The room was on the third floor. When Xia Hang and Han Huaixiao opened the door and stepped inside, they were greeted by the stale smell of a room that hadn’t been cleaned properly in a long time. Han Huaixiao reached out and checked the bedsheets and duvet cover. Thankfully, they were clean. What he didn’t know was that Fang Dewei, eager to curry favor, had personally stood over the front desk and made sure fresh linens were put on, right in front of his eyes.
After a full day of running around, Xia Hang wanted to take a shower. But when he went into the bathroom, he saw that both the towels and bath towels were yellowed with age. Their luggage was still in Han Huaixiao’s car, which was parked at the Sanshan County Public Security Bureau. In the end, he only washed his face before coming back out.
There were two beds in the room, one by the window and one closer to the door. As the subordinate, Xia Hang naturally went to lie down on the bed by the door.
Han Huaixiao also went in to wash his face. When he came out and saw Xia Hang lying on the bed playing on his phone, he reminded him, “You’ve got less than four hours to sleep.”
Xia Hang was checking the feed from his home security camera. He’d forgotten to ask Su Cheng earlier to buy a large basin and take it over, so he was still a bit worried that the two turtles might have escaped again. Maybe installing a camera had been the right call… if he felt uneasy in the future, he could just check the feed.
Therefore, he promptly picked a camera with the highest sales and better quality and placed another order. Then, he opened his chat with Su Cheng and left him a message asking him to buy a large basin tomorrow if he had time. He also sent over the door password. Hearing Han Huaixiao’s reminder, Xia Hang put down his phone, saying, “I’ll sleep now.”
But he had just closed his eyes when a series of intimate sounds and moans drifted in from the window side of the room, instantly wiping away his drowsiness.
This… hadn’t the front desk girl said the matchmaking event was tomorrow? The people staying tonight should all be single, right?
Then what was with this noise?!
But upon listening more closely, the moaning sounded fake and overacted. Not love at first sight, then. More likely… a transaction. Still, the soundproofing here was terrible. Did they really have to be that loud?
Xia Hang quietly turned his head toward Han Huaixiao, who was sleeping by the window. Han Huaixiao had only just lain down and was clearly still awake. After a moment, the noises grew louder, and Captain Han abruptly got up and slammed the window shut. The glass frame hit the window frame hard, the loud bang echoing through the quiet night. Any normal person would’ve realized they were disturbing others.
But the couple upstairs clearly weren’t normal.
They paused for only a moment before the sounds resumed, even louder than before. Had they realized they had an audience and found it more exciting?!
Xia Hang could easily imagine how dark Han Huaixiao’s expression must be in the shadows. He covered his mouth and quietly laughed for a while.
“Do it if you want, but can you stop yelling?!” someone from another room yelled through an open window. “And if you have to yell, can you at least make it sound real?! Anyone can tell the guy’s useless! You should’ve just gone to sleep already instead of ruining everyone else’s!”
Xia Hang thought that would finally quiet things down. Instead, the couple upstairs seemed determined to prove the man wasn’t useless. The movements intensified, the slapping sounds grew more frequent, and it even sounded like they’d moved closer to the window.
Shamelessness truly knew no bounds.
Xia Hang cleared his throat softly, asking, “Should I switch beds with you?”
Han Huaixiao didn’t respond. Instead, Xia Hang saw him take out his phone and start typing.
“Holy f***, this place has zero soundproofing! Are you trying to pollute the entire building’s ears?!”
“If you’re that into excitement, why even get a room?! Wouldn’t doing it in the street be more thrilling?!”
A couple more people opened their windows to curse, but the pair upstairs still didn’t stop.
A few minutes later, Xia Hang heard a car pull up downstairs. Footsteps followed in the hallway above, and then… silence. He vaguely heard Xie Mingqiang’s voice, along with another unfamiliar male voice, probably one of his colleagues.
“…ID out… let me see your phone contacts… transfer records…”
Xia Hang looked over at Han Huaixiao and immediately understood he must have called Xie Mingqiang to crack down on prostitution. But when he looked closer, he realized Han Huaixiao was already asleep.
It was cold in the mountains at night. Xia Hang pulled the hotel’s thin quilt over himself, while Han Huaixiao didn’t seem to feel the cold at all, as his quilt had been folded up and tossed at the foot of the bed.
Xia Hang knew he should sleep. Tomorrow would definitely be busy. But with Han Huaixiao asleep now, he allowed himself a rare moment of indulgence, carefully tracing Han Huaixiao’s sleeping face with his eyes.
They’d only slept together twice, but they’d shared sleep, arms wrapped around each other, countless times. Remembering the feeling of being held tightly in those strong, long arms, pressed against that broad, warm chest, Xia Hang felt a wave of numbness ripple through his body.
“Seen enough?”
A cold voice suddenly came from below the window. Han Huaixiao hadn’t been asleep at all. Xia Hang awkwardly looked away, closed his eyes, and tried to coax himself into sleep, forcibly suppressing the restlessness in his chest.
Eight years later, his ex-boyfriend was lying less than a meter away and had been watching him the whole time. Anyone who could fall asleep under those circumstances would be a Buddha. So the longer Han Huaixiao lay there, the angrier he became.
Just moments ago, Xia Hang had been messaging someone, even giving them his door password. At that hour of the night, someone you could contact and trust enough to share your home’s password with… any idiot could tell that the relationship was close. Close with someone else on one side, and on the other side, using that heated gaze to look at him, his ex. Han Huaixiao really wanted to punch Xia Hang and demand to know what exactly he was trying to do.
But just as his emotions churned and his irritation peaked, light, even breathing came from beside him.
Xia Hang had fallen asleep.
He lay flat on his back, the quilt tucked in tightly. His expression was clean and gentle, even harmless. His refined jawline was half-buried in the edge of the blanket, utterly still in sleep.
Han Huaixiao took a deep breath, slowly loosened his clenched fist, and closed his eyes.
……………
Early the next morning, Han Huaixiao was awakened by sunlight. The hotel curtains were only a thin layer and did nothing to block the light, so he rolled over and sat up, grabbing his phone from the windowsill.
Ten minutes earlier, Captain Tang had sent a message saying he and the anti-narcotics unit were already at the police station.
Xia Hang was still asleep. Han Huaixiao walked to his bedside and reached out to pat the blanket to wake him. His hand hadn’t even rested there for a full second when the originally sleeping Xia Hang snapped his eyes open, faster than instinct. In the same instant he woke, he had already grabbed Han Huaixiao’s wrist, kicked the blanket away, bent his knee, and driven it upward.
If Han Huaixiao hadn’t reacted in time and twisted his body aside, he would’ve been done for.
The entire sequence happened in the blink of an eye. When Xia Hang realized it was Han Huaixiao, he immediately released the force in his grip and knee.
“Sorry… are you okay?” he asked.
Han Huaixiao shook out his wrist. That vicious alertness in Xia Hang’s movements… he’d seen it before. The last time, outside Xia Hang’s apartment complex, when he’d woken him up, Xia Hang’s eyes had held the same guarded sharpness. That kind of response, erupting straight out of deep sleep, what exactly had Xia Hang been doing before?
But Xia Hang knew very well how much force he used when he didn’t hold back, so he looked anxiously at Han Huaixiao’s wrist and asked again, “Your hand…”
“It’s fine,” Han Huaixiao cut in. “Hurry up and wash up. Captain Tang and the others have arrived.”
Seeing that Han Huaixiao could move his wrist without issue, Xia Hang relaxed a little and went into the bathroom, quickly washing up. When he went downstairs, Director Fang was already awake as well.
“Captain Han, you slept pretty late last night, didn’t you?” Fang Dewei smiled as he walked over to Han Huaixiao. “I had the front desk change the bedding, slept okay?”
“Not bad, Director Fang,” Han Huaixiao replied. “Xia Hang and I still have things to handle, so we won’t be heading back to the county for now. We’ll take the car, please go back first.”
Once they parted ways, there probably wouldn’t be another chance to cross paths with Han Huaixiao, so Fang Dewei hesitated. “Why don’t I stay and help you?”
“No need,” Han Huaixiao said. “You should head back.”
After leaving the hotel, Han Huaixiao and Xia Hang walked toward the police station. In a temporarily cleared-out meeting room at the township police station, several people were already seated, waiting for them.
When Tang Gaoxiong saw them enter, he made the introductions. “Captain Han, this is Yin Hao, captain of the county Anti-Narcotics Division. This is Yuan Libo, director of the Jiling Township Police Station. And this is Zhao Dacheng, head of the township veterinary station.”
After brief greetings, Han Huaixiao looked at Zhao Dacheng, asking, “Director Zhao, have you been to the pig farm in Lingshan Village?”
“I went once last year for an epidemic prevention inspection,” Zhao Dacheng replied.
“Did you notice anything different about that pig farm compared to others?”
“The scale is much smaller than other pig farms,” Director Zhao said. “But there are a lot of buildings for people to live in, more space than the pig pens themselves. There’s even a mahjong room and a billiards room.”
“Who’s the owner? What kind of person is he?”
“The owner is from Jiling town. His name is Liu Kun, about thirty-four or thirty-five. Very smooth talker. I heard he used to be a local hooligan, no idea how he ended up going up the mountain to raise pigs.”
Han Huaixiao nodded slightly, then turned to Yin Hao. “Captain Yin, what do you think?”
“Captain Han, not to sound arrogant,” Yin Hao said, “but our county’s anti-drug work has been solid. That pig farm you’re talking about, there might be people gathering there to use drugs, but the likelihood of drug manufacturing or trafficking is low. If it were production, our informants wouldn’t have zero news.”
“That’s unlikely,” Xia Hang said. “They didn’t show signs of drug use.”
Among everyone present, even Yin Hao, who specialized in narcotics, no one understood drug users better than Xia Hang.
Han Huaixiao agreed. Though he’d never worked directly in the Anti-Narcotics Division, he’d seen and dealt with enough addicts to know what they looked like. When Liu Guangjie had said on the phone that both he and his father were “very careful,” it suggested Liu Zhibin had also been to the pig farm, but neither father nor son showed any signs of drug use.
And yet, linking Liu Guangjie’s mention of “new goods” and “moving stock” at the pig farm with Ye Mei’s hesitant attitude toward the place, Han Huaixiao’s first instinct was still drug manufacturing.
So… if it wasn’t production, and not drug use, then what exactly were the “new goods” Liu Guangjie mentioned?
They’d originally come to probe Liu Peng and his alibi. Now the pig farm itself seemed suspicious, along with the entire village. Was Liu Peng even connected to the pig farm at all?
The room fell into discussion over the pig farm.
At that moment, Han Huaixiao’s phone vibrated. It was Ma Zheng from Technical Investigation.
“Captain Han,” he said, “after repeated comparative analysis, from a technical standpoint, we unanimously conclude that the person in the video you sent last night is not the same person as the one captured on surveillance footage near the crime scene in Sanshan County.”
“You’re certain?” Han Huaixiao asked.
“Yes,” Ma Zheng said. “Multiple members of our tech unit cross-analyzed it.”
“We’re certain.”
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