Famine

Chapitre 32

Zhao Sande nodded slightly: "It seems it will take some effort, but I think I can do it. However, you must promise me that once the truth is revealed, you must tell me. I'll wait for your news."

"No problem, Uncle Zhao, I'll tell you first."

Two days later, the transaction records of the past six months from Hong Bentao's China Construction Bank Dragon Card began to stream from the fax machine in Du Yaofeng's study. After careful screening, four identical transaction amounts caught their attention. The dates were June and July, the amounts were all 158 yuan, and the POS machine codes were also the same. An investigation revealed that this was a POS machine used by the Jinjiang Inn Holiday Inn chain on Beijing Road, only a five-minute drive from Xinzha Road subway station. A taxi ride there would cost a starting fare of ten yuan, and 158 yuan was the price of a standard room at this budget hotel.

The card was swiped between 6 and 7 p.m., which is the time to check out of the hotel.

Generally, the afternoon is the busiest time at the clinic. Imagine Zoe working diligently, focused on treating patients, striving for her future and that of the man she loves, and working hard to pay off her mortgage as soon as possible. At this very moment, a man and a woman are making love passionately in a hotel bed; one is the man who swore eternal love to her, and the other is her best friend.

"An Ruohong, she's been married and has children!"

In the coffee shop, Mao Lifang spoke in a loud voice.

"Yes, she never talks about her private life, but if you use your brain a little, you'll know that she's over thirty years old. Unlike Zoe, who is unmarried, focused on her career, and has a steady boyfriend with whom she lives, An Ruohong is not like that."

I remember once, when we went swimming at the Jing'an District swimming pool, a bar of soap slipped from my hand and fell to the floor while I was showering. As I bent down to pick it up, I glanced at it and saw a very clear C-section scar on her stomach. Another time, at the clinic, when no one was around, she was on the phone, and tears started streaming down her face as she spoke. She said softly, "Mommy misses you too," thinking no one could hear her, but I heard it all.

If I'm not mistaken, she must be divorced, and the father has custody of the child. She appears to be a single woman, but her situation is completely different from Zoe's.

Based on my social experience, it usually happens that the man first makes money, then finds a new lover, and finally dumps her. But since the man loves the child and is much better off financially than her, he takes the child with him.

Divorce is inevitable, and the man's willingness to raise the child shows he still has some sense of responsibility. If she has to raise the child alone while also working to earn money, life will be much harder!

Mao Lifang rambled on and on, and although these were just her guesses, such guesses are usually quite accurate. At least, that's what Du Yaofeng thought.

If Hong Bentao were presented with two women at the same time and had to choose one, he would choose Zoe without hesitation, because Zoe is better than An Ruohong in every aspect.

Is it true that wildflowers always smell sweeter than garden flowers? Using this phrase to analyze Hong Bentao's infidelity is far too simplistic.

A major setback in one's career requires a long period of healing and recovery for a man. Although the milk tea shop is doing well, it's barely enough to make ends meet; the money was borrowed from various sources, and the first priority for any profits is paying off debts. Therefore, even with a woman as outstanding as Zoe in every way, he remains depressed; living in the house Zoe bought even gives him a sense of being a dependent...

At that moment, something vividly appeared in his vision, stimulating him and arousing his primal desires. Perhaps this thing had previously seemed ordinary to him, even dismissive, but with the passage of time, it suddenly appreciated in value, becoming extraordinary. It gave Hong Bentao a fleeting moment of ecstasy, making him unwilling to frequent those cheap brothels, to let those dirty hands that had touched countless men professionally masturbate him. He felt disgusted; he didn't need it anymore. What he needed was to conquer a woman to prove he wasn't a loser, that he still had charm, still had the ability to conquer the world. And conquering a divorced, lonely woman who only knew how to go to work and come home cost less than a masturbation session—perhaps just a few cups of milk tea, a stroll along the Suzhou River, and a few gentle words of flattery and concern. This was his specialty, a weapon he hadn't used in a long time.

Did Zoe discover their ambiguous relationship, which led her to jump off the building and commit suicide?

Oil painting No. 51: 773 Horror Series 13

Section 81: A Weapon That Hasn't Been Used in a Long Time

If Zoe left a suicide note, it must have been destroyed by Hong Bentao.

After Zoe's death, out of fear, guilt, and self-blame, they broke up and went their separate ways. No explanation was needed; they understood each other perfectly. Both were adults, and their relationship was originally just a simple physical one. Two losers—one disillusioned in business, the other heartbroken—used their bodies to comfort each other, to find the courage to face the cruel world again the next day. Now that Zoe was dead, there was no need to continue the relationship. Like a sour apple on a tree, it tastes sweet only when eaten secretly; once picked and presented to you, it's tasteless. It was better to let this "fleeting affair" come and go quietly. They lost contact, even changing jobs. One left the clinic, the other withdrew from the bubble tea shop, living anonymously and quietly, hoping never to see each other again, hoping to disappear from each other's sight to avoid disturbing their peace of mind. Because if they saw each other again, the first thing that would well up from the bottom of their hearts wouldn't be the remaining warmth, but the image of the dead Zoe.

Xiao Yu once speculated that after Zoe's death, her best friend An Ruohong could see Zoe's shadow everywhere in the clinic, which she could not bear, so she left the clinic.

Yes, An Ruohong, who had something to hide, didn't even want to stay in the dental field anymore. She was willing to give up her profession of many years, take off her head nurse hat, and smash her comfortable job to work as a sales clerk in a pharmacy and a cashier in a supermarket.

An Ruohong said that every time she passes Huaihai Road, she walks on the other side of the road so that she can have a wider view and look out at the large window of the clinic. Once upon a time, it was brightly lit and filled with laughter, but now it is dark and lifeless.

What was she gazing at? Was she hoping to see Zoe and offer her a confession, or was she afraid to see Zoe and berate her for betraying their friendship by sleeping with her fiancé?

Nobody knows.

Ms. Du:

I am Li Yongnian.

I received your email.

I have business in Shanghai next week, and we will meet then.

This email was sent from David@.sg

CCS is the abbreviation for the clinic where Li Yongnian currently works. It is a prestigious private dental clinic in Singapore.

Li Yongnian came to Shanghai to attend a dental academic exchange conference, which lasted for two days. On the evening of his arrival in Shanghai, he appeared at Du Yaofeng's home.

"Strange! This is really strange!!"

When Li Yongnian saw "Zoe on the Windowsill" again, he exclaimed in amazement.

"I burned this painting myself when I was performing the seventh-day memorial service for Zoe, how could this be..."

When the devastating news of Zoe's passing arrived, Li Yongnian was in Beijing discussing with the Taiwanese vice chairman the possibility of opening a second White clinic in Shanghai. Given the strong performance of the first clinic, the time was ripe for a second one. Pudong's development was undeniable; in the near future, Pudong would undoubtedly rival Puxi. Lujiazui in Pudong would become the Manhattan of New York, with its 88-story Jin Mao Tower and the under-construction World Trade Center, reaching over ninety stories. White was determined to seize market share there…

Halfway through the conversation, his phone rang. It was Xiao Yu calling. Perhaps because the cell phone signal was not very good, it took Li Yongnian a while to recognize Xiao Yu's voice. She was crying, her voice choked with sobs.

At Zoe's memorial service, Li Yongnian bit his lip and remained silent.

Later, at the clinic's management meeting, Li Yongnian gave a general outline of the emergency measures for business operations. Wu Laogan offered several suggestions and sought his opinion. Li Yongnian gently shook his head and said, "You handle it as you see fit. I've already decided to leave White and return to Taipei."

He paused, then continued, "In the eyes of you Shanghainese, I'm just a Taiwanese. I left my hometown to come here, both to make money and to realize some ambitions. But all of this has to be based on happiness, and I'm not happy now, very unhappy, so I don't want to do it anymore."

After returning to Beijing, he submitted his resignation to the board of directors.

August 23rd marked the seventh day after Zoe's death. In his apartment in Beijing, Li Yongnian personally dismantled the frame, took out the canvas, rolled it up, poured kerosene (used for lighters) over it, and lit it in the bathtub with a Zippro lighter. He watched as the canvas slowly turned into a charred cylinder and eventually turned into a pile of ashes.

He didn't shed a tear at the memorial service; he desperately held back his tears at the management meeting; but now, alone in his apartment, there was no need to restrain himself any longer.

He always felt that Zoe's death was utterly pointless and a terrible waste. If Zoe had been able to communicate with him before taking that step, all the problems could have been solved.

Those were just a few rumors!

In her suicide note, Ruan Lingyu wrote, "Gossip is a fearful thing." After her death, Lu Xun even wrote an essay titled "On the Fearfulness of Gossip." Is gossip really that fearsome? Li Yongnian still can't understand it.

On March 8, 1935, Ruan Lingyu ended her life with sleeping pills; on August 16, 2003, another woman embarked on a path of no return. Both of them were women from Shanghai.

Filled with regret, sorrow, and感慨, Li Yongnian boarded a flight from Beijing to Hong Kong. He stayed in Hong Kong for two days, intending to sort out his feelings. A friend of his in Hong Kong owned a private yacht, and the two had arranged to go fishing at sea. Unexpectedly, while in his hotel room, he received a call from a friend in Taipei asking him to recommend someone for a business manager position at a dental clinic in Singapore. Without hesitation, Li Yongnian replied on the phone, "Could you recommend myself?"

And so, instead of going fishing at sea, he immediately flew to Singapore, where a meeting of over an hour with the owner of CCS Clinic concluded the matter. He then returned to Taipei, took care of some personal matters, and flew back to Singapore, where a new office was already waiting for him.

Compared to Shanghai and Beijing, Singapore has three advantages: it's much cleaner, gets more rain, and has a higher proportion of English speakers. However, the market isn't nearly as large as Shanghai's, and the salaries aren't as high as Beijing's. But these things aren't important to Li Yongnian. What he needs is to forget—to forget the unpleasant things, the experiences that make him feel suffocated. If he could, he'd even forget Zoe.

Oil painting No. 51: 773 Horror Series 13

Section 82: "Strange! This is really strange."

Mr. Li Yongnian:

I'm sorry to bother you.

A month ago, I bought an oil painting called "Zoe on the Windowsill" from an auction house. Since then, a series of incredible things have happened around this painting, even resulting in deaths. I myself, my daughter, and my friends have all been threatened with death and have been on the verge of death several times.

Please forgive me, but the matter is too complex for me to explain clearly in a few words. I eagerly await a face-to-face meeting with you. If you see this email, please contact me. My phone number in Shanghai is 021********. Wishing you all the best in Singapore!

As the original, "Zoe on the Window Sill" was burned; this is an indisputable fact. The "Zoe on the Window Sill" in front of us is a copy, and as for its author, everyone now knows it is Zoe.

Some might ask, Zoe studied medicine and worked in dentistry; she had never been interested in painting, and rarely even visited art museums or galleries. How could someone so used to handling dental work tools wield a paintbrush to create such an oil painting, one that even the original artist, Zeng Men, could hardly recognize?

The following explanation might be more convincing: "Sometimes, things that are impossible for people to do in this world can be easily accomplished after death."

Li Yongnian once joked that as long as Zoe didn't sue him for infringing on her portrait rights, he would collect the painting "Zoe on the Windowsill," and perhaps years later, it would appear at Sotheby's and fetch a sky-high price.

If you were to take this painting to Sotheby's now, the auctioneer would announce: This painting was created by a woman whose cause of death is unknown, and her ghost is attached to it. Every noon, she will show you the colors, and at midnight, she will step down from the frame to embrace you. The starting bid is $10,000, with each bid increment no less than $3,000.

Will people rush to bid? A million, ten million, surpassing works by Monet and Renoir...

If this had happened decades ago, people would have looked at each other in disbelief and avoided it. But times have changed. The buyer would place the painting in a giant stadium, with dozens of television stations, hundreds of cameras, and layers upon layers of photographers all pointing their lenses at it. The broadcast would be broadcast live twice globally, at noon and midnight, with billions of viewers around the world watching on television—a number certainly exceeding that of the 2016 FIFA World Cup in Japan and South Korea. Then two possibilities would emerge: in every corner of the world, from Shanghai to Tokyo, from Australia to Africa, from the United States to Norway, the streets would be filled with streaking crowds; or humanity would be destroyed on that day.

If Zoe has this ability.

Li Yongnian opened his IBM laptop and showed them a pornographic image. Everyone in the clinic received it in their email inbox. Li Yongnian didn't delete it; he kept it, hoping to find the person one day. He believed in karma.

The woman in the picture strikes a very provocative pose, sticking her butt out towards everyone. What's unusual is that she has a silver ring pierced the right side of her buttocks (I wonder if it hurts when she sits down). Next to it is a caption:

"Wow! I'm Mr. Li's mistress!"

This pornographic image was sent from a free email address on NetEase's 163.com.

Li Yongnian copied the pictures onto a floppy disk, left the disk, and said goodbye. He had to rush back to the hotel because he had a meeting the next day and needed to prepare his speech.

After a brief discussion, Nuonuo, Ahu, Du Yaofeng, and Director Chen split up. Some stayed home, while others went to internet cafes, browsing various pornographic websites extensively until they felt dizzy, lightheaded, and nauseous. This slow and painstaking method continued until the third day, and surprisingly, it yielded some results.

On a pornographic website called 18.com, Ah Hu found the same picture, in the exact same pose, with a silver ring on the right side of her buttocks, but this time it was a white blonde woman.

Ah Hu called his college classmate "Little Fly" for help. Little Fly and Ah Hu were not only in the same year and department, but also roommates and best friends. To be fair, Little Fly's intelligence was definitely higher than theirs, especially in computers. Unfortunately, he was inconsistent in his efforts, daydreaming that he could replicate Bill Gates's success. He forgot that this was China, not America. The US has excellent copyright protection—it's called "universal protection." Here, apart from the software inventor fighting alone, everyone else is secretly gloating. If Bill Gates had started his business in China instead of America, for every million he earned from software, at least nine hundred thousand would have been spent on lawsuits against rampant pirates. He'd win every case, but enforcing the judgments was incredibly difficult, leading to a breakdown in his mental state, coughing up blood, and collapsing on the steps of the courthouse—a tragic end before his mission was accomplished.

The little fly didn't become China's Bill Gates as it wished; instead, it transformed into a hacker, a little fly that flies around in the internet, you hate it, but you can't swat it.

Little Fly has his own unique insights into the concept of hackers:

I could easily deposit 100 yuan in a bank, then bypass the bank's computer system firewall and add four zeros to the end of the 100 yuan to make it 1 million yuan. But the problem is whether I would dare to go to the bank and withdraw that 1 million yuan. To be honest, I don't have the guts. The former is just a prank, while the latter is a crime that would get me executed if caught.

Ah Hu's task for Little Fly was to hack into the pornographic website's server and check the download history of this image, dating back to late July. Little Fly quickly replied, revealing that the website was accessed through "Shanghai Hotline" , and the user's registered name was KEY. What followed was Little Fly's forte: he sent KEY an email containing a Trojan horse program. Although KEY's computer had Rising Antivirus software installed, it was ineffective due to a lack of updates. The Trojan horse program set up an automatic execution command on his computer, copying all emails in his inbox, including "sent" and "received" emails, and sending them back to Little Fly's inbox.

Oil painting No. 51: 773 Horror Series 13

Section 83: The Little Fly's Unique Insights

"Mr. KEY: I've come here because of your reputation. I need you to do me a favor. It's easy for you, and I'll pay you 1,000 yuan. Please move the head of the person on the left onto a pornographic image and add the caption, 'Wow! I'm Mr. Li's mistress!'"

The email attachment was a digital photo showing two women: a woman in a nurse's uniform on the right and Zoe in a doctor's uniform on the left. The woman in the nurse's uniform was embracing Zoe affectionately; she was the head nurse, An Ruohong.

The next "received email" was:

"I have received the image you created, and I am very satisfied. Please send your bank account information via SMS to my mobile phone number 136********, and I will pay you the full amount."

An Ruohong used that free email account from NetEase. After sending the pictures to the clinic's email address, the free email account was abandoned, just like a murderer throwing the knife into the Huangpu River after committing a crime in order to erase the traces.

Ah Hu printed out the digital photo and took it to show Ye Xiaohui.

"This is the photo I took," Xiao Hui said readily. She recalled that one day, An Ruohong brought over a 3.2-megapixel Olympus digital camera and asked her to take a photo of herself and Zoe, saying she wanted to use it as a screensaver on her computer. Xiao Hui took the camera and asked the two of them to get closer. An Ruohong then put one arm around Zoe's waist, looking very sweet.

"Hey, don't be too affectionate, or people might misunderstand and think you're a 'lesbian' couple!"

Xiao Hui joked like this, and while they were all grinning, she pressed the shutter.

How can I find Hong Bentao?

This problem is troubling everyone. Is there really no other way besides posting missing person notices?

Ah Hu recalled what Lao Chou had said: once, he saw a Pizza Hut deliveryman on the street whose back looked a lot like Hong Bentao, especially the way he kicked the car brake.

After leaving the bubble tea shop, will he work at Pizza Hut? At his age, he's too old to be a waiter in a restaurant, so he'll probably only be able to deliver food.

The location Lao Chou witnessed was Changde Road in Jing'an District. On Changde Road, A Hu chose an office building, dialed Pizza Hut's delivery hotline, and requested a large seafood pizza be delivered there. A Hu and Nuonuo then waited. A Hu's thinking was that Pizza Hut has branches in every district, and deliveries are made to the nearest location. Since Hong Bentao delivered to the Changde Road area last time, he might do it again this time, as long as he hadn't resigned.

Half an hour later, an electric scooter arrived with a special box for pizzas on the back. The rider, dressed in a Pizza Hut delivery uniform, parked the scooter on the sidewalk in front of the office building, took a large cardboard box of pizzas out of the special box, glanced at the delivery order, and hurriedly ran up the steps.

At first glance, Nuonuo and Ahu were disappointed. The man was unlikely to be Hong Bentao. He had a buzz cut, was dark-skinned and thin, like a Malaysian monkey, and wore a pair of large goggles. If he walked into the bank like that, he would likely arouse the suspicion of the security guards.

The deliveryman walked to the entrance of the office building, looked around, and his eyes fell on Ah Hu. With Ah Hu's size, he could finish a large seafood pizza in one meal.

"Sir, is this the takeout you ordered?"

"I called it."

Here you go, ninety-eight yuan.