Chapter 14
GUO CHANGCHENG HAD ACCEPTED a ghost’s request on impulse, but now he was anxiously pulling his hair. “But how are we going to find her?”
After scrolling through his phone for a while, he found a large group photo in which none of the faces were really in focus. Next, he spent five minutes thinking and finally came up with a simple, if rough, idea. “How about I crop the photo and post a missing person bulletin online and in the paper?”
“That would give the kidnapper plenty of time to sell her to a wholesaler and for them to resell her at retail,” Chu Shuzhi said. “My advice? Go look for her at Walmart. It’d be faster.”
Guo Changcheng gave him a completely lost look.
“Fine, fine, tell me her address,” said Chu Shuzhi. “Let’s figure out how she’d get from there to Dragon City.”
Guo Changcheng rattled off the province and administrative region. “Of course she doesn’t live in the city,” he clarified. “She lives in Cui Village, under the jurisdiction of a middle-of-nowhere county. It’s one of about a hundred villages in that county. To get to Dragon City… Um, she could walk to the county, then take the eight-hour bus from the mountain to the Administrative Center, then take a train…”
“The train’s unlikely,” Chu Shuzhi interrupted. “They’d need to check her ID for a train ride. And even if the kidnapper would actually choose the train, we don’t even know if she’s got an ID to begin with. She wouldn’t exactly steal her household registry book and run off with it.”
As he spoke, Chu Shuzhi turned his computer on and started checking online long-distance bus schedules, looking for buses that ran between the prefecture-level city Guo Changcheng had mentioned to Dragon City. He also looked up the route. “Almost all the buses from that direction take National Highway 220, and the trip takes about thirty hours. If that kid ran away yesterday, she’ll probably be arriving in the city soon.”
Guo Changcheng’s eyes shone. “Right! Chu-ge, you’re so smart! If we go wait at the highway exit, maybe we’ll run into her.”
Chu Shuzhi glanced at his wrist and saw that it was almost 11 p.m. How long would they have to wait? He thought to himself that there must be something wrong with Guo Changcheng; seeing how elated he was, Chu Shuzhi couldn’t help but rain on his parade. “Human trafficking isn’t our jurisdiction. Can’t you just go home and sleep? You don’t think before you speak! And now you’ve just casually agreed to a ghost’s demands…”
Guo Changcheng picked up on the complaint in his tone. Caught off guard, he rubbed his sleeves uneasily. “Chu-ge, how about… How about you go home and rest? I can just drive over on my own. Thank you for your help. I never would’ve thought of the bus route thing myself.”
It was all so annoyingly submissive that Chu Shuzhi’s temper flared, and his expression darkened. Guo Changcheng’s instincts told him that he’d done something wrong, so he immediately bent over to apologize. “And I’m sorry you had to help me carry stuff today! I really am. How… How about I treat you to dinner when you’re free?”
With a hmph, Chu Shuzhi picked up his jacket and walked out. Guo Changcheng lagged behind, not saying anything. When Chu Shuzhi reached the door and saw that Guo Changcheng wasn’t following, he glanced back. “What are you waiting for?” he demanded. “Aren’t you the one who wanted to find her? Get your ass in gear!”
Guo Changcheng instantly blossomed from a frost-wilted eggplant to a freshly watered sunflower and eagerly ran after him. The duo drove Guo Changcheng’s car to the highway exit to wait for a bus with a license plate from the girl’s home province. If they saw one, they’d pull it over and conduct a search among the passengers.
They spent the entire night staking out the highway exit.
Lunar New Year was over, but spring hadn’t yet made its way to Dragon City—or at least spring temperatures hadn’t. In the mornings and evenings, it was still below freezing outside, and spending time out there would quickly turn someone to ice. Under the circumstances, Guo Changcheng and Chu Shuzhi had little choice but to stay huddled in the car.
Sitting in the vehicle quickly made Guo Changcheng sleepy. More than once, Chu Shuzhi saw his chin droop almost to his chest, but each time, Guo Changcheng would suddenly shake himself awake, briskly rub his face, and get out of the car to glance in both directions. Once he verified that no buses had passed by, he’d let out a sigh of relief, wrap his coat tighter around himself, and take a quick stroll around in the night wind, hoping to wake himself a little. He only returned to the car to warm up after his entire body felt numb.
Somehow, Chu Shuzhi didn’t find it annoying to see him constantly getting in and out of the car. He just watched pensively.
In general, the Corpse King spent very little time focused on Guo Changcheng, so until now, he hadn’t fully realized that something felt off. There was what Daqing had said: Guo Changcheng was quiet about his good deeds, never drawing attention or looking for any kind of reward, and as a result, his merits increased exponentially. But even given that, how old was Guo Changcheng? Barely twenty? And yet he was covered in more merits than you could see through. Collecting that many should’ve required saving the world seven or eight times.
At that moment, another long-distance bus approached. As soon as it was close enough to see its license plate, Guo Changcheng vaulted out of the car as if he’d been flooded with adrenaline. He grabbed his ID and stood in the middle of the road, waving his arms to stop the vehicle.
“Tch, so naive,” Chu Shuzhi mumbled. Keeping an eye on Guo Changcheng’s back, he called Daqing. “Hey, night cat, you’re still up, right? If so, I have something to ask you.”
Daqing was in the middle of a dream. In it, he was floating on the ocean, holding and munching happily on a huge whale that would surely be enough to keep him fed for six months or a year. But he’d only taken two bites when the leviathan suddenly launched itself out of the water, splashing him in the face with bitterly cold water.
Jolting awake, Daqing found that Sangzan was holding a chilly receiver to his face and beaming. “Cat slutterer, phone.”
At this point, Sangzan was clearly aware that “slutterer” was a rude word. He’d completely stopped saying it ages ago…except with Daqing. Sangzan, the troublemaker, kept cheerfully saying it to the cat, and even managed to pronounce it more and more like “slut.”
The “cat slutterer” looked up, extremely cross. He pressed his ear to the phone, only to hear Chu Shuzhi’s voice. “Fuck off, old corpse,” Daqing grumbled. “Are you looking to die?”
Chu Shuzhi wasn’t about to let him get away with his bad habit of spewing insults every time he opened his mouth. “You fall asleep as soon as you finish eating. If you’re not careful, you’ll be in a new weight class by the end of the year. By then, not even a dog would be attracted to you, never mind a little female cat. Aren’t you afraid of high cholesterol, high blood pressure, and diabetes, old man?”
The cat slutterer gouged his claws into the desk, leaving a row of marks. Sangzan watched calmly and then floated away, hugging his books to his chest.
“If you have something to discuss, hurry and spit it out. If you don’t, I’m dismissing the court. Chu Shuzhi, what do you want in the middle of the night?”
“I just wanted to ask, have you ever seen orange merit?”
“Of course,” Daqing huffed. “Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and purple—I’ve seen all the colors of the rainbow. When you collect all seven, you can summon Shenron to perform the acrobatic trick of tying himself into a bow in midair.”
“I’m being serious.” Chu Shuzhi lowered his voice, glancing out at the parked bus. “Most of the time it’s white, not orange, but then sometimes it flashes like flame, as if it’s on fire…”
Daqing turned serious. “Fire? Where did you see this?”
“On Guo Changcheng.”
“Impossible,” Daqing said decisively. “I’m familiar with what you’re talking about. That’s no small amount of merit—it’s huge. Do you know what great merits entail? You can’t earn them no matter how many old ladies you help across the street or how much you donate to a few mountain-region schools. These days, all living beings’ merits and sins are written in The Book of Life and Death, meaning they’re all recorded by the Merit Brush, made from the Great Merit Tree. Great merits are on a completely different level. I’ve never seen it myself, but I’ve been told that back when Nüwa created humans, she appeared to be surrounded by fire. Those are great merits blessed by the Heavens.”
Chu Shuzhi froze. Guo Changcheng was already getting off the bus. Even from this distance, he was clearly hanging his head in dejection—another dead end, most likely.
Lowering his voice, Chu Shuzhi quickly asked, “And you’re sure xiao-Guo is human?”
“Mmph. Of course he’s human,” Daqing said. “Wang Zheng even has a copy of his ID.”
“I want to find his proof of birth, the kind that says, ‘x year x month x day, a live male infant was born’—the kind you get from a hospital,” said Chu Shuzhi.
“Huh?” Daqing exclaimed. “Holy shit. Humans are such weirdos. They have something like that?!”
“Enough bullshit. I’m in the middle of something, so I have to go. Remember to look into it for me.” Chu Shuzhi hung up just before Guo Changcheng got in the car.