Several police officers rushed to University X and brought back the chemical reagents and laboratory equipment Gong Yingxian needed as quickly as possible.
Gong Yingxian instructed them to take test strips and thoroughly swab the carpets over a wide area around the exits of every elevator that hadn’t yet been tested, marking each sample clearly.
He then set up a collection of bottles and jars on a table in the hotel lobby.
Ren Yi watched him curiously but didn’t dare ask any questions, afraid of distracting him.
Gong Yingxian caught sight of Ren Yi out of the corner of his eye. As he dripped reagents into one Petri dish after another, he explained, “Do you remember the explosives at Hongwu Hospital?”
“Of course. Hydrogen peroxide and organophosphorus compounds, combined with some kind of explosive treatment.”
“Bai Chicheng has the same substances on him, except that, judging from your description, they’ve probably been modified.”
“I remember that even a tiny amount of that stuff could blast a hole in a marble floor.”
Gong Yingxian nodded. “Its blast radius isn’t large, but its destructive power is tremendous. It can kill, injure, and poison people, making it extremely dangerous to the human body. The two instruments we brought in are too slow, so I’m using metal salt reagents directly to remove the phosphorus. This produces phosphate compounds that can’t be seen with the naked eye but are visible under a microscope.”
“You can detect them with those test strips?”
“Right. When you go through airport security, the security staff wipe a piece of paper over your suitcase and then test it with an instrument. These chemical particles are incredibly, incredibly small. They form ions that drift around within the surrounding electric field. If you’ve come into contact with hazardous chemicals, the residue might be invisible to the naked eye, but the instruments can detect it. Bai Chicheng has barely left his room since entering the hotel, but his accomplice has been coming and going. If the accomplice came into contact with him and then walked across the carpet on a particular floor, there would be traces left behind. That way, we can determine which areas his accomplice has visited.”
Something occurred to Ren Yi. “But you just said his accomplice left the hotel this morning. And Bai Chicheng has barely left his room. So who abducted the hostages?”
“We’ll know once we find them.”
The test strips from the various floors were collected very quickly.
Gong Yingxian placed them in containers holding the reagents and examined them all under a microscope. Before long, he announced, “Found it. The twelfth floor, right above Bai Chicheng’s room.” He continued, “Tell Tan to check the surveillance footage on the twelfth floor and see if we can pinpoint which room it is.”
Qiu Yan waved her hand, holding a master key card between two fingers. “Let’s go up and take a look first.”
Qiu Yan and Gong Yingxian led several police officers upstairs.
At the end of a long, narrow, dark corridor stood a window. Because the afternoon sun shone directly onto that side of the building, the window was enveloped in brilliant light, leaving only its faint outline visible. It involuntarily brought to mind a passage leading into another world.
Everyone was on edge. They all knew what kind of cunning and ruthless enemy they were facing.
A few minutes later, Tan Haochun came back with an update.
“It should be Room 1206. No one came out of that room during the evacuation. According to the surveillance footage, a staff member knocked on the door and swiped a key card while evacuating the guests, but for some reason, the door wouldn’t open. The staff member was in a hurry to help the elderly guests, so they left.”
Everyone arrived outside Room 1206. Qiu Yan glanced at the “Do Not Disturb” sign hanging on the door handle and pounded on the door twice.
“Anyone in there? Anyone!”
There was no response.
Qiu Yan swiped her key card.
As expected, the door didn’t react at all.
“Could the card reader have lost its magnetization?” Qiu Yan tried the card on the neighboring room. With a beep, the door opened. “Looks like the magnetic lock has been damaged from the inside.”
“Right. During the evacuation, the staff swiped their cards to check every room. This was the only one that wouldn’t open.”
“What do we do?”
“Let me handle it,” Ren Yi said. “These locks are easy to pick, as long as the door hasn’t been locked from the inside or secured with a chain.” Lock-picking was an important skill in their firefighting work. They even had a complete set of lock-picking tools. They simply preferred picking locks to save lives rather than working as locksmiths.
Ren Yi took the key card from Qiu Yan and carefully slid it into the gap between the door and the frame. He worked it back and forth for a while. Before long, there was a click as the small plastic card pushed the latch open.
Qiu Yan remarked, “Captain Ren, you’ve got some skills.”
“Sure, but I don’t show them off lightly, especially in front of the police.” As he spoke, Ren Yi reached for the door to push it open.
“Don’t move!” Gong Yingxian grabbed the door handle just in time.
Ren Yi jumped in surprise.
“Be careful. Step back.”
All the police officers drew their guns.
Holding his gun in one hand and the door handle in the other, Gong Yingxian pressed himself against the side of the doorway and cautiously pushed the door inward. He carefully examined the narrow opening and, after confirming that there were no mechanisms attached to the door, kicked it open in one swift motion. With his gun raised, he rapidly searched every area within sight.
It was a suite. The first thing they saw upon entering was the living room, and they would have to cross it to reach the bedroom.
Ren Yi knew better than to get in their way at that moment. He waited behind them until they had all gone inside, then curiously peered through the doorway. He heard several curses coming from within.
Ren Yi followed them into the bedroom, where the sight before him left him stunned.
On the pristine white duvet covering the enormous bed, which was two meters wide, a large English word had been burned into the fabric by a chemical substance.
FIRE.
But there was no one there.
Qiu Yan cursed furiously. “Fuck! We’ve been played.”
Gong Yingxian said expressionlessly, “If finding the hostages were really this easy, it wouldn’t fit their style of operation.”
Qiu Yan irritably raked a hand through her thick, curly hair. “What are you all standing around here for? Leave two people behind to collect evidence. Everyone else, get out.” She headed for the door first. “Find out who booked this room and whether we can get in touch with them.”
Gong Yingxian said, “I’ll have Tan focus specifically on the surveillance footage from this floor to determine exactly when someone entered or left this room.”
Ren Yi frowned, his mind filled with the huge word FIRE burned into the duvet. He felt profoundly unsettled.
They had prepared themselves for every possible situation involving hostages. The one thing they hadn’t anticipated was that there would be no hostages at the location at all. More precisely, the hostages simply weren’t here. As for where they were, who they were, or how many there were, they still knew absolutely nothing.
The hotel had more than five hundred guest rooms and was situated at a major transportation hub, with an extremely high occupancy rate. At least six or seven hundred people—guests and hotel employees—had been evacuated that day. Figuring out who had gone missing before the day was over was practically impossible.
No wonder Bai Chicheng had said they would come back to find him.
Gong Yingxian had just finished a phone call and was about to find Qiu Yan to discuss something when her phone rang as well. She answered, and after listening for only a couple of seconds, her expression changed dramatically. Her voice trembled.
“How is he now? I—I’ll be right there!”
“Captain Qiu, what happened?” Ren Yi stared at her suddenly ashen face, feeling the hair on the back of his neck stand on end.
Qiu Yan clenched her teeth, her shoulders trembling with fury. “Zhang Wen had a trap set up in his apartment. A-Qiang and five other people have been injured in an explosion.”
For a moment, Ren Yi’s mind went completely blank.
The last shred of hope he had been clinging to was crushed.
It really was Zhang Wen.
That utterly ordinary, inconspicuous young man…
Just thinking about how this man had spent all that time working alongside him, constantly scheming against them and using them for his own ends—and how he had countless opportunities to kill them—sent chills down Ren Yi’s spine.
Gong Yingxian asked urgently, “How is Cai Qiang?”
“He’s at the hospital. I’m going to deal with the scene now.” Qiu Yan took a deep breath, forcing down her grief and fury. Her face was exhausted as she said, “Yingxian, can I leave this place to you?” The words can I carried an almost instinctive note of pleading.
Gong Yingxian squeezed her slender shoulder. “Sis Yan, go without worrying. I’ll handle things here.”
Qiu Yan hurried away. Gong Yingxian watched her disappear into the elevator before finally allowing himself to lose control of his emotions for a moment. He kicked the door of the neighboring room. His face, usually as pale and smooth as white jade, was now shrouded in darkness.
Ren Yi tried to comfort him. “Don’t panic. They’ll be all right.” Even as he said it, he could feel how feeble and powerless the words sounded.
Gong Yingxian gazed deeply at Ren Yi and said hoarsely, “Every day, I think about how many people could have been spared injury if only I’d caught Purple Flame sooner.”
Ren Yi rebuked him. “I’ve told you so many times. Stop taking responsibility for everything. The enemy is hidden while we’re out in the open, and we’re up against an X cult that has been deeply entrenched for many years. You’ve already done an excellent job. The people responsible for innocent victims being injured or killed are the ones who hurt them. It isn’t your fault.”
Gong Yingxian’s lips trembled slightly.
Ren Yi spoke softly. “Yingxian, I’ve had plenty of moments when I felt frustrated and defeated, when I couldn’t save someone, when I watched a victim die right in front of me. Every firefighter has experienced pain, guilt, and helplessness before growing into a mature firefighter. When young firefighters start doubting themselves, I often tell them what my captain once told me: compared with the people we failed to save, we’ve saved far more people. You’re the same. You only see the people you couldn’t save. Do you know how many people you have saved?”
Gong Yingxian said quietly, “You’re always comforting me.”
“I’m comforting you, and I’m encouraging you too, because every word of it is true.”
Gong Yingxian looked at Ren Yi gratefully. No amount of praise or any number of medals could compare with a single word of understanding and recognition from this man.
He was about to say something more when his phone rang again. It was Tan Haochun.
“Hello. Have you found anything… What? How did we not notice this before?”
After hanging up, Gong Yingxian’s expression remained grim.
“The surveillance cameras on the twelfth floor went offline several times, and some of the footage is missing. There was too much surveillance data to review, so no one paid particular attention to this floor earlier. We didn’t catch it.”
Ren Yi had already anticipated this result. “Bai Yan played us for fools. He’s probably waiting for us to come back and find him so he can laugh in our faces. Shall we go?”
Gong Yingxian quietly took Ren Yi’s hand and gave it a squeeze.
“Even now, I’m not afraid,” Ren Yi said. “Do you know why? Because every time, you manage to get us out of danger. Every time, you bring me home safely. This time will be no different.”
Gong Yingxian looked at Ren Yi with gratitude. Ren Yi was always saying that he had saved him countless times, but that wasn’t the whole story.
They had been saving each other all along.