Volume Two: Second Scroll
Encounter1
“My name is Song Yuhang. We will meet again.”
After she finished saying this, several people hesitated to move, looking at her, and then at the Chief.
The Chief also became somewhat hesitant. In his career of over ten years in law enforcement, he had rarely seen a woman who, when facing fully armed police with loaded guns, remained so unfazed. More importantly, the backup comrades were also late to arrive, which put them at a significant disadvantage in terms of presence.
He licked his lips, his eyes shifting uncertainly, as if calculating how to resolve the situation.
In the end, it was Song Yuhang who was firmer. She said in a low voice, “It has come to this. It’s better to believe it’s there than to believe it’s not. If we can find something, it will be a great accomplishment.”
It was Song Yuhang’s idea anyway, the Chief thought to himself. At worst, if the higher-ups assign blame, I can just push it onto her. After all, she was only sent down to the grassroots level to “experience life.”
So, he tucked his gun into its holster and waved his hand.
“Search.”
The employees of the Huange Nightclub all stood lined up for them to inspect. Lin Yan leaned back on the sofa, smoking, next to Boss Qian, who was trembling nonstop.
He was fat and kept using a handkerchief to wipe the cold sweat from his forehead, looking the very picture of a thief with a timid heart2. He was shaking so much that the entire sofa was trembling.
Lin Yan rolled her eyes. With the cigarette between her fingers, she pinched the flab on his thigh.
Boss Qian almost let out a howl.
Lin Yan’s lips moved slightly, and she said in a voice only the two of them could hear, “In a moment, follow my lead. I guarantee you’ll be fine.”
Boss Qian trembled, and the two beautiful women he was holding also shrank into the corner of the sofa, looking terrified.
“B-but…”
His gaze kept darting towards the table. Speaking of which, the police’s arrival was quite a coincidence. No sooner had Liu Zhigang3 taken out the goods than they arrived. Now the person and the stolen goods are captured together4.
Seeing his evasive5, cowering gaze, Lin Yan cursed inwardly, fucking useless. She fiercely pinched the flesh of his thigh again, forcing Boss Qian to look at her.
That gaze was cold and sharp, containing a hint of killing intent. Her slightly pursed lips held a trace of certainty, as if to say: Listen to me, live. Don’t listen to me, die.
Boss Qian shuddered all over. Just as he was about to say something, Lin Yan was already being pulled up by a police officer.
“What are you doing, what are you doing? I’m talking to you! Stop whispering. Stand up straight, time for a body search!”
Seeing his hand reach for her shoulder, Lin Yan inconspicuously took a step back. Her gaze, as soft and pliant as if it had no bones, drifted over and clung to the man.
“What are you doing? Molesting me? Is this how you police enforce the law? I want that female officer to search me.”
Her voice was not too loud and not too soft. She also clutched her shawl, wearing a wronged expression as if she were being bullied. Song Yuhang’s colleague could only retreat, looking dejected6.
“Song-jie, you go.”
“…”
Song Yuhang looked at the face in front of her, which was extremely similar to Lin Yan’s, and for a moment was again in a bit of a daze. Adding to that, she was standing there wearing a qipao and a shawl, looking ostentatiously beautiful7.
Lin Yan… also liked to dress this way.
Song Yuhang’s eyes grew hot. Her lips moved. “You…”
Lin Yan took another cigarette from the pack on the table and lit it, taking a few drags, the flame leaping.
She leisurely blew a smoke ring in her face.
“I say, Officer, are you going to search or not? We still have to open for business. Can you afford to compensate for a whole night’s revenue?”
As she spoke, she rolled her eyes in disdain.
Song Yuhang noticed that the cigarette she was smoking was no longer the slender Marlboro, but the rather cold and hard Furongwang8.
Because of this detail, for some unknown reason, her heart ached sharply, and her expression turned grim.
“Stand still. I’ll do the search.”
Lin Yan had always been one to stand without a proper standing posture and sit without a proper sitting posture9. As the head of a drug cartel, Pei Jinhong would be even less likely to give a cop10 a pleasant look. Therefore, as she searched, Lin Yan casually smoked, blowing smoke rings from time to time.
The person standing before her had once given her all her tenderness and love. They had embraced, kissed, and possessed each other.
Almost as soon as she was touched, Lin Yan’s scalp instantly went numb. However, she just took another harsh drag of her cigarette, drew it into her lungs, and gently blew it in her face, letting the spreading smoke sting both of their eyes until they were red.
Song Yuhang ignored her little tricks. She searched her very thoroughly. Her fingers went through her thick black hair—nothing. Then they moved down to squeeze the corners of her shoulders and slid further down.
Lin Yan took the opportunity to tilt her neck back, her long, slender neck exposed to her eyes.
Song Yuhang’s throat moved slightly, and she averted her gaze.
“Take it off.”
Lin Yan slanted her eyes at her. “Take what off?”
“The shawl.” She spoke each word with difficulty.
Lin Yan met her gaze, staring until Song Yuhang turned her face away. The corner of her lip curled into a sarcastic smile, but she still complied with her wishes, taking off the shawl and tossing it onto the sofa.
On her entire body, there was nothing extra. Everything was in plain view; she didn’t even have a single piece of jewelry.
“Officer, do I need to take off more?” Lin Yan said, slightly puffing out her chest.
The two were extremely close. In summer, clothes are thin, and she happened to brush against her softness.
The feeling of an electric shock in that instant almost made Song Yuhang’s spine go numb. She seemed to be unsteady on her feet as she took a step back, pressing her lips tightly together, her tone reaching the extreme of coldness.
“That’s not necessary.”
Just as she spoke, an officer who had been searching upstairs ran down with a syringe in his hand. “Chief, Song-jie, we found this.”
Liu Zhi’s pupils contracted. “Hong-jie…”
Lin Yan shot him a reassuring look.
Pei Jinhong had long had a rule that no nightclub staff were allowed to use drugs inside the club, so it was impossible for any drug residue to be left here. That syringe was something she had deliberately thrown in the trash can, precisely to completely dispel the police’s suspicions.
After all, if a place is too clean, it also arouses suspicion, doesn’t it?
The moment the syringe appeared, the entire atmosphere quietly tensed up again.
Boss Qian kept swallowing his saliva, shrinking into the sofa without making a sound.
Song Yuhang held the syringe, sizing up everyone in the room.
“Which room was this found in?”
Her colleague answered, “The trash can in the innermost room.”
Song Yuhang held up the syringe. “Whose is this? Step forward yourself.”
Lin Yan covered her lips and let out a small yawn.
“Mine. What about it?”
“What was it used for?”
She revealed the injured area on her arm for her to see.
“I was injured, it got inflamed. Is it not allowed to ask a family doctor to come give me a shot?”
Song Yuhang looked at her, half-believing and half-doubting.
Lin Yan’s expression didn’t change. “Why don’t you unwrap the gauze and take a look? Or, you can smell what’s inside for yourself.”
As she spoke, she was about to undo the gauze wrapped around her arm, but Song Yuhang had already raised the syringe to her nose. It was indeed the smell of anti-inflammatory medicine.
The other officers, having finished searching upstairs and downstairs, also returned one by one to report.
“Chief, we’ve searched everywhere. There are no suspicious items.”
Hearing this, Boss Qian’s heart relaxed, as if a great stone had been lifted. He secretly cast an appreciative glance at Lin Yan and leaned back on the sofa, breathing heavily.
His series of small movements finally caught the Chief’s attention.
“You, get up. Let us see if there’s anything under the sofa.”
The group of people then turned the sofa cushions, the back of the sofa, and the space under the sofa upside down, even flipping up the carpet. It was still completely empty.
Lin Yan found it amusing to watch and rolled her eyes.
“I say, everyone, are you done searching? If you’re done, then get the hell out. Unlike all of you with your iron rice bowls11, we still have to open our doors to do business.”
The Chief slowly released his hand from the carpet. Seeing that still no one had arrived outside, his eyes were filled with indecision. Finally, he took his phone out of his pocket, intending to make a call to ask.
Song Yuhang spoke, pointing at the glass on the table.
“What is this?”
A pale blue liquid rippled in the glass. The light floated within it, making it appear all the more mysterious.
Boss Qian’s face instantly turned deathly pale.
Lin Yan’s expression, however, became more subtle.
“It’s just foreign liquor. What’s wrong?”
She said this calmly, but a subordinate behind Liu Zhi lightly touched his arm. “Zhi-ge, isn’t that…”
Liu Zhi turned his head and signaled him with his eyes to be silent.
Seeing that everyone looked as if they were facing a great enemy, Song Yuhang smiled. “Foreign liquor? Is there a foreign liquor of this color? Don’t tell me it’s some kind of…”
She paused, her tone full of meaning. “New type of drug.”
“Tsk.” Lin Yan clicked her tongue. Dressed in her dark red qipao and high heels, she moved over with a graceful and charming posture.
“The officer must be joking. We are a legitimate place of business with a license, open to welcome guests. How could we possibly have something like that?”
“Isn’t that right, Boss Qian?”
She suddenly emphasized the last three words.
Boss Qian, caught off guard by being called out, came back to his senses and nodded hastily, “R-r-right… I… I I I… we were dis-dis-discussing business…”
In the tense, sword-drawn-bow-strung12 atmosphere, his nervousness made him stutter even more. However, when facing the police, this kind of nervousness is necessary; it makes you seem weak, incompetent, and incapable of lying.
Having received Lin Yan’s warning, and with Song Yuhang’s gaze as sharp as electricity, Boss Qian didn’t dare to meet her eyes. He kept his head down, burying his face, looking for all the world like an honest, simple man.
Song Yuhang looked at him, then back at Lin Yan. Her gaze shifted to the glass of “foreign liquor,” and the corners of her lips curled up slightly in a smile.
“You think I’ll believe you? To be honest, I’ve seen this stuff before…”
Before her words had faded, Lin Yan had already picked up the glass of blue liquid and tilted her head back, downing most of it, leaving only a mouthful sloshing at the bottom.
She wiped the liquid from the corner of her lips and gently offered the glass to her.
“It’s delicious. The officer has been busy for half the day, only to come up empty-handed13. Would you like some to wet your throat?”
Song Yuhang suddenly pressed her lips together tightly, her breathing growing heavier.
She was proving a point, and she was also provoking.
The storm clouds shifted in Song Yuhang’s eyes. After a long moment, she shook her head and smiled. A strand of hair from her forehead drifted to the side with the movement, revealing slightly messy eyebrows and a pair of bloodshot eyes. She had a somewhat dissolute and unrestrained air about her, truly different from the dignified and proper Captain Song of the past.
“Since we’re already here, how can we leave empty-handed? Xiao Chen, bring the drug test strips.”
A urine test!
Alarm bells went off in Lin Yan’s head. Damn it, Song Yuhang, you won’t rest until you’ve destroyed me, will you?
If she took a urine test, there would certainly be no problem, but the same couldn’t be said for the others in this room. If even one person was found to be using drugs, she would also be in trouble, and her time as an undercover agent would be over.
Just as the test strip was about to be handed to her, Lin Yan gritted her teeth, at her wit’s end.
The Chief’s phone rang. He covered the receiver and went to the side, nodding and bowing as he answered.
“Hello? Director? Ah? A mistake? Someone filed a false report…”
A smile played on Lin Yan’s lips as she pushed the test strip back into her hand.
“I think this won’t be necessary now.”
The Chief hung up the phone and turned back to pull at Song Yuhang.
“Let’s go, let’s go, work’s over. It was a misunderstanding, just a misunderstanding, ha.”
With the Director personally giving the order and the Chief pulling at her, Song Yuhang couldn’t possibly disobey a superior’s command in public.
She kept looking back, meeting her gaze through the colorful yet cold lights.
Lin Yan raised an eyebrow and gave her a triumphant smile. Just as she was about to put the glass down, a shadow fell before her.
She looked up and saw that Song Yuhang had come back.
Lin Yan was slightly stunned. She had already snatched the glass from her hand, tilted her head back, and drained it in one gulp, before slamming it heavily on the table.
The glass shattered on impact.
Song Yuhang’s palm was dripping with fresh blood.
She raised her eyes to look at her, licked her lips as if unconcerned, her eyes flashing with an eager, challenging light.
“Pei Jinhong, is it?”
“I’ll remember you.”
Her hand brushed past her shoulder as if by accident, leaving a streak of blood on the qipao.
Song Yuhang pulled away and left. “My name is Song Yuhang. We will meet again.”
As soon as they were gone, Lin Yan’s body swayed, on the verge of collapsing.
Liu Zhi quickly steadied her. He didn’t call her “Saozi,” but “Hong-jie.”
The others also gathered around, looking at her with some concern.
“Hong-jie, Hong-jie, are you alright?”
After this battle, she had finally and truly established her authority in the Huange Nightclub.
This authority had nothing to do with who she was. They would only remember that today, it was Lin Yan who had stepped forward to save them from the cops, and had saved Boss Qian as well.
Lin Yan waved her hand, steadied herself, and looked at the mess on the floor.
“I’m fine. Clean this up, send Boss Qian home. We’re closed for tonight. Everyone, go about your own business.”
Liu Zhi escorted her upstairs to rest.
“Hong-jie, that shipment of goods…”
The shipment of genuine drugs sent by Tiger had long been swapped out by her. What she and Song Yuhang drank was indeed foreign liquor, just mixed with a bit of blue ink.
A cold sneer touched the corner of Lin Yan’s lips.
“No rush. They dared to plot against me. When a dog is cornered, it will leap over the wall14. They’ll naturally come looking for me for it.”
That carload of new drugs was at least a hundred kilograms, not a small amount. It had, in fact, added a bargaining chip to her hand.
Liu Zhi watched her walk into her room. Feeling a bit reluctant to leave, he couldn’t help but ask one more thing.
“Then… Wang-ge…”
Lin Yan leaned against the doorframe, her face somewhat cold.
“Do you think Wang-ge is an incautious person? How could he have been caught so coincidentally?”
Liu Zhi’s heart jumped in shock, and cold sweat soaked his clothes.
“Are you saying…”
Lin Yan said the final sentence that crushed the last of his doubts.
“Liu Zhi, Jiejie is older than you. The bridges I’ve crossed are more than the roads you’ve walked. Don’t mind that your Wang-ge and I were together for so many years, but there’s something I have to say: you may treat others as brothers, but they may not be sincere in return.”
“One hundred kilograms is not a small amount. If I hadn’t sensed something was wrong today and had you switch it out in advance, we’d all be in prison waiting for a bullet.”
“Think it over carefully. And then…”
Lin Yan’s gaze met his, calm yet hiding a sharp edge.
“Make a choice.”
Tonight, the Huange Nightclub did not open. The small alley behind it was also quiet.
Creak— With a soft sound, the wooden door was pushed open. Several employees walked out carrying trash bags. They walked all the way to the mouth of the alley, where the trash can was already overflowing.
The few of them tossed the bags casually, and the trash inside scattered all over the ground.
After they had walked away, talking and laughing, an old man jogging past for exercise stopped. Seeing that no one was around, he quietly picked up a cigar from the pile of waste paper and beer bottles.
He felt it over roughly. On it, someone had used a fingernail to press a series of regular marks—Morse code.
The old man put the cigar in his pants pocket and continued running.
The person who filed the false report was found. He was a drunk man who had had too much to drink. Sitting in the police station, he was still spouting nonsense. After careful questioning, they learned that he held a grudge against the Huange Nightclub because he wanted to go in and spend money but didn’t have enough, and they wouldn’t let him in.
“…” The several investigating officers looked at each other, all grinding their teeth.
Adhering to the principle of “respond to every alert,” the 110 command center immediately dispatched the mission upon hearing it was a major drug trafficking case. This led to the farce where they came up empty-handed15. Afterwards, the narcotics squad also received the mission, but upon verification and reporting it up to Feng Jianguo, it was immediately called off.
While they were conducting the interrogation, Song Yuhang also finished her day’s work and drove home.
She put her backpack down on the bed, turned on the desk lamp with a click, and opened her notebook, writing under the warm yellow light.
“June 15, 2009. It has been 140 days since you left me. It is summer in Jiangcheng again, the hottest time of the year.”
Song Yuhang propped her chin on her hand. Two drops of water fell onto the paper. She reached out and wiped them away, then continued to write.
“I miss you. Very, very much. I dream about things from our past almost every night.”
“I don’t know if it’s because what one thinks about by day, one dreams about by night16, but during a mission today, I met someone who looks almost exactly like you…”
Writing up to this point, Song Yuhang’s gaze fell on the whiteboard to the side. Looking at the three characters for “Pei Jinhong,” she clearly became somewhat absent-minded.
After a long moment, she pressed her lips together tightly, as if having made a momentous decision, and picked up her keys and left the house.
LP: Re-translated on July 30, 2025
✨ Unlock Early Access to Chapters! ✨
Choose your perfect membership at bamboopandatl.net:
📚 Full Access ($4.99)
• Advanced chapters of ALL ongoing novels
• Access to complete finished novels
• Ad-free reading experience
📖 Single Novel Access ($1.49)
• Advanced chapters of ONE specific novel
• Ad-free reading for chosen novel
PayPal is the only current payment option!