Huang Ting took his chopsticks and raised both his hands slightly, signalling his surrender. He said, “Go on.”

Yu Hao shrugged and continued blanching his meat. Both of them didn’t talk for a moment. Huang Ting stared at the blanched meat seriously, then looked down at his watch, and continued blanching for a few seconds.

Yu Hao, “……”

Huang Ting looked up at Yu Hao and said, “I’m someone who doesn’t have a lot of friends.”

“I can tell.” Yu Hao answered.

“You and I, you and Zhou Sheng,” Huang Ting thought for a bit and took out the meat from the hot pot. He said, “In the order of acquaintanceship, who’s first and who came after?”

Yu Hao didn’t expect Huang Ting to suddenly ask this. He answered, “We knew each other first. Chen Laoshi hadn’t come then.”

Huang Ting said, “At the gate of your college, if I remember correctly you were wearing a sports jacket. It was very cold. You carried a black backpack, and there were a lot of things in it. You had just returned after one of your major’s classes, and you were holding a ‘Cultivation of Ideological Morality’ book in your hands.”

“Yes.” Yu Hao raised an eyebrow slightly and said, “You remember it very well.”

The corner of Huang Ting’s mouth raised. He said, “When I saw you for the first time that day, I knew that you weren’t the one who stole the thing.”

Yu Hao said, “Thank you.”

“But due to my profession,” Huang Ting answered, “I couldn’t draw a conclusion straight away.”

Yu Hao said, “That’s okay. You sent Chen Laoshi a voice message after that, I knew you believed me.”

“Oh?” Huang Ting seemed pensive, then nodded. “Oh.”

“You actually weren’t there to be a criminal detective, right?” Yu Hao frowned. “When you were in Ying City, what did you want to investigate? You were sent there by the central authorities?”

Huang Ting sidestepped the question, “There are many things that you wouldn’t have thought about carefully at first. Sure enough, after becoming a reporter, you’re slowly starting to figure it out.”

Yu Hao had just asked the question casually, but right now, his heart started beating wildly. Their goal was to investigate the Golden Crow Wheel? That’s not right though, it didn’t match up with his and Zhou Sheng’s speculation. They couldn’t have known of the Golden Crow Wheel’s existence that early on.

“Eat.” Huang Ting said, “Don’t blanch the meat for too long.”

Yu Hao could roughly guess the purpose of this meal, and had to admire Huang Ting for how seasoned he was. If he looked for Yu Hao to try and get information out of him one-on-one, although Yu Hao couldn’t hide everything from him completely right now, he wasn’t as sweet and naive he was back then, so he was definitely capable of messing up Huang Ting’s rhythm. However, of all the things he could have done, he had invited Yu Hao over for a hot pot meal at his house. People’s defenses are at their weakest when they eat. As they blanch their ingredients, their gazes shift, and they had to eat while chatting. Just a slight pause in their movements at any time would betray their inner thoughts, and he had allowed Huang Ting to accurately capture all sorts of moments of astonishment and surprise.

“Ou Weihong’s case has a wide range of implications.” Huang Ting said, “Of course, there are other cases of corruption. I’m relatively more familiar with Ying City, so I was sent there as they hoped that I could play the role of an informer. That’s very normal.”

“Un.” Yu Hao said, “You gave me a scare. I thought you targeted the Golden Crow Wheel from the start.”

Yu Hao didn’t want to beat around the bush with him anymore and decided to first throw a bomb at Huang Ting to see how he would react.

Sure enough, Huang Ting was stunned for a short moment, but immediately resumed his calm. He said, “Yu Hao, can you follow the script? I haven’t finished laying out the groundwork. Are you sure you want to dive right to the main point like this?”

“Let’s just follow each other.” Yu Hao said with a smile, “Isn’t it better to get straight to the point? What about this, let’s play a game ba?”

Huang Ting looked at Yu Hao. Yu Hao thought about it for a bit, then said, “I’ll answer one of your questions, then you’ll answer one of my questions.”

Huang Ting, “This ‘guest acting as the host ‘ move of yours is really amazing. Yu Hao, you have to understand, I’ve always regarded you guys as friends, as my younger brothers, from beginning to end…”

“Don’t utter such empty words.” Yu Hao said, “Do you want to play or not, Huang Ting Ge?”

Huang Ting put down his chopsticks. He fell silent for a short moment, then rolled his sleeves up and did a finger guessing gesture. Yu Hao was baffled. Huang Ting took the food outside for now since they were more or less done with their meal anyway.

“Come.” Huang Ting lifted the quilt and said, “In that case, let’s just chat under the quilt for a bit ba?”

Yu Hao, “Huang Ting Ge, I don’t think you’ve been in a rather unusual state of mind recently.”

“That’s what everybody says.” Huang Ting answered, then patted the pillow at the side again.

Yu Hao’s heart thumped. It couldn’t be that Huang Ting already knew how to use the Golden Crow Wheel ba? He didn’t reject him again and lay on the bed. Huang Ting gave him a bolster to lean on, covered them with the quilt, and said, “After having one’s fill, nothing is better than just lying down…”

Yu Hao, “……”

After that, Huang Ting got a remote control from somewhere and turned off the lights. The room turned pitch dark. He pressed down on the remote control, and a blue light shone from the opposite wall.

Yu Hao, “Damn you…and I was wondering what you wanted to do!”

“What do you think?” Huang Ting looked at Yu Hao, but Yu Hao was staring at the opposite wall. Huang Ting’s room was truly too small. The projection was projected onto the wall opposite the bed, and Huang Ting might usually use such a projection to watch movies as a form of entertainment.

“It shouldn’t be too bad to solve the problem of being single by watching movies like this ba.” Yu Hao said.

“Immerse yourself in the experience.”

Huang Ting and Ou Qihang just so happened to be at two ends of a spectrum; Ou Qihang could kill the chat at any time, while Huang Ting can continue the conversation no matter what the topic was.

Huang Ting pressed a button, and a gigantic Golden Crow Wheel instantly appeared in the projection that occupied the entire wall.

Yu Hao, “!!!”

The Golden Crow Wheel was extremely bright, and its edges were similar to that of solar prominences as it emitted flames and light. Yu Hao even had a sort of misperception that he had seen the real Golden Crow Wheel in reality!

Huang Ting said, “Very surprised?”

“Indeed.” Yu Hao answered. “I never expected it at all.”

“For this to appear in my hands.” Huang Ting continued.

Yu Hao, “No, I never expected that you guys would actually play this sort of GIF in a PPT. Won’t it lag a lot when you open it?”

Huang Ting, “……”

Yu Hao, “Continue going through the slides ah, why do you have such a strange expression on your face?”

Yu Hao knew the trick to interacting with Huang Ting, which was to not let him lead you by the nose. You definitely couldn’t make moves according to common sense, otherwise he would lead you far away.

Huang Ting pressed the remote control again, and Yu Hao snatched it in a flash. Huang Ting wanted to snatch it back, but Yu Hao began pressing it by himself. Huang Ting coughed harshly a few times and gave up on seizing the remote control back. Yu Hao flipped to the next slide, and the second slide was something he had seen before — the analysis report done at STA when Chen Yekai had handed it over to them.

Yu Hao frowned. Huang Ting said, “When did we start targeting you guys?”

Yu Hao muttered, “Ever since Ou Qihang lost his memory.”

“No.” Huang Ting answered, “Even earlier. It was when Nicky decided to give up everything and go to Argentina to end his life.”

Yu Hao fell silent. He pressed the remote control and continued. Immediately afterwards, the second page of a research report appeared, and everything was written in English. When Yu Hao saw that page, he instantly became nervous, but he just glanced at it calmly and feigned an expression like he couldn’t really understand it, then went onto the next slide. The next slide was a photo of him, Chen Yekai and Zhou Sheng eating breakfast at a hotel. From the angle at which the photo was taken, he seemed to have been in the hotel’s garden.

Yu Hao, “You were really well-hidden.”

“So were you guys.” Huang Ting extended a hand. Yu Hao gave in and returned the remote control to him.

“It shouldn’t be difficult for reporters such as yourself to understand,” Huang Ting said, “In order to dig out the truth, you need to have the willpower to persevere, in addition to a little bit of luck. Yekai suffered from quite severe psychological problems during that period…I suggested for him to find a counsellor, but then the situation just eventually got worse and worse.”

“You knew that he wanted to go to Argentina to commit suicide,” Yu Hao said, “Didn’t you think of stopping him?”

“Of course I did.” Huang Ting said, “Do you have some kind of misunderstanding about me? It’s just that it’s not easy for criminal detectives to apply for an Argentinian visa. You know, I had already bought my ticket, but before I left, I realised that he had returned again. After following him the whole way, I found out that the three of you got a room at this hotel.” After he spoke, Huang Ting suddenly laughed. He continued, “Can you explain why?”

“Don’t you already know everything?” Yu Hao turned his head sideways to look at Huang Ting. Both of them had a quilt covering them as they lay in bed.

“Yu Hao.” Huang Ting said, “I’m standing on your side. It may not be easy to establish this trust, but when we met for the first time, I had given you this trust without reservation.”

Yu Hao remembered what Huang Ting had said to Chen Yekai through WeChat on the premise of insufficient evidence in the case when he was wronged by Shi Liang for stealing a watch.

“Yes, I was very touched.” Yu Hao said, “At that time, there weren’t a lot of people who believed in me.”

“I looked for you and not for Zhou Sheng to talk about this precisely because of this.” Huang Ting said calmly, “Yekai, Zhou Sheng, you, Xiao Ou, you’re the only one amongst you guys who may be willing to tell me the truth. Although I’ve already put together a rough idea, I hope that I can hear about everything that had happened from you.”

—

Juurensha: Oh woooow, I had no idea they knew so early on.