Nights in the mountains were characterized by their menacing coldness and the frigid air suffusing them. Under the moonlight, there was a burst of orange light appeared in a certain corner of the village. The light slowly enlarged and soon revealed itself to be a ball of flame. A split second later, an explosion sounded and the roof of a bamboo hut burst asunder. The peculiar thing was that despite such a huge stir, nobody was screaming. Nobody came running out of the buildings, either.
Ying Qingcang's eyes shot open. Another loud boom sounded beside his ear. He got up in haste and ran to the window to see what was happening. His eyes widened at what he saw. In one swift motion, he picked Xin Qing up. Just then, Chieftain Mo Lin and Boss Wan's voices sounded outside his door.
"You carry him!" Ying Qingcang tossed Xiao Rui into the chieftain's arms. There was an uncharacteristic look of panic on Boss Wan's face right then. "I can't find Huanhuan," Boss Wan said.
"Let's get out of here first. The explosions are drawing close," Ying Qingcang said, leading the way outside.
Chieftain Mo Lin carried Xiao Rui and ran after them. "They've all been drugged," Chieftain Mo Lin wailed. "Nobody was awake during the blast. They're all dead. Who did this? Which maniac is capable of such a sadistic act?"
Ying Qingcang's face turned grim as he ran. Xin Qing was still fast asleep in his arms. Boss Wan ran ahead to the front of the group, shouting Chen Huan's name as he did. All of a sudden, Boss Wan halted in his steps. Then, he turned around and ran in another direction.
Ying Qingcang and the chieftain followed him. Even from afar, they were able to discern Chen Huan's profile amidst the flame, and right now, she was holding a flaming torch in her hand.
"Huanhuan?" Boss Wan ran towards her and noticed the vacant look in her eyes. She could not even hear him screaming.
Then, the old chieftain shouted in horror. "Hypnosis?"
"Come on, man. Knock her out!" Ying Qingcang said sternly. "She's setting off the explosives."
Boss Wan's palm connected with Chen Huan's neck. Then, he picked up her unconscious form and ran.
The old chieftain's heart-wrenching yells sounded out: "Save them! We have to save them!"
"It's too late," Ying Qingcang said, staring at him. "Unless you have a way to instantly wake them up. Otherwise, we won't have time to carry them out one by one."
Chieftain Mo Lin shook his head as he cried. "I can't watch them all die while I do nothing. You take Xiao Rui away."
While Ying Qingcang and the chieftain argued, Boss Wan suddenly yelled from ahead. "Look out! The water tower is about to collapse!"
The tallest building in the entire village was a tower used to store water. Its supporting structure had just been destroyed by the explosives. As a result, the entire structure was tilting and leaning towards the trees and wooden cabins beside it. Ying Qingcang's eyes turned glacial. "Catch!" he yelled before tossing Xin Qing towards Boss Wan.
Boss Wan quickly set Chen Huan on the ground and caught Xin Qing in mid-air. The two of them crashed down to the ground. The old chieftain tossed Xiao Rui away from him almost at the same time as the tower crashed down upon Ying Qingcang and the chieftain.
Boss Wan crawled along the ground, looking the worse for wear. His gaze never wavered as he stared at the burning wood and collapsing walls before him. All of a sudden, a series of panicked footsteps sounded behind him. He turned his head around abruptly and sighed in relief.
"Hurry up, get them out of here..."
Bit by bit, streaks of white formed in the horizon. Although the night had finally passed, everything had changed.
"How many men do we have left?" Boss Wan asked. He and a bunch of people were now standing in front of the village's entrance. On the ground lay Xin Qing, Chen Huan, and Xiao Rui respectively. None of them were awake yet.
One of his men spoke in voice laced with pain: "There's five of us left. We didn't eat much last night, that was why we woke up in time to escape. The other brothers..."
Chen Huan shifted. Boss Wan quickly helped her up. "Huanhuan?"
"My... My head hurts. What's wrong with me?" Chen Huan touched the back of her head. Her whole body felt exhausted. Then, she saw everyone standing around her, looking utterly disheveled and grimy. Xin Qing and Xiao Rui were still lying on the ground unmovingly.
"What happened?" she asked in a panic. "What's wrong with everyone?"
Boss Wan recounted last night's events to her, though he did not mention the part about her being hypnotized.
"Then why are you guys still standing around? Hurry up and save them!" Chen Huan stood up and dashed into the village. Boss Wan held her back. "Hey, don't be so impulsive. It's good that you've woken up. You need to stay here and look after Xin Qing. We'll go in now and look for Ah Cang."
Just when the men were about to enter the village, Chen Huan saw Xin Qing's eyes blinking open.
"Are you alright? Are you hurt anywhere?" Chen Huan held Xin Qing's arms. Xin Qing rubbed her eyes. Before Xin Qing could even open her mouth, Boss Wan spoke first: "Xin Qing, you have to calm down. For the sake of the baby..."
Xin Qing went still with shock.
The entire village was in ruins. All that was left of the houses were the charred remains of their supporting frames; some did not even have those left. The smog caused by the explosives stung all of their noses. Boss Wan stood in front of the place where Ying Qingcang and the chieftain had been buried under the collapsing tower last night. He watched as his men began pulling piece after piece of broken planks from the ground. He could not afford to look for the others. The longer they waited, the more danger Ying Qingcang would be in.
Xin Qing stood on the sidelines, staring stupidly at the everything before her. Chen Huan had her arm wrapped around Xin Qing, patting her shoulder occasionally as a gesture of comfort.
"Ah Cang! Ah Cang!" Xin Qing yelled out suddenly, dashing forward. Not even Chen Huan was quick enough to stop her. Xin Qing ran towards the rubble, dropped to her knees, and began sifting through the debris herself. She pushed the planks apart with total abandon. Not once did she stop to check if the planks had any nails on them. "Ah Cang! Ah Cang, don't scare me like this, okay? Come out now, please. Hurry up! Show yourself!"
Even Boss Wan's men had stopped digging by then. They had already dug to the bottom of the pile. They found nothing.
"Xin Qing, stop. You need to watch out for your baby," Chen Huan said, moving in to help Xin Qing to her feet. Somehow, Xin Qing found the strength to shove Chen Huan aside. Then, Xin Qing turned to one of Boss Wan's men beside her, her hands clutching the hem of his pants. "Why aren't you guys digging. Don't you dare stop digging. Hurry up and dig! Ah Cang is still waiting! I can hear him calling me. Hurry up and dig, damn it!" After her tirade, Xin Qing started digging once again, shifting piece after piece of charred wood until her palms were riddled with splinters and all her nails were broken.
Xiao Rui, who had woken up some time during the commotion, walked up to her. "There are no longer any signs of life here."
Xin Qing stared blankly at a piece of black, charred wood. "Nonsense," she mumbled softly, "he's still down there. You're all lying."
"He isn't there," Xiao Rui said, crouching down. "Which means he isn't dead."
"Yes, yes, yes..." Xin Qing nodded vigorously. "He... He'll be fine. He won't abandon me. He won't..."
Chen Huan heaved a sigh of relief, but a split second later, she saw Xin Qing's body go limp. Chen Huan reached out just in time to catch her. Then, Boss Wan spoke out in his deep voice: "Start clearing up the other places right now. Finish the job as quickly as you can. Then we'll get the hell out of here."
A month later.
"She refuses to drink it again?" Zhang Mi said, watching Young Master Shen descend the stairs with the bowl of medicine.
"Drank half of it," Young Master Shen said in a dejected tone. Despair oozed from his entire being.
Zhang Mi burst into tears. "What are we going to do now? Forget that she's skipping her meals, but now she's even refusing to take her medicine. What if she has another episode? She'll die of pain."
Ah Nan and Ah Che came in from outside. Ah Nan was carrying a bunch of documents with him. "Still refusing to come down?" Ah Nan asked.
"I'll bring them up!" Zhang Mi said, taking the documents from Ah Nan. After drying her tears, she headed upstairs.
Ah Che and Ah Nan sat down. "It's been a month, and yet we still can't find anything. Not even a corpse," Young Master Shen said with a sigh.
"It means that the young master isn't dead!" Ah Che said with fervor. "We'll keep looking. We'll find him eventually."
The front door opened with a loud bang. Chen Huan ran inside. "Ying Qingcang isn't dead! I'm sure of it!"
Boss Wan followed behind Chen Huan, shaking his head. Then, he pulled Chen Huan to sit down. Chen Huan fixed her gaze on him. "You believe it, too, don't you! That he isn't dead?"
"Huanhuan, that isn't your fault. You-"
"Stop it! Stop talking!" Chen Huan yelled, burying her face into her hands.
Not long after they had left the village, Chen Huan had found out that she had been hypnotized. She learnt that she had been the one who had set off the explosives that killed everyone. She could barely live with herself these days, so much so that she felt the urge to take her own life. She could not bring herself to face Xin Qing. Every day, she would follow Aunt Tian around and perform any chore available at Ying's residence like some kind of nanny. Whenever Xunxun made Ah Sha cry, she would slap him right in the face.
Everyone knew that Chen Huan had been struggling with guilt. Even so, none of them knew how to comfort her, especially Boss Wan. Boss Wan had always hoped that Chuan Huan would stay by his side and stop running around. He had gotten his wish now, just not in the way he wanted. Right now, he would rather have Chen Huan running around as long as she could resolve her internal conflict.
"What's happening at Ying Enterprises?" Young Master Shen asked Ah Nan.
"Ying Enterprises no longer exists. All its assets had already been transferred to the young miss. In a few days, the HQ of Ying Enterprises will be renovated. The name of the building will be changed to Xin Enterprises."
"What about old man Ying? What's his reaction to all this?" Young Master Shen had never let Xin Qing out of his sight recently. Now that he thought about it, Ying Hao had yet to show up despite the fact that they had immediately called to notify everyone back in England after the incident.
A look of suspicion formed in Ah Che's eyes. "The old master... He's missing," Ah Che said in a doubtful tone.
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"That's what the guys over at England told me. The day before the young master got into trouble, the old master left the house and never returned," Ah Che said, clenching his hands into tight fists. "They've called the police and made a missing person's report. The cops are looking for him too."
Boss Wan's scowl grew darker by the second. "None of us could find any traces of him," Boss Wan growled in frustration. "The villagers are all dead. All their corpses have been accounted for."
"All except for Ying Qingcang and the chieftain," Young Master Shen said, a vacant look forming on his face. "If they really were taken by someone, the abductors would've surely planted two fake bodies to fool us. But right now, there is just nothing."
"My guys have searched through the area in a one hundred mile radius. They didn't find any leads. Not a single trace either," Boss Wan said. He deeply regretted not planting a GPS device on Ying Qingcang from the get-go.
Zhang Mi walked down the staircase and handed the documents to Ah Nan. "She signed everything."
"Is she staring off into space again?" asked Chen Huan.
"No. I persuaded her to drink a glass of milk. She's asleep now," Zhang Mi said, her eyes turning red at the rims. Still, she held back her tears. She knew that Chen Huan would feel even more guilty if she cried in front of Chen Huan.
Soon, the rumors of the accident encountered by the President of Ying Enterprises spread out among the public. All members of the press were in full-blown assault mode, bombarding the world with all kinds of news related to the incident. Some had claimed that Ying Qingcang had perished in the accident and that Xin Qing had inherited all his assets. Others had claimed that Ying Qingcang was just missing, only that Xin Qing had seduced the executives of Ying Enterprises to hand Ying Enterprises over to her. Some had even claimed that Xin Qing had been the one behind Ying Qingcang's death, and that this "Black Widow" had now become the wealthiest person in S City.
Regardless of the truth, Xin Qing had become the subject of public controversy. All women were jealous of her. The lowly nobody that was once the daughter of the Xin family had now claimed Ying Enterprises in just a few short years. Correction, now it had even been renamed to Xin Enterprises. She became the President of Xin Financial Group and owned ninety percent of the total shares.
While everyone was jealous of her and making wild guesses about her whereabouts, Xin Qing had never shown her face to the public. The reporters had not been able to track her down, either. All that had added more fuel to the controversy surrounding her. The entire city was now filled with absurd claims.
In the pitch-black house, a single lamp hung in the center of the room. The light from the lamp illuminated a bed, where a man lay. Xin Qing walked over to the bed and immediately recognized the familiar face. "Ah Cang!" she cried out happily.