, Mr. Huang. But I’m afraid we still have other business to get to.” Mr. Huang just said that for politeness. Realizing our persistence to leave, he decided to walk us out and only returned to his office once he saw us into the elevator.

“So, have you noticed anything, Shiyan?” Zheng Shuang looked as if he had been waiting for the whole morning to ask me this. I could only nod, although I did not disclose anything. We walked out of the elevator when we reached the ground floor to find the security guard mooning over his lunchbox. He greeted us warmly when we came out and I teased him, saying, “Wow, that looks mightily good!” “Of course,” he returned and said as he whisked us towards the exit, “Our company treats its employees well!”

Once stepping out of the gates, Zheng Shuang pestered again, saying, “So what did you find?” I scowled at him and said, “No. Not here. Let’s go somewhere else.” Zheng Shuang, finally understanding me, nodded and went to his car where he followed behind ours away from the compound.

We left the place and went first back to Unit 105. After all, Zheng Shuang, in his police uniform and his wheezing around in a police patrol car, would undoubtedly attract much obnoxious attention and make everyone uneasy.

Zheng Shuang left his patrol car parked outside Unit 105 and got himself a change of clothes before he rode in our car. We found a nice restaurant and placed our order, and only then, I gave a nod to Zheng Shuang, indicating it was finally time to let the secret out in the open.

“This Mr. Huang is putting up a very good show. But whether he’s speaking the truth or not, something is terribly wrong with him,” I said as I took a long breath off my cigarette. Chongxi attested with a nod, saying, “Indeed. This Mr. Huang looks terribly tired. Not because he’s lacking rest, but I feel it’s because he’s been using some sort of black magic.” “Not only that,” I added, “According to Mr. Huang, he’s very close to Huang Li. But his daughter’s been painting an altogether different picture of him that we can see from her diary. She was afraid of him. Terribly afraid, so to speak. Therefore, I believe we’ve encountered only one of the many faces of Mr. Huang, the infernal and diabolical father of Huang Li. Yet there is one thing I’m puzzled with. I shook his hands just now and I felt nothing. Is he not a member of Tribe Nine Li, I wonder…” And my voice ended to the shaking heads of everyone around me.

As the servers filed in one by one, buzzing like a hive of busy bees as they scurried about to set our table, I reached for some food and said, “We’ll have to go again tonight. We need to know more about this Mr. Huang. I say we sneak in quietly.” Zheng Shuang mumbled a “How?” through his full mouth and I shook my head. “You’ll be staying outside. Keep watch outside that office building we went to just now. The six of us can go in. You can back us up if we get into trouble.” He beamed broadly, looking visibly relieved, saying, “Gods, I thought you want me to come with you! Honestly, Shiyan, I nearly shat myself the last time we fought against that bat demon of that Creed of the Eight Trigrams!” Chongxi butted in, “Look at you. If only you had more courage as you did in your previous life!” Just then, three voices quipped from his waist, squealing, “Indeed!” “Indeed!” “Indeed!”

That startled Zheng Shuang. For a moment, he thought he was hearing things. He did not know where did the three female voices come from, only that they seemed to have originated from somewhere near Chongxi’s lower body. Their eyes met and for several awkward moments, none of them could say anything.

But Big Sister crashed into the conversation with the abruptness of an avalanche, splitting the embarrassing moment as she screamed, “All right, all right! It’s no good prattling about useless piffle! Let’s get straight into making our plans for tonight!” Her voice was thick with the accent commonly found on people of north-eastern parts, even though she was but only a fox demon from the north-eastern parts.

I shrugged and said with a smile, “The same as how we settled the case at Unit 104. We go at night. Just be careful not to alert anyone, especially that security guard…”

Fast forward to an hour before midnight, the Hour of the Rat. We stood just outside the premise compound of Huang Li’s father company, with the gentle winds of the night howling and rustling by our ears. The pitch-black darkness around us looked ominous and menacing as if hidden terrors were lurking about, waiting to pounce on us and the only single glimmer of light from a settlement not far away did little to provide us with any comfort.

Quietly as we could, we slunk towards the office block. Then something green and luminous flitted by the edge of our visions, its ghostly shimmer in the field of blackness only made it too obvious for anyone to miss and all of our heads twisted in unison to look.

The emerald-green fire flickered gently along a wall not far away, bobbing and hovering lazily in the dark with all of us following closely the moments of what we realized was a will-o’-the-wisp.