Gong Yingxian was working day and night on the investigation, while Ren Yi was busy studying the evidence and case materials from the Gong family arson case and handling affairs at the brigade. They had not seen each other for a week or two. Whenever they occasionally contacted each other, it was always about one case or another. The two of them had a tacit understanding not to mention anything personal. As long as they avoided personal matters, their relationship looked perfectly normal.
Recently, Ren Yi often looked through the few photos he had secretly taken of Gong Yingxian and secretly relived that kiss. He regretted that when their relationship had been at its best, they had never taken a single photo together. Two grown men holding up a phone to take a selfie did seem a little girly, but looking back now, he really regretted caring so much about that.
He wondered if they would ever have the chance to take a photo together in the future—one where they were both facing the camera and smiling genuinely from the heart.
Over the past few days, Ren Yi had also found time to visit his father. The old man was being very well cared for at the hospital and had even gained a few pounds. He praised the environment and the care there nonstop, which gave Ren Yi tremendous peace of mind.
This time, Qu Yangbo had gone with him, because everyone from the leadership down to the firefighters, including Gong Yingxian, had forbidden him from going anywhere alone.
On the way back, while they were chatting, Qu Yangbo suddenly pointed at a bus stop and said in surprise, “Hey, isn’t that that actor?”
Ren Yi turned his head. On the huge billboard at the bus stop was an advertisement for a beverage featuring a group of celebrities. They were wearing similar outfits, apparently from some variety show. Among them was a familiar face—Qi Xiao.
Ren Yi was a little surprised. “That really looks like Qi Xiao.”
It had only been a quick glance, so he wasn’t entirely sure.
“I’ll check.” Qu Yangbo pulled out his phone. “It is him. He just appeared on this really popular variety show. The gossip news says he’s one of the artists Song Media is focusing on promoting this year. Oh, and the movie he just got cast in—he’s playing a supporting role for Zhou Xiang.”
Ren Yi thought to himself that Song Juhan really did keep his word. He hadn’t expected Song Juhan to promote Qi Xiao this much.
“Looks like he’s finally going to make it big. That’s great.”
“You two…”
“We don’t keep in touch anymore.”
Ren Yi remembered the last time he had seen Qi Xiao and the things Qi Xiao had said. Now, it seemed they were about to come true. He was genuinely happy for Qi Xiao.
“When I saw the guy in person before, he was handsome, sure, but he didn’t have that…” Qu Yangbo searched for the right words. “How should I put it? That kind of glowing feeling Song Juhan has. Now that they’ve styled him up a little, though, he really does look handsome.”
“A person’s presence has to be cultivated.”
“Styling is important too.” Qu Yangbo glanced at Ren Yi and hesitated.
Ren Yi caught the furtive look. “You’re trying to ask about me and Gong Yingxian again, aren’t you? I think you’re seriously too bored. Why don’t you use your free time to get yourself a girlfriend?”
“Free my ass. I can’t even handle comforting the two of you. How am I supposed to find time for a girlfriend?”
“He and I are still the same. We only talk about work, not personal matters.”
“Actually, he really treats you well. He’s taking such good care of your father.”
Ren Yi gave a bitter smile. “He’s perfect in every way. He just doesn’t like me.”
Qu Yangbo let out a soft sigh. “I’m really not used to hearing you say something so poetic.”
Ren Yi laughed and cursed, “Get lost.”
“What about the case? Any news?”
“They found where the bombs were being made. They’re probably close to identifying one of the organization’s key members. They’re investigating along multiple lines at the same time. The entire substation is so busy everyone’s running around like crazy. He probably doesn’t even have time to eat or sleep again.”
“Worried about him?”
“…What good would it do?”
“Actually, I think what he said that day was obviously something he said in anger. Don’t take it too much to heart. If he really hated you, he would’ve stayed away from you a long time ago. It’s obvious that he still cares about you.”
“Maybe he just needs me to help him investigate the case.”
“Don’t think of him as so cold-hearted. The two of you have been through life and death together, and more than once. That’s not an ordinary kind of bond.”
Ren Yi deliberately shrugged as though he didn’t care.
Just then, his phone rang. He pulled it out and saw that it was Gong Yingxian calling.
Qu Yangbo raised his eyebrows suggestively. “Him?”
“Drive your car.”
Ren Yi answered the phone. “Hello.”
“You just went to visit your father?”
“Yes. We’re on our way back. Old Ren is doing pretty well at the hospital. He’s actually quite happy there. Thanks.”
“You don’t have to thank me.” Gong Yingxian said, “There’s something I need your help with.”
“Go ahead.”
“We found something new at that abandoned amusement park.”
“What did you find?”
“There are bodies in a well.”
“Where is the amusement park?”
“It’s not in your jurisdiction. We don’t want to contact the local fire brigade. Too many people means too many mouths. We’re trying to keep the entire investigation as confidential as possible.”
“Okay. Send me the address. We’ll head over now.”
After hanging up, Qu Yangbo asked, “What’s going on?”
Ren Yi said helplessly, “Going down a well to dig up a corpse. You coming?”
Qu Yangbo’s entire face scrunched up. He reluctantly said, “Fine.”
Ren Yi looked at the address Gong Yingxian had sent.
“This should be in the jurisdiction of the Western Suburb Brigade. Do you know their captain? We should at least give the captain a heads-up. We don’t need to tell him exactly what’s going on, but if they happen to see our truck, it’ll be easy for them to misunderstand.”
“That’s in another district. I don’t know him. I’ll have the chief of staff coordinate with them.”
On the way, Ren Yi called Gao Ge and told him to bring a truck out. They would head directly there themselves to save some time.
They reached the scene before dark.
Their brigade’s fire truck had already arrived. Gao Ge and Gong Yingxian were talking beside the well.
Ren Yi swept his eyes over the scene, and his heart sank.
It wasn’t a sewage inspection well. It was a foundation well.
Getting down there was on an entirely different level of difficulty from entering a sewage well.
“Captain Ren! Instructor!” Gao Ge spotted them from a distance and shouted, “This well is conservatively estimated to be fucking twenty meters deep!”
Qu Yangbo clicked his tongue. “A foundation well?”
Ren Yi walked over. His eyes met Gong Yingxian’s, and everything that had happened at Gong Yingxian’s home that day immediately flashed through his mind.
Gong Yingxian had clearly thought of the same thing. The two of them instinctively avoided each other’s gaze.
Gong Yingxian coughed lightly. “Captain Gao said this well is very difficult to enter?”
Ren Yi stood at the edge of the well and looked down.
It was cramped and pitch-black, with no bottom in sight. Just looking at it made one’s skin crawl.
This was a typical foundation well, probably left behind by some building that had been abandoned halfway through construction at the amusement park.
Foundation wells were different from sewage inspection wells. Sewage wells were designed with the assumption that people would need to go down for maintenance. The environment might be terrible, but as long as you had the proper equipment, it was manageable.
Foundation wells, however, were used for pouring concrete. They were not designed for people to enter. They were narrow and deep, and twenty-plus meters was not even particularly deep. Foundation wells for many high-rise buildings could easily be over a hundred meters deep. If something fell down one, it was like falling into the center of the earth—you would never see it again in your lifetime.
They were an excellent place to dispose of a body.
Gao Ge said, “This well isn’t especially narrow. It’s about seventy centimeters in diameter. We can get someone down there, but it’ll be very difficult.”
He glanced at Ren Yi.
“If there were a living person down there, we’d have to go down no matter what. But a dead person…”
Ren Yi said nothing.
He understood what Gao Ge meant. Although it was possible to go down, there were dangers involved. Taking that kind of risk just to retrieve a body might not be worth it.
The dangers of a foundation well were numerous. Aside from being narrow and deep, the environment underground was extremely harsh: dark, oxygen-deficient, damp and cold, and claustrophobic. There was also the risk of collapse. It was a dual test of a firefighter’s physical endurance and psychological strength.
The only advantage was that it was winter now and the soil was frozen solid, making a collapse relatively unlikely.
Gong Yingxian said, “Ren Yi, if it’s too dangerous, forget it.”
“How did you find out there was a body down there? You can’t even see the bottom in broad daylight.”
“We inferred it from the evidence we found at the amusement park, combined with Wang Rui’s incoherent testimony. During the day, we lowered instruments down and confirmed that there is indeed a body.”
Ren Yi stood up and sighed.
“A few years ago, we also had a case involving the rescue of someone from a foundation well. Gao Ge, you weren’t here yet, but you should have studied the case.”
Gao Ge nodded. “The Zhongnan Building construction site. A two-year-old child belonging to a married pair of workers fell into one.”
Ren Yi said, “That one was relatively wide. A person could barely get down. That well was so narrow that… we searched all over Beijing for the smallest, thinnest firefighter we had, and none of them could fit. Only a child could get down.”
“What happened afterward?” Gong Yingxian asked.
“There was no other way. Everyone knew the child was definitely dead. There was groundwater down there too, but we still had to rescue him. The only thing we could do was excavate the surrounding soil. It took eight days before we finally dug out the child’s body.”
Ren Yi looked at the well again.
He wanted to ask whether Gong Yingxian was anxious.
But then he realized how pointless the question was.
How could he not be anxious?
The entire Hongwu Substation was racing against time to investigate the case, terrified that if they were even one step too late, Purple Flame would do something even more terrible and hurt more people.
The body in this well might provide them with crucial evidence.
Gong Yingxian nodded. “How many days would it take to excavate it? I’ll find people as quickly as possible.”
“Forget it. It’s the coldest part of winter right now. The soil is completely frozen. It would waste too much time.”
Ren Yi took a deep breath.
“Let’s go down. I’ll go first and check the way.”
Gong Yingxian immediately regretted it.
He hadn’t previously understood how dangerous entering a foundation well could be. Gao Ge had just explained a great deal to him. The moment he thought about lowering Ren Yi down there, his heart tightened.
He immediately said, “We should excavate it instead. Like you said, there’s no one alive down there. It’s not worth taking this kind of risk.”
“At least there’s no risk of collapse right now. We should still try. If the body down there can provide useful clues, then it’s worth it.”
Gong Yingxian wanted to say something but stopped himself, looking at Ren Yi with worry.
“It’s fine. I’ll be careful.”
Gao Ge said helplessly, “You go first. I’ll be second.”
“Forget it. You’re tall and heavy. Let Sun Dingyi go second.”
Gao Ge busied himself preparing all the equipment and gear.
They set up a support frame over the well. First, they lowered an oxygen cylinder to the bottom and began “supplying oxygen” to the well.
Seeing Gong Yingxian standing to the side with his brows tightly furrowed and his expression dark, Ren Yi took the initiative to say, “Don’t worry. This isn’t my first time going down a well. Actually, the most dangerous thing about foundation wells is falling soil and collapse. In northern winters, that’s generally not a problem. If I run short of oxygen or get too exhausted, they’ll pull me back up immediately. Nothing serious will happen.”
Gong Yingxian said in a muffled voice, “If I’d known it was this dangerous, I wouldn’t have let you come.”
Qu Yangbo was standing not far from them. Hearing this exchange, his eyebrows immediately shot up.
Ren Yi smiled faintly. “My job is dangerous like this every day, and I’m still alive and kicking. If this were the captain of the Western Suburb Brigade instead, and he knew that going down this well could help you catch the arsonist sooner, he’d go down too. Don’t worry.”
Gong Yingxian stared at Ren Yi and gently bit his lip.
“Captain Ren, we’re ready.”
Ren Yi returned to the edge of the well. He took off his heavy padded coat and changed into lightweight rescue clothing.
At this point, his cold-weather layers consisted of thermal underwear, a sweater, his rescue suit, and several disposable heat packs. In a winter night of minus twelve degrees Celsius, they were barely better than nothing.
He began warming up.
Gong Yingxian watched as Ren Yi’s ears quickly turned red from the cold, and his heart ached terribly.
After warming up, Ren Yi put on his mask and attached the rescue rope, flashlight, radio, and other equipment. Suspended from the rope, he was slowly lowered into the well by the firefighters.
The four walls of the foundation well were damp and freezing cold. With every meter he descended, the temperature dropped further. Given his build, even the slightest movement caused him to brush against the walls.
The farther down he went, the more oppressed Ren Yi felt.
All around him was frozen earth exuding icy cold air. Above him was a cramped patch of night sky. Beneath his feet was a pitch-black abyss.
It was as though he had been wrapped inside a bottomless pipe, or swallowed into the enormous mouth of some monster, suspended between above and below with nowhere to stand or fall.
There was only an unknown terror seeping into every pore of his body.
Ren Yi worked hard to regulate his breathing.
He couldn’t carry an air tank down there. He had to rely entirely on his mask to filter the air in the well. The air underground was already thin, and becoming too tense would only make him run short of oxygen faster.
He was already trembling violently from the cold. His hands and feet were beginning to stiffen.
“Ren Yi, how are you?” Gong Yingxian shouted from above.
“Keep lowering me,” Ren Yi said through his trembling.
Finally, Ren Yi’s feet touched the ground.
He spoke into the radio.
“I’m at the bottom.”
“Twenty-four meters,” Gao Ge said.
Ren Yi raised his hand to adjust the angle of his flashlight, but his fingers were too stiff. He failed to hold on to it, and the flashlight hit the ground with a loud clang.
He looked down.
His heart felt as though someone had struck it with a heavy hammer.
He was standing on ice.
A thin layer of soil covered the ice, and when the powerful beam of the flashlight penetrated the soil, a skull suddenly appeared beneath the surface.
Its deep, black eye sockets were directly beneath the flashlight.
Its entire face was turned upward, as though it had been staring at the sky until the moment it died, watching that tiny patch of heaven above it alternate between day and night while its own body remained buried in a deep well.
If the dead had souls, how could such a person willingly enter the cycle of reincarnation?
Ren Yi sucked in a sharp breath.
He had already been mentally prepared for what he might find down there, but he still felt a chill run through his entire body.
“How is it? Do you see it?”
“I see it, but it’s difficult to retrieve. It’s frozen solid.”
Ren Yi tried to crouch down to pick up the flashlight, only to find that he could barely manage a half-squat. His hands couldn’t even reach the ice.
In the end, he had to use both his hands and feet to retrieve the flashlight.
In the oxygen-deficient environment, that simple movement had already left him gasping for breath.
“We need to melt the ice first,” Qu Yangbo said.
Gong Yingxian frowned. “No matter what method we use to melt the ice, it’ll damage the body. Only by preserving the body’s current condition as much as possible can the forensic examiner provide an assessment closest to the truth.”
Ren Yi felt his breathing becoming increasingly difficult. The small amount of air being pumped into the bottom of the well had probably already been mostly consumed by him.
He said, “Then we’ll have to break it. That should cause less damage to the body. The ice layer isn’t very thick.”
“If we break it, you’ll have to go down upside down,” Sun Dingyi said. “Going down upside down makes it easier to run short of oxygen. We would have to switch people frequently, and I’m afraid we don’t have enough manpower.”
Ren Yi began to feel dizzy, and he was already too cold to bear it.
“Pull me up first.”
Everyone hurriedly pulled Ren Yi back up.
Once he reached the surface, Ren Yi removed his mask and gulped down huge breaths of fresh air.
His lips had already turned purple from the cold, and his entire body was shaking violently.
Gong Yingxian had just been about to step forward and support him when Qu Yangbo beat him to it. He draped a coat over Ren Yi’s shoulders, pulled him upright, and shoved a thermos into his hands.
“Drink some hot water. Hurry.”
A look of disappointment immediately appeared in Gong Yingxian’s eyes.
Ren Yi took a trembling sip of water.
“There’s not enough oxygen down there. Get a ventilation fan and completely replace the air. And we don’t have enough people either. We still need to ask the Western Suburb Brigade for help.”
Qu Yangbo said, “You rest. I’ll arrange it.”
After Qu Yangbo left, Gong Yingxian looked at Ren Yi with deep concern, but he didn’t know what to say.
The only thing he wanted to do right now was pull Ren Yi into his arms and warm him up.
But he couldn’t.
He didn’t have the right to do that.